The silk comes at you in waves, brushes up against you and collectively blankets you in the pitch darkness that the light is piercing through. All manner of creature, bacteria, and rust flock to its structure. The microscopic bits of iron and rust that mighty currents of the northern seas have swept away from the craft’s walls can be viewed dancing at the windows. Their delicate clumps of bright red dissolving before your eyes.
Before long your attention turns to the figure slowly coming into focus. The most famous and most haunted of white ladies to slip beneath the grasp of man’s reach and into the blue ocean. Where all who dare tempt for too long the fragile balance of wood, steel, and water eventually dwell. The upright bow of the Titanic bathed in light looks almost like an upscale model in the distance from the sub’s window. Like the familiar sensation of viewing a town or city from the small circular window of an airplane. You know that what you are viewing is not what perspective would have you believe it is, for it is indeed a man-made monster. Sleeping reluctantly in the depths, while the familiarity of its image makes the moment seem a bit contrived.
Then you remember this is a tangible connection to tragedy. A link to so many lives cut short and scattered throughout the wide expanse of the sea. The wreck has become an open house for countless forms of ocean life. Nearly all of the structure’s windows and doors have been eaten away or broken off. This has created constant cross stream currents throughout the ship, exposing its many levels to sand.
The descent down from the surface must have been an incredible sight for any onlooker to witness. The wreck’s debris field bares claim to the massive unleashing of many items as the ship broke in two. An odd mixture of large and small objects in a final battle against gravity and pressure. As it swirled and dipped slowly towards the ocean floor. Bowlers, bits of the ship’s double plated bottom, cups, mountains of coal, thousands of eggs, jars of olives, suitcases, the ship’s impressive ice making machine, cases of champagne, the four massive smoke funnels, and the vast assortment of humanity that would remain lost for all time in the depths.
Only a few precious hundred survived that night, even less were brought back home from the coal ships chartered to collect the dead. Those buried in graves throughout Newfoundland, hamlets across southern Ireland, and in marbled tombs in upstate New York. They were among the only ones to be reclaimed from the sea. The rest had long been consumed by the forces of nature.
Shoes are the only items that remain today. The chemicals in their leather have preserved them from being consumed. Creating a final lasting marker for the millionaire, the fireman, the baker, and the candle stick maker who on that cold night in April were finally made equal by the great leveler of mortality.
No one at the time of her foundering knew where she rested. Several officers and passengers who survived the actual sinking, would return in the form of ashes to the spot long believed to be the wreck’s location. On the morning after the sinking, an eerie vapor lingered over the spot where the linear slipped below the waves. The first rescue ship saw in the distance thirteen boats, bits of cork floating everywhere, dozens of deck chairs, and only one body. This was where every single expedition undertaken to find the ship would begin their search and it was later discovered to be nearly twenty five miles from the actual location.
So many avoided these waters for years. The northern shipping routes would be moved further south to prevent additional disaster. Many would often describe a feeling of dread at the most humane level, from being in the precious of such a tragic event. Today it is impossible to be there, and not feel overwhelmed. You are surrounded by water, it is inescapable, the horizon is grey blue and the wind is usually rushing at you.
A constant chill is in the air, the sun, covered throughout most of the day by slow moving clouds the size of continents. But, whenever it does shine through, it produces a magnificent glow. The beam of a heavenly light seems to make an effort to penetrate the depths. The lining of the water is bathed in the sunshine. A few precious feet, sometimes will mix the bright sun’s beams with the deep dark of the sea. Never enough to reach the sand covered structure below, but, enough to make the imagination wonder.
They wreck for the first time in eighty five years was lit with giant high powered lights the week before. The salvage company’s two Russian made subs had dropped nearly five sets of these underwater production lights with ultra-long lasting batteries so that the camera crews from Discovery Channel could film the wreck live. The wreck visible in the sub’s tiny windows in the distance, the bow now diminished by the outside influences of the lights. It would be two years before their glow would finally burnt out. Until the sand could brush away the sub garbage that had been scattered by the legions of supply ships from the ocean surface, and the wreck could return to a pitch black ghost town. While the green glow of a sub light became a seldom happening once more. Tourists are no longer permitted to dive the wreck site.
The ground just behind the structure’s broken bow section it littered with shoes. Tiny shoes that could only fit on a child, ones that were only made in the northern reaches of Sweden, and some that were standard White Star Line issue. These remaining bits of humanity are enough to turn my morality away from the childish ventures of my past. Away from any desire to see the wreck with my own eyes, or to see items removed from its halls. Only one desire now remains...
Remembrance is the act of remembering, and the ability to remember
Some very interesting facts about the Titanic
At the time of her launch, the Royal Mail Steamer Titanic was the largest man-made moving object on Earth.
The Titanic cost $7.5 million to build.
The White Star Line's Titanic and her sister ship Olympic were designed to compete with the famous Cunard liners Lusitania and Mauretania.
. More than 15,000 men worked on the ship during its construction in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
The Titanic's wake was so huge that, at its launch, it sucked in another ship and almost caused a collision.
The Titanic featured an onboard swimming pool, a gymnasium, a squash court, and a Turkish bath and two separate libraries - one for first-class passengers, and one for second class.
The top speed of the Titanic was 23 knots (more than 26 miles per hour).
The Titanic originally was designed to carry 64 lifeboats. To save from cluttering decks, the ship ended up carrying 20 on her maiden voyage.
Passenger and fashion writer Edith Rosenbaum cabled her secretary in Paris that she had "a premonition of trouble" about the Titanic. (She survived.)
Governess Elizabeth Shutes was so unnerved by the smell of the night air on April 14 that she could not fall asleep. She told fellow passengers that the smell reminded her of the air inside an ice cave she had visited. (She survived.)
William Edward Minahan, a doctor from Fond du Lac, Wis., had his fortune read shortly before the voyage. The fortune teller predicted his death aboard the ship. She was right.
The plot of Morgan Robertson's novel "Futility" bears an uncanny resemblance to the Titanic disaster. The novel tells the story of the Titan, the largest ship ever built, billed as "unsinkable," which strikes an iceberg in April and sinks. In the book, more than half the passengers die in the North Atlantic because of a lifeboat shortage. The book was published 14 years before the Titanic sank.
Capt. Edward G. Crosby, a Milwaukee veteran of the Civil War, founded a steamship company on Lake Michigan but became famous for refusing to put enough lifeboats for all the passengers on his steamers. Aboard the Titanic, he was unable to find a place on a lifeboat, and he sank with the ship.
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