As you will all be aware of, no doubt if you've turned on your TV or ventured out to buy a paper or browsed on the internet, is the impending 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking.
The Titanic sunk on 15th April 1912. The gigantic vessel was the largest moving thing on the plant and was dubbed as 'Unsinkable' and yet it now lies deteriorating rapidly in it's cold watery grave somewhere on the Atlantic sea bed. It was the news that shook the western world as reports filtered through that more than 1500 of the 2200 passengers on board had met their demise out in the middle of an ice field in the early hours of the morning. It was a set of unfortunate coincidences that made the highly praised masterpiece strike it's final agreement with death: the forgetting of the binoculars in the crow's nest; the ignored ice warnings from surrounding ships; the want to get to New York in record time (possible myth); the ice sheet dumping the giant icebergs into the water at an unexpected time; the lack of lifeboats (20 lifeboats to be shared among 2200) and countless others.
We are all aware of the extraordinary events that happened that night; the dazzling array of famous First Class passengers that lost their lives or cheated their way to safety whilst the steerage and Third Class were plunged into the icy water; the band that played until the end; the engineers that sacrificed their lives to do what they could; Captain Smith watching his livelihood crumble before him; women and children only and the distress call S.O.S.. But nothing is more remarkable than what happened afterwards - the countless artistic impressions of the sinking ship.
It is rather an odd thing to point out and it had most certainly escaped my attention for the whole 16 or so years that I've been intrigued by the historic event. But the depiction of the sinking on postcards, on mantle piece artwork, and more remarkably, the graves and memorials of the passengers and stewards that had lost their lives on board the Titanic is quite an odd thing to grasp. It is the sinking of the finest ship ever made at the time; it is also the sinking of 1500 people; it is one of the greatest remembered disasters of all time. And this image has been used as art.
I may not be putting my point across here well, but what I'm trying to say is that, would you have a print of 9/11 with the Twin Towers coughing out black smoke and the planes flying around it? Would you have a picture of the tsunami hitting Japan in 2011? Would you have these on your wall? I highly doubt it. Yet for some reason this was acceptable in 1912 and probably still is now. There are so many digitalised or artistic paintings of the Titanic floundering and a lifeboat full of people in the foreground watching the dismal scene. I find this very odd. This is not to say that I find it outrageous, I just find it odd that I have never noticed how candidly it's used especially when we are considering that we are effectively admiring 1500 people dying!
But that is the striking thing about the Titanic, it is a story that ticks all the boxes. It was a remarkable twist in a story of legend. That the ego's of the ship builders and manufacturers were trashed that their unsinkable ship had actually sunk. That technology wasn't as infallible as suggested. That this great liner had almost signed it's own death warrant before even leaving the harbour with it's lack of life boats. It was a lesson to the world. We are not as indestructible as we think. And hidden within this legend is the individual stories of the 2200 people on board that continue to inspire movies and books. It has it's heroes and it has it's villains. And it will always capture the world's imagination and hearts. And this is probably why we accept the image of the sinking ship.
Articles of interest:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17511820
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/titanic/building-titanic-interactive-timeline/?source=link_TW_02
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Titanic
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-17649557
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