Not all disasters are equal
Everyone knows the story of the Titanic, the world’s most luxurious liner which hit an iceberg in 1912 on her maiden voyage and sank taking more than 1,500 people with her. You’ve either read a book about the disaster or seen a movie about this disaster.
The truth of the Titanic
When the latest version of the movie came out, I took an Online Payday Loan to buy tickets for my entire family. I thought it was important that everyone know the story and perhaps learn something from it. I later learned that modern testing of the hull has shown that inferior metal rivets were used in the construction and that on collision of the metal plates with the iceberg under terrific force, these rivets ‘popped’ allowing the plates to buckle and letting the water in.
Titanic-iana
When one talks about man-made disasters the Titanic is way out in front. There are people who collect Titanic-iana, there are Titanic fan clubs, there are websites on the internet with the most intimate details of the passengers and the ship. There is the Titanic Historical Society whose headquarters are in Indian Orchard MA.
Now, as the 100th anniversary of the Titanic’s launch looms there is a new exhibition at Belfast’s Linenhall Library and it features a small brass trinket box that held its secret link to the Titanic safe across the years and thousands of miles. This is quite an amazing story.
The trinket box
The Titanic’s most famous survivor was Molly Brown. An Irishman picked up the box at a flea market in New York. He took it home to Belfast in Ireland where the ship was built. There he sold it to Kavanagh jewelers, whose catchphrase is: “I buy anything”. The brass box carried an inscription to Margaret Brown and was given to her on her safe return to Ireland. “God has spared you, so our love shall prevail.” It is inscribed with the initials J J and the year 1912.
The box was a gift from J J Brown to his wife, now better known as the Unsinkable Molly Brown, after she had survived the Titanic disaster and lived to make enough of a name for herself to inspire a Broadway musical.
Molly Brown
Molly Brown’s husband made it rich in the gold rush in Colorado. She used the fame she earned because of her survival to set up the Juvenile Court in America and campaign for the suffragette movement there. They even wrote a Broadway musical for her. Molly Brown’s ancestors were Irish, but she came from Missouri. She was on lifeboat 6 and argued with Robert Hichens because she wanted to pick up more people from the water.
She tried to grab the tiller and urged the other ladies to row back. There was a fierce argument in which Hichens famously swore at her. Brown was headstrong and vocal. She fought hard for women’s and workers’ rights and worked to help destitute children.
The exhibition
The exhibition also features an original black and white photographs of the Titanic when it was floated for the first time, in May 1911. She is pictured minus the four trademark funnels which were added after the shipbuilders had ensured she was seaworthy.
There are also first editions of two books on the Titanic featured. One was commissioned by the family of shipbuilder Thomas Andrews, who perished. The other appeared just weeks after the disaster.
I have a picture of the Titanic in my study. Perhaps I’ll go and take a look at this exhibition.
One of the most interesting things about the Titanic was something that the movie left out. The steel that was used in the hull was an enormous culprit of the sinking. It was so full of carbon and so brittle that it couldn’t even be used for re-bar, the structural steel used in concrete. (And that is some lousy stuff.) What happened was that as her hull hit the iceberg, her port side fractured in hundreds of places, and that was the end of her. It’s like when a crack in ice – once the structural integrity gets compromised little cracks appear and spread.