Old and Abandoned – The Titanic

I have a fascination of old and abandoned things. Things that are old and abandoned have a story to tell, they’ve been somewhere, maybe done something and that story can turn something relatively worthless into something of value.

This si the start of a new feature where I will put before you old and abandoned things and try and detail the story behind them.

 

 

I’ve always had a fascination with the Titanic and it’s story. The Titanic story is well known and whenever I see pictures of the sunken wreck of that great liner. When it sank it took with it not only the lives of all of those people but the dream of man’s superiority  of creating and unsinkable ship. It’s a testament to human achievement and folly all at once. It is also a rotting museum to life at the turn of the 20th Century.

The story of how the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank is well known. Despite variations in witness reports the events of the sinking  have been worked out. The ship struck the iceberg, the bow sinking lower into the water with the heavy stern lifting higher out of the water until the ship broke in two and sank roughly 2h 40m after hitting the iceberg. The news was met with shock and subsequently martime safety rules were drastically changed to increase safety, many of the rules we rely on today were put in place in the aftermath of the sinking of the Titanic.

What is less well known was the plan to release many of the bodies trapped in the wreck by sending down explosives to tear the ship apart and release them, but the exact location of the wreck was unkown and with the outbreak of war 2 years later the Titanic was forgotten. The location of the wreck was debated decades later and finally found by team led by Bob Ballard in 1985. The wreck was found over 13 miles away from where the inaccurate wireless messages had radio’d in their last position.

In not many years the rust eating bacteria will finally claim the wreck totally and it will fall apart into a pile of old rust. The story will forever live on and maybe one day will turn into legend or folklore. Arthur C Clarke wrote a book called the Ghost from the Grand Banks where the Titanic wreck featured heavily. As with this style the book ended thousands of years int the future with the reader led to believe the wreck was re-discovered by an alien race visiting Earth. This will not happen in reality, the wreck will rot, but maybe the story will last thousands of years.

Simon 🙂

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