-Brian
Mendonça
If
you were sailing on 15 April on the Titanic
you would probably have gone down with the others. At 02.20 a.m. give or take
a few hours, the biggest ocean liner afloat stuck an iceberg and sank. She was
on her maiden voyage from Southampton in England, to New York. She had been
sailing for 5 days since she left on 10 April with stops at Cherbourg (France)
across the English Channel, and Cobh in Southern Ireland (11 April). The year
would be 1912.
Cunard’s
Carpathia which responded to an SOS
on a Marconi radio, picked up only 705 passengers from the lifeboats on the icy
Atlantic of the 2224 souls on the Titanic.
Ironic, since as ship builders go, Cunard was the sworn competitor of the White
Star Line which made Titanic. The
water was -4 degrees below freezing point.
It
would have been just another day last week if BBC had not announced on the morn
of the 15th that a few deckchairs which were on the Titanic were now up for sale. For a few
hundred thousand pounds, that is.
The
case of the sinking of the Titanic is
often cited by mothers (mine for certain) who hold it as an example of God’s
vengeance – for didn’t someone say, ‘Even God cannot sink this ship!’? As the
ship was sinking the band played, ‘Nearer My God, to Thee,’; others exercised
in the gym, still others played cards. These
scenes have been immortalized in Titanic
(1997) the film by James Cameron starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo diCaprio.
I
suggested a solemn candlelight dinner on 15th night but was only met
with incredulous looks in the kitchen. But seriously, why is the sinking of the
Titanic one of the world’s most
memorialized disasters?
The
sad outcome of the sinking of the Titanic
has spawned an idiom. ‘To arrange the deckchairs on the Titanic’ means to perform an action which, though well-meaning,
will not change the outcome of a situation.
The
ship’s remains have been sighted off the coast of Newfoundland just a little
beyond Long Island the New England of USA. She was that close to New York, her
destination.
Disaster
tourism seems to have had a field day with people flocking on to the Balmoral for the Titanic Memorial
Cruise, 100 years after it went down. The ship also traced the original voyage. There were also services in Belfast where the
ship was made, and in Southampton.
Many
a Goan has been on a ship abroad or works on one. Russel Rebello (32) perished in the Costa Concordia last year. Unlike the captain of the Concordia who fled the cruise ship,
smiling Russel went back to the ship. Russel was not content to rearrange the
deck chairs on the Titanic. He saved
the lives of as many as he could on the Concordia.
Sometimes you can change your destiny and those of others – just by moving
a deck chair.
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www.titanicfacts.net; Published in Gomantak Times Weekender, St. Inez, Goa on Sunday, 19 April 2015
www.titanicfacts.net; Published in Gomantak Times Weekender, St. Inez, Goa on Sunday, 19 April 2015
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