Auction Time!

Warning: Undefined variable $num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 126

Warning: Undefined variable $posts_num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 127

After class I began to do a little digging into our comments on why people reenact the Titanic, why people buy some of the items recovered from the ship wreck, and reversely the reactions towards these reenactments and purchases of those who have been truly affected by the Titanic. Most of us in class talked about the reenactments and all the hype still surrounding the Titanic at people marveling over its pop culture significance or the lure of tragedy or even the need to remember a historical event that changed the world; all these points are valid as well as the argument that people with money just love to buy things that represent status, wealth and history. So from there I figured I would check into the latest auctions that have been held to sell items found from the lost ship and see what answers that may bring. After looking into a 100 year anniversary auction from 2012 and the big auction coming up this month, I found a few things that I felt deserved to be posted about.

Before I go on, I have to comment on the post professor Shrout put up of Jack Dawson because the Halifax gravesite where many who died at sea are buried is still a sore subject for many whom live in the maritime city on Canada’s eastern coast; the closest major port to the wreck. In the CBS News article in 2012 by Ben Tracey, he speaks to this sadness and explains that the connection to the Titanic for Halifax is much more personal. It reads, “209 bodies of the victims were recovered and brought back to the city. 150 were buried in cemeteries around town. Each headstone shares the same infamous date.” He talks to a woman named Blair Beed whose grandfather worked the funeral home where the bodies of the Titanic where identified and she claims, “When you walk among the graves and stand in front of the grave of a housewife and listing the four children who were lost in the sinking with her, I think that’s the real story.” (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/upcoming-auction-of-titanic-items-sparks-debate/)  We may tend to forget as a society, when the popular culture aspect surrounds the Titanic story as it did when the film came out, that the real stories are the ones that will never be told. As CT mentioned in class, these stories will likely never be uncovered and that is the true tragedy behind the sinking of the ship.

The other thing I came across that I thought should be shared appeared 4 days ago in an article from the Mail Online by Matt Blake and Sophie Jane Evans called “’Unthinkable’: The chilling hand-drawn building plan used to explain how Titanic met its fate one of hundreds of artifacts to go under the hammer.” Now read that title again. A hand-drawn building plan of how and why the ship sunk? This is an incredible piece of history and vital to piecing the story of the Titanic together that will be put up for auction along with 239 others items from the ship in this month’s RR Auction in Boston. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2597005/Will-write-later-sail-Hundreds-Titanic-artifacts-auction-including-final-postcard-sent-heroic-radio-officer-worked-tirelessly-send-wireless-distress-messages-ship-sank.html)  This particular item I thought would be interested to put up on the blog as it is a hand-drawn building plan prepared exclusively for official British enquiry with illustrations showing why the Titanic sank after hitting the iceberg. Something pretty cool, maybe we should bid!