Titanic – American Disasters

April 8, 2014December 16, 2020

Auction Time!

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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!

April 7, 2014December 16, 2020

Commemorating the Titanic

Steven Biel’s discussion on the ways in which the Titanic disaster was commemorated in the years and decades afterwards illustrates how people will inevitably manipulate disasters to their own agenda. Annelies also built upon this argument in her blogpost. As we saw in the first section of the book, feminists and other groups manipulated the narrative of heroism to support different social and political agendas after the disaster.

In the next section of the book, Biel discusses the ways in which the Titanic was commemorated. Through his discussion, it becomes clear that the Titanic grew to symbolize and fill the roles that people needed it to. Through the thirties some interpreted the disaster as proof that traditional gender roles and the doctrine of separate spheres should be maintained. Another conservative narrative that evolved out of the disaster interpreted the Titanic as a symbol of everything that was wrong with modernity. Biel states:

“The disaster, then, continued to do important, if sporadic, cultural work, from reminding men and women of their proper roles and responsibilities at the onset of the Depression to asserting racial equality and exposing racial injustice…” (Biel 139).

We can see this common theme of the manipulation of narratives after disaster stretch across all of the disasters we have studied. McCullough used the Johnstown flood to illuminate the disparity in wealth and the effects of unequal distribution of economic power. Likewise, with the San Francisco earthquake, we can see that ways in which middleclass businessmen and politicians manipulated the narrative to fill their economic and political agendas.

These disasters and the various ways in which they were commemorated suggest the heavy hand people have in the definition of disaster. In many ways, facts are never facts, as they will always be manipulated, intentionally or not, to fill an individual’s narrative. These unique narratives are what give each disaster meaning within the context of the time and what dictates the vivacity with which each individual disaster is remembered.

April 7, 2014December 16, 2020

A Distorted Disaster: The Titanic’s False Memorialization

In the 1950s and 60s, the world had just suffered what are, arguably, the two greatest disasters in history: World War II and the Holocaust. However, this period is notable in America for its obsession with the Titanic disaster, with the wide popularity of the book A Night to Remember and the growth of the THS (Titanic Historical Society). The juxtaposition of these events is hard to imagine: a global war that took the lives of tens of millions against a relatively small tragedy that claimed just over one thousand. Nonetheless, Steven Biel uses the word nostalgic quite deliberately in the second half of Down with the Old Canoe to describe enthusiasts. Like AJ notes, Americans in the post-war world felt as though they were losing track of their values in the era of “women’s lib” and the end of “the Edwardian Age” (171). They sought to replicate the chivalry and noblesse-oblige that had “disappeared” in years since. (147) The problem is, would any of these enthusiasts with Titanic nostalgia actually put themselves on the boat if they had the chance? Biel doubts it. Then what is the root of this fascination? I believe that it is a distorted memorialization of the disaster. When the iceberg hits, the enthusiasts loved to think that the rich and powerful gladly accepted their fate for the sake of women and children. In reality, however, they were just following protocol.

Like many other disasters, the Titanic gives us a unique insight in deeper human nature. This is why we find disasters fascinating, why billionaires attempt to replicate the journey, and why James Cameron is a household name. When the barriers of order and class are broken down, we can get a glimpse of true human character. On the Titanic, the face of fate and death, the men stepped aside and allowed the saving of women and children. Chivalrous, right? This is the common distortion of the Titanic’s final voyage. Biel’s sources focus on modern perceptions of the disaster, from prominent novelists and filmmakers to “buffs” who are well researched on the subject. Many enthusiasts, from teachers to novelists to soldiers, formed the Titanic Historical Society to emphasize the “devotion to duty” and manhood of the Titanic’s fallen passengers. (190) However, I believe it is false to associate the saving of women and children with male chivalry. The policy was already established- women and children first- so that men were not give the choice themselves in times of crisis. The decision was not theirs to make, and, for the most part, they followed this protocol. But is that necessarily chivalrous?

To Biel, the use of the Titanic as a display of Victorian character has subsided in recent decades. References to the ship have largely become either political cliches or anecdotes about James Cameron. But the “democratic grave” at the bottom of the ocean continues to fascinate us (45). According to Biel, there’s deeper themes to be found in the Titanic disaster than just “overconfidence in technology” or “the mistake of arrogance”. (217) It’s the revelatory power of the disaster into human nature that keeps us wanting more.

April 7, 2014December 16, 2020

The Cultural Impact of the Titanic

Overall, I liked Biel’s approach to the responses to the disaster, although I do not know if I entirely buy his argument.

Biel uses how the Titanic was popularly studied from the 1950s to the 1980s in order to analyze how people used the disaster to parallel it to their own lives. I am not quite sure if he is saying that he agrees with the movements, or if he is just quoting those who believed that the disaster reflected their specific time period, but I feel as though people used the disaster in ways they wanted to do so; the disaster did not necessarily have to do with all nuances that he mentions. Like jewarren I think that it is interesting how he talks about certainty and uncertainty, and how he parallels that to technology and the nuclear age. I definitely agree that before the first World War, Americans had a (false) sense of safety and security, and this disaster can parallel how Americans saw technology before and after the World Wars. I think that Biel’s arguments about masculinity, femininity, and the disaster are interesting, although I do not know if I entirely agree with him. His arguments seem a bit speculative, and I think that people used the disaster to describe the role of men and women in the Cold War period. I also do not know if I agree with his argument about the story needing to “have a happy ending” (219). As he talks about Carter and how his femininity showed, he also parallels that to Reagan and how the great feeling produced from the time period had to parallel the disaster and give proper roles of masculinity and femininity to it. People are still fascinated with the Titanic even though he says that it has had an ending. He does a great progression of cultural significance and how people responded to the disaster over time, but the arguments that he makes from his analysis seem a bit speculative to me.

P.S. Research Update: I have found four primary sources and one great secondary source for studying how classes perceived and were affected by the Sea Islands Hurricane. I feel much more confident about my body of resources, and I will now be able to move forward analyzing classes from this disaster specifically without using to much speculation or other disasters as examples and applying it to this one.

April 7, 2014December 16, 2020

Titanic Remembrance through Recovery

Throughout Biel’s second part titled “Memories” I was particularly struck by the idea of recovery. While I believe in many of the narratives about Titanic fascination, something about the 1985 recovery effort seemed disturbing. In the past twenty years, the rediscovery of the Titanic has drastically altered public perception. Instead of remembering the tragedy, society seems to have depersonalized the loss of so many lives.

Living relatively close to Woods Hole, I find it very hard to imagine the entire world focusing on this small Massachusetts town. Robert Ballard represented the frontier of man, venturing into the unknown. The symbolic nature made this small town and researcher much more than they intended. Yet, should Ballard be elevated as an explorer, frontiersman, or simply an opportunist? Biel even makes Ballard out to be someone is troubled by his prolific success. The idea of using someone else’s tragedy into profit seems almost dirty and wrong. Nevertheless, society remains addicted to the Titanic. Based on the references to Titanic buffs, Titanic memorabilia, and even the recreation attempts today, we are drawn to it despite the catastrophic nature. The Titanic even has a permanent exhibit at the Luxor in Las Vegas, right next to the Jabbawockeez and Carrot Top. The Titanic has a cultural draw. Nevertheless, my fascination with the world’s obsession makes me wonder what is next. Are we drawn because of the length of time it took us to uncover the artifacts, the fact that we know so little about the ocean depths (more about space than the ocean floor), the popular appeal through the media (movies, plays, and books) or because it is the biggest failure of modern technology. As AJ notes Biel brings in every detail for metaphoric comparison. The promotion of the Titanic has historically been for significant promotion of policy change. However is it possible that our society sees tragedy and just tragedy and revels in uncertainty? There seems to be an eerie comparison between the mysteries surrounding the Titanic and the search efforts for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Certainly it seems that the uncertainty about location and the troubles can be related to the Titanic. The longer the mystery, the more interest grows. Similar to what Biel implies, maybe only when technology uncovers technology’s failures will we accept what happened.

On a side note, I thought Biel’s afterword about modern phrases about Titanic usage was very well thought out. Considering the word alone has “become a facile, all-purpose reference point for negligence, incompetence, obviousness, or futility” has Titanic fever spread because of the word or the tragedy. Had the Titanic been named something else, something more original and not a common adjective, would the word still live in infamy? The word has not changed definition, but through the negative connotations, now the word has a new meaning. Politicians, students, and professionals use the word often only as a negative word for size. Nevertheless, the word still has the same definition. Does this help with the memory of this tragedy or diminish the meaning? By only using the word “titanic” as a metaphor colossal failure, we not only ruin the word but disrespect the event.

Research Update:

As an extension of my blog post, I will update the progress of my final paper. After reviewing several primary and secondary sources, I was surprised at how accurate the preliminary damage reports were for the Great New England Hurricane. Nevertheless, my general thesis stands unchanged. Essentially, while the US Weather Bureau and the media overlooked this storm, ultimately nothing could have changed the destruction. The Storm was unlike anything that has ever hit the area and, in reality, nothing could have prevent the coastal destruction.

April 7, 2014December 16, 2020

Contemporary Significance of the Titanic

In the second half of Down with the Old Canoe, Steven Biel concerns himself with the way the Titanic disaster has been incorporated into contemporary culture. Biel points out that after 1912 the Titanic disaster reappears in American culture in the 1950’s. Writers and artists from this time period triggered a renewed interest in the Titanic by producing works that incorporated the Titanic into the popular culture of the time period. Biel contends that the most significant of these works is A Night to Remember by Walter Lord. After the success of A Night to Remember, Lord’s book was adopted into a feature film. Biel argues that Lord intended for his novel to be a slight “political critique” and to challenge “the Cold War gospel of progress”(159). Again it seems evident that the Titanic disaster represents a form of disenchantment with technology. In 1912 the disaster represented people’s anxiety about modernity, and it is interesting to see how these same feelings are placed on technological advancements made in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The sinking of the Titanic represented an end of an era to some people and created nostalgia to a time where the future was not as frightening.

Additionally, I think the discovery of the Titanic and all that it represented in the 1980’s is intriguing. Biel argues that the 1980’s represented a return to the “frontier spirit” (what would Turner say?). He believes that Reagan and his economic and foreign policy initiates embodied an era of “individualism, adventure, expansiveness” (208). Therefore, the discovery of the Titanic in the oceanic frontier epitomized this era. Like dajames, I find it interesting that these sorts of beliefs existed only thirty years ago. This odd adoption of the Titanic by people that believed it constituted the general feeling of time continues the tradition set by everyone else since the disaster of assigning their own meaning and significance to the sinking of the Titanic. It does not surprise me, but furthers the argument that the culture meaning of the Titanic resonated inward.

April 7, 2014December 16, 2020

Sunken Ammunition

As we discussed in class, this novel by Stephen Biel, a professor of writing at Harvard, deals not with how the Titanic went down and the details of its backstory but rather with the disaster as a cultural icon and how it has been used to address and promote all different kinds of ideological positions and issues. After getting through the first half of the narrative which illustrates the immediate reactions to the actual sinking of the ship; for example, the feminist and anti-feminist fight over the meaning of the protocol “women and children first” and whether or not it reflected chivalry or some other sort of stab at women. The second half of the book tags along with the first half and continues to speak of how different groups of people used the Titanic’s wreck as ammunition to prove several of their own theories, as well as, shine light and examine how the Titanic has been preserved over the years in several unique fashions.

Biel lays out for us many of the groups that used the Titanic as a means to address issues of the day. For instance, socialists, he claims used the sinking to attack the excesses of capitalism or the suffrage movement used it as a rally cry for support for the passing of the 19th Amendment as suffragists linked the sinking of the ship to God’s wrath. Biel continues to document how the Titanic was preserved and used as a platform by different groups to advocate and oppose things such as women’s suffrage, immigration, technology and safety protocol, disaster prevention, mainstream religion movements, civil rights activism and other issues of the day. He discerns that everyone found some sort of ammunition from the failure of the Titanic from poets, preachers and writers to reformers, racists and suffragists. One example in particular I found bold was, “I suggest, henceforth, when a woman talks women’s rights, she be answered with the word Titanic, nothing more—just Titanic,” wrote a St. Louis man to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Biel, Down with the Old Canoe).

Continuing with the other part of the second half of the work, Biel discusses how the story has been preserved through other means in which he examines films (Nazi propaganda movie), novels (ex. Danielle Steel), interestingly music (Bob Dylan, African toasts and calls, working-class ballads against the rich) and also spends a good time on Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember, as a combination of the book, TV show and film. I cant comment per say on the sources he utilizes because I have no familiarity with them and I believe that may be answered in our discussion in class, however, I do think that the strength of this well-researched book is precisely the presence and analysis of these poetry, songs, books, films, and cartoons illustrating the different aspects of American life that were affected by the Titanic or felt the need to use the Titanic as a means to some end. As we talked about in class, Biel doesn’t really give you a detailed lead up or background of the Titanic but I think he makes up for that with his writing skills and the usage of these attachments as a powerful claim that maybe even more important than the wreck itself, was the ways it was put to use by certain advocacy groups trying to promote the Titanic as a link or ammunition to their cause. I think amcarter is right when she says that the Titanic’s second wave is addressing the anxiety and culture shifting that is taking course. People are scrambling to use this as a device to get ahead.

April 7, 2014December 16, 2020

Blame it all on Carter: Political Timing and the Discovery of the Titanic

I would like to begin by acknowledging Molly’s point from last week. At first I staunchly believed that the Titanic had absolutely no intrinsic meaning and it was an entirely blank slate. I found Molly’s argument that the disaster did have inherent personal meaning to those on the Titanic and those directly affected by it to be very convincing, and she has totally changed my mind on this issue. I do think that while the personal meaning of the disaster is important to those directly affected, I think that it is significantly less important on the broader scale of historical memory than perceived cultural meanings, which affect millions of people. In Part II of Down With The Old Canoe, I was personally disturbed by the intense neo-conservative and misogynistic cultural meanings placed on the re-discovery of the Titanic.

Biel frames the search for the Titanic with the Carter Presidency and quotes a variety of sources that essentially tear down president Carter as a weak minded liberal who is essentially the worst thing someone can be- a woman. Aside from the being incredibly simple minded, its shocking that these things were published a mere 40 years ago. Biel also discusses Clive Cussler’s book, Raising the Titanic!, which framed the search for the Titanic as a struggle against communism, liberals, feminism and government regulation. What I thought was interesting was that while the book was a bestseller, the movie was “a big-budget Hollywood flop in 1980” (Biel 202). In the four years between the publishing of the book and the making of the movie did American cultural thought shift to reject Cussler’s reactionary views? If so this is great proof of the inherent lack of meaning that disasters have in terms of national culture as a whole.

I am curious if the Titanic had been found in the late 90s if it would have been framed differently by the media. Biel raises a question similar when he muses on how the discovery of the Titanic might have been framed differently if the French found it. During the late 90s the American economy was having a surge of growth under a liberal president, Bill Clinton. America was also the undisputed world power after the fall of the USSR. How would society react to the discovery during this time? Would it have been framed in terms of a different social issue? Or would it just have been less culturally prominent and only important for historians and disaster lovers?

April 2, 2014December 16, 2020

Constructing Disaster Narratives

I think both Wells and Dan rightly argue that disasters present people with a “blank canvas” on which they are able to project their own meanings or interpretations. We can see this to be true in Biel’s chapter, “The Rule of the Sea and Land” where he writes, “A conventional narrative of the Titanic disaster began to take shape before any survivor had been interviewed” (23). The narrative of the chivalric male dominated the press accounts of the disaster before any eyewitness accounts had been documented. Further, in the foreword, Biel cites Henry Adams who used the disaster to promote his own anti-Republican agenda.

I want to pause and acknowledge Molly’s assertion that we must not undermine the significant human loss of disasters’ such as the Titanic. I do think that in the study history there is a tendency to try to understand the broader social and historical implications of a disaster, and then as a result gloss over the numbers of dead. However, I think it is precisely this that constitutes a disaster in the first place – loss of human life and capital. Not to put words in their mouths, but I believe that where Wells and Dan argue that a disaster becomes a blank canvas is after the event becomes viewed as a disaster.

In considering this idea that the Titanic presented an opportunity for people to promote their own agenda or to assert their own disaster narrative, we can see a similar scenario play out in other disasters we have studied. In my own research into the San Francisco Earthquake, this idea plays out in numerous ways. For one, the Progressives certainly saw the disaster as an opportunity to rebuild the city to reflect Progressive ideals. Another example is the intense seismic denial following the Earthquake, as well as the aggressive attempt to ascribe the damage to the fires for fear that the city would not be rebuilt.

As we discussed early on in the course, disasters have the unique ability to bring social issues to the surface. Perhaps the way in which these societal tensions surface is through people using disaster as an opportunity to express sentiments that might be disregarded otherwise.

April 2, 2014December 16, 2020

Differing Interpretations of the Titanic

Part One of Steven Biel’s Down With the Old Canoe: A Cultural History of the Titanic offers several different interpretations of the events surrounding the sinking of the Titanic. These interpretations come from all segments of society; the rich, the poor, and every other segment of society developed their own unique interpretation of the Titanic disaster. These differing opinions is what Biel draws on to construct his argument Biel argues that the way disaster is interpreted is subject to our own beliefs. This argument is strengthened throughout the first part of the book.

I found it very interesting how everyone at the time of the Titanic was able to use this disaster to further strengthen his or her own beliefs. Every segment of the population read into the sinking of the Titanic an explanation for the disaster that reaffirmed their own values. The rich were painted as heroes, while the poorer, more ethnic passengers were described as villains. Additionally, arguments were made for and against women’s suffrage and religious doctrine was employed as an explanation for the catastrophe. To me, this seems like a form of exploitation. Spectators are using the deaths of the Titanic passengers to further their own agenda. I think this shows something about human character that is slightly morbid.

I like the argument that Dan and Wells brought up that the Titanic does not have an intrinsic meaning. I agree; while the Titanic had meanings to a lot of different people at the time, it seems difficult to assign an intrinsic meaning to this disaster. Also, I disagree with Molly’s assertion that we have become indifferent to loss of life because of this class. The loss of human life and capitol was horrible, but as historians, we examine the way events like the sinking of the Titanic affected the course of history. Through this historical lens, we have to realize that not everything has to have meaning, but we must analyze its historical significance.