Anniversaries

I've had anniversaries on my mind this week, probably because both my wedding anniversary and birthday have occurred within the last eight days.  They seem to whiz round with ever increasing rapidity but I'm sure you find the same.


Another more momentous anniversary falls tomorrow.  The Titanic sank one hundred years ago.  Even a century after the event the resonance of that shocking disaster still touches people like myself who were born many years after it and weren't concerned personally in any way.  But the facts of it are so huge in scale and still difficult to comprehend.  Titanic was the pride of its shipping line, the biggest and best of its kind, the most luxurious and invincible.  And yet five days after starting its maiden voyage it lay at the bottom of the ocean, a testament to the fallibility and frailty of humanity.


Of the 2 223 on board who woke that morning, only 710 would see another dawn.  Among them were men, women and children; crew members and passengers; rich and poor.  1 517 deaths in the space of a few hours.  It is a sobering thought even one hundred years on.

I recently watched A Night to Remember, the 1958 British film of the disaster, and can heartily recommend it not only as a faithful representation but also as a gripping piece of filmmaking. 


We should remember this anniversary, if only to remind ourselves that however grand the human race thinks it is, nature always holds the trump card. 

Titanic Anniversary

This April will see the one hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, so expect to see a lot of commemorative documentaries and dramas about the ill-fated liner.


Even one hundred years on there's something that still fascinates people about this event. It has spawned films and books, but for me the most affecting of all is the wealth of real life stories about those who died or survived that night in the North Atlantic.  Even a look at the casualty list makes poignant reading; whole families, young and old, rich and poor, came to a sudden and bitter end that night.  Many of them no doubt believed this trip of a lifetime to the New World would be the start of a wonderful new life, never suspecting it would in fact be the end of this one.


I am currently reading The Story of the Titanic As Told By Its Survivors  edited by Jack Winocour.  Forget about all the silly Hollywood melodrama, this is the real deal.  Personal eyewitness accounts by those who were there and managed to survive. The remarkable thing is there was no drama, either on the night or in the account. That is what makes the stories so gripping.  The events themselves are terrible enough that anyone with a modicum of imagination can place themselves in the witness's shoes and relive the shocking events.  


Many of those lost were never recovered, and of the three hundred or so bodies retrieved from the water only some were ever identified.  Titanic's Ghosts is an excellent documentary about recent attempts to identify the remains.