White Star
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More Captain Edward John Smith.
I’m reading 1912 Facts about the Titanic which I heartily recommend, it’s a good read – loads of human stories including of the ‘little people’ which a lot of the accounts tend to focus on the Astors and Guggenheims and Strausses.
I also bought a replica of the 3rd Class White Star Line coffee cup, which is as camp as hell but lovely.
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In happier times
9th June 1911: Captain John Smith (1850 – 1912) and Lord James Pirrie, Chairman of the Harland & Wolff Shipyard, on the deck of the White Star Liner ‘Olympic’.
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Titanic
There are quite a few videos on YouTube re: the Titanic – sadly quite a lot referring to that terrible travesty of a movie by James Cameron and quite a few people that scarily can’t tell fact from fiction. Above is a nice one that does indeed include portraits so it’s on track roughly with this blog. I also saw one that had more cross-fades from old pictures to new wreck pictures (hey all you Titanic slideshow video creators, why don’t you do that instead of another boring one of Jack n’ Kate?) and then couldn’t find it again under the deluge – this is the closest to that one:
My fascination for Royal Mail Steamer Titanic and it’s demise comes from the fact it was one of the last gasps of an extremely opulent aristocratic and moneyed world that was pretty much destroyed by WW1 and later events…how I wish I could go back there (and leave before the iceberg hit, of course). We shall not know it’s like again.
By the way one of the songs that I was listening to while I was in the exhibition actually looking at the ship’s bell was strangely prescient – Broken Bells, Sailing to Nowhere:
Oh and spook! the wallpaper I randomly chose for this blog is very close to that which was in the First Class bedrooms – if the mockup at the Artifacts exhibition was correct.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/) -
Titanic Precognition?
So it’s 100 years today since the launch of the Titanic, in 31st May 2011. Yesterday I went to the Artifacts exhibition, and it fit my melancholic mood on a rainy day…very sad. So today I’ll post more Titanic related photos and videos.
This is William John Stead, famous British investigative journalist who was lost on the Titanic…spookily:
Stead had often claimed that he would die from either lynching or drowning. Stead published two pieces that gained greater significance in light of his fate on the Titanic. On 22 March 1886, he published an article named “How the Mail Steamer Went Down in Mid-Atlantic, by a Survivor”,where a steamer collides with another ship, with high loss of life due to lack of lifeboats. Stead had added “This is exactly what might take place and will take place if liners are sent to sea short of boats”. In 1892, Stead published a story called From the Old World to the New, in which a White Star Line vessel, the Majestic, rescues survivors of another ship that collided with an iceberg.
I’ve heard quite a lot of foreshadowing from others too, with ships called Titan or indeed Titanic being mentioned in stories years before the disaster. I have one factette for you – the makers of the ship didn’t proclaim it ‘practically unsinkable’ – the leading shipbuilding magazine at the time did…oops.
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Jack Philips, the senior wireless operator of the Titanic…he came from very near where I grew up. I used to hang out at his memorial, interesting how he helped save but also partly caused the disaster by ignoring the ice warnings.
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“When anyone asks me how I can best describe my experience in nearly forty years at sea, I merely say, uneventful. Of course there have been winter gales, and storms and fog and the like. But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident… or any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort.” – Edward John Smith, Captain of the RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic
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And here he is at work: Captain Smith on Olympic (by louise6851)
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/) -
What iceberg?
Captain Edward John Smith, of a little known ship called the Titanic.
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Captain Cameron of the Teutonic [White Star line]. Yes I have a thing about captains..who doesn’t?