Titanic

Start your story with a character having a premonition, but no one believes them.

Titanic

No mortal eye could see

The intimate welding of their later history

My grandmother had a premonition that the Titanic would sink on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York. But no one believed her. 

If you ever visit Belfast, you will probably go to Titanic Belfast, which is one of the most famous tourist attractions in the world. The attraction documents the place where the Titanic was designed and built and then describes its maiden voyage in 1912 and the terrible catastrophe that ensued. The Titanic was one of the most majestic ships in the world. The engineers, the draughtsmen, the riveters, the fitters, the turners, and the boiler makers, were proud of its Ritz-Carlton restaurants, its Turkish baths, its electric lifts, and its squash racquet courts. Not one rivet was missing! 

If you have time you should visit the Titanic Memorial in the grounds of Belfast City Hall.

In the centrepiece of the garden is an amazing statue which depicts a female who represents death and she holds a Laurel wreath over the head of a drowning sailor Who is held above the waves by two mermaids. 

I always visit the memorial garden on 15th April which was the date the doomed ship struck an iceberg off Newfoundland with the loss of 1,500 lives. 

It’s easy to get caught up in the facts and figures and we probably do this to try and make sense of a huge catastrophe. People are still debating the cause of the horrendous disaster. Was the ship going too fast, was there not sufficient attention being paid to the iceberg warnings? Or was it just the arrogance of the owners who thought the ship was unsinkable and therefore did not have sufficient lifeboats. Prior to the sinking, the ship had received six warnings of sea ice but continued to travel at 22 knots. When the lookouts spotted the iceberg, it was too late. 

Was it just fate? The poet Thomas Hardy, wrote a poem called, ‘The Convergence of the Twain’, in which he imagines the meeting of the two as a sinister coupling. 

VIII

And as the smart ship grew

In stature, grace, and hue,

In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

IX

Alien they seemed to be;

No mortal eye could see

The intimate welding of their later history,

X

Or sign that they were bent

By paths coincident

On being anon twin halves of one august event…

Thomas Hardy was critical of ‘human vanity’ and ‘pride that planned the Titanic. And he describes how the cold currents run through the ‘steel chambers, late the pyres/Of her salamandrine fires’ 

My grandfather Sam Wilson was among the dead—he was a carpenter and he was one of the ‘Guarantee Group’ which was created to travel with the crew on the ship’s maiden voyage just in case there were any problems to be resolved in terms of unfinished work. 

I remember my mother telling me stories she had heard from my grandmother about the terrible tragedy. ‘The sad thing was’, she said, ‘was that none of the bodies of the Guarantee Group were never recovered.’ 

My mother’s description of my grandfather’s bones at the bottom of the sea made me think of Ariel’s song in The Tempest:

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:

‘Imagine’ her mother said, ‘your poor grandfather’s bones lying in that icy sea off Newfoundland and he never had a Christian burial or a headstone’. My mother would quote the headlines in the New York Times:

The headlines in the New York Times read, ‘Titanic sinks after hitting ice. 866 rescued by Carpathia. Probably 1250 perish; Ismay Safe, Mrs. Astor Maybe Noted Names Missing.

My mother used to say that it was a disgrace that there were not enough lifeboats on the Titanic as it was deemed to be ‘unsinkable’. She told me that my grandmother was very anxious about her husband being part of the Guarantee Group. She had said to him, ‘Sam, I had a terrible nightmare last night. I dreamt the ship crashed into an iceberg. I heard people crying out as they perished in the icy sea. I saw debris floating on the water and personal belongings’.  Sam assured her that it would be one of the safest liners that even sailed the seven seas. ‘Don’t you fret Agnes,’ he said, ‘I know you will be worried about me being away. But it is a great opportunity for me. And it will be great to see the fruits of all out labour.’ He had been especially proud of the Grand Staircase. He would tell Agnes that it was made from polished oak, and that it was located beneath a dome. And he would say to her, ‘it’s like a floating palace, fit for royalty.’ 

Then Sam would tell the children about how the First Class passengers dressed in all their finery would descend the staircase and dine in the state-of-the-art restaurants. He explained that the passengers would be so beguiled by the ornate furnishings that they would forget they were on a ship but fancy themselves in a grand country house or a hotel.

Films have been made about the Titanic. In James Cameron’s version, a love story unfolds between a young aristocratic woman, called Rose and Jack, a poor artist. In the end, Jack is drowned and Rose survives. I found this film very poignant because it brought up memories of my grandfather. The director was asked why there was not a happy ending, he said that Jack had to die because the film was about death and separation. 

But did my grandfather have to die? Maybe if he had listened to his wife’s premonition, he would have lived. But he could not bear to give up the opportunity of being part of the troubleshooting team and he stepped on to the doomed liner on the 2^nd April 1912.