GIANT CONSPIRACIES! The Titanic was Deliberately Sunk for the Insurance Money!

Another great conspiracy has arisen among the tinfoil hat brigade:  the Titanic was switched with its sister ship, the Olympic, and the latter deliberately sunk to obtain the insurance money.

YouTube has several videos by various people who believe this theory and are spreading it far and wide.

However, the Titanic and the Olympic, though similar in appearance, were not identical.  Any attempt to switch the two would have been noticed by the crew, the passengers and the workers who built both ships.  Also, how did they get the iceberg in the right place at the right time?  Why would the president of the White Star Line (Bruce Ismay) and the ship's designer (Thomas Andrews) sail on a ship that was to be deliberately sunk?  The story is beyond incredible.

However, decide for yourself by viewing the facts and the rebuttals at this site.  NOTE:  a list of irrefutable facts will never convince the conspiracy theorists.  Similar, comprehensive rebuttals are online refuting the Kennedy Assassination Conspiracists, as well as the 911 "Inside Job" kooks.  However, I do love to skewer their lame arguments.

There Are No Lifeboats: Accepting Our Fate

Musicians of the Titanic (Movie Recreation)

I am in a strange mood since the American people, in their infinite stupidity, re-elected a radical who hates business, prosperity and energy.  We have a president who is doing all he can to ruin the country.  Whoops, must be careful there, I was allowing a bit of anger to rise.  No point in that, since anger is futile.  It would be the same if the crew of the Titanic got angry at the ice berg.  Must reconcile to my fate.  No matter how much I don't like it, there is nothing I can do to stop the destruction.  I can only watch in awe as the giant smokestacks break free and fall into the sea, the passengers scrambling for a higher place on the deck in order to survive a few moments longer.

When the Titanic was sinking and beginning to list towards the bow, some gentlemen remained in the smoking lounge, playing cards, smoking cigars and drinking brandy.  They were doomed and knew it, so enjoyed their last few moments doing what they liked best.  The ship's musicians did something similar:  they carried their string instruments on deck and played rag time music amidst the frenetic human scramble to find places in the too few lifeboats.  Towards the end, they played "Nearer My God to Thee."  Then they died in the freezing sea.

I feel somewhat like that now.  The Ship of State is sinking and there are no lifeboats.  Businessmen are selling off stock and other capital assets before Obama's tax hike hits, companies are laying off employees to try and survive the hefty expenses of Obamacare.  The human scramble in the face of disaster takes many forms.

I am trying to enjoy my life as best I can this Christmas season.  It goes against the grain to passively accept an evil that I cannot change.  I like to fight for what I believe, at least when there is a chance of victory.  So I will enjoy the Christmas music, the colored lights, the tinsel, the camaraderie of friends and family.  After New Year I will think about new ways to cope and to resist.  Meanwhile, cut the cards and enjoy another cigar.

Related Post:  Always on Watch posts on a similar line of thought.  Read it here.

Back From Las Vegas: the Titanic Exhibition

I just got back from my trip to Las Vegas.  I didn't gamble (I don't do that) but wifey and I saw some great shows, including the Titanic Exhibition, the Rat Pack is Back, Taylor Hicks and Cirque Du Soleil, "Love," an aerial acrobatic performance to Beatles' music and imagery.

One night wifey snuck downstairs to the casino and resolved to spend $1 in pennies playing the penny slot machines.  She won $75 and quit while she was ahead.

Cup and Saucer from the Titanic

The only show I really cared about was the Titanic Exhibition at the Luxor Hotel.  Upon entering the exhibition, you are given a card with the facts of one of the passengers, their name, cabin class, and the facts of their voyage.  Mine was of a gentleman traveling third class, on his way to Detroit to take a job open for him there.  At the end of the exhibition, you will confront a large white board listing all of the passengers and crew of the Titanic, and whether they survived the sinking.  I knew mine had undoubtedly died, being a male, third class passenger, who had almost no chance of gaining one of the too-few seats in a lifeboat.

We saw a recreation of  a third class cabin and a first class cabin, as well as a replica of the Grand Staircase, complete with the clock and the cupid figure, the ornamental railings and the white floor with black tile inlays.  There was also a replica of the large round skylight above it, with the decorative iron grill.  It was truly impressive.  We had our photograph taken, standing on the fifth step. (See an example here of some other couple on the Grand Staircase).

Actual artifacts recovered from the Titanic's debris field included pots and pans, saucers and cups, and ceramic "au gratin" bowls.  These are the bowls found stacked neatly in rows in the sand of the debris field, their wooden storage box long ago eaten away by sea organisms.  The bowls are still perfect, white and unblemished.

Au Gratin Bowls in Titanic's Debris Field

There was a lady's diamond ring, still beautiful and brilliant in the soft lighting, as well as various personal effects, including wallets. dollar bills, coins and clothing, postcards and letters with the writing still visible.  A perfume salesman's fragrance samples were also on display, still smelling sweetly after 100 years, most of which was spent on the ocean floor.  There was a pair of sink faucets from a first class cabin, one marked Hot and the other Cold.

The display has back lighted signs in each room, telling the history of the Titanic, as well as films running showing the building of the Titanic, the retrieval of artifacts, and an illustration of how the ship sank and broke up during sinking.  There is a huge model of the sunken Titanic, showing how it looks today in its watery grave.

One of the diplays is a mock-up of the promenade deck, where you walk on the deck, viewing a black sea at night, the black and moonless sky brilliant with stars, as it was on the night the great ship sank, April 15, 1912.

The most impressive display is the last one, which is a huge chunk of the Titanic itself.  You walk into a dimly lit room and find yourself face to face with a metal wall, actually a piece of the hull, complete with rivets and portholes, still containing glass, though it is broken and much of it missing.  This is the famed "Big Piece," which broke off when the Titanic broke in two.  It was recovered in 1998 and weighs 15 tons.  Viewing it, you feel you are looking at the side of the Titanic, and you are...well, a comparatively small piece of it anyway.

Viewing these artifacts, I felt I was communing with the dead.  Seeing them is a reminder of the terrible loss of human life that occurred when the Titanic sank.   These objects are more than curiosities, they are the bits and pieces of hundreds of human lives.  The mood is somber, respectful and almost reverent.

Consulting the listing of passengers and crew, I learned that my passenger, Frank John Goldsmith of England, had indeed died on the Titanic.  Mrs. Chomper's passenger survived.

Before leaving, we visited the gift shop where I bought a small piece of coal from the Titanic, and two third class coffee cups (exact replicas), white with the dark red insignia of the White Star Line.

You can view a lot of these displays at the links provided above, as well as here and here.

How Voting For Obama is Reminiscent of the Titanic (Cartoon)

I'm off to visit the grandkids and my middle son and my daughter-in-law.

Here's a funny to prove I am still alive.

Last Day for Taxes - Also, the Little Boy of the Titanic

Ah, the tax season officially ends today.  I go into work at 1 PM and work until 9 PM, but then it's all done, except for some mopping up through the rest of the month.

I'm tired!  I must get ready, but first a cigar in the spring-like weather in my backyard, where the lawn is a brilliant green and the persimmon tree is filled with new, yellow-green foliage.

One hundred years ago today the Mackay-Bennett funeral ship set sail for the site of the Titanic's sinking.  It arrived at the scene early in the morning of April 20.  The sailors, looking over the side, were appalled at what they saw:  dozens of bodies, bobbing about in the waves, upright in their white life vests, heads bowed in death.  Then began the grim task of recovering the bodies. 337 were found, 309 by the Mackay-Bennett.    One was a two year old boy.

The Mackay-Bennett sailors were deeply touched by the recovery of the little boy's body.  They took up a collection among themselves and the public, and gave him a grand funeral in Nova Scotia.  He was buried beneath a large grave marker (right).  In a sense, his grave marker became a monument to all of the children who died on the Titanic.  He was one of only three children whose bodies were recovered, and his little shoes were kept as an artifact of the Titanic.

The child's identity was finally made known more than 90 years later, thanks to modern  DNA analysis. The little boy --  Sidney Leslie Goodwin, of England -- is unknown no longer.

 Sidney Leslie Goodwin

A Walk Through a Graveyard

Yesterday, upon reading about memorials and monuments to the Titanic, I got the same feeling I do when walking through the older sections of a graveyard.  Marble statues of angels, tombstones covered with moss or lichens, the inscriptions wearing away until they are almost unreadable.  You get the impression of other times, of spats on men, horse-drawn buggies, large Victorian hats on women, wrought iron gates, the Gilded Age.  Bones and sepulchers.  Dead people.

It's only by reading accounts, well-written by those who lived though those times, that the imagined odors of must and dust and decay disappear.  Flesh and blood men and women arise in their place in the mind, the dead past takes on the vibrant immediacy of a heart beat.

Reading great books about events like the Titanic, one can feel the engine vibrations beneath his feet, the smell of the smokestacks, the sway of the decks, the chill wind of the Atlantic, the pleasant smell of salt air, the screech of seagulls.

Not to mention the taste of corn from this corny description.  But you get the idea.

Off to work.  I have to get through today and tomorrow and this tax season will be history too.  One that I don't want to come back to life, rhetorically or otherwise.
 

Heroes of the Titanic: Isidor and Ida Strauss

Isidor and Ida Strauss

Lawrence Auster of View From the Right is one of the few bloggers I know who remembered the Titanic today, 100 years to the day after the great ship sank.  He mentions the statue in New York that memorializes two of the brave:  Isidor and Ida Strauss.  This married couple were Jews from Georgia.  Isidor had volunteered for the Confederate Army at the outset of the Civil War, but was refused due to his young age of sixteen.  Later he became co-owner of Macy's Department Store with his brother.

The Strausses had been together since their marriage in 1871.  An officer of the Titanic offered a seat in a half-filled lifeboat to Isidor and Ida, but Isidor refused to go ahead of younger men than himself.  Ida opted to stay with him, and is reported as telling the officer:  "I will not be separated from my husband. As we have lived, so will we die, together."  Another account that I read in the book "A Night to Remember" says that Ida refused Isidor's plea for her to go into the lifeboat without him.  She said, "We have lived together for many years.  Where you go, I go."  Wikipedia says the couple was last seen sitting in deck chairs when they were washed overboard by a huge wave.

A ship called the Mackay-Bennett was sent to the location of the sinking to recover bodies, and Isidor's body was recovered.  Unfortunately, Ida's was not.

Isidor was buried in the Bronx, New York.  His tomb (and the Strauss statue in Strauss Park) can be viewed here.

The video clip (from James Cameron's movie "Titanic") below shows Isidor and Ida in their bed as their room fills with water.  This is fictional and does not line up with eye witness accounts of their demise.  However, I did enjoy the portrayal of Wallace Hartley's string quartet playing "Nearer My God to Thee" on the rapidly flooding deck.  Hartley's body was recovered and he was buried in his hometown in England.  More people attended his funeral than there were residents of the small town.

100 Years Ago Today: The Tragedy of the Titanic (Photos, Videos)

RMS Titanic as She Appeared in 1912 (Colorized by Stogie)

I have been hearing about the Titanic since I saw a movie about it (as a wee child) in 1953.  A great British ocean liner, on its maiden voyage from Southampton  to New York, touted to be "unsinkable," hit an iceberg near Newfoundland and sank two hours later.  There weren't enough lifeboats -- only enough for a third of the 2,223 people on board.  About 1,500 of those people went into the freezing water of the North Atlantic, where they quickly died of hypothermia.  That terrible event happened 100 years ago today, early in the morning of April 15, 1912.

The Titanic story is one of incredible arrogance, lack of foresight, bravery and cowardice, heroism and tragedy.  The Titanic was a beautiful ship, fitted out in luxury and the highest technology of its day.  It had luxury cafes, a gymnasium, a swimming pool, a library, and a wireless telegraph and remotely controlled watertight doors.  Some fool reportedly told the press before the voyage that "God himself couldn't sink this ship."  Apparently, God took that as some kind of challenge.

Titanic Today

Only 710 survivors made it into the lifeboats.  Many of the lifeboats were lowered into the sea half full, because the Titanic didn't seem to be sinking at first, and passengers preferred the warmth of their cabins to what seemed a false threat.  When the ship began to sink at the bow and the list became increasingly steep, pandemonium reigned as many tried to crowd into the remaining lifeboats.  Since it was "women and children first," some men survived only by accident -- by jumping into the water where they were picked up by the half-filled lifeboats.  Two men went over the rail together; one survived and the other did not.  A priest prayed with some passengers on the steeply listing deck; members of the ship's orchestra, led by band leader Wallace Hartley, played music to calm the crowd.  Some say their final song was "Nearer My God to Thee."  Others say it was "Autumn."

They were picked up hours later by the Carpathia, a freighter who sped towards the disaster site in a heroic attempt to save the lives of the Titanic's passengers.  Alas, it was too far away to save anyone but the lifeboat passengers.  The S.S. Californian, within easy reach of the Titanic, could have saved many.  Its crew was puzzled over the meaning of the flares being set off from the Titanic (they were a cry for help), but took no action.  They turned off their wireless and went to bed, totally oblivious to the unfolding disaster.

Today the wreck of the Titanic rests 12,415 feet down on the seabed, slowly rusting away.  Plans are underway to commemorate the tragedy and pray for its victims -- now 100 years after they disappeared into the cold waters of the North Atlantic, along with the luxury ship that will sail on in legend and imagination.

Here is a fairly short video showing scenes from the sunken Titanic, overlayed with images of Victorian era, ghost-like figures walking about the scene, which then clarifies into actual photos of the locations as they looked in 1912.  The film ends with a string ensemble playing "Nearer My God to Thee," very much as it must have sounded when Wallace Hartley's string ensemble played it as the Titanic sank into the sea.  Highly recommended.


Here is a film showing underwater views of the Titanic, with some unusual perspectives.

 

 From the Discovery Channel: Deep Inside the Sunken Titanic:   Part 1 of 2



 Deep Inside The Sunken Titanic, Part 2 of 2