Disturbing the Dead

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The original vessel under construction in Belfast. From The Mariners’ Museum collection.

Hello readers and welcome back to the Library blog. For those of you who are unaware, Australian billionaire Clive Palmer has just released construction plans for the proposed cruise linerTitanic II. No, I did not mistype that – this man seriously wants to rebuild theTitanic. According to the proposed plans, theTitanic IIwould be made as close to the original specifications as possible. However, a new deck will be added for lifeboats, the huge steam engines would be replaced by much smaller diesel engines, and the underwater hull would be made slightly more aerodynamic.

The prospect of a replicaTitanic帆船海浪或许是伤感的d a controversial notion to many people. While it is no doubt touching that the people who perished on the firstTitaniccould be honored and remembered by the creation of a second one, one must consider the endurance and implications of theTitanic’s legacy. The sinking of the “unsinkable”Titanic在她的处女航是笼罩着一个故事the past century, symbolizing the folly of humanity’s hubris in the face of the forces of nature. It is a lesson meant to be so powerful that it bears no repetition: for that reason, every child in America grows up learning its story. By building a secondTitanic, are we not throwing away the lessons we learned? Are we not trivializing the importance of the deaths suffered in 1912? Some say that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Perhaps theTitanic IIwill not literally sink, if it is ever made. But remaking that ship will reject the lessons we were supposed to learn, and trivialize the impact made by all those who died.Read more

One Last Look at Her.

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Illustration of Titanic and Olympic, from 1911 brochure
From the cover of a 1911 White Star Line brochure, a wonderful illustration of their new superliners Titanic and Olympic. From the Archives.

Before I let RMSTitanicgo as a topic of this blog, I have one more image I feel compelled to share with you. This is the cover of a brochure we have in the Steamship Ephemera collection, in which White Star Line advertises both its new super liners,OlympicandTitanic.This brochure has some magnificent illustrations from the building of both vessels and dates from 1911. I would be happy to show it to you in person if you stop by the Library. Really, very happy. Here it is.

As we remember…

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Titanic Deck Plan
A deck plan of RMS Titanic, probably to be used in conjunction with a brochure for choosing one's cabin. From the Archives.

Like many of you, I have been fascinated with the story of RMSTitanicfor as long as I can remember. I’m not sure why, exactly. I wasn’t a particularly sympathetic child, grieving over the story of hundreds of lives lost. That was a characteristic I developed in adulthood. I also don’t think that I had some mysterious connection to the gentility of the Edwardian past. I think I was attracted, as many boys are, to the utter grandeur of the ship itself and to the spectacle of the ship dying, as it were. Despite its many flaws, the Leo DeCaprio / Kate Winslet film put me very much in touch with the awe I experienced as a boy reading about and imagining this engineering miracle as it succumbed to the icy Atlantic. Some boys loved cars; I loved massive ocean liners. Go figure.

Anyway, thanks to my friends inPhotographic Services, I am bringing you an engineering (sort of) document from our Steamship Ephemera collection: a deck plan ofTitanic, sans chairs. In memory of all those who graced that magnificent ship a hundred years ago today.Read more

New Letters from Titanic Survivors

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RMS Titanic
"The Largest Vessel & The Largest Floating Crane in the World, the White Star Liner 'Titanic'". From the Eldredge Collection at The Mariners' Museum.

Today, Archives staff has put up on the web finding aids for letters in our collections from two survivors of theTitanicdisaster. Have a look at the finding aids for theMary Lines Letterand theHelen R. Ostby Letterunder Special Collections and choose the category “Shipwrecks, Collisions, Salvage and Underwater Archaeology.”

Both these young women were first-class passengers onTitanic.Mary Lines, Paris-educated daughter of the president of the New York Life Insurance Company, boarded at Southampton, England. Helen Ostby, travelling with her father, a jeweler, came aboard in Cherbourg, France.Read more

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