Titanic
by Harley Berger, Vice-President
RMS Titanic was the second of a trio
of superliners intended to dominate the transatlantic travel business.
Owned by the White Star Line, Titanic was the largest passenger steamship
in the world at the time of its launching. During Titanic's
maiden voyage, it struck an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on Sunday April 14,
1912, and sank two hours and forty minutes later at 2:20 a.m. Monday.
The sinking resulted in the deaths of more than 1,500 people, ranking it
as one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters in history and by far the
most famous. Titanic used some of the most advanced
technology available at the time and was popularly believed to be
"unsinkable". The media frenzy about Titanic's famous
victims, the legends about what happened on board the ship, the resulting
changes to maritime law, and the discovery of the wreck in 1985 by a team
led by Robert Ballard and Jean-Louis Michel have made Titanic
persistently famous in the years since. Yet despite all that is known ,
there are still mysteries connected with the great ship’s loss, such as:
Why was the radio unmanned at the time of the disaster? Why was it sailing
at top speed through waters known to be dangerous? Why wasn’t the ship
found where she was known to have gone down? For some possible answers
to these and many other observations, please join us on Saturday, February
18 when our guest will be Titanic historian
Ed Weichsler, who’s interest in
all things Titanic has spanned over 40 years and taken him
across two continents. In the course of his travels Mr. Weichsler has met
2 dozen Titanic survivors, the aforementioned Robert Ballard and
was offered a part in James Cameron’s film “Titanic”.
Take advantage of this unusual opportunity for a serious and in-depth
examination of a tragedy that has achieved almost mythological status in
the popular culture, and while you’re at it, why not bring a friend? *
This is not a program of Northwest Unitarian
Universalist Church. |
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