A Gray Spot for Her Majesty
Disclaimer: I make no claims to the White Star Line, Titanic, or any other places, objects, or persons that may be mentioned in this chapter.
Go two-and-half miles down and there is nothing but tons of pressure at every square inch and total blackness in the ocean's depths. The water is so thick and deep that not even sunlight can penetrate that far down. There is nothing to light the way but the small bright lights of the submersibles that whir and swim along the bottom of the sea. They are the only lights Titanic has seen since the night it sank a hundred years ago. Suddenly, looming overhead is the bow of the ship itself, decorated with icicles of rust and mounds of dirt. It is the first thing seen by the man-made lights, for never again will the ship rise to see daylight or the expanse of night sky. For in a single night, the ship that was thought to be Unsinkable was proven to be fallible.
On that night, there was no moon, and the stars appeared brighter only because of the ice crystals in the air. What could have been seen a half-an-hour away was seen only in in half a minute and could not have been avoided, even if they had collided head-on. All in part because of human faults, but mostly, because the doom-fated ship had entered into a valley of death upon the sea. The swift, freezing Labrador Current brought with it broken of pieces of ice from Greenland that had been around since the day the ice age firmly began and changed the climate of this planet forever.
Most of the 2,200 souls on board were ignorant, except for perhaps the members of the crew who knew of the ice-warnings and also those who recorded the fluctuating temperature changes. While it is no secret that pushing the ship to 22 knots was not so ideal, especially with the Labrador Current flooding down into the Atlantic, nothing could've prevented the death of Titanic that night.
In essence, though it is heartbreaking to think about or even acknowledge, the cruise ship called R.M.S. Titanic of the White Star Line was meant to sink that night so long ago.
As mere mortals, we are always trying to find our way into being amongst the stars, or even into being stars ourselves; in being like gods. We find that we strive always to push ourselves with the one way we can succeed as well as any set of divine powers: technology. And it is no lie that the Titanic at the time was the pinnacle of steam technology along with being the most luxurious ship the world had ever seen. But with all of its power and might, with all of its sleekness and comfort, it could not have been saved. The ship had been designed so that if the first four compartments of the water-tight bulkheads of the ship had been filled with water, it would've stayed afloat. Even if only two of the compartments in any other part of the ship had been filled with water, it would've stayed afloat. But that night, after grazing an iceberg that tore into its side, and also tore open the bottom due to the shelf of ice underneath the water, six compartments filled with water and signed away on the death certificate of Titanic.
It is also true that more people could've been saved, even with the lack of lifeboats that were not made available to save the rest of the passengers onboard. 70-72 men were able to fit in each of the twenty life boats, which could've easily stowed a thousand lives a safe distance away from the soon-to-be wreck. But with the panic, the terror, the heartbreaking reality for each man, woman, and child, only a little over 700 were saved while 1,517 perished with the sinking of the ship and the hypothermia that set in less than a half-hour after being in the water. The thrashing and swimming only increased the freezing cold to sooner corrupt the core body temperature of each helpless individual, but they did not understand.
The only sought to live. They only wanted to be saved from the fate they knew deep down they could not escape. Their screams echo forevermore in the endless dark of the ocean. Their grave acting only as a time-capsule into a period of time that seems just as ghost-like as the ruined ship itself.
Personally, I can understand why Captain E.J. Smith would step quietly into the bridge of the ship and willingly go down with his vessel. With so many lives to be responsible for, knowing that only so many were going to live out of all of the passengers, and very well feeling the weight of the guilt upon his shoulders, it is no wonder why the chilled waters seemed so welcoming for such a crippled-soul.
With this night being the hundredth anniversary the ship last saw daylight, it can only be affirmed that their lives are finally received by the people that exist on this planet.
When James Cameron first pitched the idea of the movie to the board of producers, he only said two things:
"This ship. Romeo and Juliet."
Regardless to say, it is no wonder after seeing Leonardo DiCaprio in Baz Luhrman's production of Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet as to why he was picked for the character of Jack Dawson (which, surprisingly enough, there was a man named J. Dawson who had died with the sinking of the ship, but his name was not Jack). Having Kate Winslet play Rose DeWitt-Bukater, a.k.a the Juliet character, was of course a good judgment call by the casting directors for the movie. Many of the facts that seemed right at the time, when the movie was being made, have later on been disproved by James Cameron himself, but changing so much in the movie would be too tiresome and a wasting of too much money.
For many of us, who were growing up when this movie came out, this was the way we were first introduced to Titanic. Of course the love-story was what many became obsessed with and how the star-crossed lovers (spoilers!) were torn apart only after having found each other aboard the ship. I, myself, was also swept away by the love that seemed to live on despite the fact that one soul-mate had died and the other had promised to live a full-life in the wake of the tragedy. However, I found myself feeling something that burned more than a twelve year-old girl's foolish dreams of enduring romance. I actually viewed it when my father brought it home as a video rental from Blockbuster those few months after leaving theaters; I was in third grade at the time. And as a child, the love-story didn't reach inside of me: rather, it was the ship itself.
I found myself drawing her all the time, keeping the dates of April 14th and 15th forever ingrained, and watching the movie every year on both days since then. I wanted to learn more about the ship, more about the times, more about the people who built her, crewed her, and piloted her. I wanted to understand the people who boarded her and put so many of their hopes and dreams into the hands of Titanic herself.
However, feelings I cannot explain well up inside of me each time the opening credits begin. This year they've been even stronger. While watching the documentary that James Cameron did in order to put the mystery of Titanic's sinking forever to rest, I found myself experiencing physical reactions to the ship that I had only felt lightly and never as intense whenever I had waited for the anniversary to reappear on the calendar. I couldn't catch my breath while watching them explain how the ship had split in half – and when I did catch it, I found myself holding it in unconsciously. I started to cry and shake, my heart was pounding, and an overwhelming feeling of being there filled me to the brim.
Tonight, as I sit here on my laptop writing this to commemorate the full century it has been since the ship sank, I am watching the movie and I find myself crying for a reasons I can't think of and experiencing feelings I can't understand. I can only hear the thoughts that come to me, unbidden from some part of my brain that remains hidden from me.
"Leave us alone," the voice cries, "Look at what they have done to my ship. I have been here. This is our grave."
Of course many cases of reincarnation have been spilled out by people across the globe who have also felt connections to the ship. There is no way to prove that any of these cases are true, though many agree to past-life regression therapy. I don't know if I am a reincarnation of someone who was on Titanic or someone who had some sort of connection to the ship. While some can claim that they can remember past lives when they were children, for the rest of us, it is harder. My mother suspects it is because we either experience something traumatic or simply because the life we lived before held no real impact on us spiritually. I've had dreams about the ship itself and wanting to prevent it from setting out on its disaster-prone course. I've even had dreams that seem like memories but I am unable to differentiate (or prove) whether they were really memories or just dreams.
I have no fear of water – except of course of drowning or being eaten by a shark. I have no fear of heights, except when plunging down ninety-feet at eighty miles-an-hour on a rollercoaster. I'm not a fan of ice or the cold, but honestly, who likes to feel frozen all the time during winter (even if they are a fan of the season)? I could go on and on forever about this, but I feel that it digresses too much.
Do I believe in reincarnation? Yes. Whole-heartedly. I feel that each of us has a set of lessons to learn in each life that one simply cannot learn in one life alone. There would be too much strife, suffering, and unrelenting horror that would leave a soul empty. But that is not the point of this essay.
Nor are my feelings of connection to the ship, be they real or fitted-in because of some misguided subconscious memories. None of that is really relevant – though it does break the ice.
No, my point is simple enough, and ironically enough, it is even displayed with the first forty-minutes of the film.
The theme of this written piece is to prove that connections can transcend time, space, and even the physical world. We all know (those that seek the ship out more than the romance of the movie and even those who seek to read this incredibly long-winded entry) that feelings have the ability to transcend words and thoughts. Those who feel touched by the story or even remotely sad acknowledge this one truth: the human heart, nay, the soul, transcends all elevations, overcomes every descent, and obliterates limits or barriers that would otherwise enclose it in a single thought of motioning forward. Though the past should always remain the past, it is learning from it and even recognizing it that allows us to evolve.
Being that Titanic is part of the past, none of us can really know what it was like for the people to be on board that ship – and not just during the sinking. Oh, there are stories that run around based on written accounts, reports, and journal entries of what it was like in some capacities and who some of the people were – especially for those who were first class passengers. But none of us can say for certain whether or not there may have in fact been a romance like Jack and Rose's on board the ship for those few short days. There may have been fights and disputes between family members and friends. It can be stated, however, that for those were leaving behind their homes to immigrate to a new land, longing was ever present, along with nostalgia. But there was happiness and laughter, joy and tears. There were parties, dinners, lunches, breakfasts, masses, and arenas for games all on-board this ship. And then, in the span of two hours and forty-minutes, it was gone beneath the waves forever.
The world may have gone on turning, but nothing was ever the same. The Edwardian period was quickly overtaken by the looming future that the twenties brought in, along with the shadows of war that loomed at the edges of each new decade since 1912. The world then was a different place, and though it was ruled primarily by class, it was a simpler time. Where true hard work was labor intense, even by the cruelest means, and left men more satisfied and bone tired than those who work under today's means of instant gratification by means of the internet. The rich…well, from what is seen on dramas on television or written about in books, they still have their dramas, their woes, and petty games (though they seem more charitable these days).
But for whatever reasons there may have been during everyday life, once it was made clear that status and money would not save, class became a primitive means of life. Then, and only then, were the careful and controlled layers peeled back to allow the basic instinct for survival to take hold. But it was not enough for those whose names were already engraved on the grim reaper's list. Though unfair and merciless, history cannot be changed, and so what had once been a luxury liner is now, and forevermore, an unlit lonely grave.
And no matter as to why I feel this strange connection to a vessel and story that is older than me by seventy-seven years, I will never attempt to sway myself otherwise (or allow others to do so). I know there are many out there who feel the same and I thank those who would make me feel welcome.
When my time comes in this life, I hope that I am an old woman who has lived her life and seen all of her dreams come true. I hope that I am able to die looking out over the sea and knowing that it won't be long until I begin a new journey. I hope that my soul, before passing into the next plane, will venture down to the depths, much like Rose's, and find Titanic welcoming me as well.
So tonight, I say thanks for reading this; I say a prayer for those who lived and those who died this night a century ago. And though we are losing the ship to time and the ocean, her story and her name will live on forever – and that too is my prayer.
Rest in Peace, R.M.S. Titanic – you are not forgotten, and never will you be lost to time, for you are in the hearts of many.