The Legend of Titanic

I saw this news story off of ABC. I think it's interesting that only 1 survivor is left. I think it's even more amazing that there were survivors (old enough at the time to remember) to tell their story... that they were there to experience of all Titanic's beauty and horror...

I saw this movie entitled Ghosts of the Abyss where James Cameron led an expedition to explore Titanic at the bottom of the North Atlantic. They were able to find the famous Turkish baths. You could see the famous blue green tile glowing through the murky water. I can't imagine what it felt like to be the first people to enter that room for over a hundred years. As they explored the ship I was over come with a sense of respect and grief. You could almost hear the ghosts of the passengers and crew.

Anyone who knows me, my friends, family.. knows I love history.. I bleed historical facts, tidbits, and oddities.. Titanic is a part of any history lover's knowledge. I was lucky enough to visit the Titanic exhibit in Las Vegas at the Tropicana last year. I saw clothing worn by passengers, the dishes they ate off of, the beds they slept in. I was able to experience how cold the water was that April night in 1912 and see an almost endless list of names of those who perished. it gets to me every time.. the stories.. the heroes.. the romance.. and the horror the sheer horror of all those who lost their lives.. 2200 passengers and crew set sail from south Hampton and over 1400 of those people met their end when the great ship sank. Titanic was the second in a series of ocean liners built by White Star. These liners were to be the most luxurious, fastest, and largest of their day. Titanic's construction began in 1908 resulting in over 3 years of hard labor on the backs of Irishmen. It was a symbol of status..It was the best of everything.. Along with the rich and prestigious that Titanic attracted there was also the poor and disheartened who saw Titanic as a first step in a better life in America. That all came to a horrible end on April 12, 1912 in the North Atlantic ocean.

The Mackay Bennett set sail on April 17th with the morbid task of recovering Titanic's victims. Bodies that where recovered from the water they were tagged, embalmed and placed in coffins or if too badly decayed were placed in white bags and put back into the ocean. The bodies were were then taken back to Halifax Nova Scotia and laid out in a temporary morgue located at for families to identify them, then buried in one of three cemeteries, Fairview Cemetery, Mount Olivet Cemetery, and Baron de Hirsch Cemetery. Click here for pics of graves and bios on some of the people buried in these cemeteries.

A Titanic victim aboard the Mackey Bennett

Of all the stories of the bodies being recovered the one that touches me the most is that of the unknown child. A Blondie haired little boy whose body was recovered by the Mackay Bennett.. The body didn't have any means of identification. The captain and the crew of the Mackay Bennett were so touched and grief stricken by they site of the child they paid for his funeral and gravestone in Fairview Cemetery. The child was laid in a white coffin and carried out of a packed St George's Anglican Church on May 4. The fair haired child was buried in Fairview cemetery with a head stone that read "Erected to the memory of an unknown child whose remains were recovered after the disaster to Titanic, April 15, 1912." However, in November 2002 an exhumation followed by DNA testing the body was identified as Eino Viljami Panula, a 13 month old child who's parents were from Finland. There is an excellent series on PBS entitled Secrets of the Dead. In one of the episodes entitled Titanic's Ghosts, the story of the unknown child is told along with the process of identifying him. A name was finally put to the small body. For over a hundred years the body of a child laid in a cemetery in Nova scotia with out a name to identify him and now he is finally someone, he is some one's child, some one's little boy who can finally rest.

***UPDATE***
The unknown child's remains once thought to be Eino Panula are now thought to be the remains of Sidney Leslie Goodwin. Due to subsequent DNA testing. Read the story here

Reposted from Yahoo News

– Wed Sep 22, 11:50 am ET

LONDON (Reuters) – The Titanic hit an iceberg in 1912 because of a basic steering error, and only sank as fast as it did because an official persuaded the captain to continue sailing, an author said in an interview published on Wednesday.

Louise Patten, a writer and granddaughter of Titanic second officer Charles Lightoller, said the truth about what happened nearly 100 years ago had been hidden for fear of tarnishing the reputation of her grandfather, who later became a war hero.

Lightoller, the most senior officer to have survived the disaster, covered up the error in two inquiries on both sides of the Atlantic because he was worried it would bankrupt the ill-fated liner's owners and put his colleagues out of a job.

"They could easily have avoided the iceberg if it wasn't for the blunder," Patten told the Daily Telegraph.

AP/Premier Exhibitions, Inc.-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

"Instead of steering Titanic safely round to the left of the iceberg, once it had been spotted dead ahead, the steersman, Robert Hitchins, had panicked and turned it the wrong way."

Patten, who made the revelations to coincide with the publication of her new novel "Good as Gold" into which her account of events are woven, said that the conversion from sail ships to steam meant there were two different steering systems.

[Video: A closer look at the Titanic disaster]

Crucially, one system meant turning the wheel one way and the other in completely the opposite direction.

Once the mistake had been made, Patten added, "they only had four minutes to change course and by the time (first officer William) Murdoch spotted Hitchins' mistake and then tried to rectify it, it was too late."

Patten's grandfather was not on watch at the time of the collision, but he was present at a final meeting of the ship's officers before the Titanic went down.

There he heard not only about the fatal mistake but also the fact that J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of Titanic's owner the White Star Line persuaded the captain to continue sailing, sinking the ship hours faster than would otherwise have happened.

"If Titanic had stood still, she would have survived at least until the rescue ship came and no one need have died," Patten said.

The RMS Titanic was the world's biggest passenger liner when it left Southampton, England, for New York on its maiden voyage on April 10, 1912. Four days into the trip, the ship hit an iceberg and sank, taking more than 1,500 passengers with it.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

Titanic Survivor Dies at 96

1 of Last 2 Titanic Survivors Dies at 96; Barbara Dainton Lost Father in 1912 Sinking
The Associated Press
LONDON
Barbara West Dainton, believed to be one of the last two survivors from the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, has died in England at age 96.
Dainton died Oct. 16 at a nursing home in Camborne, England, according to Peter Visick, a distant relative. Her funeral was held Monday at Truro Cathedral, Visick said Thursday.
Elizabeth Gladys "Millvina" Dean of Southampton, England, who was 2 months old at the time of the Titanic sinking, is now the disaster's only remaining survivor, according to the Titanic Historical Society.
The last American survivor, Lillian Gertrud Asplund, died in Massachusetts last year at age 99.
Dainton, born in Bournemouth in southern England in 1911, was too young to remember the night when the huge liner hit an iceberg and sank in the Atlantic in April 1912, killing 1,500 people, including her father, Edwy Arthur West.
He waved farewell as the lifeboat carrying Barbara; her mother, Ada; and her sister, Constance, was lowered into the ocean, according to Karen Kamuda of the Titanic Historical Society in Indian Orchard, Mass. His body was never identified.
The Titanic did not have enough lifeboats for all of 2,200 passengers and crew. Only a small number of those unable to find a place on the boats survived the freezing waters.
Dainton returned to England after the accident. She married in 1952.
She avoided publicity associated with the Titanic and even insisted that her funeral take place before any public announcement of her death, Kamuda said.
"We respected her privacy," Kamuda said. "We're so open with everything and our emotions nowadays, but people at that time, they just didn't talk about it."