Titanic: 100 Years Later

(I know, this has nothing to do with the paranormal, but this was written by me and who writes Scared Sheetless...me! So, I figured, why not? Enjoy. Also to those who are hardcore Titanic fans who may stumble upon this. I know I didn't mention everything, but this was for a newspaper so I didn't have the room. I wanted to cover other stories, but this is what made the final cut.)
Written by Scared Sheetless' Very Own, James Paradie
The Titanic disaster has hit its one hundred year anniversary and the world is giving the most famous ocean liner a celebration that both honors the marvels that it created, to being the world's largest ship at the time at 882 feet long and weighing 40,000 tons. To the 1,500 people who lost their lives freezing in the Atlantic Ocean. No matter what side you look at, from the glorious photos of Titanic at Harland and Wolff in Belfast, to its isolated state two miles down to the Atlantic Ocean seabed today. It is a majestic, beautiful, and tragic site all wrapped into one.

Conception:
Around the early 1900's, ocean liner companies were building bigger and luxurious ships and the White Star Line wanted to be the ones who set the bar. In 1907, J. Bruce Ismay, president and director of International Mercantile Marine, and Harland and Wolff Chairman, William James Pirrie, conceived the idea of birthing three of the largest and most sufficient ships ever thought of and their names would be: Olympic, Titanic, and later Britannic (originally named Gigantic). In March of 1909, Titanic's keel was laid down in Belfast and the process began. Titanic was such a huge deal that well over 100,000 spectators came to witness her hull being launched before being taken to the basin to be fitted (which means getting everything from chairs or kitchen supplies and etc. for the ship.) March 20th, 1912 was the day of Titanic's original maiden voyage, but due to Olympic's horrendous, and near fatal, collision with Royal Naval cruiser Hawke in September of 1911, the voyage had to be delayed so the workers could repair Titanic's oldest sister ship. A new date was scheduled for a month later.

The Voyage and Life on the Ship:
April 10th, 1912 was a day of amazement and wonder as classes of people from millionaires to the dirt poor, who were mostly immigrants looking for a new life in the New World, got to set sail on the world's largest ship. Titanic had a large class of different groups of people and the sad part is that some of them, especially the Third Class, had it better on the ship than they did in their whole lives. Imagine being poor, living in awful conditions, and suddenly you have a bed, a roof over your head, and bathing. And some of the Third Class weren't used to fine dining and even though they were the lowest class on the ship, they were still fed really good. The First Class and Second Class, however, had it made. They had their own gymnasium, their own Turkish baths, and their own swimming pool. Most of the first class didn't even use some of this fine areas of entertainment as some viewed it as a prop. Most just enjoyed each others company, gambled, and enjoyed the four restaurants (one with even palm trees outside of it) that Titanic offered. It was like a ship made from the Gods of Heaven brought upon as a gift to the Atlantic, but where there is good, there is always evil, and this evil was in the form of an iceberg.

"Iceberg dead ahead!":
Titanic was supposedly unsinkable due to it's sixteen watertight compartments, but on the night of April 14th, 1912, those assumptions would sink along with the ship. At approximately 11:30 pm, Fredrick Fleet and Reginald Lee were up in the crows nest, when suddenly they spot this black mass getting dangerously close to the ship. They only have thirty seconds to spare as First Officer Murdoch demands that the ship be put into reverse and for them to steer the ship away from the iceberg. But they were going too fast and the previous iceberg warnings they were receiving all day were ignored. The final moments of the sinking saw the Titanic's stern rise into the air, before a roar was heard (as explained by survivors) and the ship's lights went out and it broke into two just in front of the third funnel. The bow sank with the water filling the stern before the stern rose back into the air; the bow snapped the double hull of the ship off as it made it's "fall" to the ocean floor. The stern then followed moments later. The ship was gone and there was a yield of silence before hundreds of people were heard screaming in the moonless night. Only two boats risked death by going back to take in possible survivors; they only found four.

The Lost:
2,200 souls shared their best memories, some shared their final memories on that very ship. They would go onto the promenade decks and look out into the vast ocean, only in a short amount time to have their lives tragically altered. What was the most perfect day turned into a drastic, horrifying night that in the end only 713 survived, while an estimated 1,500 lost their lives. Among those of the brave who lost their lives was one heart wrenching story of the Straus family, who at the time co-owned the Macy's department store in New York City. At the time of the sinking, Ida made her way into the lifeboat, but when Isidor went to join his wife he was stopped and told by the official that it was women and children first. Ida got off and instead put their maid in her place. She joined her husband and said, wherever he goes she goes. They were both never seen again.

Finding Titanic:
After the wreck, there was much debate on who to blame for the wreck, most of the blame went to J. Bruce Ismay for his cowardice during the sinking, he eventually went into isolation himself and died in the 1930's due to a stroke. There's always been fascinations from explorers to even oil tycoons alike to find the Titanic. Some even wanted to raise her, one theory was using ping pong balls to bring her to the surface, believe it or not. Nobody could ever find it and all attempts failed until 1985 that is when Robert Ballard, and a team of oceanographers, used a live video sonar device to "mow the Atlantic Ocean sea bed" to search for the Titanic. It worked. On September 1st, 1985 in the late night they found her and as quickly as cheers from the explorers happened, sorrow and remorse fell upon them. One of the explorers said, "She sinks in twenty minutes." They all went out onto the dock of the ship and had a memorial for all who lost their lives that tragic night.

Legacy:
Ballard has made many journeys to the ship, as has famous cinema filmmaker, James Cameron (Titanic and Avatar). People have even gotten married on the dock of the ship, using submersibles. When you think of the most famous ship of all time you will think of Titanic. Same goes for thinking about the most famous shipwreck of all time. The actual Titanic is fading away now by bacteria eating at her steel and some experts say within several decades she will be nothing more than a pile of rust. But just as a person who passes on, if you think about it, they are always there, and the memory stays alive. The same will go for the Titanic and many centuries to come.

Sources:

(Note from author: A lot of this strictly comes from the plain old noggin. I'm seriously a Titanic buff and I will be posting several more Titanic related posts on my website in the next coming weeks. Go onto scaredsheetlessncn.blogspot.com and don't be afraid to tell me what you thought of this article. Just send me an email at scaredsheetlessncn@hotmail.com.)

Okay, I did get SOME sources, and they are respectively as follows:

www.titanicuniverse.com

Titanic at 100: Preserve the wreck or let it go? by Dan Vergano, USA Today.com

Titanic is Falling Apart by Brian Handwerk, National Geographic.com