Seabed images of wreckage give new insight, fuel fresh surge of interest
The SS Nomadic, a tender to RMS Titanic and the last surviving White Star Line boat, is displayed at Titanic Belfast, a visitor attraction near the Titanic's birthplace in Belfast, Northern Ireland. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Editor's note: More than a century after its sinking, the Titanic still boasts enduring international appeal. Following latest 3D scans of the shipwreck, China Daily delves into why its story remains enticing.
The recent loss of the submersible taking passengers to the wreckage of the RMS Titanic, 3.8 kilometers below the waves and about 640 km off the southeast coast of the Canadian island of Newfoundland, was for many people a major reminder of the fascination the world continues to have with one of the most talked-about events of the 20th century.
The 1997 film Titanic, which won multiple awards telling the tale of two fictional passengers on the ill-fated ship that sank on April 15, 1912, with the loss of about 1,500 lives, inspired a whole new generation to take an interest in the ship and its story.
The last survivor of the sinking, Millvina Dean, died in 2009, aged 97. She was also the youngest survivor, aged just nine weeks then, and was not even aware that she had been on board until the age of 8.
There were eight Chinese sailors in the Titanic's crew and six had survived, with Chinese cities enthusiastic recipients of the many related exhibits and artifact exhibitions that continue to tour the world.
Titanic Belfast shows what the ship looked like inside. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Shanghai in 2013, Guangzhou in 2017, Wuhan in 2018 and Hong Kong this year have all hosted major Titanic exhibits.
In 2013, Australian tycoon Clive Palmer announced plans to construct a replica of the ship, originally built in Belfast in Northern Ireland, at the CSC Jinling Shipyard in Nanjing, though the project never came to fruition.
Fortunately, recently released high-resolution images of the wreckage on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean have offered new insight into the current state of the remains of the ship and fueled a fresh surge of interest.
Last summer, a mission by deep-sea mapping company Magellan and documentary filmmakers Atlantic Productions resulted in a unique 3D representation of the whole wreck in such detail that even serial numbers on propeller blades were visible.
Remote-controlled submersibles spent more than 200 hours taking at least 700,000 images from every angle to come up with a remarkable record.
"Previously, footage has only allowed you to see one small area of the wreck at a time," said 3D capture specialist Gerhard Seiffert.
"This model will allow people to zoom out and to look at the entire thing for the first time… This is the Titanic as no one had ever seen it before."
Although the Titanic set off on its disastrous voyage from the port of Southampton, on the southern coast of England, its birthplace was the Harland& Wolff shipyard in Belfast, whose two towering yellow cranes are still the most distinctive feature on the city's skyline.
Visitors look at the slipway where the Titanic rested before its launch at Titanic Belfast. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Proud of connection
Belfast remains hugely proud of its connection to the Titanic, with the city's most high-profile waterfront residential and business regeneration area known as Titanic Quarter. Since 2012 it has been home to the Titanic Belfast visitor experience, one of Northern Ireland's most visited attractions.
It draws visitors from around the world, with the availability of audio guides in Chinese reflecting its far-reaching appeal.
Claire Bacon is the communications manager at Titanic Belfast. She told China Daily the Titanic was a huge presence in Belfast's past and a major part of its present.
"Titanic is one of the most recognizable names in the world, but a lot of people didn't realize it was built here, so we've brought the story back home and tell it in a way and in a place nowhere else could," she said. "You can stand on the exact spot where it was built."
In a city with such a blighted reputation because of violence and division caused by the Troubles in Northern Ireland (1968-98), Titanic Belfast has proved to be a hugely popular and unifying innovation.
"Since 2012, we've had 7 million visitors, and, in the first 10 years, we contributed 430 million pounds ($550 million) of spend back into the local economy, so it's a huge part of city life," Bacon said.
Visitors stand outside Titanic Belfast. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
The self-guided tour, available in a variety of languages, allows visitors to learn about the city's maritime heritage and the construction and launch of the ship from the slipway outside the exhibit's door as well as the voyage and sinking.
Visitors can enjoy a new $5.7-million gallery called Pursuit of Dreams, which looks at the dreams of the builders, the passengers and the dream of Robert Ballard, who found the wreck in 1985.
Artifacts on display include the violin of bandmaster Wallace Hartley, a life jacket and one of the last six surviving deck chairs. Visitors also have a chance to go on the last surviving White Star Line boat, SS Nomadic, the small tender used to ferry first-class passengers to and from the ship, which Bacon said is the closest anyone can get to going on the Titanic.
"The city has always been very proud of its shipbuilding heritage, and when it was being built here, Titanic was a huge deal, so we celebrate that heritage and the innovation that it took to build the ship," she said.
Having written three books and been involved in numerous documentaries about the Titanic, Tim Maltin is one of the world's leading authorities on the ship. He has been captivated by it since seeing the film A Night to Remember as a child and because his uncle was taught at school by a Titanic survivor.
He told China Daily its enduring international appeal was because of the universality of the experience.
"The Titanic was a microcosm for humanity — people from all over the world, rich and poor, together in that one place, a creation that was the best that humanity could come up with, suddenly struck down by the awesome power of nature," he said.
"All nationalities were on board — there were people from Africa, from Turkiye, China, Japan, obviously Europe and North America, and all of those people, whether they survived or died, left a story in the towns and communities they came from. When I do talks about it, wherever I go in the world, more often than not there will be someone there in the audience with a personal connection to the ship."
Visitors mimic a well-known scene of the 1997 film Titanic at Titanic Belfast in Northern Ireland. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
The supposedly unsinkable Titanic sank two years before the outbreak of World War I, as what were regarded as years of certainty and unstoppable progress of human endeavor came to a juddering halt.
"The sinking was similar to the themes of the tragedies of ancient Greece, which looked at the smallness of humanity in the vastness of the universe," Maltin said.
"We no longer have those stories in our lives, but we do have a story about a supposedly unsinkable ship, containing a cross-section of society, confidently setting out over the horizon and being struck down by the power of nature. Even in the 21st century, this allows us to question our place in the universe."
As if to underline the power of nature over the arrogance of humankind, freak atmospheric conditions compounded the tragedy by obscuring the iceberg until it was too late and causing the confusion that meant another passing ship, the California, could have come to the aid of survivors but did not.
Bizarrely, a novel called Futility, published in 1898 by British writer Morgan Robertson, told the fictional tale of a supposedly unsinkable boat called the Titan, which sank crossing the Atlantic 14 years before the real-life incident, which was the first major event of the telegraph age, and that became the first global news story.
Tim Maltin works on ship logs at the Devon Record Office in Exeter, England. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Shattering reminder
"For years, life had been about progress and the advances of technology, a straight line graph of the upward curve of man's superiority, but the sinking of the Titanic, and the way the news spread, shattered that and reminded people that we live in a chaotic world, shortly before everything was turned on its head by WWI," Maltin said.
Every so often, a new film or incident, such as the recent submersible tragedy, brings the story to the attention of a new generation, and more than a century after its dramatic death, breathes new life into the ship.
Something else that stirred up interest is the latest photo scans, which Maltin said is "like taking the water away … it's so dark down there, the best thing you can do is taking loads of photos and stitch them together, and this is the ultimate photo stitch".
"It's the best record we have of the exterior of the wreck."
The only way for people to see the wreck of the Titanic more clearly would be for it to be raised — and Maltin said this is not beyond the bounds of credibility.
"I would leave the stern as a memorial, as that's where most people died, but I think raising the bow is very feasible. It's strong enough and there is technology used for moving oil rigs, which could be deployed. I would love to see it on the slipway in Belfast where she was built," he said.
"Raising her would probably cost less than the budget of the next blockbuster film about the sinking, and it would be a wonder of the world, the biggest tourist attraction imaginable.
"In some ways, the sinking of the Titanic was the making of it — its sister ship, the Olympic, only lasted until the mid-1930s before it was scrapped, but by dying on its maiden voyage, the Titanic became immortal. And if they could lift the stern up, can you imagine it being put on a barge and taken to arrive in New York, more than 100 years late? It would be the news story of the millennium."
julian@mail.chinadailyuk.com
