Thursday, June 6, 2013

The RMS Titanic


  When I was a child, my father and I watched the 1953 movie "Titanic" with Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb. I remember watching in disbelief and astonishment that this beautiful (unsinkable) ship could be brought down by the powers of mother nature and human error.
   I grew up always curious to learn more and more of the facts about that fateful night.
   Now at a much riper and wiser age, I find that, I am no longer curious about the breathtaking ship, but am obsessed with the ship and its passengers. Whether it be about the construction of the boat, or the type of China used in the dining room, I need to know more. The all consuming obsession has taken me to doing a lot of research on my days off from work.
   To all of you who watched the lovely little romance that James Cameron shared with us in his 1997 "Titanic" the real movie you should watch is his "Ghosts of the Abyss". Here you can see his love and obsession come out in amazing form but you also feel the amount of energy he put into making the Titanic movie. He (being very rich and able to afford this) commandeered a vessel loaded with high tech equipment and submersible cameras and went out to find the final resting spot of the Titanic. That really was so much better then the 3 hour epic he did in 1997. Now don't get me wrong, I have watched his "Titanic" movie several times and do like it, I think I just wanted more about Everybody!
  Anyway, I recently watched "Titanic, Blood and Steel" which is a really cool miniseries put out by Encore. I also just found this great website www.RMSTitanic.net which I love.
   I have decided to start my next story and guess what it will be about? You are correct and very smart if your answer was the Titanic.
I do have one cute story to share, it's a small piece about one of the survivors, Violet Jessop



Violet Jessop, an ocean liner stewardess and a nurse was one of the survivors of the Titanic. She is also well known for surviving the Britannic in 1916, the sister ship to Titanic. Violet also survived an earlier fiasco in 1911, when she was aboard the RMS Olympic, when it collided with another ship, HMS Hawke. She passed away on May 5, 1971 of congestive heart failure.

Obviously, this woman shouldn't have been on any of those ships.

Have a good day!