Titanic: Still making waves after 91 years

SHE may have sunk 91years ago, but Titanic still continues to cause controversy. This week the Daily Echo reported that Southampton City Council had decided not to permit an exhibition of the liner's artefacts to be displayed in the city.

It had nothing to do with the fact part of the collection had been gathered by a convicted child molester, said council officials.

However, plans to display items belonging to the ship and survivors were sunk.

Southampton's loss turns out to be Portsmouth's gain - a similar exhibition opened at the Historic Dockyard on Wednesday.

On show are much the same sort of flotsam and jetsam gathered from the ocean after the liner had gone down; messages and letters sent by passengers, many of whom did not survive, and the stories of some of those on board.

All the usual controversy over whether Titanic and those who died on board that fateful night in April 1912 should be allowed to rest in peace, will be brought to the surface.

But the displays in Portsmouth and Southampton - for the council have said the show will arrive here eventually - pale compared to the all-singing exhibition at the Science Museum in London.

Titanic: The Artefact Exhibition opened earlier in the summer and will close later this month.

It is by far the greatest showing of artefacts from the bottom of the Atlantic and includes huge chunks of the giant liner that have been hacked off and dragged from the depths.

Like eerie cadavers the pieces hang suspended from the museum ceiling while light effects are played across their black painted rivets to give the impression both they and the visitor are actually two and a half miles down with the remainder of the vessel.

I visited the exhibition last week and have to say I found the experience very moving. I had expected to be at best indifferent, at worst angered by the "show-and-tell" aspect of what should be a sombre tale.

After James Cameron's multi-Oscar award-winning film Titanic, I will admit to expecting more than a passing reference to Kate Winslet and the Leonardo boy.

However, nothing of the kind. Apart from a dodgy "touch the iceberg" feature (which I have to admit kept the many young children entertained), the displays were tasteful and contained few personal items.

The odd shoe and battered top hat did not seem too intrusive on the grief that must once have surrounded such items.

I will admit to joining others in reaching into one case to touch part of the hull that is open for just such an "experience." Having once touched part of the Moon during a tour of the Kennedy Space Center I found the experience just as strangely thrilling.

A testimony from Hampshire's own surviving Titanic survivor Millvena Dean, was the last story I read.

In it the 91-year-old, who was a baby when the ship sank taking her father with it, said that when they found Titanic they found her as well.

She meant, of course, that since the discovery of the wreck, and the movie that followed, her life as a Titanic celebrity has changed beyond all recognition.

I left the exhibition moved, certainly enough to visit the other Titanic tour currently doing the rounds: Ghosts Of The Abyss.

Ghosts is a 3-D Imax movie experience taking the cinema-goer down to the depths and back to the wreck along with one of the submarine exploration crews that now seem to regularly visit the rusting hulk. It promised to be an awe-inspiring experience.

It was certainly shocking. Far from being just a documentary - a fish-eye-view of the old lady you might say - the film turns out to be Titanic 2 - The Return.

Starring original Titanic actor Bill Paxton and its director James Cameron, the film mixes real footage of the liner as she is today with newly filmed drama sequences purporting to show life on board the ship before and as she sank.

Some of the old assumptions were there. The captain, Edward Smith, was reckless, the White Star Line director J Bruce Ismay was more interested in record speed than safety and was a coward to boot, saving himself before the 1,500 souls who perished.

The most disturbing accusation presented again as fact - much as it was in the feature film - was that third class steerage passengers had been locked below decks to allow the first and second class passengers to escape. A monstrous accusation, if true. But is it?

Documents from Britain's Public Record Office would appear to show otherwise. "I think the passengers in the third class had as much chance as the first and second-class passengers," reads a statement held by the Public Record Office from a third class passenger on the ship.

It was this line that was trumpeted by the UK after the film was released.

However, I discovered, the American investigation into the sinking embellishes such reports and the reading makes even the strongest defender of Titanic's crew a little uncomfortable.

Questioning Daniel Buckley, an Irish-born American resident of New York, the inquiry's chairman Senator William Alder Smith asked: "Were you permitted to go on up to the top deck without any interference?"

Mr Buckley: "Yes, sir. They tried to keep us down at first on our steerage deck. They did not want us to go up to the first-class place at all."

Senator Smith: "Who tried to do that?"

Mr Buckley: "I cannot say who they were. I think they were sailors."

Senator Smith: "What happened then? Did the steerage passengers try to get out?"

Mr Buckley: "Yes, they did. There was one steerage passenger there and he was getting up the steps, and just as he was going in a little gate a fellow came along and chucked him down; threw him down into the steerage place. This fellow got excited, and he ran after him, and he could not find him. He got up over the little gate. He did not find him."

Senator Smith: "What gate do you mean?"

Mr Buckley: "A little gate just at the top of the stairs going up into the first-class deck."

Senator Smith: "There was a gate between the steerage and the first-class deck?"

Mr Buckley: "Yes. The first-class deck was higher up than the steerage deck, and there were some steps leading up to it; nine or ten steps, and a gate just at the top of the steps."

Senator Smith: "Was the gate locked?"

Mr Buckley: "It was not locked at the time we made the attempt to get up there, but the sailor, or whoever he was, locked it. So that this fellow that went up after him broke the lock on it, and he went after the fellow that threw him down. He said if he could get hold of him he would throw him into the ocean."

Senator Smith: "Did these passengers in the steerage have any opportunity at all of getting out?"

Mr Buckley: "Yes, they had."

Senator Smith: "What opportunity did they have?"

Mr Buckley: "I think they had as much chance as the first and second class passengers."

Senator Smith: "After this gate was broken?"

Mr Buckley: "Yes, because they were all mixed. All the steerage passengers went up on the first-class deck at this time, when the gate was broken. They all got up there. They could not keep them down."

Perhaps, then, James Cameron's version of events on that fateful night, if a little over-dramatised, turn out to be true.

In the end Titanic continues to enthral us. The reason is quite simple.

I defy anyone to visit any of the exhibitions or the Ghosts Of The Abyss film and not ask themselves that one question: what would I have done that night?

Titanic The Artefact Exhibition runs at the London Science Museum until September 26.

Titanic - The Exhibition runs at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard until November 17.

Ghosts Of The Abyss is currently showing at the London Science Museum Imax and Bournemouth Imax theatres.

- Originally published September 2003.