Anniversary: The Sinking of the Titanic

April 11th, 2012 will be the 100th anniversary of the Titanic's first full day at sea. It will be my birthday. It will also, controversially, be the day when over five thousand artefacts from the decaying ship will be put up for auction in New York.

I say controversially because these are not objects saved by passengers or rescuers in 1912. They are objects taken from the decaying ship by divers working for R.M.S. Titanic Inc. between 1987 and 2004. You can see many of them in this Guardian photo collection. The objects range from parts of the ship, including a telegraph, chandelier, dishes, a porthole, and even a portion of the hull, to more personal artefacts that remind us of the human tragedy, like men's clothing, a pair of glasses and a bracelet with the name 'Amy'.

R.M.S. Titanic Inc. clearly finds no fault with what they are doing. This New York Times blog article points out that the artefacts were taken from the debris field surrounding the ship, while the ship itself was treated as a "sacred object" and left untouched. There are multiple conditions on the sale, disallowing the collection to be broken up, and requiring the buyer to make the collection available "to present and future generations for public display and exhibition, historical review, scientific and scholarly research, and educational purposes."

The estimated financial worth of the collection is staggering. The collection was appraised at $189 million US in 2007, but the president of auction house Guernsey's points out that it is "virtually impossible to appraise". A court ruling was necessary to even allow the company to sell the collection. But that doesn't change the fact that R.M.S. Titanic Inc., its parent company Premier Exhibitions (who also created the 'Bodies' exhibit) and Guersney's stand to make a lot of money from the sale.

Many people are speaking out against this sale, and the dives as well. The Halifax Chronicle-Herald interviewed Lynn-Marie Richard, registrar for the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, who was unequivocal when it came to the museum's interest in these artefacts. As a member of the International Congress of Maritime Museums, she says, "We’re into preserving and documenting — not into pillaging." The Halifax museum has a large collection of Titanic artefacts, but she is clear that they were all donated or on loan, and were picked up by the sailors who went to the Titanic's aid in 1912. The newspaper also spoke to Steve Blasco, a scientist with the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth, NS. He visited the wreck in 1991, taking samples to study the site and helping with the IMAX film Titanica. He equates taking these artefacts from the ocean floor with grave-robbing, and calls upon his relationship with a now deceased Titanic survivor, Eva Hart, who saw the site as her father's grave site.

Robert Ballard, who discovered the Titanic's resting place in 1986 (and famously confirmed the ship did, indeed, split in two) has already publicly spoken out against tourist submarines causing irreparable damage to parts of the ship, and these same tourists taking objects from the debris field that were in no danger of deteriorating. Clearly there are scientists who are calling for more restriction to the site - but the lure of the wreckage seems to be proving stronger than the argument for historical preservation. In 2004 the site was extensively filmed and photographed to assess its condition, and in 2010 the complete site was mapped with 3-D technology. Shouldn't these records be enough to satisfy our curiosity?

The debate will continue, but it doesn't change the fact that these artefacts exist. Perhaps they shouldn't have been retrieved from what can be seen by many as a grave site, but the objects are here, above water, and people have become fascinated by them (see a previous post about dark tourism). It is unrealistic to think that they will be brought back down to the wreckage of the ship. I believe the company is truly doing the best they can in this situation. There are plenty of conditions on the sale, including making it available to the public. It just remains to be seen whether rich, responsible bidders exist, and are willing to follow the rules.

And, for my birthday, I think I will skip the Titanic memorial cruise, which is sold out anyway, and go relive the Hollywood magic of James Cameron's 1997 version of the sinking on the big screen with my 3-D glasses.

Picture of Titanic's bow is copyright Emory Kristof/National Geographic.

Historical Fiction: New York

I read a lot, pretty much daily, and my love of history definitely creeps in to my book choices. I have already described my early love for young adult historical and time-travelling novels, and for a long time my favourite summer reading was anything about Henry VIII, his wives, and his descendants. Luckily my tastes have broadened since then and reached beyond the 16th century. Historical fiction is a great way to get introduced to different eras and real-life characters, even if it only convinces you to visit Wikipedia to see if something you read was true or not. Just before Christmas I happened to finish three different books about one of my favourite cities, New York, and I thought I'd share them.

It took only a few days to read The Virgin Cure by Ami McKay (author of The Birth House), which shows you how much I enjoyed it. The book follows Moth, a 12-year-old girl in the Lower East Side of 1870's New York. The book delves deep into the poverty, crime and generally poor quality of life (sanitation-wise, health-wise, education-wise, you name it) for residents of that neighbourhood. Young girls and women are hit particularly hard - Moth is first sold into being a maid for an mentally unstable rich lady who beats her, escapes to beg on the street, and ultimately ends up in a house where girls are trained to become prostitutes and their virginity is sold to the highest bidder.
McKay wrote the book after researching her great-grandmother, who was a 'lady doctor' in the Lower East Side at this time, so we also get a fascinating glimpse into the life of a woman who chose to study medicine (in the 1870s!) and then committed herself to treating the poorest women in the city. I love that McKay's own family history got her researching and writing. And while the 'virgin cure' (the idea that having sex with a virgin can cure syphilis) seems crazy, McKay writes on her website that parallels can be found today with AIDS in countries like Thailand and India, which just reminds me why we need to keep studying history in the first place.
Read before: visiting the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

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It took me significantly longer to read Edward Rutherfurd's New York, but then again, it is almost 900 pages long. This is Rutherfurd's love letter to New York, an epic that follows the van Dyck and Master family (among others) from their beginnings as 17th century Dutch immigrants to their success in the financial world of Wall Street by the 20th century. Did I mention the book is 900 pages long?
The book is far from perfect. Some parts became too bogged down with historical detail - the American revolution was important but I didn't really need to read about every movement of the British and rebel armies. I enjoyed how events like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire were detailed, but other ones were completely ignored - one Amazon reviewer recalled the amalgamation of the boroughs and the building of the subway as events unworthy of being left out. And while secondary characters were created to discuss some of the more marginalized populations (the Irish, African Americans) the book was really about a white, upper-class family.
The main character of this book is really the city itself. I found it fascinating to learn interesting tidbits of New York history, from when and why buildings were built to why streets are named what they are named. While it got a little cliched at times with its talk of freedom and the American Dream, it is a well-researched epic that's worth reading for its historical detail.
Read before: wandering Wall Street and drinking at Fraunces Tavern.

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Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin is set in 1970s, which begs the question - when is fiction classified as 'historical'? Are the 1970s historical? Is last year historical? Either way, I'll include it in my list for it's portrayal of a very specific time in New York history. One summer morning in 1974, New Yorkers looked up and saw something incredible: a tight-rope walker balancing, without a harness or safety net, between the two World Trade Centre towers. McCann introduces a variety of characters - an Irish priest looking after prostitutes in the Bronx, a grieving mother on Park Avenue, the tight-rope walker himself, among others - and chronicles their stories as they interconnect.
McCann does a great job placing readers in his specific time period - you feel the growing tension in Harlem, the heat of the summer day, the poverty on the mean streets of the city, the anger regarding Vietnam, the excitement of the new World Trade towers. While I wouldn't necessarily call it historical fiction, he does drop readers right in the middle of that particular day.
Read before: wandering up Park Avenue before exploring Harlem and the Bronx.