'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'
Posted by Martin Cohen
‘Life Is a Shipwreck, But We Must Not Forget To Sing in the Lifeboats’.
It’s a great thought, and can be found on the internet attributed to Voltaire, but it doesn’t sound quite like the great French philosopher, and indeed Garson O’Toole is probably right to point at a later book editor commenting on the world view behind Voltaire’s bitterly witty story, Candide.
Here in these images surely, the passengers do not sing, but seem instead curiously withdrawn, as if trying to shut their eyes to an awful sight. And indeed that might be just what they were doing, as these plucky little lifeboats were chugging away from a Titanic, sinking and still packed with thousands of desperate passengers. Second and Third Class ones, that is. For the real scandal of the Titanic was not that it sank, not even that its Captain was so dilatory in asking for assistance (or the boats around in offering any) but that the social conventions of the era implied that most of the lifeboats were for First Class passengers only, with no mixing. Though to be sure, the small number of officers and richer passengers left on the boat did mix with the other passangers later... in the cold grey waters of the Atlantic.
Facts-wise, then, the fact is that the first six lifeboats were at less than one third loaded capacity, and the passengers were only First Class passengers or… Ship’s Officers. Six underloaded boats like the ones in the picture, which had a capacity for 40 persons meant 150 passangers drowned to defend the niceties of wealth.
That said, Captain Edward Smith was on the bridge at 2.13am, seven minutes before the Titanic disappeared beneath the waves, and went down with the ship.
It’s a great thought, and can be found on the internet attributed to Voltaire, but it doesn’t sound quite like the great French philosopher, and indeed Garson O’Toole is probably right to point at a later book editor commenting on the world view behind Voltaire’s bitterly witty story, Candide.
Here in these images surely, the passengers do not sing, but seem instead curiously withdrawn, as if trying to shut their eyes to an awful sight. And indeed that might be just what they were doing, as these plucky little lifeboats were chugging away from a Titanic, sinking and still packed with thousands of desperate passengers. Second and Third Class ones, that is. For the real scandal of the Titanic was not that it sank, not even that its Captain was so dilatory in asking for assistance (or the boats around in offering any) but that the social conventions of the era implied that most of the lifeboats were for First Class passengers only, with no mixing. Though to be sure, the small number of officers and richer passengers left on the boat did mix with the other passangers later... in the cold grey waters of the Atlantic.
Facts-wise, then, the fact is that the first six lifeboats were at less than one third loaded capacity, and the passengers were only First Class passengers or… Ship’s Officers. Six underloaded boats like the ones in the picture, which had a capacity for 40 persons meant 150 passangers drowned to defend the niceties of wealth.
That said, Captain Edward Smith was on the bridge at 2.13am, seven minutes before the Titanic disappeared beneath the waves, and went down with the ship.
Read more…
http://www.icyousee.org/titanic.html#life
http://www.icyousee.org/titanic.html#life
