Titanic, name and thing, will stand as a monument and warning to human presumption.
The Bishop of Winchester, at Southampton, 1912
Since its fateful maiden voyage and sinking in April 1912, RMS Titanic has become a monumental icon of the 20th century and, perhaps more generally of the aspirations and anxieties of modernity. The name of the ship itself has entered the vernacular language to become a byword of both human hubris and heroism, and of misguided trust in the securities of modern technology. The Titanic's sinking has been interpreted as signaling the end of the imperial 19th-century world order and as a premonition of World War One. . . In this respect the Titanic tragedy and its reception have found an eerie echo at the beginning of the 21st century in the way the attack on the World Center in 2001 has been seen to mark a historical turning point, seemingly collapsing in a single catastrophic event previously held certainties, boundaries and values, and raising doubts and anxieties over what may eventually distinguish the world after the catastrophe from what has come before.
From: The Titanic in Myth and Memory: Representations in Visual and Literary Culture, Tim Bergfelder and Sarah Street.
The were some other ominous connections between the 1912 sinking and the war of 1914-1918:
The Titanic's rescue ship, RMS Carpathia, was in a convoy in July 1918 when attacked and sunk by U-55. All of the 57 passengers were saved, and of the crew of 223 five died in the explosion caused by the second torpedo. America's Last Doughboy, Frank Buckles, had sailed for England on an earlier voyage of the Carpathia.
SS Californian, which missed the Titanic's rescue signal when only ten miles away from the stricken liner, was sunk 9 November 1915, while en route from Salonika to Marseilles by German submarine U-35, with the loss of one life.
A long list of surviving passengers and crew members saw notable service in the war to come, both in civilian and military roles. One example: pre-disaster passenger (and photographer) Father Frank Browne had traveled first class to Cobh (then Queenstown), where he left the ship. In 1915 he was sent to join the Irish Guards as chaplain. After surviving five wounds, he became the most-decorated chaplain of the Great War, receiving King Albert's personal medal, the French Croix de Guerre, and the British Military Cross (twice).
In one way, the sinking of Titanic had a silver lining. The Titanic tragedy was a major influence on improving the worldwide system of sending and monitoring distress calls, procedure that would be immensely important during the coming Great War, especially at sea. Coincidentally, at the third International Radiotelegraph Conference, held in London in June and July of 1912, it was agreed that ships would listen for distress signals on a wavelength of 600 meters. (This is a frequency of about 500 kHz.) Every ship was to cease transmitting for three minutes at 15 and 45 minutes past the hour. During this interval they were required to listen for distress calls.
One famous writer to be—still a boy—found the sinking haunting:
I was eleven when the war started. If I honestly sort out my memories and disregard what I have learned since, I must admit that nothing in the whole war moved me so deeply as the loss of the Titanic had done a few years earlier. This comparatively petty disaster shocked the whole world, and the shock has not quite died away even yet. I remember the terrible, detailed accounts read out at the breakfast table (in those days it was a common habit to read the newspaper aloud), and I remember that in all the long list of horrors the one that most impressed me was that at the last the Titanic suddenly up-ended and sank bow foremost, so that the people clinging to the stern were lifted no less than three hundred feet into the air before they plunged into the abyss. It gave me a sinking sensation in the belly which I can still all but feel. Nothing in the war ever gave me quite that sensation.
George Orwell, "My Country Right or Left"
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