– THE ILL-FATED QUEST OF THE TITAN SUBMERSIBLE

The Titans were a mighty specie of Proto-Gods, whose exploits are recorded in Greek and ancient mythology. It is a name associated with great and noble exploits, as well as terrible tragedies. The recent event of the tragic ‘Titan’ Submersible” was a tourist adventure to explore the wreckage of the ‘TITAN-IC’. It was not an unusual experience, though an expensive one. But somehow, errors were made and diligence was compromised with the effectiveness and capability of the vessel used for this venture and the result was suicidal.

The R.M.S TITANIC was the largest ship afloat at the time, an American-owned ship operating on a British Line. At full speed, this $7,500,000 owned liner struck an Iceberg about 1,600 miles northwest of New York City on her way from Southampton, England on her maiden voyage on April 15, 1912. More than 1,500 of her passengers and crew were lost.

The irony of this celebrated vessel was that it had lifeboat space for only 1,176 persons but was carrying more than 2,200 people. It was 882.5 feet long, with a gross tonnage of 46,328. Most of the poorer people were workers and immigrant families in the steerage class, looking forward to a new life in America, most likely to prevent a justified riotous will to live. They were locked in the areas they occupied to enable the rich and famous to survive. Among them were a Haitian Creole engineer and his French wife. Most of these passenger victims died of hypothermia.

Thus, if ever the lore of a Ghost ship with angry spirits is required by some talent, the TITANIC is the perfect and leading model to air social and anti-class vexations from beyond the grave. There was a boast that the TITANIC was unsinkable, and even God couldn’t sink the TITANIC. If these things were said that we‘ve heard older folk mention in conversations, then regardless of what we believe or don’t, it’s best not to test things that our egos don’t quite understand.

There were TITANIC movies, stories in magazines while growing up. I can’t remember any novels. Most likely other incidents and trends took over, and TITANIC was shelved until James Cameron launched his Iconic movie with that irresistible soundtrack. In 2012, I bought a National Geographic Magazine with the TITANIC as its main theme. From the insights I learned from that article, there was no reason for what currently occurred to have happened based on what has been available for that kind of venture. James Cameron had a contribution to that 2012 article. What he was looking for at the time when he visited the wreck was what every artist looks for, creative authenticity to suffice the feeling of honesty with what you’re expressing.

What I learned was the level of equipment that was functioning in Oceanic Archaeology. So I had concluded that if you could fund it then the venture was on. Deterioration would be the huge hurdle: “Titanic’s battered stern, captured here in profile and overhead, bears [as shown in the magazine] witness to the extreme trauma inflicted upon it as it corkscrewed to the bottom. Making sense of this tangle of metal presents endless challenges to experts.” Says one: “ If you’re going to interpret this stuff, you gotta love Picasso”. However, personal items were found that could speak of some of the people on board, who had perished.

The outpour of sarcastic poetry and mockery at the wealthy that perished with the TITAN Submersible -more at their status of being Billionaires – is balanced by the similar poetry that echoed in 1912 when the TITANIC sank because wherever you are in the majority of today’s world, the labyrinth of disenfranchisement, and as one citizen argued, the man who wanted to kill billions with COVID19 “is one ah dem”. The fact, however, is that the TITANIC is no longer a mystery. New technology has enabled visibility.

To me, what was profound about the impact of the TITANIC has lived with me for years, in reference to the fallibility of human genius: “ But something else beyond human lives went down with the TITANIC: an illusion of orderliness, a faith in technological progress, was soon replaced by fears and dreads. The TITANIC disaster was the bursting of a bubble. There was such a sense of bounty in the first decade of the 20th century. Elevators! Automobiles! Airplanes! Wireless radio! Everything seemed so wondrous, on an endless upward spiral. Then it all came crashing down.”–James Cameron.”

I grew up in a world to expect error from man-made things, disasters like the ‘Columbia in 2003’ were mourned but perceived again in a philosophy that what man makes is subject to error, probably the TITANIC had to happen to level the world of the then future from the thinking of 1912, towards the dark ideals of WWII.