<a href="mailto:gordandk@aol.com">By GORDIE LITTLE</a>
Small Talk
April 27, 2008 05:02 am
—
I wrote recently about the origin of "Kilroy was here." It had to do with ships and rivets.
Ship rivets popped into the news again around April 14, not because it was the birthday of my wife, Kaye, but because it marked the 96th anniversary of the Titanic disaster.
I've eagerly followed the Titanic story since childhood.
Perhaps you heard about inferior rivets having been used on the ship. We scratched our collective heads once again, puzzled as to why the builders would settle for less than the best in that regard.
It reportedly took more than three million rivets to hold the giant liner together. Rivets recovered from the wreck site revealed that if better quality iron had been used, the "unsinkable" ship might not have sunk on that fateful April night in 1912.
PROPHETIC DREAMS
I have always been fascinated with the story, for reasons that might be unfamiliar to you. My family and friends are sometimes painfully aware of my voracious appetite for stories about the paranormal. I am particularly interested in how or why some people seem to have the ability to "see the future," either on purpose or inadvertently.
I have written often about so-called "dreams of prophecy" in which dreamers say they have experienced vivid scenes of plane crashes, ship sinkings and natural disasters. I had such a vivid dream many years ago, and details were confirmed following investigation of an area airplane crash.
There were many such dreams reported prior to and subsequent to the Titanic incident, but I have always been particularly drawn to a book written 14 years before the ocean liner's tragic maiden voyage.
As a teenager, I read about a merchant seaman named Morgan Robertson who might never have been a blip on the historical radar screen, had he not penned that unpublished book in 1898.
It was about an "unsinkable" ocean liner that struck an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage. Publishers turned the manuscript down many times, telling the author that the concept was simply too unbelievable.
STRANGE SIMILARITIES
The parallels between Robertson's ship and the Titanic are indeed bizarre. Even the experts and skeptics remain baffled after all these years.
The fictional ship was called Titan and the book's title is "The Wreck of the Titan."
Both ships were British. Both were 800 or more feet long. Both hulls were made of steel. Both had in the neighborhood of 40,000 horsepower. Each had three propellers and two masts. The Titan had 19 watertight compartments; the Titanic had 16. The Titan had 24 lifeboats; the Titanic had 20. Both ships had a capacity of 3,000 passengers. Speed when both struck the iceberg in the North Atlantic was more than 20 knots.
Time of the actual impact for the Titan was close to midnight. For the Titanic, it was actually 11:40 p.m. Both struck on the starboard side.
I should explain that Robertson rewrote his book after the actual disaster and made some changes to ride the wave of interest in the incident; but the fact remains that his original manuscript was downright uncanny.
ST. JOHN'S MARBLE
Here's something else you might not know: Plattsburgh has a most interesting connection with the Titanic story. Tim Clukey sent me a copy of "The Plattsburgh Sentinel" dated April 30, 1912. It was part of his late father's library.
The article says that marble flooring from England that was to be used for the aisles during renovations of St. John's Church on Broad Street in Plattsburgh went down with the Titanic. A new pattern had to be ordered and shipped later.
Books, movies, models, music, Broadway shows, the wreck discovery in 1985, interviews with survivors until the last one died, and now, "Small Talk" have hashed and rehashed the story, and new chapters are written every year.
You can still rent the Titanic movies and buy the DVDs containing interviews done with survivors in the late '80s. Many books and related magazines are available at your local library.
You can take a trip to Belfast and visit the Irish shipyard of Harland and Wolff where the Titanic was built.
Available for purchase are modern replicas of the "Steel Titanic Wall Clocks" that were all synchronized below decks on the ship. Many of the originals were said to have stopped at 2:20 a.m. after the great ship went to the bottom.
Visitors to Branson, Mo., can take in a modern version of Titanic in what has been billed as the "World's Largest Museum Attraction." It opened two years ago.
Here's some more Titanic trivia. She had four smoke stacks, but only three were real. The fourth, called a "dummy" stack, was just placed there to make the ship look bigger. Another little-known fact: Lookouts on the Titanic didn't even have binoculars.
Can the disaster be blamed on a single fault or flaw? Probably not. Was the great ship cursed as has been speculated? That is the stuff of legends.
Have a great day and please, drive your cars AND boats carefully.
Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.