The willingness to allow certain people to die while every effort is made to save others. “It’s a horrifying and disgusting contrast. And then there’s all this time for all this drama to be acted out, like the band playing - that just doesn't get duplicated.” - Don Lynch, historian of the Titanic Historical Society, to Salon and then on its maiden voyage, it hits an iceberg and then sinks so slowly. “It is the ultimate story: It’s unsinkable, supposedly, and you’ve got it full of all these key people, like the president of the company that owns it and the president of the company that built it, and as well as all these famous people. It’s really quite surreal.” - Director James Cameron to ABC News And for a very similar tragedy, where warnings went unheeded, to take place at the same exact site … is just astonishing. “I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night. Russell, coincidentally, said he was offered a place on the Titan a few years ago and considered it, but he ultimately turned down the opportunity, saying, “I’m not great with enclosed spaces, and this was my worst nightmare. You start with life, then there’s the assumption everything will be fine, then there’s the moment when everyone has to decide how they’ll respond to the challenge of dying.” “That time enabled people onboard to go through the process of dealing with death. “It took two hours and 40 minutes to sink, which is long compared to most other wrecks,” Gareth Russell, who wrote a book about the Titanic, told the Telegraph. “While we are glued to the news about 5 mostly wealthy tourists lost on a submarine on their way to seek the wreckage of a sunken ship, today is World Refugee Day, and only last week a boat holding hundreds of refugees sank off the coast of Greece,” Jeffers wrote in the caption of the post.īut for others, the grip of the Titanic’s story is simply impossible to ignore. In a drawing posted on Instagram, artist Oliver Jeffers depicted the scenario with a news camera pointed toward the sinking five-passenger sub, turned away from drowning refugees. These critics point to the fact that far less attention was paid to the deaths of 300 migrants trying to get from Libya to Italy, who drowned after their boat capsized in some of the deepest waters of the Mediterranean. To them, the jaw-dropping costs, both of the submersible adventure and the international rescue effort, only highlight the gap between wealthy and poor people. Many critics are stunned that Titanic enthusiasts assume such risks to visit the wreck and its underwater graveyard. Director James Cameron’s iconic 1997 movie earned more than $2.2 billion worldwide - making it, at the time, the highest-grossing feature film ever. There are seven permanent Titanic museums, a litany of books, documentaries and video games to immortalize the ship’s voyage. The tale of the Titanic has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry. “For a lot of us, it’s more than just a ship,” Rafael “the Titanic Guy” Avila, who shares Titanic updates on his TikTok account with more than 650,000 followers, told the Washington Post. As Salon noted, so-called Titaniacs will do anything to see the Titanic in real life. For others, it represents something bigger than life - and an opportunity to be a part of it. For some, the wreckage both then and now represents the ills of greed playing out in the most absolute terms.
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