The “Titanic” was considered unsinkable – until an iceberg put an end to the arrogance of its engineers. On April 15, 1912, the ship sank, taking almost 1,500 people with her to the bottom of the Atlantic.
A shipwreck seemed unimaginable. “We are on a ship that is unsinkable,” the engineers of the “Titanic” are said to have once said. Sufficient lifeboats for all passengers seemed superfluous. A masterpiece of shipbuilding of unprecedented size, painstakingly built by hand with every luxury, special safety precautions and attention to detail. A colossus weighing more than 52,000 tons, created for eternity – but which only set out on a single journey that ended tragically.
Still one of the greatest ship disasters in history: 110 years ago the “Titanic” sank
110 years ago, on April 10, 1912, the “Titanic” set sail. Just four days later, on April 14, the ship collided with an iceberg that sealed its fate. The sharp ice tore serious leaks in the ship’s hold. Within hours, huge amounts of water ran into the “Titanic”, which finally broke apart, caught fire and sank into the depths. Hundreds of people were able to get to safety on the few lifeboats, but around 1,500 passengers and crew members died in the icy waters of the North Atlantic.
Today, in 2022, the tragedy still fascinates. Many young people are also among the visitors to the “Titanic” exhibition, which can be seen these weeks at the so-called Dock X in south-east London. “Even though it’s been 110 years, it’s as if it happened not so long ago, and hearing these stories we can understand that we haven’t changed much – we could all have been there!”, said the Swedish curator of the exhibition, Claes-Göran Wetterholm, to the German Press Agency.
Many photos of the ship workers and passengers from back then have yellowed, and yet the show manages to bring the “Titanic” a bit into the present. “A mammoth without any comparison. You can’t believe it until you see it,” said an observer in the diary notes a few days before the maiden voyage. Walking down the replica of a hallway leading to the first class cabins on the Titanic gives you an idea of what it might have been like to be a passenger on the famous liner. It also becomes clear from what different backgrounds the people came on board.
Between first-class cabins and working on coal stoves: the two worlds on the “Titanic”
For the young Spaniard Victor Peñasco, whose fine tuxedo is one of the preserved original pieces in the exhibition, the journey was simply a great adventure. He and his wife were traveling in first class. In the lowest part of the “Titanic”, on the other hand, the workers toiled away at the coal stoves in order to satisfy the ship’s energy requirements and keep the hustle and bustle going.
Wetterholm, who has been dealing with the history of the “Titanic” since the 1960s, is just as fascinated by the ship itself as by the stories of the travelers. When it comes to the anecdote of Gerda Lindell’s wedding ring, which was found at the bottom of a lifeboat days after the accident, or a little girl’s shoes, he raves. “All these things tell the human story,” says the Swede.
Even original tickets and letters written on the “Titanic” survived the disaster. They are documents of great and small hopes in the passengers’ luggage. It was not for nothing that the “Titanic” was also known as the “Ship of Dreams”. She began her fateful journey from Southampton in southern England. Destination and place of longing: New York.
How the story ends is no secret. But re-enacted shots of how the “Titanic”, which had been acclaimed by the masses a few days earlier, disappear bit by bit under the surface of the water, unfold a pull that it is difficult for viewers to escape. The fate of being at the mercy of the force of nature despite the latest technology makes the “Titanic” saga topical even today. Then as now, great hopes are attached to technical innovations. But in times of increasing natural disasters, it becomes apparent again and again how at the mercy of this force man can be.
Thanks to new computer animations, it is now possible to follow the sinking of the “Titanic” in minute detail. Developers have even dedicated an entire computer game to the ship, in which you get an impression of what makes the myth “Titanic” so special: splendor, swank and a dramatic ending.
You can watch the sinking of the “Titanic” in real time in the following video:
Covered by seaweed, the wreck, or what is left of it, still lies at the bottom of the ocean to this day. Curator Wetterholm also sees the story of the “Titanic” as symbolic of what was understood in ancient Greece as “hubris” – the human sin of arrogance and hubris.