“41.726931° N, 49.948253° W.”
We may be fleeing across these waters into an uncertain future, the fate of our home-away-from-home and her crew unknown, but in another time at this place, an earth-shattering event took place that also bode ill for another ship full of passengers; a life-changing event.
At this moment, we were passing over the wreck of the RMS Titanic.
As we crossed the corpse of what was left of this “Ship of Dreams”, we began to follow the five-mile-long debris field that is strewn below us. Boilers and hull plates, the contents of her interiors, saucepans, dishes, bottles of wine and oh so much luggage, shoes, children’s dolls - all the vestiges of people’s lives, that for some was all that they owned, as they navigated the Atlantic for a new life in the “New World”.
Hanging silent and invisible in the murky depths, are the remaining souls of those who lost their lives at this spot. Some still trapped inside the hull as she took her final plunge, others dying of hypothermia after being thrown into a bitterly cold Atlantic Ocean. It was at this point, the pride of the White Star Fleet had descended violently into the inky black depths, never again to feel the warm sunrise on her decks or to host gay, joyful events in her elegant public rooms.
It was in their memory, that 108 years later, a few of us hardy souls stood on the top-most point of our ship in silence and respect before turning to stare out over the aft as our wake marked our track and the field of her debris.
I have never been this close to her before , although I did manage to touch a piece of her hull once. On a travelling exhibition of recovered artefacts in Melbourne a few years ago, there was a salvaged section of the ship and the lone security guard was being distracted by a miscreant climbing into a lifeboat.
The low-slung guide rope was no match for me as I shimmied over it and towards the historic steel plating. Touching it was a highlight of my life at the time, but now at this time here we all are, and 12,600 feet below, under our most beautiful ship in the world and the turbulent waters of the Atlantic, sits the wreck of the world’s most beautiful ship of that time; an example of man’s hubris and his attempt to build the biggest, the most luxurious and the safest ship afloat, but one that left lives ruined and families torn apart. Careers and reputations were lost and the birth of a legend was all that remained amongst so much death here.
It’s ironic that this crossing should be the journey that brings me here. Now sprinting towards the safety of our ship’s home port of Southampton, we have been unsettled by the news of a burgeoning Armageddon spreading around the world. As we flee, the vestiges of a pandemic was sweeping the very continent that we had just been visiting. South America’s borders are now closed, our flights home cancelled, destination hotels closed, and here, helpless in the mid-Atlantic, I learn worryingly that even New Zealand borders are now closed. Home, Ponsonby, and my parents never seemed so far away.
We have no control over our fates when the only option is to sit tight and wait until we reach land and then what? Gossip at the cocktail parties and balls centre around what life is like on land; talk of a changed world of face masks, hand sanitiser and public gathering restrictions, are incomprehensible here in our safe yet ignorant bubble. We circulate and drink champagne and eat caviar while Rome appears to be burning.
There are a number of passengers out on deck after being fore-warned earlier by the Captain of the occasion. Of course all the Titanic buffs (and there are many on board) were well aware of today’s significance. We look around and below us. Disappointingly, the water belies nothing of what languishes below. There are no markers, no gravestones, no icebergs and no indications that this area could be anything other than just a random spot somewhere Mid-Atlantic.
For those of us also “in peril on the sea”, we stand looking out over the dark grey water, the white-caps and white-horses whipped up by the bitter wind flying off the troughs and waves and remember and feel just that much... “nearer my God to thee.” (ROSS THORBY)
#cruising #cunard #titanic #queenvictoriaship