R/V Knorr at the WHOI dock in Woods Hole, MA 2012 Public Domain (Wikipedia)
RV Knorr, made famous by being the Woods Hole vessel that had the researchers that found Titanic aboard, is heading to Mexico. The ship was a mainstay of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution since it was delivered to them in 1970. And logged close to a million miles in its long history with Woods Hole. The ship was officially decommissioned in 2014 and its replacement, the RV Neil Armstrong, will take its place. The ship will now serve in the Mexican Navy though it is unclear what her duties will be.
The Belfast Telegraph is reporting that the former Harland & Wolff Headquarters, adjacent to Titanic Belfast, is going to become a boutique hotel. The four-story, 84 room hotel will be managed by Titanic Quarter Ltd. who claim it be “world’s most authentic Titanic-themed hotel.”
Titanic House (former Harland and Wolff Drawing Offices), Queens Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland, March 2012 Photo:Ardfern(Wikimedia Commons)
Titanic Foundation, with the help of a £4.9m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Heritage Enterprise programme, is supporting the restoration of the Drawing Offices. The scheme, which will include three pavilions, will be publicly accessible for tours, events and exhibitions. Both projects are due to open in 2017, creating 100 new jobs.
The announcement has generated mostly positive reports in the Belfast Telegraph and elsewhere. Certainly it will draw people and because of its close proximity to Titanic Belfast will become destination all its own.
Photograph of iceberg taken by chief steward of Prinz Adalbert on morning of 15 April 1912 near where Titanic sank. At the time he had not learned of the Titanic disaster. Smears of red paint along the base caught his attention. The photo and accompanying statement were sent to Titanic’s lawyers, which hung in their boardroom until the firm dissolved in 2002. Public Domain
It has never really crossed my mind to consider how old the iceberg Titanic hit. Possibly as part of an intellectual exercise and a desire to alleviate boredom, scientists at Sheffield University crosschecked data on ocean currents and witness descriptions from 1912. And now they believe it was snow that formed glaciers 100,000 years ago in southwest Greenland that ended up being the infamous iceberg that collided with Titanic in 1912. And it originally was 100ft above the water and possibly 1,700ft long when first formed. By the time it hit Titanic it had shrunk a bit in size but still quite large.
Now that all the stale news about Titanic II has gone around the globe enough times to make it really old news, another one is getting primed to take its place. The new/old story is about how Titanic’s demise was foretold in the book Futilityby Morgan Robertson. The book was published in 1898 and renamed after the Titanic tragedy as Wreck of the Titan. Many who read the book are struck by the similarities between the fictional Titan and Titanic. Some even go so far as to say Robertson was either clairvoyant or had some other supernatural revelation of what was to happen.
While there are similarities between the fictional Titan and the historical Titanic, there are a lot of things different. Titan was not on its maiden voyage and on its sixth heading back to Britain from New York. There were fewer lifeboats so five hundred could be saved out of the 3,000 passengers aboard. It looked different as well, more like a steam yacht with sails and carried no cargo. The collision was different as well. Titanic impacted with the iceberg on its starboard side causing punctures in the hull. In Robertson’s book, the ship collides with the iceberg head on and rolls up on it. Then it rolled on the side allowing the boilers and engines to pierce through the hull then slipped back into the sea and sank. One could go on but you get the salient point here: that the fictional Titan’s demise was very different from the historical Titanic. Robertson denied he had any supernatural vision and concocted his story using the available data he had on ships of the day.
So when you see news reports that proclaim “book predicted Titanic’s demise 14 years earlier” it is nothing more than puffery by editors trying to fill space (and tv news producers do the same as well). It ought to be noted that Robertson wrote about a surprise Japanese attack on the United States but hardly anyone thinks it predicted the events of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.
Do Not Forsake Me is the song made famous in High Noon (1952) starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. The song is sung at the opening of the movie and is often instrumentally heard throughout the movie. The movie is not standard western movie fare where you have lots of action leading up to a main gunfight. In this movie, the gunfight occurs near the end. Most of the movie is made up with Gary Cooper’s character trying in vain to find townspeople to help stand with him against Frank Miller and his gang. In the end he must face them alone although his wife does help kill one of the gang. It won many top awards in the 1952 Academy Awards (Best Actor, Best Music, Best Film Editing, Best Music in Song). Tex Ritter, who recorded the song for the movie, played it live for the audience at the Academy Awards.
There are two general versions of the song. One is the Tex Ritter version heard in High Noon which references the name Frank Miller in the lyrics. The second and more commonly heard one omits any reference to Frank Miller and the most famous rendition is by Frankie Laine. Here are both versions for your Academy Award Sunday.
La Circassienne au Bain (originally by Merry-Joseph Blondel 1814 and recreated by John Parker 2014) Image: Wikipedia Commons
Merry-Joseph Blondel(1781-1853) was a neoclassical French painter and a prolific artist in his day. Many of his works grace museums in France and elsewhere. One of his works, La Circassienne au Bain, was bought by Mauritz Hokan Bjornstrom-Steffansson and put aboard Titanic to be shipped to the United States. Of course when Titanic sank, Blondel’s masterpiece was lost to a watery grave. Bjornstrom-Steffansson filed a compensation claim of $100,000. Needless to say he never got that amount (White Star settled the legal cases for $664,000) but the large painting was gone and worse few descriptions of it remained.
Cue Titanic enthusiast John Parker who decided to track down what it looked like and recreated it. He managed to find the necessary information and make the portrait, which is now up for auction for £2,000 to £3,000.
Before embarking on the project he went around Europe seeking out examples of Blondel’s work. “I couldn’t find any photographs of the painting that went down with the Titanic– but I found an engraving that was done in 1819,” says John. “It was only five years later so it was bound to be a fairly accurate representation.”
Titanic at Cobh Harbor, 11 April 1912 Public Domain (Cobh Heritage Centre, Cobh, Ireland)
It is interesting what has happened since my original post on the subject. The reprinted stale news The Independent ran spread through the media. Newspapers, the major news networks, and a lot of blogs ran the story as if it were big news. It proves a theory about mass media today: they pretty much feed off each other and few bother to check the facts. It was amusing to read some of the write-ups. You could see that the editors/writers tried to find something different for their take on the story. At the end it was the same stale news from 2015.
This blog got a lot of hits thanks to jalopnik.com whose more skeptical approach to the story puts the more experienced mass media to shame. MoneyTalksNews has a similar skepticism about the Titanic II project. Krystal Steinmetz zeroes in on the key points and notes that the pictures zapping around the Internet are not the real ship but renderings from several years ago. She also adds (in addition to no construction going on at present) the following:
Plans for the ship could also be capsized by an investigation of Palmer. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission is investigating Palmer and the collapse of his company, Queensland Nickel. Palmer could face criminal charges over alleged use of aliases in company dealings and moving money from his failed business into his self-titled political party. The company owes creditors roughly $100 million.
As it stands now the only viable Titanic replica being built is the one being built by the Chinese themselves-for a theme park far away from the coast. This full replica will be permanently docked there (on water), have rooms for people to stay in, and is the infamous one since it will include a sinking simulator as well. So if you desiring to see a full Titanic replica, that is the only one that is actually being built.
George Washington (1732–99) by Gilbert Stuart Photo: Public Domain (Wikimedia Commons)
Although today is referred to as “President’s Day” it is not a federal holiday by that name. It is officially designated as Washington’s Birthday under federal law. There was a movement to combine both Washington and Lincoln’s birthday (since they occur days apart) or honor the office of president. That never came to be. Instead in 1968 the Uniform Monday Holiday Act was past and came into force in 1971. That shifted most federal holidays to a Monday if it fell during the week. Washington’s Birthday name was not changed and so under federal law it is still Washington’s Birthday. However many states issue their own proclamations celebrating not only Washington but Lincoln and others from their own state. Advertisers have caught on as well. So today many call it President’s Day but who it commemorates beyond George Washington is up to the state governors.
The unity of Government, which constitutes you one people, is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very Liberty, which you so highly prize.
President George Washington,Farewell Address, 19 September 1799.
