Happy New Year (publicdomainpictures.net) Photo: Larisa Koshkina
Another year gone. Hard to believe it but 2020 is all but over except for those December bills that are paid in January. The year started out fine with just some worry about an infectious disease that was appearing overseas. At first there was concern but nothing extraordinary. Then it began to spread in Europe fast. Called eventually Covid-19, this infectious disease spread quickly. Soon lockdowns in Europe began and then elsewhere. The disease would not always kill but could really knock you down. Nations and economies came to a standstill. Most businesses were shuttered, offices went remote, and the streets empty.
For Titanic, the news was indeed mixed. Titanic came in and out of the news over the desire to retrieve the Marconi radio from Titanic. This means going into the wreck to retrieve it for posterity before it is lost forever. On one hand, the argument to preserve for posterity is persuasive. Those opposed to salvage questioned the need to retrieve the Marconi radio. The judge in the end authorized the retrieval. Then the U.S. government stepped in and said the proposed salvage violated the Titanic treaty. The case is now on appeal and any salvage may be held up until it is resolved.
Titanic II, the proposed replica of Titanic and brainchild of Australian billionaire Clive Palmer, has likely been delayed again. A few years back and with great fanfare, Palmer announced his desire to build this ship. The formed a company, did some preliminary work, and then building was scheduled to begin at a shipyard in China. And then it went quiet and no one could confirm any shipbuilding was being done. Palmer also got into a spat with China during this time that may have affected the proposed construction. So Titanic II missed its original scheduled sailing for the simple fact construction never began. More time passed and then word came out that once again the ship construction was back on. And a new sailing schedule was released. And then, once again quiet. Perhaps because of Covid-19 or other reasons, it looks like once again Titanic II is not yet ready to be sailing soon.
Sadly, due to Covid-19 shutdowns, many Titanic attractions were shuttered. A few have reopened according to local health guidelines. Belfast Titanic shut down just after Christmas and is scheduled to reopen on 7 Jan 2021. That is, of course, conditioned on whether the current shutdown orders are extended or not. Both Titanic Branson and Titanic Pigeon Forge were open for the holidays but now closed for renovations. They are both scheduled to reopen in January. Masks required.
I want to wish everyone out there a Happy, Blessed, and Joyous New Year. May all your dreams come true in 2021.
John Bigham, 1st Viscount Mersey, 1912 llustrated London News Public Domain
According to The Independent, an upcoming documentary will reveal Lord Mersey, who presided over the British Titanic Inquiry, personal notes on the inquiry. The personal notes reveal that Mersey was disturbed by the lack of lifeboat drills, that important ice warnings were not properly delivered to Titanic’s officers, that Titanic was going too fast, and that the Californian wireless operations had shut down for then night.
Ned Bigham,the judge’s great-great grandson and the Fifth Viscount Mersey, will be revealing this in the upcoming documentary Titanic’s Lost Evidence on 5 Jan 2020 on Sky History.
A handmade replica of the RMS Titanic is ready to set sail for a new home. Sarnia’s Dave Finley spent 1,095 days and 3,000 hours creating the eight-foot-long passenger liner from parts he minutely crafted himself. “It’s completely scratch built,” said Finley, 61. “It’s pretty decked out. There’s a lot of detail.” From the handrails to the 48 boilers within its hull, the Titanic has been painstakingly remade from wood and metal and wrapped in plastic sheets painted to match the ship that sank in 1912. Finley used 10,000 brass nails and dressmaker pins for rivets, and tiny chunks of charcoal to fill the coalbunkers within. The engine room made of brass and copper took two months to complete. “I can’t put no more on; there’s just nothing left to put on,” he said.
Widener had been an investor in iconic passenger liner, RMS Titanic. In 1912, George, his wife Eleanor, and their son Harry, planned to travel home on the ship’s maiden voyage, following a family holiday in Europe. George is said to have hosted a luxurious dinner party aboard the ship, celebrating its splendor (and his father’s investment). The lavish event was attended by Titanic’s now-famous captain, E J Smith, who departed early due to iceberg warnings.
The Titanic was the most luxurious ship afloat and food onboard was a big part of the liner’s appeal. Meals were included in the ticket price for nearly all passengers, with the exception of those in the à la carte restaurant. There was enough to cater for 2,200 people on what should have been a week-long voyage. Hefty provisions included 75,000lbs of meat, 11,000lbs of fresh fish, 40 tons of potatoes, 40,000 eggs, 7,000 heads of lettuce, 10,000lbs of sugar, 250 barrels flour, 36,000 apples, 1,500 gallons of milk and 15,000 bottles of ale.
Officials in Sweden announced their intentions on Friday to allow for a new investigation into the sinking of the MS Estonia after new evidence emerged from a documentary more than 25 years after the disastrous incident. Sweden’s Home Affairs Minister Mikael Damberg revealed during a news conference that the country’s Accident Investigation Authority, along with counterparts from Finland and Estonia, would be sending divers down to the wreck site to further investigate claims made about damage to the vessel’s hull.
The documentary at the center of renewed interest in the wreck came from the Discovery Channel network, and it was released in September to coincide with the wreck’s 26th anniversary. The five-part broadcast provided new underwater footage that showed a previously unrecorded 13-foot gaping hole in the ship’s hull. After the documentary was aired, Sweden, Finland and Estonia announced that a joint investigation to assess the new finding would be undertaken. An official report in 1997 ultimately concluded that the sinking was caused by a faulty door lock on the vessel’s bow.
(Note-This looks more like a press release than a news item. But the gingerbread house they showed in the photo looks pretty good.)
Sail into Christmas by visiting Titanic Hotel Belfast to marvel at the only life-sized gingerbread house in a hotel in Northern Ireland and chill out with a Christmas cocktail while enjoying a festive feast in the Wolff Grill. If you are dreading the fuss of being joyful and merry while cooking the Christmas lunch on Christmas Day, let Titanic Hotel Belfast do all the prep for you in advance. Relax and enjoy time with your family after decorating the tree with baubles knowing that your only task is serving your guests with an exquisitely prepared festive feast by award winning chefs of the Wolff Grill.
TITANIC could have “got out of the way” of the iceberg it would eventually collide with if the crew had access to a vital cabinet key, according to claims made nearly 100 years after it sank.But YouTube channel ‘Bright Side’ claimed it could have been avoided had the chief officer had access to a single key during their ‘A man who failed to save the Titanic’ series.’ The narrator said: “Titanic was a catastrophe to come out of a long chain of unfortunate events. “The chain that would decide its cruel fate started with a tiny key. “It seems like such an insignificant little thing, so trivial that the man who had it on him completely forgot to hand it over to the person who needed it at a critical moment.
Recently we reported that a misleading advertising gimmick made people falsely believe that a photo from a camera brought up from the ocean showed Titanic sinking. This was shown by Snopes to be a marketing gimmick, using a manipulated image, to get people to view a slideshow. Now comes word of another deception being done by the exact same marketing tactic. This appeared, according Snopes, in February 2020 on many websites:
“Experts Discovered The Real Reason The Titanic Sank – And The Truth Had Been Covered Up For Decades.”
When you clicked on it, you were taken to a website called Serendipity Times. The story indicated that a 2017 documentary “Titanic: The New Evidence” indicated photographs supported the theory that a coal fire, which started during construction, was ignored. Supposedly these photographs had been covered up for decades. However, according to Snopes, that is not what the documentary actually said. The photos were in an attic. And, of course, the coal fire theory is not new. That theory has been out there for a long time and looked into by many Titanic researchers.
Some argue that the fire would have damaged the ship’s hull making it more vulnerable to being pierced by the iceberg. Others disagree as to the importance of the fire and the role it played. The iceberg pierced the hull with punctures and gashes causing a tremendous amount of water to enter the forward compartments. If the theory is true, it merely hastened the inevitable without really changing the outcome. At any rate, whatever your views on this theory, this marketing tactic is pretty tacky and deceitful.
Titanic at Cobh Harbor, 11 April 1912 Public Domain (Cobh Heritage Centre, Cobh, Ireland)
In early November 2020 the Taboola advertising platform promoted an advertisement claiming an old camera found in the deep ocean revealed “horrifying Titanic photos.” Placed by Floor8, it purported to show a black and white photo of Titanic. When you clicked through it was a different title claiming to show what the last days of Titanic were like, and no mention of a camera. Naturally it drew in a lot of people who wondered if it was true or not.
The clever folks at Snopes looked into it and confirmed it was false. Apparently Floor8 took a frame from Cameron’s Titanic movie and altered it to appear black and white. And it was simply a plot to get you to click through a slideshow. You probably have done this without even noticing how clever it is. You are at a website and see something like “You will not believe what the cast of Lost in Space looks like today!” or something similar. The purpose is to grab your attention so that you click through a long slideshow. Advertisers make money on this slideshow clicks, which is why it takes a frustratingly long time to get through them. In the advertising world, it is called advertising arbitrage.
That is a fancy phrase for bait and switch which more accurately says what is going on. You are lured on for one thing but directed to something else. In the retail trade, you advertise a product knowing you do not have it. When a customer asks for it, you say it is out of stock and on backorder for several months. You then direct them to the next best product, which of course is more expensive. This tactic, however, is considered deceitful and fraudulent in many jurisdictions. And will ultimately damage the reputation of the business that practices it. Now in this case there is no actual product they are selling. But they are luring you in promising something that turns out to be false, as in this case. And while there is no product, it is done to generate sales to advertisers. I have no doubt some clever prosecutor may make a case out of it.
Probably the lesson from this is when you see it is a sponsored ad on many news or entertainment sites, to not click through for an endless slideshow that pays advertisers every time you click to the next slide.
Fortunately, for the sake of history, government officials in both the United States and Great Britain moved aggressively to find out what had happened and why. Their inquiries, beginning on April 19 and May 2 respectively, put on record much of what the world now knows about the disaster—that the ship was traveling too fast for the icy conditions, that its design made it more vulnerable to sinking than anyone realized, that it was carrying far too few lifeboats for the people onboard and much more.
Kingston’s Marine Museum of the Great Lakes is charting a new course for the future with an ambitious fundraising campaign and a Titanic-era steamship in its sights. Chris West, chair of the museum’s board of directors, revealed to Global News for the first time that the museum is in “very close talks” to acquire the more than century-old SS Keewatin, an Edwardian passenger steamship, to become its flagship exhibit.
Reverend John Harper Source: Wikipedia (via Encyclopedia-titanica.org) Public Domain
The Irish Post reported that the Pastor Harper letter, penned before the ship left Cobh, was auctioned off for $55,803 (£42,000) by Henry Aldridge & Son. The name of the person who won was not revealed. The contents of the letter are as follows:
My Dear Brother Young,
I am penning you this line just before we get to Queenstown to assure you that I have not forgotten you and especially all your kindness while we were north.
I intended sending on Mrs Pratt’s train fares just before I left but in the rush, which was exceptional having had 11 or 12 services for the week-end, I was unable to get it done.
I will send it on from Chicago. We had a great season of blessing during the last few days in Walworth.
I don’t know how I am to thank dear Aunty Mary and yourself for all your kindness. The Lord will repay you for it all. Trust things are going well at Paisley Road. The warriors are with me here and are doing well so far on the journey.
Very kindest love, your loving auld Pastor, John Harper.
A letter written on the Titanic by a hero pastor who died in the ship’s sinking is up for auction in the U.K. The letter was written by John Harper, the pastor of Walworth Road Baptist Church in London, a widower who was traveling with his sister and 6-year-old daughter to preach at the Moody Church in Chicago.
A ship branded the “Titanic of the Great Lakes” has been found in its watery resting place – 110 years after it mysteriously sank. The Pere Marquette 18 spent the summer giving pleasure cruises in Chicago and was called the “world’s largest pleasure boat” and the “safest ship afloat”. But the vessel sunk with the loss of dozens of lives en-route from Michigan to Wisconsin as it returned to its regular route in September 1910. There were multiple witnesses to the sinking – including another ship, the Pere Marquette 17, which came to the rescue – but the cause of the calamity remains a mystery.
The expeditions, which will see nine guests set off on an eight-day trip from Canada’s Newfoundland, won’t be cheap. Each of the “mission specialists” (used to describe the guests) will be expected to pay $125,000 (£96,368) for the trip which includes a six to eight-hour dive in the submarine to see the wreckage. Only three guests will join the driver in the submarine at any one time. Rush, who is planning to host the trips from May to September annually, says that 36 people have already booked in for the first six expeditions.
[Note: I originally wrote about this back in 2014. I have since rewritten the post adding in the full text of the legend and updated the source material.]
Pearson’s Magazine,1909, featuring the story of the Unlucky Mummy (British Museum ref AE 22542) Public Domain (via Wikipedia)
One of the most enduring supernatural stories of Titanic is that a cursed Egyptian mummy aboard the ship caused its demise. The tale has been around since Titanic sank often repeated in books about the supernatural. And with the advent of the Internet, this tale gained a new audience as it bounces around in emails, social media posts, and blogs. Back in the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a lot of interest in Egypt. People were fascinated with the pyramids, its history, and mummies. Bram Stoker, who wrote Dracula, wrote his own mummy horror story called Jewel of the Seven Stars that has become the basis of many mummy movies. So, it is not hard to see how the tale of a cursed mummy would be appealing to many.
Tale of the Cursed Mummy
The Princess of Amen-Ra lived some 1,500 years before Christ. When she died, she was laid in an ornate wooden coffin and buried deep in a vault at Luxor, on the banks of the Nile. In the late 1890s, 4 rich young Englishmen visiting the excavations at Luxor were invited to buy an exquisitely fashioned mummy case containing the remains of Princess of Amen-Ra They drew lots. The man who won paid several thousand pounds and had the coffin taken to his hotel. A few hours later, he was seen walking out towards the desert. He never returned.
The next day, one of the remaining 3 men was shot by an Egyptian servant accidentally. His arm was so severely wounded it had to be amputated. The third man in the foursome found on his return home that the bank holding his entire savings had failed. The fourth guy suffered a severe illness, lost his job and was reduced to selling matches in the street. Nevertheless, the coffin reached England (causing other misfortunes along the way), where it was bought by a London businessman.
After 3 of his family members had been injured in a road accident and his house damaged by fire, the businessman donated it to the British Museum. As the coffin was being unloaded from a truck in the museum courtyard, the truck suddenly went into reverse and trapped a passerby. Then as the casket was being lifted up the stairs by 2 workmen, 1 fell and broke his leg. The other, apparently in perfect health, died unaccountably two days later.
Once the Princess was installed in the Egyptian Room, trouble really started. The Museum’s night watchmen frequently heard frantic hammering and sobbing from the coffin. Other exhibits in the room were also often hurled about at night. One watchman died on duty; making the other watchmen wanting to quit. Cleaners refused to go near the Princess too. When a visitor derisively flicked a dust cloth at the face painted on the coffin, his child died of measles soon afterwards.
Finally, the authorities had the mummy carried down to the basement figuring it could not do any harm down there. Within a week, one of the helpers was seriously ill, and the supervisor of the move was found dead on his desk. By now, the papers had heard of it. A journalist photographer took a picture of the mummy case and when he developed it, the painting on the coffin was of a horrifying, human face. The photographer was said to have gone home then, locked his bedroom door and shot himself. Soon afterwards, the museum sold the mummy to a private collector. After continual misfortune (and deaths), the owner banished it to the attic.
A well known authority on the occult, Madame Helena Blavatsky, visited the premises. Upon entry, she was sized with a shivering fit and searched the house for the source of an evil influence of incredible intensity; She finally came to the attic and found the mummy case. Can you exorcise this evil spirit? Asked the owner. There is no such thing as exorcism. Evil remains evil forever. Nothing can be done about it. I implore you to get rid of this evil as soon as possible. But no British museum would take the mummy; the fact that almost 20 people had met with misfortune, disaster or death from handling the casket, in barely 10 years, was now well known.
Eventually, a hardheaded American archaeologist (who dismissed the happenings as quirks of circumstance), paid a handsome price for the mummy and arranged for its removal to New York. In Apr 1912, the new owner escorted its treasure aboard a sparkling, new White Star liner about to make its maiden voyage to New York. On the night of April 14, amid scenes of unprecedented horror, the Princess of Amen-Ra accompanied 1,500 passengers to their deaths at the bottom of the Atlantic. The name of the ship was of course, the H.M.S. TITANIC [sic].
The problem, and there are many, is that so far no one can confirm that a Princess Amen-Ra (or someone similar) ever existed. There are many prince and princesses in Egyptian history. What appears to be a mummy is actually the inner coffin lid described as a gessoed and painted mummy board of an unidentified woman. The lid was found in Thebes and has been dated (by style and shape) as from the late 21st or 22nd dynasty (about 950-900 bc). Unfortunately, her identity is unknown and the only inscriptions are religious phrases. She likely participated in ceremonies in the temple of Amen-Ra. It is speculated though not proven she was a priestess of that temple. It was donated to the British Museum in 1889 and has been on display ever since (except during the two world wars) and even gone on traveling exhibitions.
The tale, according to David Mikkelson at Snopes.com, was concocted by two Englishmen William Stead and Douglas Murray. Stead was a well known journalist and believer in mysticism. Murray is described as an Egyptologist. They both crafted a horror story about a mummy that went to the home of a friend. According to their tale, the next day everything in the drawing room where it was located was destroyed. It was moved to different rooms but that only resulted in more damage to objects in those rooms. The mummy would cause all sorts of things to its owner that included sickness and death. After visiting the British Museum and seeing the coffin lid, they concocted another story that the look of terror depicted on the coffin lid indicated a tortured soul with an evil spirit now loose upon the world. This fanciful tale was repeated to newspaper reporters who ate the story up. Two stories then became one and this mummy would cause havoc wherever it was. Stead would die when Titanic sank in 1912 but told the tale to dinner attendees about a cursed mummy.
Survivors who heard the tale from Stead relayed this to reporters. The story Stead and Murray concocted and Stead’s presence on Titanic telling the story of a cursed mummy became merged producing the current legend. It was modified that the British Museum, so anxious to be rid of it, sold it to an American who shipped it home on Titanic. So of course the mummy caused Titanic to sink. Some more elaborate tales have the mummy making it off Titanic and would cause havoc and had to be shipped elsewhere causing more disasters. However, the cargo manifest shows no mummy or Egyptian relic being transported aboard Titanic.
We have a fascinating tale in the end but that is all that it is. It was two stories merged into one and then altered to include Titanic. And has been repeated in numerous times over the years and found a new home on the Internet. It is a great tale, and if you left off Titanic, would make a great horror story.
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