Even those who aren't history buffs knew that Saturday, April 14th marks the 100th anniversary of the tragic sinking of the R.M.S. "Titanic". The supposedly "unsinkable" British liner struck an iceberg and went down off the coast of Newfoundland carrying over 1500 persons to watery graves. The story has been commemorated in hundreds of books and articles, and at least a dozen films, most notably James Cameron's 1997 epic which has recently been re-issued in 3-D in theaters this month ...
What some might not know is that there is a local connection to the famous tragedy (I wrote an article about it in the December, 1985 edition of The Ohio Valley Pilot shortly after The "Titanic" was rediscovered by ocean explorer Robert Ballard) ... One of the passengers on the ill-fated ship was an elderly London native named Miss Lucy Ridsdale, who boarded The "Titanic" on April 10, 1912 at Southhampton, England. She was enroute to visit her sister, Mrs. F.G. Rhoss, and niece, Mrs. J.E. ("Lillie") Wikstrom of 115 Third Street, Marietta ...
On the evening of April 15th - thanks to the new "Associated Press" wire services used by The Marietta Register-Leader - Marietta learned of the tragedy and the Rhoss family was deeply concerned about the fate of their elderly relative. This concern worsened a few days later when The Times (which didn't have access to the wire-service reports) erroneously reported Miss Ridsdale among the missing. Fortunately, a telegram was received later saying that Miss Ridsdale had reached New York with other "Titanic" survivors aboard the steamer "Carpathia". The telegram read "All is well. Will start for Marietta Saturday". It was signed, "Lucy" ... It seems that the main difficulty of Miss Ridsdale, a second-class passenger, was that she had lost her glasses and had some difficulty finding her way to one of the lifeboats ... After being briefly detained in New York (where a Board of Inquiry hearing was called to interview survivors), Lucy Ridsdale arrived safely in Marietta. Interestingly enough, upon her arrival, she was not interviewed by The Register-Leader, but by The Times which had mistakenly reported her death ...
I have been a "Titanic" buff since I was around six, when I saw the 1952 "Titanic" film with Clifton Webb, Robert Wagner, and Barbara Stanwyck ... I got a chance to view the actual relics from the sunken liner when they were on display at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland in 2003. I actually touched one of the huge hook-like lifeboat davits that was lying on a bed of sand in the lobby! I later found out that that particular davit (discovered lying on the deck near the wheel house) was that which held "lifeboat number two", the boat that the wife of famed entrepeneur Isadore Strauss was to have boarded when she told the boarding officer that "I have lived my entire life with Mr. Srauss and I won't leave him now!" ...
Another reason for my fascination with the "Titanic" story comes from reading Walter Lord's book "A Night to Remember", which includes a detailed list of passengers who survived as well as those who did not ... That list includes the name of a young third-class Irish passenger named "Brigit O'Neill", who boarded at Queenstown (also known as "Cobh" , it was likely the same port from which my Irish ancestors embarked when they came to these shores in 1808) to travel to "Amery-kay" where she hoped to obtain a job as a maid or housekeeper and eventually share the blessings of the "American Dream" ... She didn't make it!
So WHY does the story of the 1912 sinking of The R.M.S. "Titanic" retain such emotional power a century later? ... It may be that the story of this ship's passengers is, in a way, the story of ALL of us, and the ways we relate to each other on the basis of wealth and class. In recent months (as we observed the various "Occupy" protests) the issue of the "disparity" between the 1% at the top and the 99% NOT at the top has been revived. ... It is well-known that a major cause of the massive loss of life was the fact that the ship did not carry enough lifeboats to accomodate 2200 passengers and crew-members. It is also known that - while much has been made of the doctrine of "women and children first" - the fact is that more first and second-class male passengers survived the "Titanic's" sinking than did third-class females and children ... This tragedy is a reminder that much has been accomplished since 1912 (i.e. shipboard safety standards have improved) but - as the recent wreck of the cruise ship "Costa Concordia" in Italy shows - we still have a long way to go ...
What have we learned in 100 years?
Fred O'Neill
Marietta
