Exhibition - Beryl Bainbridge reflects on the small reminders of a gigantic tragedy
Shortly before midnight on 14 April 1912, the "unsinkable" SS Titanic struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage to New York. She sank less than three hours later.
The causes of such a disaster were numerous. A blaze, started by the friction of coal descending at speed into the boilers, had accelerated before the ship left Belfast - in spite of this, a certificate of seaworthiness was issued before her departure from Southampton; the fire continued for two days into the voyage, no doubt weakening the metal structure of the vessel; there was an insufficient number of lifeboats, and the crew had not been drilled in the correct release and management of those available; although other ships in the Atlantic had slowed on account of reports of icebergs, Captain Edward J Smith ordered full speed ahead.
Intimations of the tragedy to follow began in the first-class salon. The ice cubes in a poker player's glass tinkled as though shaken by an unseen hand. That was the moment when pieces of the visible iceberg, shaved off when sliding alongside the Titanic, bounced upon her lower decks. The gigantic, invisible and destructive mass drifting beneath the waterline sliced a huge gash in the liner's side and consigned her to the deep.
The water rose approximately 14ft above the keel. The watertight bulkhead between boiler rooms Nos 6 and 5 extended only as high as E deck. The first five compartments filled and the weight of the water pulled the Titanic down at the bow. As she sank lower, the water from No 6 boiler room swamped No 5 boiler room and flooded Nos 4, 3, 2 - and so on. Captain Smith, with the help of Bruce Ismay, managing director of the ship's owners, calculated the extent and outcome of the damage at two minutes to midnight. The Titanic had an hour and a half, possibly two, before she sank.
Another vessel was believed to be not far away, and rockets were fired to engage its attention. These signals of distress were mistaken for a display of fireworks; after all, the Titanic was unsinkable. Seven hundred and fifty survivors rowed off in the partially empty lifeboats and watched as the mighty ship, her bulk outlined in stars, plunged into the depths with a cargo of 1,500 men, women and children.
On 14 July 1986, lights from a submersible at the bottom of the Atlantic pierced through the blackness to illuminate the corroded bow of the SS Titanic. The tiny sub rose upright, past intact portholes and gigantic fingers of rust, and finally came to rest on the remains of the wooden deck forward of the mast where, 74 years earlier, the lookout Frederick Fleet had bellowed warning of approaching danger.
Robert Ballard, the American responsible for locating the lost ship, made a moving documentary film of the discovery; he took nothing from the wreck, it being his conviction that such things belong to the dead. A year later, despite attempts by the United States Congress to protect the ship from being looted, an expedition involving American and European investors plucked hundreds of objects from the deep. Several years later, in Hamburg, I visited an exhibition financed by Titanic Inc, in which no fewer than 6,000 artefacts were on view, including an eerily lighted showcase containing a heap of clothing and footwear reminiscent of the exhibits found in museums dedicated to victims of the Holocaust.
The exhibition "Titanic", at the Science Museum in London, features artefacts rather on the small side - dinner plates, a ragged Gladstone bag, perfume bottles, jewellery, children's marbles, coins, a steward's jacket. The exception is a corrugated 20-ton section of the hull which once enclosed two first-class cabins on C deck.
If I sound less than enthusiastic, it is merely because I have seen such tragic items before. Those who have not cannot fail to be moved by the photographs, the pocket life-histories of the survivors and the dead, the pathetic belongings, the somewhat brash commentary on tape by James Cameron, the ship's bell hanging in the gloom, the one supposedly rung by Captain Smith to signal the Titanic's imminent demise.
There are those who believe that the wreck of this once mighty ship should be left intact at the bottom of the sea. Although worthy, this is not an achievable end; consumed by iron-eating microbes, the Titanic will soon vanish for ever.
"Titanic: the artefact exhibition" is at the Science Museum, Exhibition Road, London SW7 (call 0870 870 4868 or visit www.sciencemuseum.org.uk) until 28 September
Beryl Bainbridge's novel about the sinking of the Titanic, Every Man for Himself, is published in paperback by Abacus. She has recently been awarded the David Cohen British Literature Prize, awarded for a lifetime's achievement
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