TITANIC WEEK, DAY 3

Today's question for Doug Ross concerns the Titanic community. As you know, wherever there is an enthusiasm, there is a community of enthusiasts....

Can you tell us a little bit about the Titanic community? I know some of the other scholars have been very helpful and supportive.

Doug's reply:

The Titanic community of today is as complex as the story of Titanic herself. There are the historians and scholars who study Titanic like an academic discipline, the hardcore enthusiasts who are as knowledgable as the historians themselves, regular enthusiasts who love the general story of Titanic or the pop culture of Titanic, and then people who are curious about her story. I think I fall in between hardcore and regular enthusiasts because I understand and know a lot, but I can’t tell you things like what grade of paint was used or what the mattresses were made of.

Among the people Doug thanks in his acknowledgments are two scholars who had passed away. This one, Jack Eaton, seems to have lived a full life:

Jack was co-historian on the first Titanic research and recovery expedition in 1993, when, at the age of 67, he became the oldest person to make the perilous 12,500-foot dive to the ship’s wreck and debris field.

...And he had no surviving family, so it was the community who was his family. All kinds of feelings about that.

Link to Doug's book