TITANIC WEEK, DAY 2!

[asakiyume]

Today my question for Titanic enthusiast Douglas Ross is this:

You've been interested in the Titanic for a long time. How (if at all) has your focus changed?

Doug's answer:

I have always been interested in the general story of Titanic and the lessons incorporated into maritime law, which I call the Civil Rights Act of the sea for its groundbreaking and world-shattering changes that endure until this very day, but now my focus has slightly shifted to incorporate the broader world, such as how racism affected Blacks traveling back and forth between the United States and Europe. I'm also more interested in certain passengers and crew, such as the White Star Line chairman J. Bruce Ismay, who is a very complex man that I have grown to sympathize with on a personal level, but I wasn’t always this way towards Ismay.

J. Bruce Ismay as a young man
(photo courtesy of Wikipedia)



J. Bruce Ismay as played by Frank Lawton in the film A Night To Remember (1958), in a lifeboat, as the Titanic sinks behind him



J Bruce Ismay as played by Jonathan Hyde in James Cameron's Titanic (1997), same scene



ETA --Doug commented on Twitter about film representations of Ismay, saying that there are "several films on Ismay, all bad with the exception of SOS Titanic and A Night to Remember."

His list of other offerings:
--Titanic (1996 CBS miniseries)
--Ghosts of the Abyss (2003) [A documentary film]
--Titanic (2012) [a four-part TV drama]
--Titanic: Blood and Steel (2012) [a 12-part TV drama]
--Titanic documentary (2011)



(Link to Doug's book)

Comments

[sartorias]

Interesting that he's drilling down to the individuals aboard that ship.

[asakiyume]

Yes--overall tragedy is overall tragic, but we relate in a much more deep way with individuals (... as a generalization)

[minoanmiss]

*reads and is intrigued*

[asakiyume]

^_^

very glad!

[amaebi]

I know something about the Titanic and its demise, and have never been interested in it. Now I am interested in Doug's approach.

[asakiyume]

I am sure he will count that as a win ^_^

[teenybuffalo]

I read the wikipedia entry on Ismay because of this exchange, and I feel terrible for him. The public and the media telling him "You should have died because it was the only decent thing to do" is predictable and depressing. And this is the guy whose personal fault it was that the Titanic didn't have more lifeboats! He had to live with that for the rest of his life, and from his actions I imagine it weighed on his conscience.

[asakiyume]

Yeah, it's a horrible fate--kind of like if your fate was that you were out driving in your new car, joyously singing "100 bottles of beer on the wall" (but not sloshed yourself at all), and you thought you could make it through a yellow light and somehow instead ended up in a car accident and killed a family of five . . . only it's a family of fifteen hundred. And the lifeboat thing is terrible, but the rules at the time didn't *require* lifeboats for every person [which can I just say? CRAZY--but they thought the more "unsinkable" you were, the less provisions for a disaster you needed to have], so it wasn't like Ismay was cutting corners: he was following the rules.

I mean there are still things he could have done . . . but as you say, he had to live with his own decisions and survival the rest of his life. And we all make the occasional bad decision, and the result isn't usually fifteen hundred people's deaths on our conscience.