TITANIC WEEK, DAY 3

[asakiyume]

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

Comments

[sartorias]

The fandom being complex, heh!

[asakiyume]

Don't we know it! I'm giggling about the grade of paint and the mattresses, because you just know that yep, there are people out there who do know those details.

[amaebi]

I am thinking about that. What an image.

[amaebi]

"I thought it would be so easy to find information on the model camera used by Father Frank Browne to take his famous photos aboard Titanic. Not so easy!"
- Titanic Society post

You will relieved to hear that there was a followup: "The results of my further research regarding the identity of Father Browne's camera can be read in my article in the Titanic Commutator, Volume 37, Number 200. I am still hopeful of receiving any comments, critiques, opinions or additional information."

[asakiyume]

Enthusiasts gonna enthuse ^_^

Father Browne's photos were one of the things I did search for more information on--they are great (although when I posted some to Twitter, Doug told me some of the photos I'd grabbed weren't actually his!)

[amaebi]

*beam*