A Sinking Feeling

Is it over? Can I watch TV again without being bombarded with images of sinking ships, lifeboats ans sepia tinted pictures of people in Edwardian dress? Yes folks, it's true, I'm sick and bloody tired of the Titanic. I sincerely hope that now the actual hundred anniversary date of its sinking has passed the media will let it drop. Unless, of course, we're going to have the hundredth anniversary of the melting of the iceberg. If the sinking were still in living memory and there were survivors still alive, I might be able to understand the fuss. Or if there was some 'mystery' surrounding the disaster. But there isn't. The ship struck an iceberg and sank. That's it. Which is one of the reasons that I've never actually been interested in the whole Titanic business - it really isn't much of a story, is it?

Basically it's just a case of big liner goes on maiden voyage across Atlantic, big liner hits iceberg, big liner sinks slowly with huge loss of life. If you were to pitch that to a film studio the money men would just shrug their shoulders and say 'So, what?', before showing you the door. I mean, it didn't even capsize, trapping passengers in the upturned hull, like The Poseidon Adventure, did it? Which is why all the films about the Titanic have to jazz it up with entirely fictional sub-plots involving those poor Hollywood Irish-accented steerage passengers being locked below decks and shot by the nasty English officers, or romances across the class-barrier, etc. If it isn't that, there are plots about the negligence of the owners, (they were complete bastards, but so were most shipping lines in those days, probably still are). Even Raise The Titanic has to come up with some nonsense involving spies and rare elements vital to the US defence programme, in order to explain why anyone would be interested in raising the bloody thing. Even the few conspiracy theories about the sinking of the Titanic are boring, involving alleged insurance scams and the substitution of sister ship Olympic for the Titanic. Yeah, that's the best they can come up with, the Titanic wasn't the Titanic, it was the Olympic. That's it - even if true such a substitution wouldn't change any of the facts of what happened. So, for the sake of my sanity, please let this be an end to the Titanic industry!