Friday, March 30, 2012

Documentary Review: Titanic The Legeng Lives On

Few in the world could believe the news. Wireless stations in Cape Race and New York were picking up signals that the Titanic had struck an iceberg and was in some sort of trouble. White Star Line Vice President Phillip Franklin maintains that the Titanic is unsinkable and that "only an inconvenience would be suffered by her passengers."

Meanwhile, the Carpathia races north across the Atlantic toward the sinking liner. The bow is now sinking, and the stern begins rising out of the water. The individuals still onboard realize the ship will founder. The weight of the unsupported stern causes the hull to fail and the ship rips in two just aft of the third funnel. Many think the stern will become its own lifeboat, but it too eventually floods and sinks beneath the surface.
The Carpathia reaches the scene over an hour later to find only 705 survivors.

In New York, garbled messages lead to confusion about what happened. Any good news was taken as gospel. It wasn't until late in the evening on April 15 that White Star Admitted the truth. The Cunard Line's Carpathia arrived in New York on April 18 with the survivors, many of the surviving officers as well as the managing director were to appear at an inquiry.

Many questions arose about that night including: the ship's speed, the conduct of her officers and crew, and the mystery ship about ten miles away from the Titanic when she sank. Eventually no legal blame is put on either White Star or Harland &Wolff.

Titanic laid undisturbed at the bottom of the North Atlantic for over seventy years until Dr. Robert Ballard found her in 1985. Ever since, the wreck site has become somewhat of a controversy via the salvage operations that raise relics from the wreck.

All this and more is discussed in great detail in the second part of History Channel's Titanic: The Complete Story. The presentation is the same style as the first part, providing pictures with interviews from survivors and historians as well as mixing in statements by the survivors who were already gone by the time the documentary was made.

This documentary successfully completes the story that Death of a Dream began, ending with Jack Thayer's quote:

"There was peace and the world had an even tenor to it's way. Nothing was revealed in the morning the trend of which was not known the night before. It seems to me that the disaster about to occur was the event that not only made the world rub it's eyes and awake but woke it with a start keeping it moving at a rapidly accelerating pace ever since with less and less peace, satisfaction and happiness. To my mind the world of today awoke April 15th, 1912."
Final Rating: 9.5/10

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