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The Titanic:
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The Titanic:
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Inspiration for the project |
Word6 file (12k)
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The sources of the data
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Word6 file (13k)
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The Titanic, probably the most famous shipping disaster of all time - certainly the most well known, has been the subject of many books and endless speculation it has always been a subject of intrigue for students of the sea and the general populace - sparked by the attraction of the colourful passenger list, the pathos of human tragedy, the uncertainty of the cause of the disaster (still not clearly and definitively resolved) and the legends that have surrounded the event.
Fact and fiction have become woven into an almost inseparable whole. Poor original records, incomplete investigations, inaccurate contemporary reporting, memories affected by stress, the passage of time and the subtle effect of the culture and society of the day have all conspired to produce this tangled web that has delighted novelists and tormented scholars almost from the day after the tragedy up to the present day!
This project began with the data files in the SATCHEL MS-DOS product and grew into what you see now. Although a hackneyed phrase, truth has certainly proven stranger (and more interesting) than fiction as this project has unfolded.
It is hoped that users will be able to glimpse behind the cold and somewhat stark words and images on the screen and come to grips with the human dimension of the society of the day and this tragedy in particular. This will only occur if users see the information as a starting point and surround them with research that is book and film based.
The beginnings of the original project owe much to Walter Lord’s novel ‘A Night To Remember’ and to the discovery of the wreck by Dr. Robert Ballard on September 1, 1985. The words from the epilogue of his book ‘The Discovery of the Titanic’ are an hauntingly appropriate conclusion to this introduction:
“The bottom of the ocean is a quiet place, a peaceful place, fitting for a memorial to all the things that sank when the Titanic went down. The wreck we found and photographed can stand as a monument to a mistake of arrogance, to a lost age, and to a kind of innocence we can’t recover - and to the people, both guilty perpetrators and innocent victims, who figured in the drama.”
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The possibility of a database began with the discovery of a passenger list in Lord’s book, ‘A Night to Remember’ and gathered momentum with the discovery of the reprint of a 1913 book ‘Titanic, a Survivor’s Story’ written by Colonel Archibald Gracie. This volume contained contemporary records compiled by the author on the decks of the Carpathia - but more of that later.
It soon became apparent that Lord’s list was based on an official White Star list and was full of inaccuracies - an interesting point in itself! Nevertheless, the decision was made to enter this data, using Gracie’s work, as the basis for lifeboat allocations and to alter the original as new information came to light.
The initial crew list was obtained, again from a contemporary source that has been reprinted - Titanic indeed has spawned a healthy trade in the reprint business! This was a 1912 publication titled ‘The Deathless Story of the Titanic’ and contained not only crew and passenger lists but also contemporary newspaper reports - resplendent with Edwardian phraseology and pathos! This list, again, was full of inaccuracies, but again the decision was taken to use this as a starting point and to update it as more accurate information was (hopefully) unearthed.
The turning point came when enquiries in the UK resulted in the obtaining of photocopies of original documents from the Public Record Office which, being handwritten and often containing a clerk’s interpretation of a person’s name still left some gaps and potential inaccuracies in the data. At about the same time the publications of the chief historian of the ‘Titanic Historical Society’ became available and these two sources provided much of the missing information.
The passenger database has been updated recently with information that has surfaced since the release of the film 'Titanic'. The sources were the many new web pages that have sprung up; contributions to the Titanic discussion group owned by Mark Taylor and the passenger list in the back of the second edition of that magnificent book 'Triumph and Tragedy (see the resources pages for details).
However, it would be foolish to contend that the data is one hundred percent accurate or one hundred percent complete. To wait until this were so would have meant that the database would never have been finished! If users of this software package have any documents or information that would add to the accuracy of the data, they would be gladly accepted. Walter Lord’s concluding remarks to the preface of ‘A Night To Remember’ , while made with relation to the facts pertaining to the tragedy, could equally apply to this database: “It is a rash man indeed who would set himself up as a final arbiter on all that happened the incredible night the Titanic went down.”
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