Top Ten Titanic Toe-Tappers no. 5: The Legend Of The U.S.S. Titanic

Number five in my Top Ten Titanic Toe-Tappers is The Legend Of The U.S.S. Titanic, a thirteen-minute “talking blues” recorded by New England folkie Jaime Brockett in 1969.

It’s an archetypal, freeform 1960s’ extravaganza, similar in style to Arlo Guthrie’s more familiar Alice’s Restaurant, though unlike Guthrie’s epic, Brockett’s piece was never made into a movie.

Loosely built around Leadbelly’s The Titanic, it includes a substantial walk-on part for heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson. Brockett also introduces an entirely new character into the saga, however, a first mate with a penchant for smoking hemp rope. Naturally he turns Captain Smith on to his poison of choice, with disastrous consequences…

I had hoped to include a link here to buy the track, but sadly it’s not available on iTunes, while on Amazon the CD that contains it costs over £100.

Amazon did at least tell me that p.354 of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness includes the line “Wanda said abruptly: ‘Can I have a drink, Jamie?’ Brockett poured her out a stiff brandy and soda.”

Julian Fellowes’ Titanic – the Blogtanic preview

I went last night to a BAFTA preview, at the BFI, of the first two episodes of Julian Fellowes’ four-part Titanic TV series. Attended by many of the cast and crew, it was followed by a panel discussion featuring Fellowes himself.

In their quest to find a fresh way to re-tell the familiar tale, Fellowes and his producers have squared up to the crucial issue that audiences feel they already know the story – and they certainly know the Titanic is going to sink. As Fellowes put it in the Q&A, rather than have three episodes of characters worrying about their marriages and their mortgages, followed by one devoted to the actual disaster, they’ve decided to show the climax in every episode. That means we get to see the ship sink not once, but four times.

It’s a daring move, particularly in terms of episode 1, when the Titanic crashes into the iceberg before we’ve had time to get to know, or care about, the characters. Our first sight of the collision, and the loading of the lifeboats, seems strangely flat, and there has to be a chance some viewers will give up after the first episode. As the series unfolds, however,  each subsequent episode throws new light on the scenes we’ve seen before, repeatedly showing the same incidents from different perspectives.

The idea of the Titanic as a microcosm of the Edwardian world is hardly new, and yes, some of the emblematic figures whom Fellowes has placed aboard the great ship may seem familiar from his previous work. The flawed-but-decent Lord Manton, for example, is strongly reminiscent of the Earl of Grantham from Downton Abbey, while the various servants might have stepped straight out of Gosford Park. Fellowes’ deft touch at revealing their thoughts and motivations, however, from the millionaires in first class down to the impoverished emigrants in steerage and the grimy stokers in the boiler rooms, makes for compelling viewing.

Fellowes’ fictional characters share deck space with many of the Titanic’s real-life passengers and crew. His fellow “Titanoraks” will be fascinated to see his take on certain enduring controversies. Here, for example, it’s Captain Smith, rather than the usual villain J. Bruce Ismay, who dices with death by racing the Titanic ever faster towards the ice field.

While the fates of the genuine historical figures have long since been cast, the lives of the invented characters remain poised in the balance until the fourth and final episode. According to Fellowes, he didn’t decide who would live and who would die until he’d already written the first three instalments. I’m looking forward to finding out who makes it  – if I had to guess, though, it’s not looking good for some of those plucky steerage passengers.

The series is being broadcast in Canada from today onwards, and starts in the UK on Sunday March 25.

All text on Blogtanic © Greg Ward

Did anyone really think the Titanic was unsinkable?

Whether the Titanic was unsinkable was settled once and for all on April 15, 1912. A hundred years later, however, two related issues are still being debated. Did her makers, the White Star Line, claim that she was unsinkable? And did the world at large – and above all, her passengers – believe her to be unsinkable?

The Olympic and Titanic under construction, Harland & Wolff shipyards, Belfast.

Only the faintest of pre-tragedy references to the Titanic’s supposed unsinkability have been discovered. Describing the system of watertight compartments used in both the Titanic and her sister ship, the Olympic, a 1911 White Star Line brochure explained how in the event of an accident the captain could close the watertight doors, thereby “practically making the vessel unsinkable”.

In the Shipbuilder magazine, later that year, the crucial phrase was truncated to become “practically unsinkable”. Far from singling out the Titanic, however, the author referred to such watertight compartments as being “usual in White Star Lines”.

On the very day that the Titanic sank, the word “unsinkable” seemed to rise to the surface. The man largely responsible was White Star vice president Philip A.S. Franklin. When the first rumours of the sinking reached New York, he responded “We place absolute confidence in the Titanic. We believe that the boat is unsinkable”. He later told the New York Times “I thought her unsinkable, and I based [my] opinion on the best expert advice. I do not understand it”.

Philip A.S. Franklin (left) and J. Bruce Ismay (right) during the US inquiry into the disaster.

The arrogance of imagining any ship to be unsinkable tied in perfectly with the notion of the Titanic being destroyed by hubris. Early reports of the disaster were peppered with the word, and survivors swiftly started to use the term. Less than a month later, White Star’s president J. Bruce Ismay, who had himself survived the sinking, testified at the British inquiry that “I think the position was taken up that the ship was looked upon as practically unsinkable; she was looked upon as being a lifeboat in herself”. Colonel Archibald Gracie, who was on the deck of the Titanic as her fate became horribly apparent, described the male passengers as seeking to “reassure the ladies” by repeating “the much advertised fiction of ‘the unsinkable ship’”.

In his stimulating book, The Myth of the Titanic, author Richard Howells concluded that the idea was “an essentially retrospective invention”. He argued that the Olympic was all but identical to the Titanic, built in the same shipyard at the same time. The Olympic sailed on her maiden voyage less than a year before the Titanic, on the same route and even with the same captain.

At no time however was the Olympic hailed as being unsinkable; only the Titanic became known as the “unsinkable ship”, precisely because she did in fact sink. No one would dispute that the Titanic’s passengers, and for that matter her captain and crew, thought they were aboard an exceptionally safe ship. Few appreciated that she was in fact considerably less safe than such predecessors as the Great Eastern.

While that over-confidence may not have caused the collision itself – racing at breakneck speeds towards dangerous icefields was pretty much standard practice at the time – it did ultimately cost lives, because it was surely the main reason why so few passengers came forward to board the earliest lifeboats.

Only once the Titanic sank, perhaps, did people realise quite how invulnerable they had imagined themselves to be, a blind faith they then simply articulated by using that one small word – “unsinkable”.

All text © Greg Ward

The 1912 Titanic movie riots

I was very proud this week to contribute a guest post to the consistently wonderful Silent London blog.

My post describes the riots that broke out in three movie theatres in Bayonne, New Jersey, on April 26, 1912 – that is, just 11 days after the Titanic sank. The theatres had advertised that they were going to show “sensational” moving images of the disaster. The local police chief, knowing no such footage existed, forbade the showings to go ahead. And the audiences rioted…

To read the full story, on Silent London, click here.

And if you’re wondering how I came across this snippet, it was when I was researching my post So what SHOULD you do with the deckchairs on the Titanic? Hoping to find eyewitness reports of Baker Charles Joughin’s activities, I searched for newspaper stories from 1912 that mentioned “Titanic chairs” – and found this instead.

The French Connection – Cherbourg remembers the Titanic

I was lucky enough to get an advance preview this afternoon of the new Titanic exhibition in Cherbourg, France, which is due to open next month.

The Titanic called at Cherbourg for two hours on the evening of the day she sailed from Southampton – Wednesday April 10, 1912. Just under 300 passengers joined the ship here, including such famous names as John Jacob Astor IV, Benjamin Guggenheim, and “the unsinkable” Molly Brown.

One hundred years later, to the day, the Titanic exhibit will open in Cherbourg’s former Transatlantic terminal. It’s a new addition to the Cité de la Mer, an already huge facility that incorporates a decommissioned nuclear submarine, the Redoutable; an extensive history of underwater exploration; and several large aquariums.

Only a small proportion of the Titanic displays are currently in place, but it’s clearly going to be a must-see atraction. Without trying to rebuild the ship herself, the designers have set out to evoke several of her most important features. Each visit is intended to offer an “immersive experience” – albeit not in the same sense as the original voyage!

Visitors reach the new exhibit via parts of the Transatlantic terminal that have until recently only been accessible to cruise passengers. Strictly speaking, this glorious Art Deco structure post-dates the Titanic, but you only have to glance outside to see the spot where the great liner anchored, beyond the harbour walls.

You enter the exhibition proper to find yourself standing at a re-created segment of the ship’s rails, watching a huge screen that displays first a panorama of Cherbourg as seen from the Titanic, and then her next and final port of call, Queenstown in Ireland (now Cobh). From there, you can choose whether to move into the first-, second-, or third-class areas of the ship.

Sections that I was able to see today included a meticulous re-creation of the Titanic’s mailroom, and a mock-up of a first-class cabin. Those that have yet to be installed, but will be ready in time for the opening, include a “wireless room” where children can learn Morse code, and Captain Smith’s own quarters. The exhibition also broadens its scope to explore twentieth-century European emigration to the United States.

With many thanks to Laure Anne Forti de Marthe for her hospitality.

Top Ten Titanic toe-tappers no. 4: Blind Willie Johnson’s God Moves On The Water

Worthy of a place in any Top Ten of Titanic songs – though admittedly not everyone might consider it to be a “toe-tapper” – God Moves On The Water was recorded by the itinerant Texan street preacher Blind Willie Johnson in 1929.

To listen to it, click on the link below.

Despite the fact that he didn’t actually play the blues, blues aficionados have long regarded Johnson as a sort of honorary bluesman. That’s largely due to his astonishing virtuosity as a slide guitarist; on first acquaintance, on the other hand, some listeners find the gruff, leonine roar of his voice off-putting.

Johnson only ever recorded thirty sides, in three sessions between 1927 and 1930. Consisting of hymns, gospel tunes and moralistic ballads, they’re still guaranteed to send shivers down the spine. When Johnson was posthumously “rediscovered” during the 1960s’ blues revival, many of his new champions assumed that he’d written his own material; for his original  audience, however, most of his songs would have been familiar from church. Hence his repeated use of his guitar as a substitute for his voice – with the words already known, he often sang only half of each line, completing the phrase on the guitar instead.

Although this is the earliest known recording of God Moves On The Water, Johnson is thought to have acquired the song as sheet music from a street evangelist. The fact that he never sings the entire phrase “God moves on the water” suggests it was already well known.

The song is often described as expressing the belief that the sinking of the Titanic was divine retribution for its owner’s supposed boast that even God couldn’t sink the ship. However, although the lyrics include such details as “many gunshots were fired”, and they mention Captain E. J. Smith by name, they never actually say that God sank the Titanic as a judgement. The suggestion seems to be more that God moves in mysterious ways, among which “over water” is simply one of His many options.

After the Depression put an end to his career, Johnson returned to a life of poverty in Beaumont, Texas. He died in 1947 when he caught pneumonia 
after his shack burned down, and he was confined to bed with only damp newspapers for blankets.

All Johnson’s recordings, including his masterpiece, the extraordinary free-form Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground, are collected on the twin-CD set The Complete Blind Willie Johnson.

To buy it in the US, click here; in the UK, click here.

Top Ten Titanic toe-tappers no. 3: Leadbelly’s The Titanic

The third of my top ten Titanic songs, simply called The Titanic, was recorded by bluesman Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter in 1948. Listen to it by clicking on the link below.

Born around 1890, Leadbelly was raised on his parents’ farm in western Louisiana. In his original preamble to this recording, not included here, he recalled that The Titanic was the first song he learned to play on the 12-string guitar, back in 1912 when he worked as Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “lead man”, on the road in Texas.

Sentenced to thirty years’ imprisonment for murder in 1917, Leadbelly “sang his way out” by writing a song to Texas’ state governor pleading for a pardon, which he duly received in 1925. Five years later he was back in prison for assault, this time in Louisiana’s notorious Angola Penitentiary.

Folklorist John A Lomax “discovered” Leadbelly in Angola in 1934, and took this photo, which shows him in the foreground. Lomax was searching for songs rather than singers, and concentrated on prisons on the basis that men serving long sentences would be “uncontaminated” by newer material. In Leadbelly, he swiftly recognized  that he’d hit the motherlode. Huddie was a true “songster”, who combined  an extraordinary repertoire of songs and styles with a compelling physical presence. Amazingly, he “sang his way out” again, when a similar plea to the governor of Louisiana, recorded and delivered by Lomax, brought quick results.

In a relationship that to modern sensibilities seems questionable to say the least, the newly freed Leadbelly went into Lomax’s service, and headed North. As well as acting as Lomax’s driver and talent scout, Leadbelly appeared on stage as a sort of living example during his lectures on folklore – at times posing in striped prison uniform to add an extra frisson – and also shared copyright on the songs the two men published.

Some historians have argued that Leadbelly actually composed The Titanic himself, long after 1912, though its refrain of “Fare thee, Titanic, fare thee well” is strongly reminsicent of Virginia Liston’s 1926 Titanic Blues. In any case, Leadbelly’s gift for a tune, and knack with paring lyrics down to the bare essentials, make this the catchiest Titanic song of them all. Historically it’s most noteworthy for its reference to heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, allegedly refused passage on the ship: “Jack Johnson wanted to get on board, captain he says ‘I ain’t hauling no coal’”.

To download this track from Amazon, click here; to buy the 4-CD box set from which it comes, click here.

The astonishing true story of the “Nazi Titanic”

The compelling TV documentary Nazi Titanic: Revealed tells the amazing story of the 1943 Titanic movie, made in Nazi Germany. Not only was its director arrested and driven to suicide during the shoot, but the real-life ship that doubled as the Titanic met her own grisly end just two years later, claiming three times as many victims as the Titanic herself.

Commissioned by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, the film calls the Titanic disaster “an eternal condemnation of England’s quest for profit”. It centres on the struggle between “Sir Bruce Ismay” and John Jacob Astor – depicted as an Englishman – for control of the White Star Line, which is in financial trouble due to the cost of building “the first unsinkable ship in the world”. Boasting that the Titanic will capture the Blue Riband for the fastest-ever Atlantic crossing, Ismay promises Captain Smith $1000 for every hour he’s ahead of schedule when he reaches New York.

As well as the usual fictitious passengers, from decadent English gentry to young lovers in steerage, the film also features an invented crew member, the young German officer Petersen. Very much the conscience of the piece, Petersen repeatedly warns Ismay that the Titanic is sailing too fast, with too few lifeboats, into an ice zone. When the inevitable happens, both Ismay and Astor try and fail to buy their way onto a lifeboat, but Petersen helps Ismay to escape anyway, so he can be held accountable for his actions. Petersen too is rescued, after he swims out to a lifeboat carrying a little girl. The two men have a final confrontation at the subsequent inquiry, only for Ismay to be exonerated, and all blame placed on Captain Smith.

Incidental moments en route include a girl rejecting her parents to follow the man she loves; a debauched dance in the third-class dining room; and even, as in James Cameron’s Titanic, a jewel thief being rescued from the ship’s jail by the judicious use of an axe.

Click to buy from Amazon.com

The climactic scenes were filmed aboard the Cap Ancona, a liner requisitioned by the German navy. After director Herbert Selpin complained about the behaviour of the ship’s real-life German officers, his co-writer denounced him to the Gestapo. Within 24 hours Selpin had been interrogated by Goebbels himself, and found hanged in his cells.

The Cap Arcona also met with catastrophe; she was sunk by British fighter planes the day before the war ended. Five thousand concentration camp inmates, who were being shipped to an unknown destination, lost their lives.

The so-called “Nazi Titanic” will be shown at the NFT2, BFI Southbank, on April 18 at 6.20pm, and April 25 at 8.30pm.

S.O.S. – The Titanic Centenary at the BFI

Here’s the full schedule for the Titanic season organised by the British Film Institute.

March 20 6.20pm NFT1, BFI Southbank

Titanic (TV miniseries, 2012)

A special preview screening of episode 1 of Julian Fellowes’ eagerly awaited four-part miniseries, plus a Q&A session featuring Fellowes, director Jon Jones, producers Nigel Stafford-Clark and Simon Vaughan, and cast members.

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April 5 onwards BFI Imax

James Cameron’s Titanic  (USA, 2012)

The new 3D version of James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster.

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April 11 6.20pm NFT3, BFI Southbank

Hitchcock’s Titanic Project

A talk by Professor Charles Barr. Alfred Hitchcock was originally scheduled to make his Hollywood directorial debut with a Titanic movie in 1939. He called it a “marvellously dramatic subject for a motion picture”, but the film was never made. Professor Barr will show a sequence edited from his other work to illustrate how it might have looked.

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April 11 8.40pm NFT3, BFI Southbank, and April 15 4pm NFT2, BFI Southbank

Atlantic (UK, 1929)

The first talkie to tell the Titanic story – albeit, thanks to pressure from the White Star Line, under a different name – was based on Ernest Raymond’s play, The Berg.

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April 13–28 times vary NFT3 & Studio, BFI Southbank

April 16 8.20pm NFT2, BFI Southbank; special showing with introduction

A Night To Remember  (UK, 1958)

More of a docudrama than a conventional narrative, the affecting and beautifully made movie version of Walter Lord’s bestselling book stars Kenneth More as its stern-jawed hero, Second Officer Charles Lightoller.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

April 18 6.20pm NFT2, BFI Southbank, and April 25 8.30pm NFT2, BFI Southbank

In Nacht und Eis (Germany, 1912) and Titanic  (Germany, 1943)

By the time the dramatic silent In Nacht Und Eis was released in August 1912, footage of icebergs and the Titanic were so familiar that the trade papers were already saying “they don’t attract audiences any more”. As for the so-called “Nazi Titanic”, it’s a fascinating propaganda piece, commissioned by Josef Goebbels, which calls the disaster “an eternal condemnation of England’s quest for profit”.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

April 24 8.40pm NFT2, BFI Southbank, and April 28 6.40pm NFT2, BFI Southbank

Titanic  (USA, 1953)

Romance and redemption against the backdrop of appalling maritime disaster. The young Robert Wagner falls for Audrey Dalton, and estranged couple Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck face the prospect of separating forever – and that’s before the iceberg intervenes.

Unravelling the Titanic’s carpets – with a hand from George Clooney (or two hands from his cousin)

My mother was born in the small town of Abbeyleix in Ireland, sixty miles southwest of Dublin, a few years after the Titanic disaster. She’s often told me that local people felt a strong connection with the Titanic, because the ship’s carpets had been made in Abbeyleix.

Set up in 1904 by landowner Viscount de Vesci, Abbeyleix’s long-defunct carpet factory has recently hit the headlines because one of its earliest employees, Sarah Clooney, turns out to have been an ancestor – well, a distant cousin – of George Clooney.

Four hand-tufted rugs from the factory were aboard the Titanic when she sank, and two of the hands that tufted them may well have belonged to Sarah Clooney.

This photo shows the actual rugs being woven, on the loom in Abbeyleix. An exhibition in the town’s Heritage Centre tells the entire story.

I should mention, though, that the Titanic held an awful lot of other carpets as well. The main manufacturer was James Templeton & Co of Glasgow, whose rather extraordinary factory, completed in 1892 and modelled on the Doge’s Palace in Venice, remains a Bridgeton landmark.

Templeton amalgamated with Stoddard Carpets in 1980. As Stoddard International, the firm made the replica carpets that were used in James Cameron’s Titanic. The company has since gone into liquidation, but its original Titanic designs are archived at Glasgow University.