quote:
of course the wrecksite is a graveyard
Tarn,
I will disagree with you there. The only verified remains in the vicinity of the wreck are the ashes of Mel Fisher.
I don't hear the crash site of United Flight 93 in Somerset, PA, referred to as a graveyard. Or the spot near MCAS Miramar where a USMC officer was killed while bicycling by a hit-and-run driver (the spot is marked with a white-painted bicycle and flowers). In similar fashion, I do not consider the Titanic wrecksite a graveyard. This is no way takes away from the emotional attachment given to either site or relieves one from treating each with the proper respect. A place does not need to be accorded the status of "graveyard" in order to be considered hallowed ground.
I take issue with the use of the "graveyard" term because it is wielded as a club by some to bash those of us who strive to unlock Titanic's remaining secrets by exploring the wrecksite. The insinuation is that we are no better than those who would defile the buried dead for profit.
Please bear with me for a moment here. I am about to explain things in a simplistic way but this is not meant as insult; rather, it is a way for me to work through my thoughts and build to a conclusion.
What is a grave? According to my dictionary, the most appropriate meaning of the term is "an excavation for burial of a body." In other terms, it is a place specifically chosen and crated to place a body so that it may literally rest in peace. A graveyard, therefore, is a specially-designated area where a number of graves are dug to permanently shelter these bodies (or shelter us from the decomposition process).
But is a graveyard where people die? A place of death oftentimes happens by chance...there is no preparation and the site is often inconvenient to the living. There are death sites all around us, including the chair in the Rexall drugstore where my grandfather died. How does one deal with the remains of the World Trade Center in the heart of the world's busiest marketplaces? When the Twin Towers fell, should the rubble have been left undisturbed because it was transformed into a "graveyard" when the people inside died?
There's also the matter of how far the fractured wreck travelled from the surface. When one places a memorial plaque on the wreck, it is actually located miles (if not horizontally -- that is still in dispute by some -- then at least vertically) from where the people died. What, then, do we recognise as the true hallowed place...the area on the ocean's surface where we believe the people died, or the spot on the ocean floor where we know the ship's shattered steel settled after the long fall from the world above? The former is too uncertain (being on the constantly moving ocean surface), while the latter is a permanent location on good solid earth. I understand that. I once stood directly underneath the spot where Fatman exploded over Nagasaki. I know this, not because some memorial was hanging 1800 feet in the sky, but because there is an obelisk erected in the park on the ground that points upward to where the detonation occurred. We need that solid anchor to remember what happened, and when, and when the event happened in the air or on the ocean's surface, there needs to be a corresponding memorial on solid earth that will give the memorial some permanance.
Memorial, yes. Graveyard? I don't think so. Some unfortunates may have been trapped inside the broken wreck as it descended on its long journey to its current resting place. Those bodies were compressed (like the styrofoam cups we carry in the Mirs for our amusement) in the first few hundred feet of the plunge...by the time the wreck finally landed on the ocean floor, even the bones of those bodies would have been shattered by the immense pressure. There was no burial for those remains, only complete oblivion miles away from where their spirits left their bodies. In my mind, the scene is somewhat reminiscent of the battlefield at Little Big Horn, where the bones of the fallen calvary soldiers were scattered by animals before they could be collected and buried in a proper cemetery. In Titanic's case, however, there was no one able to collect and bury the remains before they were completely consumed. As of today, the only human remains that I am aware of on the wreck are some of Mel Fisher's ashes that were sealed in acrylic inside a glass globe and deposited on the wreck. Ironic...the only known remains in the wrecksite belong to a treasure hunter who previous to his death had no physical connection with Titanic.
I have no argument -- and in actuality am in complete agreement -- with those who wish to consider the Titanic wrecksite as hallowed ground. I have and will always treat the wrecksite as such. But will I treat the site as a graveyard? No. A graveyard is a place for the dead and even though the wreck is shattered and sunk, it still lives and has a story to tell. I believe that by digging for the information and maybe even recovering a few key artefacts for further analysis on the surface, we are building a memorial to both the ship and those who sailed in her.
Speaking of memorials, if you asked me where the optimal place for a memorial would be, I would suggest the geographic centre of the 5 single-ended boilers in the debris field. More than likely, those boilers mark the spot on the ocean floor most directly underneath the original sinking datum. Like the obelisk at Nagasaki, a memorial there would mark the spot on the earth above which all of Titanic's victims lost their lives. But I agree that it would not have the visual impact of being located with the bow section.
Parks
