A Heart As Deep As the Ocean

( Please wait until later to view this video clip)

     I first became fascinated with the story of the Titanic when, as a boy, I read Walter Lord's A Night to Remember.   And ever since, I've wished there were something that could have been done to avoid this tragedy at sea.   As with the untimely death of anything that is beautiful and elegant,  the romance of the Ship is strong and we can't resist being pulled in as she leaves us. In his book, Farewell, Titanic:Her Final Legacy, Charles Pellegrino says,

     "No one who has seen the ship and said they were finished with it has ever been able to keep that vow;  its mystique has a way of biting into a person and never letting go."

   

     1,517 people were killed.  Only 706 passengers survived.

     The mystique of this luxury liner increased when Robert Ballard, an explorer/oceanographer found the wreckage in 1985, 960 miles northeast of Manhattan, 73 years after she had plunged 2 1/2 miles to an unmarked grave.  12 years after that, James Cameron, a film producer  who had a fascination with shipwrecks, released in late December, 1997, the blockbuster movie Titanic, a romantic, fictionalized account of the sinking of this unsinkable ship.

     While I knew, of course, that what I saw on the screen was fiction, still it gave my imagination a place to go as I boarded the ship with a suitcase full of its history.  I've watched the film several times, and each time I hope that the outcome will be different.  Even as I see actual film of the wreck resting on the bottom of the North Atlantic, I hope that Captain Smith will listen more urgently to warnings he received and chart a more southerly course, to avoid the fatal iceberg.

     Much of the tragedy is heightened by irony.   As Jack wins in a last-minute poker game a ticket for the voyage, we know what he does not know....that he's won a ticket to one of the most famous tragedies in American history, even if we don't know if he survives it.  As the poor and affluent alike board the ship excitedly, we wonder who will survive.....and who will not.  The cries of warning that we want to shout out are stuck in our silent throats.  Maybe we're mistaken. Maybe this time, the ship will make it unscathed all the way to New York.

     But she is beautiful on this, her maiden voyage.  She is beautiful by day, clean and pristine as Rose recalls over 80 years later that she "can still smell her fresh paint."   She is exquisite by night, her staterooms lit up like glowing jewels against the night sky.  The water and sky are both beautiful and black.....and cold as ice.

  

     As the 101-year old fictional Rose recalls the "last time Titanic ever saw daylight," there's an historical sadness in the truth of what she says.

     The fictional love story between Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt Bukater, the two main characters, personalizes the tragedy.  When Jack sees the beautiful Rose for the first time, we men can't help but recall the first time we gazed on the woman who captured our heart.  When Rose sees a portfolio full of some rough sketches he's done of some of the unfortunate souls he saw while visiting Paris, she immediately recognizes his artistic ability. 

"You have a gift, Jack.  You see people."

      One of the searing scenes of the film is Jack and Rose kissing while perched on the prow railing,  as the magic of special effects melts them away and leaves only a picture of the same prow resting lonely in the Deep.  Their lightning-quick journey to love is apparently more than lust, since they both show they're willing to sacrifice their lives for each other.  Rose is safely aboard a lifeboat, but chooses to jump back on to the sinking ship, unable to bear the thought of being separated from the young man she would love to spend a hundred years with, even if this will likely be their last night of life.

     As the ship is close to death, Jack and Rose have made their way to the stern railing, which will be the last part of the Titanic to slide beneath the surface.  Rose says something that makes me realize she and I have something in common, when she sentimentally shares with Jack, "Jack, this is where we first met !"  For the night before, Jack had been there and saved her from what appeared to be an attempt to take her own life by jumping off the stern.   (That reminds me.  Someday, I need to write for my great grandchildren how their great-grandmother and I first met.  It's not nearly as dramatic as Rose and Jack's first meeting, but interesting nonetheless.)

  

      As the rear section of the ship begins its descent, and Jack gives Rose last-second instructions on how to survive, I am touched when Jack says, "Trust me, Rose !"  and she replies, "I trust you !" Somehow, in an exceptionally brief time they have developed an uncommon trust, which is vital whether there are years, or only seconds left to live.

     Soon afterward, as they cling to life in the freezing water, the ship having sunk beneath them, Jack resigns himself to certain death, as he helps Rose on to a barely floating piece of wooden debris so she can survive.

     The final scenes of the film are well-crafted, as this fictional movie leaves a life-like impression.  Jack's instructions to Rose to ruthlessly hold onto her own life, even if he doesn't survive, are further evidence of how much he genuinely loves her.

Rose:  I love you Jack.

Jack:  Don't you do that, don't say your goodbyes.  Not yet.  Do you understand me ?

Rose:  I'm so cold.

Jack:  Listen, Rose.  You're gonna get out of here, you're gonna go on and you're gonna make lots of babies, and you're gonna watch them grow.  You're gonna die an old....an old lady warm in her bed, not here, not this night.  Not like this, do you understand me ?

Rose:  I can't feel my body.

Jack:  Winning that ticket, Rose, was the best thing that ever happened to me...it brought me to you.  And I'm thankful for that Rose.  I'm thankful.  You must do me this honor.  Promise me you'll survive.  That you won't give up, no matter what happens, no matter how hopeless. Promise me now, Rose, and never let go of that promise.

Rose:  I promise.

Jack:  Never let go.

Rose:  I'll never let go, Jack.   I'll never let go.

     Pellegrino includes in Farewell, Titanic one survivor's account of an awful sound....

"within a roughly three-hundred-foot-wide circle of nearly a thousand souls crying out in a unified, dismal moan that George Rheims would recall as 'horrifying, mysterious, supernatural.'"

      I can't imagine how gut-wrenching it was for those who had pulled away some distance in the lifeboats, the individual shouts of their loved ones mercifully covered by the collective cries rising up from that dark, painful water.  There was room for many more in the boats, but the mistake had been made in not fully loading them in the first place.  To return now would invite mayhem that might swamp the boats and cause more deaths.   

     Then there are the excruciating scenes of one of the lifeboats finally having made room and returning empty to the site where hundreds of frozen bodies are floating.   It is not difficult to imagine the reality of April 5, 1912, with 1500 souls dying so quickly in the frigid waters.  The haunting, mournful music is soul-wrenching, making one wish this entire tragedy undone.

 Please view the video clip now, that is attached at the opening of the essay)

      If only the ship could go back to port in Southampton and start over, but more wisely in her newness.  And sail slowly past the Statue of Liberty as she was supposed to.

     But reality is cold and unchanging , as we see the light of early dawn and the RMS Carpathia arriving to pick up the survivors fortunate enough to have found the protection of a lifeboat.   But alas, despite its Captain's extraordinary efforts,  it arrives far, far too late to save anyone from the water.

     Cameron tries to refloat her momentarily, when the debris-filled Ship briefly and brightly resurrects to her pristine maiden days, with the main characters happily gathered around Jack and Rose on the Grand Staircase.  But we know that is a glimpse of another place, where there are no icebergs or dangerous waters.  

    If only that awful iceberg hadn't slipped away from its natural anchor, and drifted unwittingly into the path of one of the most beautiful, splendid ships ever built.  If only I could have warned her.....

     Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance?  You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy.  You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.------Micah 7:18-19