Water, Water Everywhere

We were watching previews in the movie theater in early 2012, and Bill Paxton's voice said, "Are you ready to go back to Titanic?" The lovely flute notes of "My Heart Will Go On" began, and the preview for James Cameron's blockbuster movie played.

At first, all I thought was, "Oh, they're rereleasing it." After all, rerelease of movies is becoming more commonplace. Then the screen said, "April 2012," and I laughed loudly. My family gave me that look that they give me so often – the one that says both, "Why are you so loud in movie theaters?" and "What is wrong with you?"

I nudged my husband. "April!"

"What?"

"They're rereleasing it in April!"

He did not find this funny, and could not imagine why I did.

After the movie, I explained what I thought was obvious. "She went down in April. This year it'll be 100 years since she sank." Even in a family of history geeks, I'm occasionally the geekiest.

I was a Titanic buff long before James Cameron gave us his story of Rose and Jack, long before Bob Ballard found her in 1985. I remember being about 10 and watching "In Search Of…" on TV. I loved "In Search Of…" I loved Leonard Nimoy's soothing narration, and I loved the show's theme of the odd and unexplained. "The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanation, but not necessarily the only ones, to the mysteries we will examine," the voice-over told us every week. It was great fun. I remember clearly watching them try to figure out the sinking of the Titanic.

Most of the experts agreed, even decades later, that she shouldn't have sunk. They discussed the watertight compartments that would close "at the flick of a switch" and the fact that she should have been able to limp into port even damaged.

Mostly, they couldn't explain why she went down in only 2 ½ hours. There must have been something very heavy and undeclared in the cargo hold, some of the experts were sure. The iceberg damage did not explain her quick death.

Maybe she was smuggling munitions, they posited. Her sister ship would sink in the not too distant future after striking a German mine. Maybe she had massive, undeclared stores of arms in her hold. Maybe something ignited explosive charges on the ship.

I was deeply intrigued. The fact that, if pre WWI smuggling was taking place, it would be more likely to go from America to Britain instead of the other way around dampened this theory, but it was still fascinating. "We'll never know," they said. "She'll never be found."

Enter Bob Ballard, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, side scan sonar and a secret Cold War era mission to check out possible Soviet submarine activity. There she was, still beautiful over seven decades later, 2 ½ miles down.

Many of the questions were answered then, of course. No one had been able to imagine a circumstance that breached more than two or three of the "watertight compartments," plus they had not taken into account the fact that the doors did not go all the way to the top, allowing water to slop over from one compartment to the next. Impurities in the steel of her double hull meant that it became extremely brittle in cold water, snapping instead of bending. Her quick demise was due to flaws in the ship herself, not shadowy conspiracies.

My family cannot figure out why I am the family expert on shipwrecks. I own two beautiful silver pendants made from silver salvaged from the Nuestra Senora de Atocha, a Spanish galleon whose wreck was discovered by the legendary Mel Fisher. I can tell you what I think happened to the Edmund Fitzgerald, who sank in Lake Superior so quickly that she didn't even call for help. Her last radio transmission, to the nearby Arthur M. Anderson, was, "We're holding our own" against the fierce storm.

I am not afraid of snakes or spiders. I honestly, sincerely thought that the ridiculous cliché of women screaming and leaping onto the furniture at the sight of a mouse was fiction, until I met such women.  I tell the kids in my theater class and on my debate team that fear of public speaking usually ranks higher than fear of death for most people, and we can all be proud that we can do something that terrifies others. One of my best friends is terrified of the bearded dragon that lives in my living room; I talk baby talk to her and sit with her on my chest while I watch TV. (She did poop on me once, but hey, I'm washable. So are my clothes.)

Water? That's a different story. Deep water frightens me. Dark water – even an inch of it – induces unreasoning panic. I cannot look at most photos of sunken ships, including the Titanic. I can't watch much deep water video. When I first saw "Jaws," the opening sequence of gliding over the ocean bottom frightened me more than the shark did. (The shark, let's face it, was dorky looking and did not behave factually.)

I once had to sleep with the lights on all night after watching a documentary on the Titanic. I was in my 30s. I did not see the movie in the theaters the first time, and I won't see it there this time. I could barely sit through the previews. Sitting in a dark room, looking at a huge screen and listening to surround sound? I'd have a heart attack. If I watch "Titanic" on the night of April 14, I will do it on a small screen in my brightly lit family room.

I've read both of Walter Lord's books about Titanic. I was about 22, reading "The Night Lives On" when we had guests for dinner, two missionaries from our church. Young men generally go on missions from the ages of 19 through 21, and in order to keep them from subsisting on ramen noodles and microwave popcorn, church members are encouraged to feed them dinner occasionally.

I told them about the book, and about slamming it shut and dropping it when I unwittingly turned the page and found color photos of the wreck. They started chatting about the ship with me and my husband, but I quickly dropped out of the conversation. Soon I was saying things like, "Can we change the subject?" and "I really don't want to talk about it," as they veered into speculation that was curling my toes. I shared my fear of water. They listened in an abstract way and kept on talking. Soon I was saying, "I need you to stop talking!"

They were saying things like, "Can you imagine being trapped on the ship? A lot of people were." Then came the final straw: "There were air pockets, you know, even after it went down. It's possible that some people were alive until the pressure became too great." "Yeah," said the other, "at pressure like that your head would literally explode."

I stood up and shrieked like a banshee. "STOP IT! STOP IT! I TOLD YOU THAT I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT! DO YOU WANT ME TO BE AWAKE ALL NIGHT? Do you want me to have to sleep with the lights on all week long?"

They turned and stared at me, all three of them, blinking as if they'd just realized that I was in the room, and wondering why I was so unreasonable.

I had a panic attack the first time I tried snorkeling, and the water was knee deep. The fear is getting more manageable as I get older. I love snorkeling, and have for years. 

         Three years ago, I went in an actual submarine to the bottom of the Pacific. We all watched out our windows as, yes, we glided by sunken ships. 

          We went so deep, over 100 feet, that all the color bleached out of everything and our own teeth glowed orange.

         It helped that the sub very much resembled the ride vehicle at Disneyland, but hey, riding in it is still a HUGE accomplishment. I am extraordinarily proud of it.

We've been through two museum exhibits designed to help you imagine what it was like on the Titanic.

           The first was in Long Beach aboard the Queen Mary. As you entered both exhibits, you were given a "ticket" with the identity of a passenger or crew member on it. At certain points, you find out what was happening to "you." As the exhibit progressed, they started playing creaking sounds, designed to sound like the doomed liner. I've gotta tell you, being aboard a ship, one that's bobbing ever so slightly, while you touch a simulated iceberg and listen to the creaking, is exceptionally creepy.

I started sending my family into the rooms ahead of me. "Come back and tell me if there's anything I have to avoid." They always came back and said, "It's fine," until we neared the end of the exhibit.

The doorway showed a narrow room, almost like a hallway, that turned to the right. There was a wall, about waist high, on the right hand side. "Go check it out," I told my son. I've never been there, but I hear that in the Holocaust museum in Washington DC, exhibits that might be too disturbing for young children are behind waist high walls. The room gave me the willies.

He came back with wide eyes. "I can't even tell you about it. Just close your eyes and I'll guide you through."

Closing my eyes was too awful; it was pitch dark, with the ship moving and the creaking, groaning sounds on the tape getting louder. My blood pressure went up. "I'll look straight down at the ground, OK?"

"OK. Just don't look up."

I took hold of his arm. He led me through the smallish room, and I stood staring down at the entrance to the next one while he checked the new room. "There's some pictures and TVs you have to avoid, OK?"

They had artifacts actually brought up from the ship, displayed in plexiglass cases.

          Unfortunately for me, above them all hung either still photos or video screens – unnecessarily large ones, I thought – showing where on (or near) the wreck they were found. I had to hurry through that room.

          There was one last room, where you checked to see if "you" survived the sinking or not.

            Luckily, beyond that was the gift shop, which opened onto the walkway leading off the ship. It was nice and bright and full of fresh air.

After we were safely off the ship, my family told me what was in the room with the partition. On the side of the Queen Mary you could see a small bump-out near the stern. It looked kind of like a little black box attached to the side of the ship. What had looked like walking into a hallway on the ship was actually walking from the ship, out through this little bump-out. If I had looked up, I would have been looking at the side of the Queen Mary, just at the water line. Looking down, over the side of the waist high wall, there was a clear view of her propellers, lit from underneath. "I'm not afraid of water or anything, and it creeped me out," my husband said. My kids all echoed the sentiment. "It was CREEPY!"

Had they told me that while I was still on the ship, I would have come unglued.

Heart attack averted. Thank you, Son. I am ridiculously grateful for his handling of the situation.

When we got our current National Geographic magazine, I had my daughter look through it and tell me the pages I had to avoid. "How did you ever go on a cruise ship, Mom?" she wanted to know.

Well. Yes. I think everyone who's ever been on a cruise ship thinks about the Titanic. The very fact that there are enough lifeboats for all, and that the ship will not leave port until you have participated in a lifeboat drill are a legacy of Titanic. Part of what grips us about the loss of life so long ago is the fact that there weren't enough boats for all, and that there was no set procedure for evacuating the ship. Anyone who reads the inquest testimony that a Titanic crew member turned back third class passengers because they were not normally allowed on the decks with the lifeboats cringes, I think.

"Most of them froze to death, not drowned. No one freezes to death in the Bahamas," I told her. It's not the whole story, but it's true. I'm also proud of going on a cruise, but the truth is, I didn't worry. I had a great time and slept like a rock.

"What about the one in Italy? They drowned."

Thank YOU, Child of Mine, for bringing that up. As if I haven't had unpleasant and unkind thoughts running through my head ever since that fiasco. Don't get me started on the carelessness that caused that mess.

Next year, for his high school graduation trip, my son wants to go on an Alaskan cruise. We're looking up prices and sailing dates, and I'm very much looking forward to it. I hope my mind doesn't decide to play a horror show inside my head while I'm on that ship, where I might indeed freeze if it sank.

Right now, I'm reading a new book, one that my oldest daughter sent to me from her school's book fair. I'm loving it. I'll probably assign it to my seventh grader when I'm done, as a homeschool assignment.  It's called, "Titanic: Voices from the Disaster."

There's only two pages I can't look at.