Visiting the ghosts of the Titanic!

Back in February, my girl and I embarked on a deep-sea exploration of the grave site of the legendary Titanic at the bottom of the Atlantic. Surprisingly, our trip lasted just slightly more than three hours. Moreover, we didn’t require any rigorous physical or technical preparations for the odyssey. Perhaps psychological only! I must add, though, that these dives are generally quite expensive, and will probably cost you an arm and a leg. You might want to throw in a spare lung or two as well, in case your submersible runs low on oxygen along the way! Also, before you sign up for these wacko trips, please don’t be an idiot as not to write your will first. We sure do hope you return from it, but truth be told, we just as much don’t want to be fighting over your property if you don’t make it back—cos your shoddy sub decided to feed you to the fish!

Thankfully, our expedition came at a massive discount and by the time we walked out of the cinema, we had spent a dismal $15—spicy pringles included. Plus, I don’t know how a dozen 3D glasses ended up in my glove box, but, yah, we didn’t spend on those either. Thanks to James Cameron’s remastery of the movie, we got just about as close to experiencing the reality of visiting the Titanic as we possibly could without exposure to the risk of physically going under the ocean.

Tell you what, though: I nearly drowned at that part after the ship has gone down and Rose’s floating on a plank of wood surrounded by frozen lifeless bodies. At that point there’s a single rescue boat left, and they’re doing one final round in search for survivors before they head out. So, Rose’s desperately trying to catch their attention. But she’s extremely frail, cold and shivery, and struggling to muster some strength and gasp of breath enough to sound the whistle! [Sniff-sniff!]–That’s like the most emotional scene in the history of emotional scenes! I swear I nearly drowned in my own tears! Should’ve yanked that whistle from her mouth and blown it myself. I hate 3D movies. You’re in there, but you’re not in there!

It’s 9am on the morning of Tuesday, 20^th June. My car radio is tuned into BBC’s top-of-the-hour news. The first news item I’m hearing has something to do with the disappearance of a certain submarine at sea. This story literally jerks me out of my seat, cos it sounds terrifyingly familiar. It’s hardly a month since I’ve heard Prophet Elvis Mbonye talk about an incident of this sort at one of his gatherings.

Whereas the news worthiness of the matter became apparent on Sunday, this is the first time I’m hearing of it. Within a short time, I begin to appreciate the gravity of the situation. There are five souls trapped inside this vessel, and nobody knows their precise location or what state they’re in. These adventurers forked out $250k each for what was supposed to be a fun trip. A day later, the biggest concern for the rescue mission is the rapidly dwindling supply of breathable air inside the expeditioners’ capsule. Without warning, OceanGate has undoubtedly turned into Ocean-Hell-Gate! Their lungs will certainly not appreciate it if these folks start breathing in each other’s CO₂. So, the race against time is on!

Meanwhile, only a week ago, scores of migrants–illegal migrants, if that makes you feel better–are reported to have drowned after their boat flipped in the stormy Mediterranean sea in a disastrously failed attempt to cross into Europe. Between January and this past week alone, there have been about five refugee shipwrecks with fatalities in the thousands. For ratio’s sake, that’s about one wreck for every occupant of the OceanGate sub. Yet the world appears to have become too accustomed to this nature of incidents; migrants drowning at sea doesn’t seem like a hot-button subject anymore. If these refugees had other route options, they probably wouldn’t use the sea. So, other than having tons of cash to splash, the thing that starkly distinguishes the billionaires from the asylum seekers is that while the seas are a destination for the former, for the latter they are only a transit route; something they would rather avoid–but unfortunately can’t. If peril is something of an adventure for you, welcome to the world of the rich!

As expected, the events of the past two weeks are quite telling and did in fact spark a raging debate about the double standards in the world’s reactionary response to emergencies based on social status. As a poor person, the dire situation that your classmates are going through might be categorized as nothing more than a problem that can be dealt with later. However, as someone rich, your situation is by all means an emergency and requires plenty of media coverage, a dedicated round-the-clock response team and all the stops that can be pulled. But, you see, the sea is not your mother! Rich or poor, she doesn’t care. She’ll swallow you!

For saving suicidal Rose from jumping off the stern of the Titanic the previous evening, Jack earns himself an invite to dine with some of the wealthiest people on deck. He has unexpectedly scaled from Third class to First. However, the chitty chats at this dinning table of snobs are quite revealing of the realities of life and the differing world views of the rich and the poor. Despite Jack saving her daughter’s life, Ruth, Rose’s mother, doesn’t fancy her daughter hanging around the wretched of the earth—or of the ship, for that matter. As such, she’s got a nasty disdainful attitude towards Jack Dawson. His lowlife demeanor, wild temperament and on-the-edge kind of lifestyle are what she finds displeasurable. Jack is a raw care-free soul and appears happy, though. Notwithstanding, they’ll all soon be under the sea, and their class tickets will not lessen the gruesomeness of their demise.

Embarking on these treacherous journeys that sometimes last weeks; sojourning many times in unsafe places along the way, and the dangerous seas waiting for them ahead, the refugees often go to such lengths mostly on humanitarian grounds. They’re either fleeing conflict back home or searching ways to better their lives. Granted, they’ll potentially be an economic burden in one way or another to the destination country. But they’re still human and deserve just as much attention as the high-flyers. Otherwise, the world is watching, taking note, and inadvertently nurturing cold-hearted sentiments. And, so, when disaster strikes the other camp, people might come off as less sympathetic. However, their feelings originated somewhere. It wasn’t surprising, therefore, to come across tirades of mocking memes on social media in the days following the disappearance of the Titan sub.

Perhaps the greatest irony of all was the vast resources that were splashed scouring the seas to locate the billionaires in their lost vessel and then discovering later, on day-four, that the sub had actually disintegrated on day-one! Even with five lives at stake and that much money spent on a single trip, turns out reaching the Titanic graveyard was priority more than safety was.

The tragedy, though, may have somewhat been a stroke of fate. I found rather interesting the fact that Stockton Rush’s–the deceased OceanGate chief’s–wife has ancestral ties to a prominent couple that perished in the Titanic back in 1912. If you remember that scene of an elderly couple lying on their death bed with massive volumes of ice-cold water gushing right under before eventually swallowing them up—well, that was the movie’s portrayal of Mr. Stockton’s in-laws. Overall, I guess the ancestors desired to spend a little more time with their son-in-law!

So, anyway, according to the experts, the Titan imploded. That’s basically to say it exploded inwards, or got crashed by the elements! At the bare minimum, that speaks a lot about the vehicle’s lack of capacity to handle the extreme conditions that deep-sea dives are said to present. This, apparently, is something the chief received multiple cautions about, but he turned a deaf ear. With investigations still on-going and more revelations emerging, what we the lay people know so far is probably just a tip of the iceberg. Oh-oh! Here we go again! Anything Titanic, and you can always trust an iceberg to be involved!

I look forward to a dramatic, thrilling and explosive Titanic-II in 3D—or implosive, for this particular story’s sake. Who in this world knew Titanic would one day turn into a franchise movie!? Just wait for it! Other than that, I have great confidence that, henceforth, there will be more billionaires joining Elon Musk in exploring the vastness of outer space than there will be that dare to even board their own super yachts at sea, lest the ghosts of the Titanic invite them to dinner without warning!

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