Titanobore

Titanomania - well that's what I call it. For the last month or so the Press have begun milking the story. Then 10th April was the 100th anniversary of the ship setting sail. It called at Cherbourg and Cork and then hit the iceberg around midnight ship's time on 14th, ie early morning on 15th GMT.

I often wonder why this is a subject of such fascination. It is the world's 7th worse peacetime maritime disaster, and nobody knows the other six (the worst was the Dona Paz in 1987). But many people, called Titanoraks, are obsessive about it. And despite the assurances of American Film Directors that access to the life rafts was a class struggle, we really know hardly anything of what went on. Legend had it that Benjamin Guggenheim, despite being a supposedly classless American, felt too posh to get in the lifeboats and made his valet drown with him. Now we know for certain (ha!) that his valet being of mixed race wasn't allowed in the lifeboat and Guggenheim drowned with him. Got to be a story there, nudge nudge. Or not.

Not long after the Titanic sank, the First World War began which claimed nine million lives and after that the Spanish 'flu claimed even more. But still they go on and on about the Titanic, bore bore bore.

Let's hope the circus is over soon.