Sen. Smith: “Who gave the first order?”
Mr. Hitchens: “Mr. Murdoch, the first officer, sir; the officer in charge. The sixth officer repeated the order, `The helm is hard astarboard, sir.’ But, during the time, she was crushing the ice, or we could hear the grinding noise along the ship’s bottom. I heard the telegraph ring, sir. The skipper came rushing out of his room–Capt. Smith–and asked, `What is that?’ Mr. Murdoch said, `An iceberg.’ He said, `Close the emergency doors’ . . .”
“Titanic,” the movie, is in fewer theaters this weekend than it was a month ago. Even the most successful motion picture in history is destined to have a circumscribed half-life in first release, and week by week fewer and fewer people choose to buy tickets to see it. They’ve seen it already–some of them three and four times–and now the summer releases will be taking over the nation’s movie screens.
So the “Titanic” phenomenon–at least the first burst of it–is over. The movie will live forever, on video and in re-release, and will always mean something to the people who saw it in first run in 1997 and 1998.
Those quotes at the beginning of today’s column, though . . .
They’re not from the movie. They’re from something that has already lasted more than 80 years.
They are from the official transcripts of the 1912 U.S. Senate investigation of the Titanic disaster. On April 19, 1912– within a week of the sinking of the Titanic, and within days of the arrival in New York of the rescue ship Carpathia, carrying the Titanic’s more than 700 survivors–a U.S. senator from Michigan by the name of William A. Smith convened hearings to try to get to the truth of what had transpired.
Nearly 100 witnesses were called– passengers, crew members, officers. The first sessions of the hearings were called to order in a ballroom of New York’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel; in all, there would be 17 days of hearings.
This was in the days before coast-to-coast radio and television. What was said in that hearing room was recorded by stenographers, as in a courtroom; for all these years the more than 1,100 pages of transcripts have sat largely unread by the public (although historians, including James Cameron, the director of “Titanic,” have found them invaluable).
Because of the movie’s success, an abridged version of the transcripts has been issued by Pocket Books. And the result . . .
Well, the result is an intriguing example of the difference between the visual image and the printed word.
James Cameron’s “Titanic” will most likely be viewed as long as people watch movies. People will see Cameron’s vision of the sinking the same way 300 years from now as they do today–each scene will follow in order, each line of dialogue will be heard in exactly the same place in the movie. Cameron’s version will never change.
It’s a beautiful version to look at, that single movie version. The transcripts of the Titanic hearings offer many versions– many voices, some contradicting each other, all in cold black print on white pages, inviting the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. Depending on the order you read the witnesses’ testimony, depending on how you skip around, you get a varying picture of the sinking. You can’t actually hear the voices, but they are telling you not just a story, but a set of stories.
First class passenger Helen W. Bishop: “My husband awakened me at about a quarter of 12 and told me that the boat had struck something. We both dressed and went up on deck, looked around, and could find nothing. We noticed the intense cold . . .”
Steerage passenger Olaus Abelseth: “Then there was quite a lot of ice on the starboard part of the ship. They wanted us to go down again, and I saw one of the officers, and I said to him: `Is there any danger?’ He said, `No.’ I was not satisfied with that. . . .”
Harold S. Bride, the Titanic’s wireless operator: “In the first place the Californian had called me, sir, with an ice report. I was rather busy just for the minute, and I did not take it. . . .”
John Collins, an assistant cook on the Titanic: “The wind rose, and the waves were coming up, and we were rowing for all we were worth. Then the Carpathia blew her horn, and we all seen the Carpathia. She stopped in the one place. We were at this time within a mile of her, and she did not make any sign of coming over near to us. . . .”
“Titanic,” the movie, will be gone from the theaters one day. It has told a compelling story. But it was just one story. There were thousands more, each a little different. Seven hundred of them from the witnesses who survived; 1,500 more, 1,500 stories never told, from those who never made it out of the sea.
