Ross: Another Titanic tragedy forces us to consider the nature of tourism
The submersible called the Titan has captured the interest of the world for the last two weeks, since it went missing on June 18. A bit of a controversy is surging as to why anyone would want to go see the wreck of the Titanic.
Some think of it as a sacred site and it must be respected as the resting place of nearly 1,500 people, not treated as a tourist attraction. I must point out, many burial sites attract sightseers, from the nearly 400,000 graves in Arlington National Cemetery, where I visited the grave of John F. Kennedy, to the 249 marble military headstones at the site of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. The site is revered by both non-indigenous and indigenous people. I’ve always been fascinated with the battle. I’ve read about it and would someday like to visit the site. I was once told that a survivor of that historic battle lived in Andover for a while. I have never been able to track it down, but my ear is still to the ground.
I’ve also always been fascinated by the Titanic, ever since I was a little kid and found a tattered book of my father’s about the tragedy packed away in a chest. The movie was cool for a story out of the head of a creative writer. It could have happened. There could be treasure that went down with the ship that has never been recovered, but that isn’t what would draw me to the site – no, not the possibility of treasure. I’m not a treasure seeker, at least not treasure with a monetary value.
I must note, too, that one of the very biggest battle sites, Gettysburg, is not only a grave site with more than 6,000 interments, but also one of the biggest tourist attractions in Pennsylvania. And it is estimated that 9,000 people a day visit the 9/11 Memorial in NYC.
As I said, I think of the resting site of the Titanic as a sacred site, but that doesn’t mean that if I had an extra $250,000 laying around that I wouldn’t visit it.
Some would ask why anyone would want to do those things, visit Arlington, the site of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Gettysburg or 9/11. Others see the mountain and want to climb it because the mountain is there. Not me, I could care less about climbing up a mountainside no matter what is at the top. If it’s the Ark, I’ll take a helicopter, thank you very much.
What I think is in poor taste and a little sacrilegious is the thought of the Coast Guard and other countries investigating the Titan accident. For what purpose? It was an implosion. What is there left to investigate and why risk more lives and waste more money trying to figure out what happened – for money? The people who died on Titan don’t need the money nor do their families; they already have it.
And what are they going to find – a catastrophic failure in the hull. Don’t we already know that?
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In my creative little mind, I see the passengers of the Titan getting their wish as the passengers of the Titanic welcome them aboard, the way they did Rose at the end of the movie Titanic. Can’t you just see them being welcomed onto the ship? But then I have a vivid imagination aided by the big screen and technicolor.
Visiting the Titanic would be an out of this world adventure, like flying into space and visiting the moon or Mars. All way too expensive for the common man, but that doesn’t mean it should not be obtainable. My fear is that whoever controls the site will be forced to make it off limits to the public.
And that shouldn’t be. To my mind, rather than spending billions of dollars investigating an accident for which we already know the reason, why not find a way of marking the site, so that it is visible to anyone sailing that way.
The Titanic is about 2.5 miles deep in the ocean. To date the tallest building in the world is 2,722 feet, or just over half a mile, but wouldn’t it be cool if Titanic’s resting site was marked with some sort of beacon?
— Kathryn Ross writes a weekly column.
This article originally appeared on The Evening Tribune: Kathryn Ross column: Weighing a Titanic dilemma
