By Doug Draper
“Dance band on the Titanic, Sings ‘Nearer My God to Thee’, The iceberg’s on the starboard bow, Won’t you dance with me.” – from Harry Chapin’s 1970s album ‘Dance Band on the Titanic’.
One hundred years ago this Saturday, April 14, the world’s greatest ship – considered a masterpiece of technology in its day that “not even God could sink” – steamed forth proudly and possibly arrogantly, at a high speed at the time of more than 20 knots, toward an iceberg that just happened to be one of this earth’s many and possibly more minor creations.
The iceberg some allege to be the one that sank the Titanic and the lives of some 1,500 of its passengers and crew. Could one like it still be out there, waiting for the rest of us?
So much for our hubris. So much for a proud arrogance that says our technical smarts has dominion over this planet.
There have been many things said about this, one of the world’s most famous disasters. There have been many metaphors, from the ‘shuffling of the deck chairs on the Titanic’ to you name it, to describe the many other messes we continue to make on this planet.
What I keep thinking about is that “unsinkable ship” steaming toward that iceberg, with the dance band entertaining a mostly comfortable and complacent list of first-class passengers in the background. I think about that dance band still playing today, as the deniers of climate change and any one of another of economic and related disasters face us. I think about those who say; ‘Just give me more tax cuts’ or ‘Keep giving me another three per cent annual raise’, and I’m just thinking about that iceberg out there, ready to sink us again.
Jack Philips sent out Titanic's distress signals. Who will send out ours?
Will there be more distress signals, like the ones sent out by Titanic’s wireless operator Jack Phillips, urging any other ship that may be around to come to the rescue? Will there be any ships left, by the time we get through doing what we do despite any and all warnings, to come to the rescue?
I will leave this post with a few last words from the late Harry Chapin (some of you may remember him for the songs ‘Taxi’ and ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’) who wrote of the Titanic;
“A familiar name is being etched on the bow of Space Ship Earth. There are icebergs up ahead but life goes on as usual. Down in the cramped quarters of steerage up to the sumptuous salons of first class, the every multiple variations of oft-repeated themes make a dancing counterpart to the long low melancholy dirge of the fog horn.”
And out there in the fog, as too many of us deny the possibility of climate change or more economic meltdowns due to greed, or another catastrophic world war due religious prejudices or our thirst for what is left of the world’s energy supplies, the dance band keeps playing “Nearer My God To Thee.”
(Niagara At Large invites our readers to share their views on this post. Please remember that we only post comments by those of you brave enough to share your first and last names.)
Niagara At Large 
Sad to say the Titanic might not have sank if they decided to save money and not cap the tops of the sections, the designers of the Titanic wanted totally sealed sections along with the automatic doors on the bulkheads would have kept the ship afloat even with 3 or 4 sections flooded. that meant water went from section to section pulled the boat down into the cold North Atlantic, back in the late 1950s I crossed that part of the Atlantic
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I agree with your analogy and will offer another comparison: Rome burns while Nero fiddles.
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The metaphor is very fitting. We are sailing our own ship, planet earth, right into the ice field and just assume or hope we can make it through. Others deny that the ice field is even there out of sheer stupidity or because they have an agenda. Unfortunately the result will be the same. Of course the Titanic era “class” system remains intact whether we admit it or not. The poorest and least significant among us (the majority or 99%) will be the ones who suffer the most. When earth hits the metaphorical iceberg however, we will have no lifeboats. We only have this tiny green and blue planet with no help in sight.
There are other Jack Philips out there trying to spread the message like Gore, Suzuki and countless others but we are not listening. Not unlike the Titanic passengers or other ships nearby who were incredulous that the huge ship on the immense sea could be destroyed, we refuse to believe our space ship in the immense universe could become unliveable.
The story of the Titanic resonates still because hubris among the human race is as omnipresent as ever and it will be the cause of our demise.
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It’s the metaphor I am responding to. ‘There’e an iceberg in the fog’ or an even older one about the ‘here be dragons’. We are headed for one or the other, doug, you are right.
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The Titanic error of the past 50 years -especially for Ontario- was to use & trust Nuclear reactors to generate electricity.
The high cost of Nuclear power -“Stranded Debt” on your hydro bill- has de-industrialised Niagara by raising hydro rates in the 1970’s, and will drive away jobs across Ontario in the nex decade, as hydro rates rise to pay to refurbish &/or replace our soon-to-expire Pickering & Bruce reactors.
Can you imagine what it will cost
– to build new reactors?
– to decommission & store the retired ones for 10,000 years?
– to store the spent nuclear fuel rods for 10,000 years?
And where? In Our back yard, of course! The NIMBY complaints about Big Wind and Solar will be minor hic-coughs compared to the coming battles over Nuclear Disposal. Better get your lead-lined underwear and overcoats ready….
PS. Home Hybrid wind-solar electricity is now cheaper than standard Hydro rates, and you can do it in stages; wonder when people will start acting on this?
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I’ll try again. It is the metaphor doug presents which interests me. What the future will bring, when we are presented with insurmountable icebergs in our political system, or, as they said in the middle ages, about the sea, ‘here be Dragons’. It is our future, I fear.
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Another worth while metaphor would be” up a creek without a paddle” and the boat has a hole in it, we cannot bail out fast enough, I believe we are too late to do anything , the global warming denyers have won and they will suffer the same consequences that all of us will.
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The worst thing about the flurry of interest in the Titanic is that everyone is ignoring that the 3rd class passengers were LOCKED below decks. They weren’t even allowed the illusion of a chance of survival. Why? they were assumed to be poor, ignorant and might become hysterical and inconvenient. Perhaps more people would have survived if there had been a bit more hysteria and challenge to the “authorities.
I remember the people in the World Trade towers that were told to go back to their offices.
And people wonder why I don’t trust authority!
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Interesting comment, Sheridan, and quite true. Elizabeth Renzetti wrote about those passengers in the Globe and Mail on Saturday. if you haven’t seen her piece, you should look it up. If you cannot get it, I will try to get it for you as I have emailed her back and forth over the years.
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