Selling the spirit of the stiff upper lip

THE SINKING of ‘Titanic’ was the sensational international news story of the early 20th century. The catastrophe was a shocking blow to society’s faith in technology and the certainty of progress.

Relatives and friends of the dead, from American millionaires to the emigrant poor and the labouring crew, were plunged into grief. A sense of public mourning prevailed.

The circumstances of the disaster and the huge toll of the dead, which included many celebrities, were given saturated press coverage. Newspapers and magazines published memorial supplements, which fed an enormous public appetite for information and boosted circulation figures.

As survivors began to tell their stories, every aspect of the disaster was documented, from hastily written passenger memoirs to evidence at formal inquiries in Washington DC and London. A key text in establishing the popular ‘Titanic’ narrative in words and pictures was the 40-page booklet ‘The Deathless Story of the Titanic’, published in April 1912 by ‘Lloyd’s Weekly News’ and costing only two pence.

‘Titanic’ newsreels for cinemas were quickly put together. Many of the scenes were inauthentic, however, and incorporated ships purporting to be ‘Titanic’.

One of the first-class survivors was the American silent film star Dorothy Gibson. Within weeks she was playing herself in the first Titanic disaster movie, ‘Saved from the Titanic’. It was released in the UK as ‘A Survivor of the Titanic’. No prints of the film have survived.

While the cultural response to the tragic event was overwhelmingly populist, the literary figures George Bernard Shaw and Joseph Conrad published critical pieces, including on the issue of insufficient lifeboats. The German artist Max Beckman painted ‘The Sinking of the Titanic’ on a giant canvas.

In responding to the huge scale of loss, the qualities of heroism, duty and stoicism in the face of death were universally acclaimed, even if not always accurately. The stiff-upper-lip command “Be British” and the chivalric order “Women and children first” struck sentimental and patriotic chords.

Entrepreneurs, catching the mood of emotion, flooded an eager market with mementos of the disaster. This was the modern ‘Titanic’ industry in embryo.

Commemorative postcards were especially popular, as they combined a high level of memorialisation with the commercial advantages of low cost.

It was believed that the ship’s band’s final piece was ‘Nearer My God to Thee’, and the sheet music became an international bestseller.

The publication of specially composed ‘Titanic’ sheet music and songs was another commercial activity generated by the disaster. In the United States, the first disaster song was published on April 25th, 1912, followed by more than 100 over the next 12 months.

Following the disaster, feelings of loss and bewilderment were expressed in an outpouring of popular verse. Although written from the heart, most of it was doggerel. This, however, does not diminish its social, cultural and historical significance. In Belfast, for example, an anonymous versifier composed ‘The Big Boat 401’, referring to ‘Titanic’’s shipyard number. It is an evocative eight-verse poem, which provides a valuable insight into post-disaster shipyard attitudes:

That ship was flesh and bone of us;

We loved her, and with pride

We admire the men and women

Who like heroes on her died.

Many shipyard workers believed that an apprentice painter working on ‘Titanic’ daubed the challenge “Let God sink this vessel if He can!” in large letters on the hull, before painting it over. After sectarian assaults on Catholic shipyard workers in the highly charged political atmosphere of 1912, a belief spread among many Catholics that the sunken ship had enshrined anti-Catholic messages, such as the alleged ship number 3909 ON. This was a mirror image of the sectarian slogan “No Pope”.

Today ‘Titanic’ is a glittering icon of popular culture, a global brand fusing profit, pleasure and memorialisation. In Belfast, on the centenary of the disaster, the new €120 million Titanic Experience symbolises the ship’s contemporary status in the city. ‘Titanic’ has been embraced as an agent for economic, social and cultural regeneration. A proud ‘Titanic’ past has been reclaimed, and Belfast is now a key destination in the international ‘Titanic’ tourist industry.

‘Titanic’ was built to make money, and 100 years later it is still doing just that.

Michael McCaughan is the author of Titanic: Icon of an Age – An Illustrated Chronicle from Design to Disaster, to be published next week by Blackstaff Press