A few weeks ago, I came upon a video.
A restoration of the Titanic from the people at Honor & Glory Project 401.
The video is over three hours long, so I watched portions before bed. The music was soothing. The experience gave me a restful feeling before I slept.
I traveled the passages, looked into the 1st, 2nd, steerage, and engine rooms, and where the service attendants and crew ate and slept and lived.
It was a wonderful feeling to see into the great ship far more than anyone ever had before.
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| Honor & Glory, Project 401 |
Her well-appointed rooms, the artwork, the tapestries, the fine linens and upholstery, and the breath-taking woodwork, all of which one wonders could ever be crafted today. And if it could, what untold millions it would take to do so.
But after a few viewings, another mood struck. That of profound sadness and even claustrophobia. The latter not in the true sense. In the sense, I was the only human on this great ship. And no matter how much looked into rooms or along the promenade decks or in the lounges, no one was there. The ship was deadly silent as unto a grave. A grave I will walking through. A grave I wasn’t sure I was meant to be.
Tears came. I fought them back. How silly to cry over a video.
But my loneliness remained, and the emotions hung heavy on my shoulders like dead weight, like they would make my psyche sink into the same black abyss.
Don’t get me wrong. The people at Honor & Glory have made a visual miracle here. A once in a lifetime chance to be aboard a ship that would never be again. That if all had gone to plan, Titanic maybe in existence today as a boutique excursion like the Orient Express.
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| Honor & Glory, Project 401 |
But loss and death overwhelm. I feel panic and pain in those shiny marble halls. I sense loneliness and thirst from the vines and potted palms. I see the lacquered walls and the brilliant lighting, which shed not light but tears. The ship is crying through her rusticles pain.
Somewhere in my video travels, reality hits. I don’t know when. I don’t know where. But as mighty and ripping as a berg into iron. It hits and tears and screeches and ever damages.
All that was organic is long gone — the wood carvings, the wicker and upholstery, the linens and towels and ornate rugs. All gone. Long eaten by the ocean’s micro-organisms. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. All the is created by man is swept away by God.
Yes, inorganic materials will still exist deep within her holds. Like priceless jewels held in the ships’ safe, like the wrought iron and steel and brass and gold. But even time and sea water exposure are aging the ageless. What Honor & Glory shows us is no more. What is left is only our imaginings of a time and place when humans assumed they had tamed Mother Nature and, due to that errant belief, rode high and mighty, and fell and failed.
Yes, there were other great losses of life on the sea well before Titanic set sail. But it was man’s arrogant belief that took sail in Titanic into the unforgiving waves that summarily drowned our hopes and dreams on that clear and frigid night when the sea was as glass. The calm before God’s storm.
This was the first, but not the last, time man would live in hubris before a deadly fall and shun that Mother Nature, not man, stands watch at life’s helm.
I have yet to finish the video. I had to take a break. The emotions, too omnipresent, too overwhelming, too heavy on the lungs to catch my breath, as if I, too, were thrashing, sinking, drowning in the icy sea. But from sorrow and loss and grief and regret, and a wish of what could have been.
In the end, I need people on that ship to feel okay. I need women and mean and children, laughing and talking. The swishing of great gown trains, the clinking of crystal and the glint of solid silver service.
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| Honor & Glory, Project 401 |
I need lively chatter from the First-Class Lounge and cigar smoke haze in the Smoking Room. I need the crew and service people laughing and joking and telling tall tales over their modest meals in the ship’s bowels’ Mess. I need the Titanic’s doctor going over files and the bridge crew giving and obeying orders. I need the White Star flag flapping in a gentle breeze. I need little boys and girls running up and down the Poop Deck, playing ball and skipping rope. I need old men and women lounging in the deck chairs, gazing out to sea and thinking back into their pasts over Darjeeling and freshly baked scones.
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| eBay |
I need so much from Titanic I shall never receive, no matter the wondrous and victorious attempt by the staff at Honor & Glory. I am one human among countless who still want more. Human evolution is a slow battle won.
I wholeheartedly encourage you to watch the Honor & Glory video on YouTube and look up their website, and even donate to their efforts. It’s a world, thanks to their amazing graphic artists, in which we can truly have a look-in and see and feel and miss as if it were our own.
But steel
your emotions. Don’t let them be ripped apart like the rivets in Titanic’s
hull. The weaknesses are still there, the damage still possible. It will be man,
who, as always, will remember and bear the burden of regret.
sebbyvision, TikTok
