More than 100 years after the “unsinkable” RMS Titanic sank, a collection of over 5,500 items salvaged from its wreckage is about to go under the hammer.
That there are many bidders, private and public, for the collection speaks a lot about our fascination with grand ocean liners in general and the Titanic in particular.
As I write, it’s unclear who will end up owning the artefacts. The British Museum — the vast repository of world history that every London tourist must visit at least once — was considered the top bidder, and it has a fundraising campaign supported by, among others, James Cameron, who directed the movie Titanic.
That the 1997 film remains at No. 2 on the list of top-grossing films of all time is another pointer to the intense public interest in the tragedy.
In Northern Ireland, you can visit Titanic Belfast, a museum that is billed as the “world’s leading tourist attraction”. It seems odd that a city would celebrate its role in building a boat that famously sank at the cost of more than 1,500 lives, but there you go (and if you’re in the UK, you probably will).
The public obsession with the Titanic is never far away when you take a cruise holiday. If you get into a casual conversation, it’s very likely that someone — probably a first-time cruiser — will reference the Titanic and/or the more recent tragedy of the Costa Concordia.
The truth, of course, is that cruising is perfectly safe these days — statistically much more so than driving in a car. Yet our view of life on the open seas is coloured by both the romance of the film and its heartbreaking end and the knowledge that it is rooted in history.
Travel is about the here and now, but sometimes it’s also about the past. It’s about places, things — castles, churches, monuments — and events that shaped the world as we see it.
Which is why the real-life collection of items salvaged from a ship that sank in 1912 is set to sell for more than US$19.5 million. And, wherever those artefacts turn up, there will be many people willing to pay to see them for many, many years to come.
