Heroes of the Night: Titanic’s Legacy
The day after the Carpathia docked in New York, the U.S. Senate formed a committee and began an investigation into the disaster to ascertain who was at fault for the Titanic’s foundering and the loss of life. A similar investigation with similar goals in mind was held in Britain after the American inquiry had concluded. At both affairs, numerous witnesses were called to testify. Despite the considerable time devoted to the endeavors on both sides of the Atlantic, The stories of the Third Class passengers remained largely untold. No Third Class passengers spoke at the British inquiry. Officials denied that there were ever locked gates that separated Third and Second Class and that Third Class passengers were otherwise kept back. Only three Third Class passengers testified at the American inquiry, two of whom confirmed that they had been prevented from going up to the boat decks. Even so, none of them felt that they had been victims of any extraordinary discrimination.
In the weeks and months after the sinking, Titanic was kept fresh in American memory in a variety of ways beyond books and newspapers. People commemorated the disaster in a variety of official and unofficial ways. Picture post cards, sheet music, statues and memorials, and souvenir literature (designed to accompany commemorative and memorial events) were abundant. Memoirs were published. People gave interviews. There were memorial services. People wrote songs and fiction about the ship, and some even made movies. The first film about the Titanic, titled Saved From the Titanic, was released only one month after the sinking. It starred Dorothy Gibson, an actress who really survived the sinking. No copies of the movie survive today, although stills from the movie’s promotional materials exist and can be viewed online. People also found ways to reap financial benefit from the situation. For example, insurance companies used the sinking to sell policies.
Titanic remained in the public consciousness until 1914, when World War I presented more immediate issues that required attention. Titanic had begun to disappear from public memory even earlier, though, in 1913, and remained so until the 1950s, when the story became a commercial success again. In 1955, Walter Lord made the first substantial effort to address the fate of Titanic’s Third Class passengers in his book A Night to Remember. Forty years later, James Cameron would also tackle the myth of First Class heroism in his 1997 film Titanic. In his film, Cameron flipped what had been the prevailing hero myth on its head by making Third Class passengers the heroes and First Class passengers the villains.
Immediately after the Titanic foundered, rigid social conventions defined heroism, and upper class elites defined those social standards. They barred anyone who was not part of their world from entering their memory as admirable participants. Social division would not allow them to see past class in determining who deserved to be called a hero. First Class men automatically earned the right to be called hero, unless something made that impossible, as was the case with Bruce Ismay. Conversely, Third Class passengers were automatically cast as villains and cowards. There was little chance at all of them being remembered as heroes, regardless of how heroic their actions were. People viewed these early recollections of the disaster through the tint of strict class division and prejudice. The fact that more recent interpretations of the disaster present Third Class passengers in anything other than a negative light suggests that the tint that once colored the public memory of Third Class passengers has finally been removed.
