RMS Titanic 100 years later

 

Has the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic aroused the same nostalgia elsewhere in the world as in Canada? The Canadian connection to this maritime disaster is through Halifax where several hundred drowned victims were buried. The state-of-the-art luxury liner was on her maiden voyage en route to New York on that fatal night of April 14-15, 1912 when she struck an iceberg, began to take on water and three hours later slowly sank in ice cold waters about 3.7 kilometers deep. Of the 2223 people on board, 1514 drowned. There was dramatically higher mortality among Third Class passengers (for whom there were no lifeboats) and crew, than among those traveling First Class.  This maritime disaster happened when British hubris was probably greater than ever before or since. The event is a metaphor for the decline and fall of the British Empire, perhaps for the decline of Western civilization, over the past 100 years.