At 10:23 PM 7/13/98 -0500, you wrote:

>Several years ago there was a Titanic exhibit at the South Street Seaport in
>NYC. It was pretty dark inside, with lighted displays, and there was I think
>ragtime music playing--possibly not what the band actually played when the
ship
>was sinking but evocative of the time.

Actually, yes, the band did play ragtime as the ship sank.  Contrary to
popular myth, they did not start playing hymns but continued to play the
popular fare of the day, which was ragtime as to not depress the guests
further.  There is a great cd that came out a few years ago called
something like "Music From the Titanic."  It has selects that were played
on the Titanic as well as gives the story of those heroic musicians who
never stopped playing.

>There was one exhibit case that included a little tiny replica of every
single
>person on the ship--passengers and crew--that somehow showed whether they had
>been saved or lost. Possibly the lost ones were grayish and the saved ones
>white. It was obvious that many of the crew and many of the passsengers below
>first class had been saved, contrary to what is conveyed by the film.

And contrary to the movie, there were enough life boats by British law and
standards.  British law stated that one person in a lifeboat occupied 2.5
feet (or something decimal like that.)  The number of square-footage in the
lifeboats was equal to the amount of people on the ship with each life boat
holding something like 65.5 people.  (I forget the exact numbers but it did
work out that a .5 person was in each boat.)  Obviously, this was not going
to work because a) you can't put .5 people in a boat and b) you can't fill
a lifeboat to capacity and lower it down 12 stories into the water.  The
weight in the middle of the boat would cause it to crack in two.
Furthermore, since the ship was listing on it's side, a number of the
lifeboats could not be lowered because they were jammed up against the side
of the ship thus reducing the number of boats that could be used.

My personal take on the entire movie is stated in the bumpersticker "The
boat sank, get over it."  I was also disappointed that someone who could
reconstruct every last detail of the ship and insist on actual period
garments for costumes, did such a lousy job with recreating the history of
the events.

But this is such a weighty topic for so early on a Tuesday.

Deb  :)

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