Thread by @remembrancermx

Since we’re all talking about the Titanic today, the reason finding the Titanic was such a Huge Deal is because it proved the women who survived the disaster weren’t hallucinating.

Survivors of the Titanic were, unlike most maritime disasters, primarily women & children. They were also able to see most of the disaster up until the electricity gave out. This provided a rare glimpse of how such disasters occur.

The women on those lifeboats were adamant the Titanic sunk like this: the stern flew upwards, then a loud cracking noise filled the air, the stern came back down because the ship had split in two, then the stern went back up & finally sank.

The critical point is this: the Titanic absolutely split in half before sinking, & the survivors absolutely saw this happen.

But those running the inquiries back home were men. And a ship like this hasn’t sunk before, so they assumed the disaster had occurred as all other similar disasters did: with a whole ship sinking into the waves.

The women survivors were utterly dismissed in their testimony. The noise they heard was deemed to be something else entirely, & they were told they imagined those last moments due to the stress of the situation.

In the face of this opposition, not many survivors held onto their initial view of how the ship sank. Some were convinced otherwise but most likely most just decided to be quiet. Why argue anyhow? Their loved ones were dead regardless.

Finding the Titanic wreckage, then, was critical because it was the first time survivor testimony was proven correct. Hundreds of feet separated the two parts of the ship. There was no way it could have sunk in one piece.

There absolutely is a purpose to uncovering shipwrecks. Even where survivors to a disaster exist, they’re busy surviving. Shipwrecks tell a greater part of the story, & they are physical evidence that cannot be dismissed.

All of this to say, I’m not against trying to find the ship in the first place, even if it is a recent mass gravesite. It honors both the dead & the living to finally be able to tell the story as it occurred. But once science is satisfied? I dunno. Maybe leave it be.

The Titanic is an absolutely fascinating perfect storm of a disaster that deserves further inquiry by folks, btw, just a total system collapse in every possible way.

(And no I don’t have sources, my source is reading everything about the Titanic since I was like 12 then visiting the museum a few years back)

Oh cool there’s some folks here who talk about seeing it break, that’s rad encyclopedia-titanica.org/the-titanic-br…

Muting this because I’m exhausted sorry

Holy shit actual survivor testimony

https://twitter.com/hannahpearld/status/1671221724912951303