Thread by @DanEnRoute

The top question I get after writing SINKABLE is why is the #Titanic so famous? I'll tell you why, and it's not the reasons you think. 1/ thread.

It's not the usual factors. Many ships had sunk on their maiden voyage before. Many ships had been called unsinkable before (esp when steel hulls replaced wood). Many ships sunk carrying rich or famous people before.

It's not the iceberg either. Icebergs had struck ships as long as there had been ships to strike. In fact icebergs were such a common problem in the North Atlantic in late 19th century that by 1912 the Revenue Cutter Service was relieved that iceberg strikes had declined.

It also was the death. Other wrecks had drawn greater losses of life, like the Chinese junk ship Tek Sing, that sank in 1822 and killed 1600, or the French munitions ship Mont-Blanc that exploded in Halifax harbor in 1917 and killed 2000 people ON SHORE

And frankly none of the metaphorical stuff mattered. The "hubris," the "symbol of a new era," etc. Those labels were all assigned decades after the sinking by historians trying to craft sensical narratives.

Here's what actually made the Titanic famous: demographics and good timing. Demographics first. 1500 people died, but 700 people lived, and most of the survivors were young women & children who lived another 50-70 years telling & retelling the story of that night. This was impt:

Because those survivors kept the story alive long enough for factor #2, timing: The 1910s and especially the 1920s was an era of big advances in storytelling. Books became much easier to print and distribute widely. Television appears, and silent movies.

This helps spread the Titanic tale much further than before. It also creates an extensive content library of people, stories, anecdotes, and testimony (side note: I highly recommend reading U.S. Senate transcripts of Titanic inquiry. Fascinating stuff.)

This body of memories informs media treatments of the Titanic in the 20s and 30s, but the biggest one didn't come until the 50s, a book called A Night To Remember by Walter Lord. Lord's book was the definitive account of the tragedy, and it became a big movie in 1958.

Lord's book and film catapulted the Titanic back to the top of public consciousness. My dad once told me that he used to watch A Night to Remember on repeat because it was constantly on TV in the 50s.

The film and the story started to fade in the 60s, but then something else happened: big advances in underwater mapping that supercharged the search for the Titanic wreck. Before then it was impossible to search that deep, so even with the SOS coordinates, the ship was unfindable

Several colorful characters devoted their lives to finding the wreck in the 70s & 80s. I follow them in my book SINKABLE about Titanic obsession. None was more colorful than Jack Grimm, a Texas oilguy, who put millions of his own $ into 3 searches in the 80s and almost found it.

Then in 1985, the wreck is found by a Navy underwater expert named Bob Ballard. Ballard got a lot of acclaim, but we learned later he was on a classified mission to find 2 u.s. nuclear subs and had the benefit of extremely advanced tech created by the government. Big advantage.

The discovery supercharged the story yet again and offered a modern angle for new generations to suddenly care about an old thing that happened 75 years before. And that led to the biggest supercharging of the Titanic story ever...

James Cameron's 1997 film TITANIC. We all saw it, some people dozens of times. Cameron retold the story, but he added a love story, which embedded it deeper in the human soul. People loved this movie, it won best picture.

Notably, Cameron's film was especially popular in China. It grossed huge #s, and even higher when it was re-released in 3D on the 100th anniversary of sinking in 2012. The only full-scale replica of the Titanic in under construx in landlocked Sichuan Province.

The story might've faded again, but this submersible story has made it top international news yet again. And no matter how it ends, it is major. Either they're found and it's the top survival story in human history. Or they die and it 2x's the world's already top tragedy story.

I can go on much longer about Titanic lore and shipwreck obsession. In fact I did! In my book SINKABLE from @DuttonBooks. Wherever books are sold (and @Easton_Press even printed 300 copies in leatherbound)