On April 10, 1912, the RMS Titanic, owned by the White Star Line, left Southampton, England on her maiden voyage to New York City, with 2,224 people on board. Among the passengers were some of the wealthiest people in the world, such as Isidor Straus, co-owner of the American department store chain Macy's, and his wife Ida, and American millionaire John Jacob Astor IV with his young wife Madeleine. However, there were also over a thousand immigrants from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, headed to the United States or Canada in search of a better life. At the time, the Titanic was the largest and one of the most luxurious ships ever built, and was called "unsinkable" by the media. No one, however, expected the tragedy that was to occur a few days after it left England.
On April 15, 1912 at 11:40pm, the Titanic collided with an iceberg as it was sailing across the North Atlantic Ocean. This collision caused substantial damage to the ship, causing it to fill up with water. The passengers were evacuated and put on lifeboats, some of which were only partly filled. By 2:20 am, the ship broke into two and eventually sank, with more than a thousand people still on board. Those who were left on the water died from hypothermia, due to the freezing water temperatures.
The disaster caused shock and outrage around the world, especially after primary investigations revealed several regulatory and operational failures, which eventually led to major improvements in maritime safety regulations, which are still strictly observed until the present. Among those that were heavily criticized were the lack of lifeboats, which were not enough to carry all passengers and crew on board in the event of a disaster. There was also a lack of proper evacuation procedures, leading to the deaths of many passengers (mostly men) who were on the Second or Third Class cabins. Many believe that if proper procedures were observed, more people would have survived, and the loss of breadwinners in the families would have been avoided.
100 years later, the Titanic continues to fascinate people around the world. The Titanic's memory continues to be kept alive with books, movies, musicals, and exhibits about the disaster, the most popular being the 1997 film by James Cameron, which today is the second highest-grossing film of all time. This year, in commemoration of the disaster's 100th anniversary, the 1997 film was re-released in theatres, this time in 3D. There have been ceremonies and commemorations at the site where the Titanic's wreckage had been found, and memorials of the disaster are once again filled with flowers.
But--100 years after the disaster and after much media coverage and hype, have the people actually learned from this experience? The countless more maritime disasters which occurred in the years after that seems to have put all those changes and safety regulations revisions to waste. In December 1997, the passenger ferry M/V Dona Paz collided with an oil tanker near Marinduque, Philippines, which resulted in a large fire which subsequently killed over 4,000 people, easily surpassing the Titanic disaster's death toll. The M/V Dona Paz was found to be overcrowded, and there was a lack of safety equipment. Many people on board the ship were not even on the official manifest.
What will it take for the people to actually learn their lesson? Should we wait for more disasters to occur before we decide that enough is enough and we actually have to step up to ensure the safety of everyone? This is too much of a gamble that we can no longer take, and it's no longer just disasters at sea we're talking about here. Every year, people die as a result of accidents or disasters which could have been avoided in the first place. Every year, men, women and children die from accidents which could have been avoided if only people had taken proper measures to avoid it, if they only had the initiative.
We cannot let another Titanic or Dona Paz disaster to happen. Although these accidents may sometimes be unpredictable, the best that we could do is to at least take the necessary steps to lessen their impact on the people's lives, which no one really seems to be doing that much. I think now would be the perfect time to do that.
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