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Pee Cee Jay
Lessons from the Titanic By Jideofor Adibe I had actually wanted to publish this piece last week to commemorate the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic during its maiden voyage on April 14 1912. I was conflicted on this. Why should I join the bandwagon of those commemorating other people’s history when virtually nothing from our shores is deeemed worthy of commemoration? I abandoned the piece perhaps as a protest - pretty much the same way I have refused to be strongly identified with the ethnicisation of European football league – despite having played football up to the University team level and living in Europe for 22 years. My standard answer to those who ask of the team (meaning of course the English football team) I support has always been: ‘Rangers of Enugu’. Do I mind if they sneer behind my back and call me a yesterday’s man? Not really. I am returning to the Titanic story this week because it is really well documented in books and most memorably in that 1997 film of the same title written, directed and co-produced by James Cameron and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as members of different social classes who fell in love aboard the ill-fated ship. The Titanic, built in Belfast Northern Ireland, was designed to be the epitome of comfort and luxury. One of three Olympic class ocean liners operated by the British company White Star Line, it had advanced safety features such as watertight compartments and remotely activated watertight doors and therefore thought to be unsinkable. It took three years to build and would cost about $400 million in today's US dollars. So impressed were its stakeholders that it was unveiled and promoted as the: ‘Largest and finest steamer in the world’. Legend had it that some of those associated with the ship boasted that not even God could sink it – a blashphemy many historians say was never uttered in relation to the ship. What was not in dispute however was that it was built not only to be the safest and biggest ship of its time but also the last word on comfort and luxury. Yet tragedy struck on its maiden journey.
For its maiden voyage, the Titanic left Southampton on 10 April 1912, calling at Cherbourg in France and Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland before heading westwards towards New York. On April 14 1912 and with 2,235 people on board, it hit an iceberg some 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland which caused its hull plates to buckle inwards in a number of locations on the side of its starboard, opening five of her sixteen watertight compartments to the sea. Within two hours and 40 minutes the 46,382-ton liner, with lifeboats for only 50 percent of her passengers, sank, causing the death of 1,514 people in one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history. There were only 710 survivors. As we celebrate the centenary of this tragedy, it is perhaps germane to reflect on some of the lessons that could be learnt from it: One, sentiments aside, I ask myself the level of technological development in, say my village, Ozubulu, Anambra State, at about the time this supposedly sea goddess was constructed. Yes, I know that some great empires and civilisations existed in some parts of Africa even before the Whiteman came. I believe that at that time in most villages in the country, if the people had woken up and seen such a ship, their first impulse would have been to start worshipping it, wondering what the gods were trying to communicate to them. This is not a put down on our people. Rather it is to underline the progress we have made. These days we talk of ‘catching up’ with those who built the ship as quickly as possible, of vision 20:20:20 and becoming part of the developed world. Given where we were technologically when this ship was built, and where we are today in relation to them, it is obvious that we are really catching up, even if we still have a long way to go. This is really a challenge to the pervasive sense of Afro-pessmisim that one sometimes feels around. Two, an obvious lesson from the Titanic saga is the need to avoid hubris. For most people there is often a big temptation to be overconfident in whatever one believes one has become very experienced in doing or has acquired an unparalleled expertise in. The belief in the Titanic’s ‘unsinkability’ was based on its pioneering new double hull and its series of watertight compartments separated by remote control sealing doors. The designers had figured that in a worst case scenario, the ship would be able to withstand the holing of four of the watertight compartments and still stay afloat. Unfortunately, the collision with the iceberg holed five compartments. The lesson is that the moment we begin to believe our own hype or the hype of the sycophants around us, that should trigger an alarm bell in us that we have indeed become vulnerable. In fact so confident were the crew in the ‘unsinkability’ of the Titanic that they took less than half the number of lifeboats that were required for the number of passengers on board. Additionally, it was alleged that the lookouts had no binoculars because they were left behind at Southampton, where Titanic began her voyage – because it was thought unnecessary for such an ‘unsinkable’ ship. It has been suggested that with binoculars the lookouts would have spotted the iceberg much earlier and perhaps avoided the tragedy. As a young boy in Onitsha in the 1970s, I recall we used to go to the bank of the River Niger to watch a certain young boy who swam in the River Niger and performed several tricks. One day he dived into the water and never came up again. The lesson is that apart from God’s guarantees, we are all vulnerable no matter what we believe makes us invincible. Three, there is often a need to go beyond appearances and look deeper for the underlying causes of a phenomenon. This is common sense that often turns out not to be so common. On the Titanic, it was said that almost everyone, including the captain, was way too busy partying when young Fredrick Fleet, the junior watchman, spotted the iceberg on Sunday night at 11:35 pm. The night was said to be clear and free of fog, meaning there was really no reason to hit the iceberg at all. The iceberg that common eyes could see was only its tip, hence the upper structure of the ship that it damaged was very limited, so initially no one worried that much. The problem however is that two-thirds of the iceberg was below the surface, unseen, and it was this unseen part that ripped the deadly holes in the hull below the waterline and ultimately sank the ship. The lesson here is that the instinctive desire, especially in our type of society, to elevate the institutional manifestations of a phenomenon to its defining characteristic could mean that most of the time we end up dealing with the symptoms of a problem rather than its cause. We often see this in our approach to many issues – from Boko Haram to the problems in our education and health sectors. Often the problems persist or mutate because we refuse to accept that what is observed could have an underlying cause, especially when such underlying causes do not fit into the binoculars through which we filter the realities around us. Four, the Titanic tragedy also calls to mind the class or primordial interest that the leadership of any country or organisation unconsciously projects or defends, especially when it matters most. Historians of the Titanic tragedy often note that the major death toll took place among the ‘little people’, essentially those in the Third Class cabin. Though women and children were prioritised in the rescue, the leadership of the ship has often been pilloried for this apparent discrimination against the ‘little guys’. Some of the male survivors, notably the White Star Line's chairman, J Bruce Ismay, were accused of cowardice for leaving the ship while people were still on board and consequently socially ostracised. Wherever we are stationed in life, when it matters most, on whose side do we pitch our tents? Five, the Titanic tragedy raises questions about fate and its ironies. When do we know when a particular discomfort is designed to save us from a bigger tragedy? For instance it was said that the Titanic just narrowly missed a collision with another ship SS New York when it was coming out of Southampton after New York’s mooring cable snapped. It was said that sharp steering by the Titanic captain saved the day as it avoided a collision by less than five feet. In retrospect, what seemed like a good fortune at that time turned out not to be so. The belief is that if the two ships had collided, the worst that could have happened would be that the Titanic’s journey would have been delayed by several hours, possibly days. But that accident, had it happened, would perhaps have saved the ship from the greater tragedy of the iceberg. So how do we fathom out the irony of fate? |