Mick Clifford: Two tragedies speak to the world we live in
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How was your week? For most of it, me and half the world were transfixed by the five people who were missing on an expedition to the Titanic. It is one of those stories that lodges in the global imagination, full of dread and hope, concern, and fascination.
We have been here before in recent years, me and half the world. In 2010, thirty-three miners were trapped 2,300 feet underground for more than two months. All of them were eventually lifted to safety, the marrow of the earth giving them back up to life, a resurrection from what seemed like certain death. Then in 2018 there were the twelve members of a Thai junior football team, aged between eleven and sixteen, and their 24-year-old coach, all lost to flooded caves with little prospect of survival. But they were found, perched on a rock just above the floodwaters. The world watched on as rescue teams ascended on the mouth of the cave from all over the world to make this a fairytale ending to a potential tragedy of terrible proportions. The only black mark on the whole story was that one of the rescuers died, but even that resonated with ancient values, one man sacrificing his life so that children may have a chance to grow.
So when word came through on Monday about the submersible, a fiberglass capsule the size of a Hiace van, losing contact en route to the Titanic, we all hoped it was déjà vu all over again. The earth had once again laid claim to humans, suspending them at the precipice of life while the world looked on. That the whole shebang was unfolding in the vicinity of the most famous shipwreck in history heaped on the poignancy. When it set sail on its maidan voyage the Titanic was going to show how man had found a way to conquer the might of the natural world. The world just shrugged and sent it to the bottom of the North Atlantic.
Now, with accelerated technological advances, an intrepid entrepreneur and explorer had devised a way to visit the past. For quarter of a million dollars a head, you could travel down to view the fabled wreck, and in the process demonstrate that nowhere today is unconquerable. Nature, we have your measure at last.
All the way through till Thursday, as boats and planes attempted to comb an area apparently the size of Ireland, there was no escaping the vicarious feeling that could have been permeating the stricken vessel.
Through all that time, the mind’s eye saw a movie reel unspool. A uniformed woman before a screen in a darkened control room spots a bleep, emitting from a remote search instrument. Alert, alert, we have found them. A plane circles over the grey Atlantic waves, a ship motors urgently to the spot, and before long the hiace van is hauled to the surface and all emerge safe, sound, and shaken.
It was not to be. Eventually, the ocean gave up the clues as to its continuing majesty. Debris from the submersible was located not far from the Titanic. A general consensus now has it that the vessel imploded as it neared the wreck. The only merciful aspect of the narrative is that the occupants in all likelihood died instantly and were not subjected to an unspeakable terror of waiting for the end.
And so it is that the curse of the Titanic endures. Five more lives have been taken, along with the estimated 1500 who were on the ship when it sank on its maiden voyage in 1912. In the different world that existed then, many of those travelling were immigrants fleeing poverty en route to the new world. These immigrants, confined to third-class cabins, suffered the greatest loss of life as the ship went down.
Today, the sea which bridges the old and new worlds is the Mediterranean. This week, as I and half the world were fixated on the extensive and expensive search in the north Atlantic, another search was taking place in the waters south of Greece.
On June 15, a small trawler, weighed down with up to 700 migrants sank about fifty miles off the coast of south Greece. There are around one hundred survivors, but most of the others are believed to have died in one of the worst such disasters in recent years. Throughout the week, bodies were brought ashore and laid out in rows in an attempt to identify and account for who was on board and arrange some form of cheap and cursory burial.
The migrants were fleeing war and poverty in Syria, Afghanistan, Egypt, and Pakistan. In all likelihood, the total amount paid by these desperate people to the boat’s operator was less than the quarter of a million dollars forked out by each individual on the voyage down to the Titanic. We do not know the names of the migrants who died. Their families may not find out for weeks, or months, or ever, whether they had been on board, within sight of Europe, and all its promise, when the trawler went down.
In contrast with the frantic rescue effort in the North Atlantic, there are questions over whether the Greek coastguard acted as promptly as the tragedy demanded while the trawler sank. Huge value was correctly placed on the lives of the Titanic five. By contrast, it would appear that some in Europe regard the rescue of drowning migrants as possibly exercising a pull factor in encouraging more to come. On Thursday, hours before the debris was found near the Titanic, another boat sank on the far side of the Atlantic off the Canary Islands. The vessel was packed with up to 60 migrants, at least 35 of whom drowned.
Both the Titanic adventure seekers and all the migrants who drowned were aware of the dangers of undertaking their respective voyages. For the former, the risk must have been deemed worthy in pursuit of witnessing a wonder, relating it to everybody, and revelling in the sense that they had experienced something as if from another world. The migrants had more earthy dreams propelling them into peril. They saw a future where they might be given the opportunity to live rather than exist, to strive to make the most of their lives, to one day witness their children receiving an education and prospering as citizens of a wealthy country.
Their story is at the heart of human experience, their tragedy vast and personally felt by families across continents. Yet for many of us, it was the other unfolding drama that captured our imagination this week. It says a lot about the world in which we now live.
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