Hello! Hands up those who think the Titanic was sunk by a gigantic cheesy on a stick floating in the North Atlantic on a dark night in April. So many of you eh! Well that’s alright. You just keep buying your half rotten organic vegetables from the local farm shop and putting your marker against the name of the Liberal Democrat candidate in the elections. Alternatively how many of you think the ship sank because its Captain was mainly interested in breaking Atlantic crossing records for his company, disregarded weather reports and had his head up the arse of all his society and celebrity passengers most of the time? Hmm, about the same number. Finally, hands up those who believe that the rivets in the hull were made of third rate steel and that the maritime pride of the British Empire, despite all the fanfare publicity, was just a big accident waiting to happen?
The floating coffin theorists may have a point. The rivets holding the steel plates together sheared under pressure allowing the initial gash to extend along much of the hull. This more likely possibility, however, has been submerged in recent weeks under the glossy romanticised 100th anniversary commemoration coverage of the Titanic’s sinking, turned by the media into a revolving morbidity fest of upper class swells in dinner suits and their jewelled ladies, palm court orchestras, the lavish opulence of the décor of the first class state apartments, the Dining Room, the Ballroom, the Billiards Room and the Library. A bit like Cluedo on Water with the ship as the victim!
Then of course there were the many hundreds of lackeys provided by White Star Line to doff their hats, curtsy or stand by waiting on the whims of their masters and madams. Exactly the way it was in 1912 in a deeply servile British society with the servile knowing their place, a situation reflected precisely in the social order maintained on the vessel. And just think, two years later, millions of this same class dressed in khaki were sent over the top by the same masters and mown down like flies on the battlefields of France, giving up their precious lives for the monstrous cracker motto lie, Those Who Die Fighting So Shall They Have Increase.
How little has been said of the deep contempt shown by the Company and maritime regulations at the time towards the steerage passengers locked up below all this froth, providing lifeboats sufficient in number only for the glittering few. Worse still, the hateful attitude of the merchant mariners aboard towards the poor and unfortunate bound for America and a new life. No, the recent media fest was more a demonstration of the wealth and celebrity of 1912 society for the wealth and celebrity of our own deeply divided society of 2012. Only for the wealth and celebrity of 1912 there was something more than a cheesy on a stick waiting in the freezing North Atlantic waters that one night in April. A great big ice crystal was heading their way carrying a serious message. You may be the Titanic, with all that publicity about being unsinkable… the best that there is… BUT DON’T FUCK WITH ME BOY OR YOU’RE GOING DOWN!
So there it was, just a great big crystal bob-bob-bobbing along in the ocean minding its own business and doing its thing. Having a free ride down the current without a care in the world. A free spirit you might say. Maybe giving shelter to some North Atlantic wildlife. For those who believe in the spiritual power of crystals, think of all that clear pristine power, all that vast concentration of energy packed together in an infinitely complex lattice. Just think of it! Can’t you feel the energy of this wondrous phenomenon of nature? Such a marvellously energising free spirit!
Then along comes this tin coffin, inside of which are all those dressed up swells and their ladies, sitting at the Captain’s table guzzling champagne and talking superior cobblers.
I really must get all those wretched men in my factories to work harder. Can’t afford to have any of them idling about for what we pay them…
I wholeheartedly agree with you my dear fellow… If we’re to sink more money in on the Exchange those bloody workers must be taught they can’t have a free ride…
Oh I so agree with you Percy. It seems that even the chambermaid thinks she can get above her station these days…
Good God! You having trouble with your servants, George?
Yes, there’s this long tin coffin, thin as a pencil with four funnels on top all puffing out smoke.
Toot toot! We’re the Titanic and were unsinkable so piss off you dirty big water ice crystal or I’ll run you down like a dog!
You can see it all, can’t you readers? This unsinkable, glittering, unchallengeable cross section of British society with a handful of their upstart American cousins aboard. Absolute wealth, power and contempt for everyone and everything. Riding the Atlantic with supreme confidence because no-one else counts and then this little crystal bobbing along in all that expanse of water. No engines, power or steering. No vanity or boasting. Just unpretentiously drifting along in the current.
Now I ask you, who’s getting in who’s way here? How much publicity has been given over to the crystal itself in recent weeks? You all know about Lady Farthingale and her silk knickers, the wretched do nothing Captain with the beard, the Dining Room with the Mirrors, the plates, the crockery and the seating arrangements. Everything down to the menus. Every little detail about the coffin and its clientele, the honourable this one and lady that one, then all the steerage. There’s even Di Caprio playing a broth of a boy in a flaky romance that you all think could have happened to you! Then there’s all the underwater exploration of the wreck. Talk about morbid obsession! Perfect for suburban lower middle class housewives dripping snobbery, nostalgia and more. Yes, it’s all been there, all the way down to the last monogrammed bog roll, but how many of you know about the crystal that gave it the kiss off?
I’m not talking about something that took a hundred years to pop out of a glacier in Greenland. The kind of thing you see in a science reality program presented by some cheesy northerner with a gratingly erudite accent. Nothing like that. I’m talking more about energy levels. All those crystals of ice compacted together. I mean you know what it’s like when some kid chucks a well-made snowball at you and catches your ear. Little bastard! Your hands immediately get busy working up something much bigger. You’ve been smacked in the gob and you know all about it. Well now, think of the snowman the kids made in the garden, the one with a carrot for a nose. They put your old hat on it and it looks like Vince Cable. The one next to it’s even more innovative. With the inverted plant pot on its head and a geranium sticking out the top it’s a dead ringer for Oliver Letwin! Now think of that snowman being the size of your house, or more realistically ten times as big as St Pauls. All that crystal power and energy drifting along in deep water and coming towards it some shiny new biscuit tin out of Belfast.
Well who’s kidding who here? You may want to call it an iceberg, the thing that fucked over the pride of an Empire, created a whole new souvenir industry and gave you a belly full of puerile nostalgia, but there are many other folk out there who know better. With all that locked up energy drifting along waiting to be released, countless millions of alternative therapy enthusiasts with a far better understanding like to think of it simply as… THE CRYSTAL THAT SANK THE TITANIC.
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