(April 06, 2022) Robert McQuillan shares some April thoughts…

110 years ago on Sunday 14 April 1912, the massive White Star liner RMS Titanicstruck an iceberg. That catastrophe is generally reported as happening at 23.39… Three hours, one minute later, at 2.40am Monday morning the so-called unsinkable, luxury liner was gone in the calmest but coldest seas (28 degrees under).

Only 750 were plucked from the frigid sea. Sadly, 1523 had perished.

 It was indeed, as the Walter Lord‘s prolific 1955 book and subsequent 1958 movie called it, A Night to Remember.

Titanic’s ‘If Onlys’
Among other beliefs – and ‘believed mysteries or conspiracy theories’ – the following have been associated with that horrifying disaster.

If only…

• The British Board of Trade ruling had called for more lifeboats.
• The crow’s nest spotters binoculars hadn’t disappeared.
• Iceberg warnings had been taken more seriously.
• Bruce Ismay, White Star managing director, hadn’t pressed for a speedier (24k) crossing.
• First officer Murdoch hadn’t reversed the main engines, handicapping the turning ability.
• The ship had had a double hull.
• The watertight doors had been higher than three metres (and there had been more doors).
• There had been more red flares on board.
• The mysterious ship nearby had responded to the distress signals
• The Carpathia hadn’t been so far away to steam to the rescue (four hours away).
• ‘We’ hadn’t booked on the maiden voyage.

• Morgan Robertson’s 1898 romantic novel The Wreck of the Titan or, Futility had been taken seriously. (Later this book would be regarded as ‘prophetic’ as it centred on ‘the largest craft afloat… unsinkable, indestructible she carried as few boats as would satisfy the laws’ being sunk by an iceberg. ‘Fourteen years before the greatest civil maritime disaster of all time, this story eerily prefigured the actual calamity’ of the Titanic).

That’s 12 ‘If Onlys.’

Thirteen is often regarded as unlucky. Christians don’t believe in ‘luck’ as we trust God (or should!), but here’s a thirteenth ‘If only’, a sad one…

• God hadn’t been mocked! Seems it was mockingly, jokingly claimed that even God couldn’t sink Titanic (not that He would have!).

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