'How To Survive The Titanic,' And Sink Your Name

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White Star Line heir J. Bruce Ismay was one of 325 men to survive the sinking of the Titanic.

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October 15, 2011

J. Bruce Ismay probably shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as any of the true criminals of the 20th century, but for many years he may have been the most universally despised man in the Western world.

Ismay, heir to the prominent British White Star Line shipping company, owned the Titanic, and he's the one who said it would be fine to put just 20 lifeboats on a ship that could hold 2,800 people. Why clutter the decks, he argued, when the ship itself is a lifeboat?

On the night of April 14, 1912, when the Titanic hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic, Ismay discovered just how wrong he had been. He jumped into one of the last lifeboats to leave the crippled ship — and he survived.

But by the time the Titanic's survivors reached New York, Ismay was one of the most reviled men on Earth. In How to Survive the Titanic: The Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay, Frances Wilson, a fellow at London's Royal Society of Literature, tries to explain the man so many grew to hate.

Ismay's 'Empty Ship'

Wilson tells NPR's Scott Simon that there were many different accounts of just how Ismay survived.

"Some people describe Ismay as getting into the first lifeboat," she says. "Other people describe Ismay as being ordered into a lifeboat by the captain."

How to Survive the Titanic

The Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay

by Frances Wilson

Hardcover, 328 pages | purchase

• nonfiction
• history & society
• biography & memoir

MORE ON THIS BOOK:

• NPR reviews, interviews and more
• Read an excerpt

Ismay told yet another story. He said he helped load eight lifeboats on the starboard side of the ship and when it looked like the deck was clear and there was no one else left, he jumped into an open spot in one of the last boats to leave.

"Ismay describes leaving behind him an empty ship," Wilson says. "Obviously we knew there were 1,500 people on that ship so it was by no means empty."

Crew Or Passenger?

Needless to say, after the ship sank, there were investigations. New York, Washington and London all conducted inquiries during which passengers were asked to account for their own survival, then account for Ismay's.

The inquiries established that Ismay didn't push anyone out of their spot on the lifeboat, but there were debates as to whether or not he actually had a claim to the empty seat he took.

"What Ismay himself said, and what he stressed again and again and again, was that his status on the Titanic entitled him to a place in the lifeboat because, he said, he was a regular passenger on the ship," Wilson explains. "He wasn't a member of the crew. The crew, like the captain, [was] expected to go down with the ship, and this is really what the inquiries focused on: How could he have been a passenger when he didn't pay for his ticket?"

Villains Of The Titanic

The tragedy and the investigations that followed destroyed Ismay's reputation. Wilson says she didn't quite grasp what the Titanic did to Ismay's name until she started reading newspapers from the time.

"He was absolutely loathed in America," she says. "What seemed to happen with Ismay is that the fantastically complicated story of the Titanic was simplified into a kind of pantomime of one villain and a lot of heroes."

But Ismay wasn't the only villain. The British Board of Trade had originally said the Titanic could carry even fewer lifeboats than it had onboard.

"When Ismay said, 'OK, let's not have 48 lifeboats, let's go to sea with 20 lifeboats,' the British Board of Trade requirement was 16 lifeboats," Wilson says. "So Ismay was in excess of those. And so, in a sense, the British Board of Trade [was] the bigger [villain]."

Jonathan Ring

Frances Wilson is also the author of The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth,winner of the British Academy Rose Mary Crawshay Prize.

The 'Difference Between Surviving And Living'

How to Survive the Titanic started out as a book about the parallels between writer Joseph Conrad and the great ship. According to Wilson, those parallels include the fact that the original manuscript of Conrad's short story "Karain" went down with the Titanic, and that Conrad had written a detailed account of Ismay's fall 12 years before it even happened in the novel Lord Jim, about an Englishman who jumps from a sinking ship into a lifeboat.

"He's a member of the crew on this ship and is then seen as this scapegoat for that scandalous experience," Wilson says, "and Lord Jim tries to find a way of living with the acute consciousness of lost honor."

So, too, does Ismay — though not very successfully. Wilson says that while other survivors could eventually find a way to move on from the tragedy, Ismay and his family simply couldn't. His wife went so far as to ban any conversation about the Titanic from taking place in Ismay's presence, but Ismay still had a lot to say about it. So instead of confiding in his family, he turned to another survivor, Marian Thayer, an American who had lost her husband when the ship went down.

"[Thayer] wrote to [Ismay] gentle, forgiving letters and Ismay just poured his heart out to her," Wilson says. "So as his marriage was crumbling in England in the year after the Titanic went down, he was becoming more and more and more emotionally dependent on Marian Thayer."

In his letters, Ismay admits to suicidal thoughts and a feeling of blamelessness with regard to tragedy. Wilson describes his correspondence as extremely self-pitying, as though he were trying to boil down the story of the Titanic to a tragedy of one man.

the two-way

Titanic Sinking Not Act Of God, Act Of Human Error

"On the one hand they're love letters, and on the other hand they're pathetic and infantile kind of self-absorbed letters," she says. "At one point, he says to her, 'Gosh, can you imagine what would have happened to us had the ship not gone and hit the iceberg?' "

Eventually, Thayer stopped replying to his letters and Ismay was, again, silenced. He died 24 years after the Titanic went down, at his house in London.

"He never picked up his life again," Wilson says. "There's a difference between surviving and living — and Ismay was a survivor."

Read an excerpt of How to Survive the Titanic

J. Bruce Ismay

About the most reviled man of his times in America by Titanic Nation.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

J. Bruce Ismay

John Bruce, Ismay has received a lot of criticism over the past decades. Why? Because he got into a lifeboat when there were still women and children aboard. But is there any just foundation for this serious criticism? We'll look at the two sides of the story, 1. reasons for staying aboard, 2. reasons for getting on a lifeboat! Now this will be rather hard for me, since I already have an opinion of Ismay, but I will try to not let that come through..... you decide for yourself what he should have done!

1. First we'll look at the reasons that J. B. Ismay should have stayed aboard the sinking Titanic!
After the Titanic collided with an iceberg at about 11:45, it did not take long for John E. Smith to figure out there was not enough places for all the men, women and children in the lifeboats. So he gave the well known order, "women and children first." Now, did the Captain mean that there was no men to be allowed in the lifeboats? NO! The lifeboats needed officers, and sailors to make sure they were operated safely, and correctly. It was the spirit of the order that counted, if you did not have a legitimate reason for getting in a lifeboat, you had no place in one. Some fantastic men of measure did get off in a lifeboat, such as Harold Bride the wireless operator, Lightoller the Titanic's Second Officer, Archibald Gracie, Jack Thayer, and the list could go on.
Whats noticeable about these men, is they did not receive the criticism that Bruce, Ismay did, why is that?
Did Ismay have a responsibility to stay with the Titanic till she sank beneath the waves, like the Captain did? Lets look at some things that took place years earlier..... When the Titanic was still on blueprints the planning of how many lifeboats the Titanic would carry came up. The Titanic's designer at the time Andrew, Carlyle was pushing for 48 lifeboats which would have been enough for everyone one on board in case of a disaster. But there was one man standing in his way, John B. Ismay! When the rubber met the road Ismay said no, for various reasons. But when you get to the night of April 14, 1912 its a different story. Because of his choice, it puts him under some obligation to stay aboard and take whatever comes.
Here's possibly another reason that he should have stayed aboard. J. B. Ismay owned the White Star Line, which means he owned the Titanic. If a person owns something that is used for the public, and if fails in some way, and death follows, or injury, it seems that whoever owns it should take whatever other had to take as well. He was responsible for the passengers as well!
I guess one more thing that should have binded him to the Titanic it time of trouble, is the fact that there were still women and children on board, and he owed them all the safety that was in his power as a man. By giving up a spot in a lifeboat, and doing the courteous thing, and not to mention the polite thing!

2. It wouldn't be fair to explain one side of the story, so we'll make an argument for the opposite side. In this kind of situation we have to be fair, because Ismay is no longer around to speak for himself!
J. B. Ismay claims that there were no women in sight, and there are witness to back up the fact. Since that being true why should he stay on a sinking ship and face certain death? And if there was no women sight was he really breaking a rule? I think that if your standing on the side of a sinking ship, and there's an empty spot on a lifeboat, there are no women and children about, would we have the fortitude to remain on the ship? There are a lot of questions that come into play here, and what it comes down to is, was he doing something really out of the ordinary?
Why should he stay on a sinking ship if he could get off, and go back to his family, we can't really say that he had motives of the baser sort. He was the managing director of the White Star Line, he had a lot of responsibly back on shore.
Was there really a need to end his short life, just to make a name for himself?
And after all, you can't blame the entire construction of the ship on him, Thomas, Andrews obviously didn't have a problem with 20 lifeboats!
Just because countless men stayed aboard, doesn't mean that Ismay did if a opportunity presented himself.
To call this man a coward just because he got off a sinking ship, doesn't seem right! What would you have done in his position?

Closing the Gate

One morning a zookeeper discovered that a kangaroo was out of his enclosure and roaming freely in the zoo. Knowing the kangaroos can hop very high, he instructed the zoo workers to construct a ten foot high fence around the kangaroo’s enclosure.

The next morning the zookeeper discovered that the kangaroo had once again gotten out of his enclosure, so this time he instructed the zoo workers to construct a twenty foot high fence. The next morning the kangaroo was once again found wandering around the zoo. This time the fence was extended to 40 feet high.

The camel in the next enclosure asked the kangaroo, “How high do you think they will go?”

“Pretty high,” the kangaroo replied, “unless somebody figures out to close the gate at night.”

[from Tommy Burrus, “Passing the Torch,” sermoncentral.com]

The voice of God

A former park ranger at Yellowstone National Park tells the story of a ranger leading a group of hikers to a fire lookout. The ranger was so intent on telling the hikers about the flowers and animals that he considered the messages on his two-way radio distracting, so he switched it off. Nearing the tower, the ranger was met by a nearly breathless lookout, who asked why he hadn’t responded to the messages on his radio. A grizzly bear had been seen stalking the group, and the authorities were trying to warn them of the danger. -- Harold M. Wiest; Dawson Creek, British Columbia, Canada via Nathan Johnson, sermoncentral.com

The Wonder of It All

by Ralph Marston

Do you ever wonder
At the wonder of it all?

Do you ever stand in awe
of the tiniest things
and how perfectly they work together?

Do you ever stop to think
about all the possibilities
and how even though they have no limit
they grow in number with every minute?

Do you ever wonder
when the leaves flutter down in autumn
at the incomprehensible power of life
that brings them back in spring?

Do you watch the waves roll in
and then look out far beyond them
where the water seems to touch the sky
and realize
that the vast expanse before your eyes
is only a small little corner
of all there really is?

And do you comprehend that all there really is,
as unimaginably grand as it may seem,
is only a smaller corner still
of all that there can be?

Do you ever wonder
how love can stay alive
past every pleasure and every pain
and even when there can be no hope
there is more than ever?

Do you ever struggle to lift a heavy rock and wonder
how a massive mountain can rise
thousands of feet above the plain
without even trying?

Do you ever realize that
no matter how much you may know,
no matter how many wonders you may have experienced,
there will always, always be more?

Do you ever wonder
why it is you wonder
and why you know what beauty is
even though you can't define it?

Do you ever wonder
who is doing the wondering,
who is looking out through your eyes
and feeling completely at home
with the wonder of it all?

Whatever you believe,
whatever you profess,
whatever you doubt or fear or hope for,
there are some things
your heart cannot deny
when you let go
and let yourself know
the wonder of it all.

from thewonderofitall.com

which offers a stirring sight and sound slide show to accompany this.

Jonny Gomes: The Man Who Wouldn't Die

Jonny Gomes scrappy and grinding style has made him a key part of the Cincinnati Reds rise in the National League. His style was a byproduct of a rocky road to the majors that withstood tragedy, deprivation and, almost literally, heartbreak.

A great story:

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=6478335

NPR: The Best Museum You've Never Heard Of

from DCNY by Tony Seel

January 31, 2011

The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, Calif., just might be America's least known great museum. It houses a vast collection of works — from South Asian sculptures to works by Europe's Old Masters, Impressionists, and contemporary Americans — yet even Californians who live nearby say they've "always meant to go but ..." The museum tends to attract more European than American visitors.

Learn more about Norton Simon and his collection at the Norton Simon Museum website

In a comprehensive new book, the museum's senior curator, Sara Campbell, sheds light on this often-overlooked museum and the man who founded it. Collector Without Walls tells the story of Norton Simon — the businessman behind Hunt-Wesson Foods, Canada Dry and Avis — who had an eye for great art and a knack for collecting it.

The successful industrialist approached his art museum with a businesslike efficiency. When he came to visit, he would inspect his collection, but never linger, Campbell recalls: "He would make a circuit of every single work of art and walk as fast as he could."

Simon hired Campbell 41 years ago as a typist. She remembers him as a wonderful boss who solicited opinions about art from everyone.

"He asked everybody what they thought about the collection," Campbell says. "He would ask me, he would ask the most prestigious museum director, and he would ask his cook."

But after gathering the information so democratically, Simon would dowhatever he wanted, Campbell says.

Chief Curator Carol Togneri met Simon when she was working at the Getty Museum. He had come to the Getty in search of her boss, but that curator was unavailable. So Simon asked Togneri to pass along this question: "Of all the Raphaels in the world, where does mine come in among the top five?"

Simon constantly asked such questions. He wanted to be the best and have the best — and often, he succeeded. His accomplishment is measured by some 8,000 works of art, collected over three decades, starting in 1954.

No more than 800 or 900 of those pieces are on display in his Pasadena museum at any one time, so visitors can't see everything in a single visit. You won't fall victim to common museum perils — sore feet or exhaustion. And the museum is rarely crowded, so there's no need to fight for a closer look at Degas' dancers, early Flemish tapestries, 14th-century altarpieces or Rembrandt's Portrait of a Boy — thought to be his son Titus.

The portrait of the young boy with golden locks and rosy cheeks is one of three Rembrandt paintings in the collection; but if Simon had had his way, there would have been four. He had planned to bid against the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the master's Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer, but wouldn't match their bid of $2.3 million. So the painting belongs to the Met; it's the One That Got Away.

Simon kept careful track of all the numbers. "He remembered every price he ever paid," Campbell says, down to the currency and its conversion rate.

Over the years, Simon began loosening his purse strings. Twenty years later, he bought his most expensive piece — for a whopping $4.2 million. The painting is a 15th-century resurrection scene by Flemish painter Dieric Bouts, priced because of its rarity. But the regal depiction of Jesus, wrapped in a red cloth, also has outstanding artistic merits, says Togneri.

"It is a great painting," she says. "Look at the detail. Look at the way that the armor is painted — the reflection of the morning light — that brooding sky."

Before the Bouts and the Rembrandts, Simon's earliest purchases were comparatively modest. He paid $16,000 for a late Renoir and $300 for a painting by 20th century American artist Dan Lutz. He bought the works to decorate his new house, Campbell says. His wife and a decorator had picked out some art for the new home in the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. Simon didn't like their selections. There happened to be an art gallery next door to his barber shop in the old Ambassador Hotel. Every Saturday morning, when he went to have his hair cut, he'd see art in the window display.

Over the next years, Simon bought 80 works of art, spending about $1.5 million. He was a quick learner and a big spender. His tutors in art education were important art dealers in New York. It was a rich education. But Simon was above all a businessman — and he collected art like one.

"Mr. Simon was an industrialist, a businessman," Campbell says. "One of the practices in his business was to acquire companies that were not doing well and to turn them around. It was almost as if he collected companies. I think that he became feverish about art in the same way."

Simon appreciated the art that he collected, but kept an emotional distance from it — especially when it came to buying and selling.

"There are times when he has been quoted saying, 'I have to maintain some distance from this or it will consume me,'" says Campbell.

Simon needed to be able to decide when to sell a piece and when to walk away from a difficult dealer.

"Sometimes it worked, [and] the dealers quickly lowered their price and sometimes they didn't," Campbell says. But Simon always had to be prepared to walk away.

Simon died in 1993, but since 1974, the artwork he collected have been on view at the handsome Pasadena museum that bears his name. In many ways, it's a museum of "don't." The museum doesn't buy, or lend, or borrow any of its works — and it doesn't put on blockbuster shows, either. But what it does is display glorious works of art with elegance and style for any visitor who makes time for the voyage.

Finding Illustrations

I've only heard from one user of this blog, and I would love to hear from others. What do you find helpful? Where do you find illustrations?

It has been my experience that sometimes illustrations find you. For example, the illustration above this post was on NPR one morning as I was driving to the church that I serve. Other times finding the right illustration can be a time-consuming and sometimes frustrating pursuit. Here are some places that I have found to be helpful:

1. Homiletics. Homiletics is a bi-monthly magazine that is superb in the art of illustration. Sometimes (often?) their direction for a particular sermon is not quite what I'm looking for, but combing through what is now an online resource (homileticsonline) can be very rewarding. Homiletics is pricey, but it is worth it. These folks have been called the "metaphor guys" and rightly so.

2. sermoncentral.com I am a contributor and I find that most contributors whose work I look at are not good illustrators. However, if I'm stuck for one it is worth the time to look through the sermons there.

3. books, movies, television, radio, general culture - These can be the ideal source for illustrations, but sometimes they aren't as timely as you would like.

4. Your life - for some this is the best place. I personally try to keep a balance on this and I also make sure that I'm not the hero of all my stories.

That's my list, what's yours?

America's Four Gods

This is the introduction to a sermon that I have posted to sermoncentral.com by the same title:

Who does the grocery shopping for your household. I admire those who regularly wage the grocery store battles. Last year, I was part of the MOVE weight loss program at the Binghamton V.A. Health Clinic. Now, I know that you’re saying to yourself, “why would Fr. Tony need to be involved in a weight loss program?”

One session of the MOVE program was devoted to a video that explained grocery store marketing. The video took us through a typical grocery store beginning with the produce section. About every grocery store I’ve ever been in gets you started with the produce section, and this is a good thing since produce is good for us. The video explained how endcaps generate increased sales of the items placed in them and how eye level placement in aisles also increases sales. Folks, with all the marketing expertise that is employed at the grocery store we don’t have a chance!

Honestly, for me, a grocery store is sensory overload. They’re almost as bad as a Chucky Cheese, although Chucky Cheese is sound and sight and a grocery store is more reliant on sight alone. There are so many choices between similar products it can be baffling. Similar products come in different sizes and weights with different prices and nuances in ingredients. It’s all too much. How do you regular grocery shoppers do it?

There’s a similar complexity in the American religious landscape. Roughly 90% of Americans believe in God and about 85% of Americans believe that God is loving. However, after that the homogeneity of belief vanishes.

Baylor University professors Paul Froese and Christopher Bader looked at the wide range of beliefs about God in America and determined that this hodgepodge of ideas could fit under four headings. In America’s Four Gods, Froese and Bader offer two questions that they believe lead to the four most prevalent conceptions of God in the United States.

Question #1 is “To what extent does God interact with the world.” [Note: quotes and information on America’s Four Gods is from the Christianity Today book review by Matthew Lee Anderson, “The Divine Divide,” which can be accessed at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/november/21.65.html]

Question #2 is “To what extent does God judge the world?”

From the answers to these two questions Froese and Bader teased out America’s four Gods.

God #1 is “the authoritative God, who both judges and is closely engaged in the world.” This God is like the stereotypes God the Cop and God the Judge.

God #2 is “the benevolent God who is ‘engaged but nonjudgmental.’” This is the Santa Claus God or God the Loving Grandfather.

God #3 is “the critical God, who happens to be judgmental but disengaged. I call this the bad mother in law God. Before you throw things, notice that I said bad mother in law. I’m sure that there aren’t any bad mother in laws here.

God #4 is “the distant God, who is neither engaged nor judgmental and could care less about how humans muck about.” I call this the Slumlord God.

Who is God for you?