Ocean Liners

This article discusses several minor refinements to Titanic's design based on experience with some specific riveted joints on Olympic (similar changes were then incorporated into Olympic and Britannic).  It is a greatly expanded version of an article originally made available on the Titanic Research & Modelling Association (TRMA) website in 2005, which published information about these changes for the first time.  This expanded article appeared in the British Titanic Society journal Atlantic Daily Bulletin in December 2019.

There is all too much incomplete, out of context, inaccurate or plain misinformation about Titanic.  Much of it stems from media sensationalism or simply the dissemination of inaccurate information in secondary sources.  That is particularly true when it comes to Titanic’s lifeboats.  There are many facets of the subject far beyond the scope of this short article, which merely draws a comparison between the original proposals for her lifeboats (July 1908) and the lifeboats she sailed with on her fateful maiden voyage (April 1912).  It demonstrates that Titanic's lifeboat capacity (as a proportion of her total passenger and crew capacity) increased by nearly 39% between the original design proposal being approved and her departure on her maiden voyage.

The new designs for the US Paper Money between 1914 and 1918: Federal Reserve Notes and Federal Reserve Bank Notes during the Word War I. Contents:
BEFORE THE FED, THE FED, THE NEW NOTES, 12 BANK SEALS, THE NEW TRADITION, 2 TREASURY SEALS, DATES, FIVE-DOLLAR BILL, TEN-DOLLAR BILL, TWENTY-DOLLAR BILL, FIFTY-DOLLAR BILL, ONE HUNDRED-DOLLAR BILL, ONE-DOLLAR BILL, TWO-DOLLAR BILL, $500 BILL, $1,000 BILL, $5,000 BILL, $10,000 BILL, 4 AUTHORIZATIONS ON THE “FED” PAPER MONEY (1914-1918), FINAL WORDS.

This paper highlights the rescue efforts of the ship Carpathia (its captain, crew, and medical staff) as it came to Titanic's aid.  It also examines the central role that Carpathia's passengers played in the relief efforts once the survivors were on-board, and concludes with a look at the survivors' committee that Margaret Brown formed as the ship headed for New York City.

This article was first published in the Titanic Historical Society’s Titanic Commutator 2008: Volume 32 Number 183. Pages 108-12.
The original article examined what was then a new photograph of Britannic, showing her official transport number as ‘G.608’, in the early part of 1916, and another which showed it as ‘G.618’ in October 1916. The evidence available indicates Britannic had the number ‘G.608’ for the first phase of her career as a hospital ship and then ‘G.618’ for the second phase.  The reason for the change is still not known as it is not specifically documented.  However, it seems reasonable to suggest that the original number was simply freed up to be allocated to another ship, when Britannic was initially withdrawn from hospital ship service.  She was then allocated another one when she returned to service a few months later.

A television programme made a number of false claims about Titanic's lifeboats, claiming that the ship's original design had included enough lifeboats for all the passengers and crew but that this had been changed.  The programme showed viewers primary source documentation which purported to support these claims, but an examination of their source shows the programme completely misrepresented the contents.  This article highlights the danger of inaccurate claims in secondary sources.  The article was published in the British Titanic Society journal Atlantic Daily Bulletin in March 2019.

On the afternoon of May 7, 1915 the British liner Lusitania was torpedoed by the Imperial German submarine U-20 and sank in eighteen minutes with the loss of 1,191 lives (including 123 American citizens).  This was the largest loss of life at sea during wartime to-date and prompted a public relations coup for Great Britain and a disaster for Imperial Germany.  This much was certain.  But almost immediately, troubling questions were posed: Why did such a large and well-built ship sink in 18 minutes?  Did the Germans plan to “get” the Lusitania?  Why did the British Admiralty allow the ship to sail unprotected or unadvised through a dangerous war zone?  Was the ship adequately warned of the danger?  What was the nature of her cargo?  What caused the second explosion survivors described?  Was she armed?  Who was to blame for the disaster?  For decades these questions beg for answers. Since she disappeared beneath the waves, writers have sought to find blame for this tragedy (and each has their own axe to grind).  Some followed conventional wisdom and charge Captain Turner. On his shoulders rests the safety of passengers, crew, and cargo and the Captain must ensure that everything is done to ensure safe passage.  If something goes wrong, he must respond to the problem, rectify it, and answer for his action (or inaction).  What if that something is beyond the control of the Captain?  There are many challenges on the oceans:  freak storms, rogue waves, fog, and icebergs, to name but a few.  In 1915, there was a new danger:  the submarine’s torpedo. Captain William Turner and his ship encountered this new danger with terrible consequences.  Others echoed the official enquiries (Lord Mersey in London and Judge Mayer in New York) and blame Imperial Germany.  More perceptive researchers peered through the fog of war and place a guilty verdict on the British Admiralty (for inaction).  Some writers found conspiracies, others simply a snowball effect of blunders.  There are many mysteries:  supposed spies caught on board in New York, anonymous telegrams warning prominent passengers not to sail, and most ominously, the publication by “The Imperial Germany Embassy” of a warning to travelers in New York area newspapers on the day of departure.

Although located at the centre of Europe, Bohemia was for much of its history dominated by a European empire. This essay reflects  on a constellation of anti-racist, anti-colonial sentiments in the writings (1877–1944)  of  a  number  of  Czechs  who  travelled  to  the Dutch East Indies. These feelings  include  an  alienation  from  the imperial nations of “the West”; a sense  of  kinship  with colonised peoples of “the  East”;  the  collapsing  – through  images of blending and mirroring – of certain distinctions essential to colonial racism; and, often,  a  feeling  of  the  absurdity  of  the Czech  traveller’s  own  presence,  ideas  and  dreams.  An exploration of Bohemian perspectives and imagination, and a reflection on  insignificance  and  being  out  of  place,  can  contribute to a more nuanced understanding of European representations than that afforded by dominant colonial and postcolonial narratives that generalise about Europe  based  on views limited to the imperial nations.

“I love Christmas, that Muslim holiday.”  (K. Biebl)
In 1926, the communist avant-garde poet Konstantin Biebl (1898–1951) travelled from Czechoslovakia to the Dutch East Indies. In his texts, poetic and often comic, both landlocked Bohemia and the colonized tropical islands are seen disorientingly anew, like “mirrors looking at themselves in each other.” _On This Modern Highway, Lost in the Jungle_ takes the reader on a journey crisscrossing the poet’s life and work, with particular attention to his travel writing and his dreams and memories of travel, as they mirror the book author’s own life experience as a Czech scholar of Indonesia living in island Southeast Asia. Biebl’s poetry and travels are also the book’s point of departure for a broader exploration of the intersections of travel and poetry, the attitudes to colonial/social injustice, and the representation of otherness in Czech literary and visual imagination, beyond Biebl’s times. In its attention to how poetic travel reflects the Czech historical experience in the shadow of imperial nations, the book moves scholarly reflection on literary travel, modernity, and colonialism to a new ground. [Table of Contents and a brief sample can be downloaded; the book, in electronic and printed format, is available from https://karolinum.cz/en/books/mrazek-on-this-modern-highway-lost-in-the-jungle-25880 ]

The essay juxtaposes, as in a poetic metaphor, Czech sea voyages to Southeast Asia in the late colonial era, as described in the travellers’ writings, and the author’s recent voyage on a container ship from Rotterdam to Singapore. A reflection on sea travel and an experiment in historical research, it is an account of accessing the past through the experience of a voyage. The essay reflects on size, speed, time, and modernity; on containers, classes, nations, colonies, and empires, past and present. How can our present journeys help us grasp the experiences of past travellers, as well as our relationship with them, our nearness and our distance? How can old travelogues enrich our perception of present-day travel, shipping, and colonialisms? How do present, past and future overflow into each other, on the fluid borders between physical, economic and industrial reality and narrative/poetic imagination? How is containerisation, whose (pre)history this essay traces, part of our ‘knowledge production’? The essay performs these questions with a Czech accent that reflects a specific historical situation and the self-image of a variously colonised European people who navigate(d) in particular, often clownishly improper ways, in the world of colonies and empires, old and new.

Transatlantic literary exchange depended, in the early twentieth century, on the ocean liner. Books and periodicals were exported via sea routes, lent among passengers or through ships' libraries, and even bought and sold on board. Many authors and journalists travelled on the Atlantic, finding inspiration for their writing in these journeys. This talk investigates the reading and writing practices which transatlantic liners enabled, and explores the meanings that were invested in these ships through literary narratives.
3 Dec 2020
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/events/the-frantic-atlantic-ocean-liners-in-the-interwar-literary-imagination
An essay with the same title is forthcoming in Symbiosis: Transatlantic Literary & Cultural Relations 24.1/2 (2020).

4pm Wednesday 25 November, online
Hosted by Periodicals and Print Culture Research Group:  Nottingham Trent University

The Canadian Home Journal was a successful women's monthly published from 1905 until 1958. As the title suggests, its content was domestic in two senses: the focus was on home and nation. Yet the magazine consistently engaged with themes of mobility. During the final decade of its run, the jet age had arrived, but the age of the ocean liner was not yet past. Car ownership was on the increase, though railway trips were still heavily promoted. These forms of transport compete for attention in the pages of the Journal. This talk presents a case study of the May 1956 issue, which documents a fashion event set on Canadian Pacific's new transatlantic liner. "The Empress of Britain Fashion Story" is about design and commerce, glamour and novelty – and above all, it is about plastic. From synthetic fibres to camera film, from cellophane wrapping to laminated panels, plastics – the revolutionary new materials of the age - feature on almost every page of the issue. Presented as the ultimate domestic product, plastic is simultaneously used to evoke panoramas of travel. This talk explores plastic in print, as a way to understand the larger dynamic between home and mobility in mid-century magazine culture.
https://www.ntu.ac.uk/research/groups-and-centres/groups/periodicals-and-print-culture-research-group