News of the Restless

Back in 1898, Morgan Robertson published The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futility — a novel depicting the sinking of an “unsinkable” ocean liner, of then-unprecedented size and “innovative” safety features that are touted as infallible, but which collectively prove to be the ship’s doom. The novel was meant as a cautionary parable on the hubris of the wealthy, the powerful, and the careless. The author was no crystal-ball psychic; he relied on his own knowledge of the then-current trends in ship design to create a convincing picture of what elements could combine to create such a disaster. He also relied on well-known facts about the nature of Gilded Age capitalism and the captains of that particular (metaphorical) sinking ship.

14 years later, in April of 1912, that novel proved eerily prescient when the similarly-named (and sized) Titanic sank on her maiden voyage, after striking an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland. The ship’s captain sailed into a known iceberg field on a moonless night in early spring, disregarding warnings that the ship was about to hit a berg — which it did. The “watertight” compartments that were supposed to contain any seawater leakage failed, due to cost-cutting and poor construction. One by one, they filled and spilled over. This, in turn, caused the ship to tilt stern-up before finally speeding to the bottom of the Atlantic. The Titanic‘s lifeboats, already insufficient for the number of passengers on board, were lowered only half-full. Over 1500 people drowned that night.

The Cassandra-like warnings of Morgan Robertson had gone unheeded. A combination of hubris, cost-cutting, and willful ignorance brought the Titanic up against an iceberg…and eventually, down onto the sea floor.

More than a century later, it’s evident that some people just haven’t learned a damned thing from Morgan Robertson’s parable, or from its all-too-real sequel. A tourist mini-sub named (what else?) the Titan fatally imploded on its way down to the wreckage of the Titanic a few days ago. Four passengers and a pilot — the OceanGate company’s CEO, as luck would have it — perished. The passengers had paid $250,000 US apiece for the privilege of visiting a sea-floor graveyard in an unregulated submersible which was very shoddily constructed for its intended purpose.

And yes, the same forces at play in The Wreck of the Titan and the wreck of the Titanic also played an all-too-predictable part in this particular disaster:

What’s truly galling about all this is that submarine design principles have been known, or at least researched, for far longer than Morgan Robertson’s novel has been in existence. And all the truly good ones — the same “rules” Stockton Rush complained of, and bragged of breaking — have been around, and followed with excellent results, for decades. Here is a video by an engineer, explaining clearly and in some detail why the Titan was not safe for the depth it was supposedly designed for, and why the whole expedition went catastrophically wrong:

Bad choices of materials; no secure seating; cheap gaming controllers instead of a more reliable dashboard (and redundancies in case the primary controls fail); exposed wires on the outside of the ship, held on by zip-ties. Not only was the Titan disastrously out of its depth, it was something to be wary of at any depth.

And, bear in mind, that’s just from an engineering perspective — although at the end, the narrator does touch (with audible exasperation) on the stupid interpretation from right-wing commentators that “woke hiring” was somehow what doomed the vessel, because the CEO said a few disparaging things about “white men in their fifties”. No, that’s not it. For one thing, most of the OceanGate hires were male, and all (as far as I could see) were white. As for the younger ages of the employees, cost-cutting and greed are far more likely reasons; that, and the tendency for very young employees to be intimidated by the CEO, who clearly was a cocky son of a cuss. Not only would they not have the nerve to demand better pay (and insist on doing things the way they ought to be done for safety’s sake), they also wouldn’t have the experience and know-how to justify such demands.

And nerve, experience, know-how, et cetera ad nauseam, are NOT traits limited to white men over the age of 50. It’s cringey how often this needs to be pointed out, but for right-wing ignorami, certain things are just not as self-evident as you’d think they were. Here’s another video, just for funsies:

No, “wokeness” didn’t sink the Titan. Hubris did. It’s sheer hubris to build a minivan-sized potato-chip can out of carbon fibre deemed unsafe for aircraft by Boeing, over the protestations of one of the few employees who knew better, sue said employee for “revealing trade secrets” when he raises a public alarm, drive it around with gaming controllers, and expect anything other than disaster to eventually ensue. Hubris is the opposite of wokeness, on steroids. Don’t buy the crapaganda…and don’t waste much time mourning for a 60-year-old white man — oh sorry, “innovator” — whose million-dollar-a-trip greed got him quite literally (and permanently) out of his depth.