Best Strength

Anyone even the least bit familiar with the history of The Titanic is also familiar with one of the great coincidences surrounding the tragedy. Fourteen years prior to that fateful day in 1912, Morgan Robertson wrote a novella entitled “Futility”, about the world’s largest, most luxurious, and safest ocean liner. This new ship was said to be unsinkable due to the newest water tight compartments they had installed. Coincidentally, that ship sank after hitting an iceberg. An even more remarkable coincidence is that the name of the ship in the fictitious story was “The Titan”!

But here’s a little known fact you can use to amaze your friends and family. On that fateful last night aboard the Titanic, over 200 Second Class passengers were eagerly holed up in the Second Class dining room. What was keeping these passengers so entertained? Why, a new fangled contraption called a Motion Picture! And what were they watching? What else? “The Poseidon Adventure”!

The film industry, in 1912, was still in the beginning stages and had only just started to produce motion pictures. Most were only 8 to 10 minutes long and all were silent and filmed in black and white. Nevertheless, these new moving pictures captured the imaginations of audiences everywhere who were hungry for new forms of entertainment. The Titanic, in all it’s grandeur, of course, carried it’s own film projector and library of films.

The film industy still had a somewhat undesirable image, though, that it had aquired in the days of the Nickleodeon. This is probably the reason that not many have heard this story. The First Class passengers considered the movies to be vulgar so the films were shown late in the evening, at 11 PM after the First Class passengers had retired, and only in the Second Class dining room.

The audience of a few hundred Second Class passengers was so enthralled with The Poseidon Adventure – a tale of six passengers and crew members struggling to survive the sinking of their ship ” that they either didn’t feel the shudder of the ship as it struck the iceberg or they took no notice. In fact, they were so entertained by the movie that it was shown a second time, immediately after the first.

The Poseidon Adventure was an unusually long movie for it’s time, and with 2 back to back showings of 53 mnutes each, it was well after 1AM when these Second and Third Class passengers finally returned to the deck. By that time, the few lifeboats that there were had already been launched, most at only partial capacity and occupied by First Class Passengers.

This grim coincidence could explain why barely one third of the Titanic’s Second Class Passengers survived while nearly two thirds of the First Class passengers and crew made it to safety.

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