"God Himself Could Not Sink This Ship"

So said a deckhand in Southampton to Mrs. Sylvia Caldwell when she asked if the Titanic really was unsinkable (quoted in Walter Lord's A Night To Remember). Yet six days later the great ship struck an iceberg and sank in the wee hours of April 15, 1912. The event was the news equivalent of the JFK assassination or 9/11 of the era. There were investigations, lawsuits, and a whole lot speculation. Many facts were not uncovered for years, and many may never be known.

From the moment she sank 95 years ago, the Titanic has been the subject of countless books (both fiction and non-fiction), sermons, films, television shows, songs, plays, editorial and political cartoons, a Broadway musical, and even a Nazi propaganda film. I first learned of the ship and her ill-fated voyage as a third grader, when I read Lord's book for a book report. Since then I have read almost every English language book written on the ship and her sinking. That does not even come close to giving me fanatic status in the world of Titanic buffs!

I have been resisting the temptation to use the Titanic as a metaphor for the current mess in the Anglican Communion. I know that people on both ends of the debate, and in the vast "middle," have different ideas of what or who is the iceberg, the ship, the captain, the passengers, the Carpathia, etc. I think I will leave well enough alone.

Instead, I will tell you a story about my first (and so far last) voyage on an ocean liner. The summer after I finished junior high school (which was 7th, 8th, and 9th grade at the time), my family took a cruise to Bermuda on the Statendam. We had two cabins near the bow of the ship, one for my parents and one for my brother and me. After a day and a half at sea, we docked in Hamilton early in the morning. I was startled out of my sleep by a loud scraping noise along the side of the ship. It took me a few groggy moments, as I stumbled around trying to find my life jacket, to realize that the noise had been the ship scraping the bumpers of the dock and not a hole being torn in the hull. Such was the power of the Titanic story on my 15-year-old mind!

Peace,
Jeffri