So, what did y'all think of the 2-hour live broadcast?

I'll be on the live internet chat, afterwards.

-- Thomas M. Terashima (tom@nucleus.com), August 16, 1998

Answers

Chat! at Discovery Canada.

-- Thomas M. Terashima (titanicshack@yahoo.com), August 16, 1998.

Hello Tom:

Well, I warned you about this at your chat room ( at least I think that was you). I watched and taped the special tonight and was generally very pleased with it. A couple of things bothered me though. It looks like RMSTI is on track to start pulling items out of the the ship itself (Marconi equipment, a door, etc.). Their big thing has always been that the items recovered were from the debris field, not the ship. After the broadcast, I listened to the Q&A in the Discovery website and Charles Haas responded to a question about the shoes( you know the picture) saying that they were cargo that settled on the bottom. Well, I went wild! If anyone looks at that picture and believes that those two shoes fell 12,500 feet and just happened to land in that position, they should look again! A picture is worth a thousand words, and that picture says it all in my opinion!

Regards, Peter

-- Peter Nivling (pcnivling@capecod.net), August 17, 1998.

While I enjoyed seeing the Titanic herself, I thought the whole excercise was spoilt by moronic reporters asking stupid questions and the same phrases and melodramatic statements spoken that have been said in most of the other documentaries on the Titanic I have seen. I was tempted (but outvoted) to turn down the sound and just look at the ship. I also thought it very sad the ship is deteriorating so quickly. I'm sure the graverobbers think what they do is worthwhile at the expense of hastening her final destuction.

-- Lianne (liannegraham@one.net.au), August 23, 1998.

{originally posted Mon, 17 Aug 1998 23:26:20 -0400 (EDT)}

Peter, I watched most of that Discovery Channel special but missed the picture with the shoes. What's it all about?

-- Emma (dilemma76@hotmail.com), August 23, 1998.

{originally posted Mon, 17 Aug 1998 23:37:16 -0400 (EDT)}

Ptere, if the pair of shoes is the same as the one that appears in Dr. Ballard's books about the discovery of the wreck in 1985, it is clear that tehy belonged to a deceased person who was sucked in with the ship (bow or stern). That person was resting laid down on the back before the bacteria and organisms completed their feast and nature recycled.

Sorry for the details... It would be very unlikely to belong to any person who died of hypotermia and had the lungs filled with water. A journey of 2.5 miles to the bottom of the ocean would not put the person near the wreck unless suction would have occured. And the photo shows the symmetrical position, which would enspire any detective to draw the body with chalk on the pavement (if that would be possibble). Most likely, the person, probably a male, got sucked down with that section of the ship, or trapped by some falling piece of wood or rope that later disintegrated together with the body.

-- Dan Draghici (ddraghic@sprint.ca), August 23, 1998.

{originally posted Mon, 17 Aug 1998 23:38:20 -0400 (EDT)}

I meant to type Peter, sorry, it's late...

-- Dan Draghici (ddraghic@sprint.ca), August 24, 1998.

{originally posted Tue, 18 Aug 1998 04:01:55 GMT}

I only vaguely remember seeing that photo of the shoes. I'm sure though, that the shoes didn't have leather laces. This would have easily resolved the question. I agree with Peter that the shoes would unlikely have landed 2 miles down in that position as cargo. That is, unless the shoes were laced together unworn?

-- Dan Dalton (foo@bar.com), August 24, 1998.

{originally posted Tue, 18 Aug 1998 04:13:55 GMT}

BTW, I watched as much of the broadcast last night as I could stay awake for - not much. No new ground was broken, no new discoveries made (unless I missed something). What was the point in a live broadcast? Previous exploration of the Titanic has taken years of patient, painstaking exploration. Much has been made of how dangerous any dive to Titanic is and how slowly and deliberately each maneuver has to be made. Did anyone really expect anything new in two hours?

-- Dan Dalton (foo@bar.com), August 24, 1998.

{originally posted Tue, 18 Aug 1998 05:18:25 GMT}

Hello all: A couple of things:

Hi Gilded: I suppose anything is possible. I believe there is a coffee mug resting on top of a boiler as if it were set there also. The crate of dishes were probably pretty well packed at the time as they looked like they had not even been taken out for use yet so the crate settled to the bottom intact or pretty much so and over the years the crate and packing were consumed leaving the dishes, which, being china or glass, will last indefinitely. I just took another hard look at the shoes and all I can say is (and not to be morbid) visualize a body there wearing them and I think you'll see what I mean about the position. Also, as far as I can determine, the right one is on the right and the left one is on the left.

I saw the "blips" too and thought at first that it was my cable about to pull one of it's untimely outages but I guess it was when they switched from a satellite feed to a local feed to air one of their far too frequent commercials. They really did not produce what they advertised although the did briefly show a gate which was partially open (or partially closed depending on which school of thought on the controversy that you subscribe to) but they did not elaborate on the location and it was a real quickie. All in all, it was interesting but was more of a commercial for the technology and RMSTI. I suppose they could have been having some technical problems also but it really looked like a teaser for future salvage and exhibitions.

Hello Dan: I think the shoes are too far apart to have been laced together. If you e-mail privately your e-mail address I can send you the jpeg image. It's small but effective.

Regards,
Peter

-- Peter Nivling (pcnivling@capecod.net), August 24, 1998.

Overall the show was OK, but too much talk, too few live images and too many of the live images were poorly illuminated (although that's hardly their fault, considering the conditions they're working under, and I do mean ***under***!).

Regards,

-- Kip Henry (kip-henry@ouhsc.edu), August 24, 1998.

Hello Dan (Draghici):

Yes, that is what I was referring to and it really is a spooky picture to me. It just does not make sense to me that these shoes were part of "thousands of shoes from cargo" as Mr. Haas explains it in the Q&A after the broadcast. First of all, the positioning of the shoes and second, no one else that I have read or heard about that has made dives to the wreck can recall "thousands of shoes" laying in the debris field.

Hello Emma:

They never showed that photo in the broadcast. It is in Dr. Ballard's book "The Discovery of the Titanic" on page 192-193 and the question about them was asked in the Q&A on the Discovery site after the broadcast.

Regards, Peter

-- Peter Nivling (pcnivling@capecod.net), August 25, 1998.

I'll keep the tape I made, but...

Way, way too much inane blather from the two reporters, and too little of the ship. Much of the show came off like an infomercial for RMS Titanic, Inc.

At several points in the show, there was an implication that RMS Titanic and its scientists were making some startling new discovery about the wreck, which was in fact something that has been known for years, eg. the fact that there was no 300-foot gash from the iceberg.

I understand that it was live TV and all, but I still think they could have done a better job with the program.

-- Thomas Shoebotham (cathytom@ix.netcom.com), August 25, 1998.

one of the problems they had was that they could not get "T-REX" to function and I believe that was going to be used to go deeper into the ship. So, with the broadcast being live, they had to fill the time as best they could. If this was the case, they should have explained it as such.

Regards, Peter

-- Peter Nivling (pcnivling@capecod.net), August 25, 1998.

Thomas, I perfectly agree with your comments. I thought to myself, here they are celebrating technology again and not learning from the past. How brilliant we are and how intelligent is our creation, including the submarine etc. Not enough prepared, while the reporters seem not to have even seen the movie, I suspect... Not much heart or real science was put into the documentary. An nothing about the third class...

-- Dan Draghici (ddraghic@sprint.ca), August 26, 1998.