Peter Costello
Two poor emigrant women settle down as steerage passengers on the Titanic. Travelling on Titanic with Father Browne by EE O’Donnell SJ, foreword by Dr Robert D. Ballard (Messenger Publications, €25.00 / 23.00)
Published last week, to mark the 110th anniversary of the sinking of RMS Titanic, this evocative collection shows Frank Browne’s photographs taken on the leg of the ship’s maiden voyage from England to Queenstown. There the photographer was ordered by his superior to leave the ship, and so were saved his images for posterity.
I know this was an event that the world will never forget. But I find, for instance, Robert Ballard’s photos of the wreckage of the liner on the sea-bed the eeriest things possible. When we have had visitors who wanted to see the museum in Belfast I have let them, but while they are there I have done something else.
I realise this is not the response of everyone, but all I feel is the sense of human futility. The disaster itself moved poets, moralists and theologians to ponder the very nature of destiny and grace.
But here are the images of engineering achievement, high society grandeur and Anglo-American wealth. But Browne did not forget there were others on board the Titanic beside grandees. So aside from the very familiar images of wealth and social power, he also captured the scene illustrated: Steerage passengers getting settled on deck. We can take it, I think, that the two poor women in the foreground were drowned only days later, on their voyage to a new land of hope and opportunity. This is really the image of the Titanic to remember.