The Myth of the Titanic (review)

Readers looking for an exposé on the sinking of the Titanic may be disappointed in Richard Howells's The Myth of the Titanic. While Howells does deal with discrepancies in some common beliefs about the Titanic, his book focuses on how and why modern myths are created using the Titanic as a case study. He crafts an easily accessible, well-organized, and logical book where each chapter builds on the one before.

The first two chapters lay the foundation for the rest of the book. In "A Brief History of the Titanic," the physical characteristics of the ship are described. Howell gives a timeline of the vessel's brief sailing history, a recitation of facts surrounding the sinking, and an account of the aftermath in both the United States and Great Britain. The second chapter, "Myth and the Titanic," reviews the myth theories of Malinowski, Levi-Strauss, Cupitt, Geertz, Jung, and Freud. Howells gleans from these scholars' works a working definition of myth that he uses as a paradigm throughout the rest of the book. The main thrust of his definition is that people use myth to "reanimate the actual to construct order and meaning from an arbitrary world" (p. 59).

In chapter 3, "Women and Children First," Howells sets up the world in which the myth of the Titanic operates, one inherently British and male-dominated. In this world, where men are the players and the heroes, it follows that "women and children first" would be the order of the day. While not all women and children reached the safety of the lifeboats, the percentage of male survivors was significantly lower. Once the men were left, it was their job to "die like gentlemen" (p. 80). Howells points out that the operative word in the phrase is "like"; in other words, even a man from the lower classes could die a gentlemanly death if he exhibited courage in the face of certain demise. Perhaps Benjamin Guggenheim and his valet, Victor Giglio, who went to their deaths in full evening attire best demonstrated the embodiment of gentlemanlike behavior.

The heroes of the Titanic also followed the last command of Captain Smith: "Be British!" (p. 99). According to Howells, being British required "manliness . . . devotion to duty . . . selflessness . . . loyalty. . . restrained emotion, sense of fair play and . . . sense of humor" (p. 106). Any man possessing these characteristics lived up to the high standard of Britishness no matter what his nationality.

Howells argues that it was the media and popular culture of Edwardian Britain that fashioned the "true" account of how those who died on the Titanic spent their final hours and minutes. Popular culture sources are also the basis of the stories about the orchestra playing "Nearer My God to Thee" as the ship slipped into the seas, and of the general acceptance of the Titanic as an unsinkable ship.

In his conclusion Howells applies the theories he used to analyze the myth of the Titanic to a more recent tragedy—the Challenger explosion. As was the case with the sinking of the Titanic, after the Challenger exploded people sought to make sense of the incomprehensible. It would be interesting to see how applicable Howells's theories are to the aftermath of September 11. His case for the power of the media and popular culture in shaping public opinion is a strong one. As folklorists have long known, the story itself is not as important as how and why it is told. The Myth of the Titanic makes a convincing case for the current viability of myth.