Titanic Impressions

One hundred and one years ago tomorrow the Titanic disaster occurred on her maiden trans-Atlantic voyage. Sailing calm seas under a moonless sky on the evening of April 14th, 1912, this seagoing miracle of industry plied the waters of the North Atlantic. At 11:40 p.m. she hit an iceberg and sunk just over two-and-a-half hours later.

Picture is taken from a contemporary newsreel introducing the Titanic. With the dockworker in front, it is easy to imagine the enormous size of the ship.

The following year Grandpa Foy was called on a mission to Holland and later served in the army during and after the first world war. Returning home from either event he would have traveled the same ill-fated route as the Titanic and just a few short years after the event. One of those times he traveled over the very position of the catastrophe. Years later Leslie wrote down his impressions of the experience and the position of man in a perilous world:

The port of Brest, France, taken by Leslie Foy.

Experience of Leslie T. Foy

"It was my opportunity - once - to sail over the identical spot where the Titanic sank. I have thought of this many times in my more serious moments - just as I, then, reflected the fullness and significance of it.

"We had been notified that morning by our captain that we were approaching the spot where the Titanic went down and that his ship would send out signals as we reached the exact latitude and longitude.

"I recall now, vividly, just how I felt as the ship's fog horns sounded this salute. My heart seemed almost to stop as did the great ship upon which we were afloat . . . it too seemed almost to shudder at what had happened as there passed before my memory's eyes - a panorama of that fateful day. I beheld the Mistress of the Sea - the Titanic, then the World's largest and most palatial steamer and it's cargo of human lives . . . lives teaming with a fullness of all that the then prosperous and socially intoxicated world had to offer. I saw the magnivicent dining room with its social elite, its diplomats, Millionaires; Elbert Hubbard, the writer, and his like. I saw wine and women, bands, dancing and what not - all so engrossed in the magnitude of the thing that - not even the sentinel in his look-out, or the captain at his helm even dreamed that in the short space of a few minutes the great titanic would be sleeping just one mile down directly beneath where we then cruised. I beheld in my memory all these things - and more, but mainly I came face to face with the solemn reality of the insignificance of man - the nothingness of the great Titanic - and the mere speck that man is of minself in the great plan of life. 

"Yes! How unimportant MAN IS ALONE but how great he might become in God's omnipotent plan."

As we chart our own courses through life, we might remember Grandfather's insights.

Note: Grandpa's memory has been typed exactly as he wrote it except with the correction of a few spelling errors. Whether these were his errors or a later typist's is impossible to tell so I eliminated them. Thanks to the geniuses of technology that created spell check.