Titanic

Titanic! The very word evokes awe and fascination, as the 100th anniversary of the ship's disaster is marked this year. Our son took us to the Science Museum in Houston last week to see an exhibit recreating the experience through viewing actual artifacts and a mock-up of sections of the great ocean liner.

We had seen one of these attractions in Branson (the guide told us there are four different exhibits across the country), but this one featured going into the bottom of the ship where the giant furnaces were stoked for the boilers to produce steam to power the ship. Dark and lit mostly by the glow of the furnaces, it was a somber scene with the backdrop of the throbbing engines adding realism to the display.

We saw one of the giant screwlike valves salvaged from the wreckage used to close the waterproof compartments. These were activated by pushing a button, which was the key to making the ship "unsinkable." The legend on a placard above told how the attendant barely escaped with his life by pushing the button and jumping through just in time. The captain reportedly said the ship could withstand losing one compartment, or even up to four, but with six lost, it was just a matter of hours before the end.

One glass case had dozens of individual porcelain au gratin baking dishes lined up in sand, just as they had been discovered. Their wooden cabinet had deteriorated, leaving them arranged just as they had been on the shelves. A poignant scene repeated many times was an occasional recovered cooking pot or sauce pan, along with the actual photograph of it lying on the bottom of the ocean, with a description of its use to make the rich sauces and meals served the privileged passengers.

There were stories recorded of narrow escapes by some who had scheduled a passage on the doomed liner, and for one reason or another, their plans were changed (one man had been shanghied, which inadvertantly saved his life). Others had changed their tickets to be aboard the fabled ship, as was evidenced in the triumphant messages we read in the faded, old script of recovered letters.

Several stories dealt with gold, money, or jewelry that was known to be in the luggage and trunks of the passengers. One man was purported to be carrying the family fortune, another a money belt full of hidden treasure, and another a suitcase full of jewels. Accounts like this are enough to inspire treasure hunters today.

The artifacts and incidents of the Titanic are reminiscent of evidence of other sudden destructions found by archeologists in digs of past civilizations. People were stopped in the midst of their everyday lives by volcanoes or other natural disasters. We know that biblically there will be a time when earthly life will be interrupted by what what we know as the Rapture, or the catching away of the Bride of Christ, the church--the Blessed Hope, I Thessalonians 4:17. That is the ship of salvation that is truly unsinkable!