Jo-B Sebastian had just entered an exhibit about the Titanic and more than 1,500 of its passengers missing when a friend received a news alert on his smartwatch Thursday afternoon. It was news that five of her submersibles had gone missing during a deep-sea dive to explore the Titanic. The wreckage was confirmed dead.
“I felt like I had added five to the tally, and it was very eerie,” said Sebastian, a 34-year-old musician living in New York City.Titanic: Exhibition,” in New York.
Since last Sunday, the submersible Titan disappeared in the deep sea, its fate has roiled the world. Many were fascinated by search and rescue efforts and hoped that the missing explorers would be found alive. Others wondered why the wealthy would spend so much money on dangerous tours of disaster sites. The sinking of the Titanic in 1912 was one of the most famous maritime disasters in history, and she was drawn to the Titanic, which is still the subject of movies, exhibits and shows to this day. increase.
Before the Titan went missing, Sebastian bought an advance ticket as a surprise birthday gift for his friend, economist Stephen Hutt, and toured the exhibit, saying, “It feels like a perfect storm. I will,” he said.
In the final room of the exhibit, watery footage of the shipwreck, shot by Oceangate, the company that operated the Titan, is juxtaposed across three screens with the company’s founder and CEO, Stockton Rush. was also among the dead.
Peter Lazard, 61, a consultant from South Africa, sat watching the footage.
“The irony is that we now see what these people were trying to see,” he says. “We’re sitting safe watching this, but these people gave their lives to see what we saw.”
Titan’s deadly implosion made people question “Titanic” Celine Dion highlights a spooky retelling of James Cameron’s blockbuster Titanic, playing at Union Square’s Daryl Ross Theater. Should the joking show continue in light of the new disaster?
Avionce Hoyles, who plays Iceberg in the play, said the cast held a prayer wheel before Thursday night’s performance to pray for the families of the missing submarine passengers. “We asked that we be able to bring joy to the audience, and hopefully we did,” Hoyles said. “This show makes medicine, and our medicine is laughter.”
There was some concern that the audience would be distracted by the tragedy of the missing Titans. But they decided it was right to continue the show.
Also in the audience that night was Kevin Oria, 30, a restaurant host from North Carolina. When he heard about the missing submarine, he said he was shocked at how history was about to turn on its own.
“This tragedy is happening among people who happened to be exploring the site of another tragedy over 100 years ago,” he said.
Oria has observed a number of memes circulating online about the missing Titan, including one that irreverently mocks the wealthy victim. And it got him thinking about how people would now react to the loss of the Titanic.
“If the Titanic sinking happened today, I think this is exactly the reaction people would have,” Orea said. “They’ll be joking about pushing it on billionaires and the one percent.”
For Sebastian, a musician who grew up fascinated by the Titanic, the fate of the Titanic was a reminder of how human life can be shortened by the sea.
“When I first heard the story, what really struck me was that I couldn’t imagine being stuck at the bottom of the ocean waiting to die,” he said, recalling early reports. The U.S. Coast Guard announced that it had found evidence of a “catastrophic implosion.” “A story that really resonates and has stood the test of time, I feel, is a story of a life wasted, a story of what could have been.”
