THE VIEW FROM KING STREET
Anorakism
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CHRISTOPHER HURST looks at a phenomenon of urban life, and its connection with one of the greatest maritime disasters of all time.
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AFP
A watch that stopped when the Titanic sank, at a recent auction.
THERE is a certain kind of person — found, I suspect, mainly among urban males — with an all-absorbing interest in one subject unconnected with his normal weekday activity. In recent years he has come to be known as an "anorak". (This is because that garment is the preferred gear for train-spotting, one of the classic anorak activities.) Children commonly have "crazes": I had one for pumps at gas stations, which in those days differed according to the brand of petrol (I even had dreams about them). Also for big waterfalls, which for many years I only knew from geographical magazines. A Freudian analyst could have fun with these revelations. With the ending of childhood these obsessions usually change to "interests" and become more constructive. But not always.
Sport — whether for teams, like football and cricket, or for solitaries, like rock-climbing and pot-holing — is too vast a subject to be included here, but although it breeds obsessive participation and spectatorship, it can hardly be linked with anorakism — except in its secondary manifestations like collecting sporting memorabilia. A perfect field for the more or less "tame" anorak is model railways. I have known three men of mature years — a civil servant, an eminent accountant, and a Roman Catholic monsignor — who keep expensive track layouts and model locomotives and carriages in the roof-space of their houses, where they can escape after a tiring day. They climb the narrow stair (or maybe even a ladder), turn on the light and throw a big switch, and then have the joy of watching their trains whizzing round the tracks — past stations, under bridges and through little tunnels. Fanciers' clubs hold conferences to which the more seriously addicted go away periodically to meet their soul mates.
I would never bracket collectors of objectively beautiful objects such as china, pictures or rare books with such obsessives, although collecting is often an obsession with them. In the field of classical music, Wagner is the cultivated anorak's delight, generating a passion unknown to lovers of Bach or Mozart, making attendance at the Bayreuth festival akin to a religious pilgrimage.
Postage stamps are a borderline case. One of the fascinations of stamps is that they broadly reflect the history of their times. Another is that some early sets are beautiful examples of gravure printing. Early stamps, of which small numbers were crudely printed in places like Mauritius and the former British Guiana (cases in point) and thus have colossal value to collectors, have a different fascination. Consider too the stamps of small states that were later absorbed into larger ones (in Germany, Italy, India, Canada, South Africa, Australia — the field is vast). Philately is a great source of arcane knowledge. But what is a private individual (again it is usually a man) who will pay a small fortune for such a stamp, or one containing a rare "error", if not an anorak? Can he truly share the pleasure of owning it with anyone other than a fellow-anorak?
I think that enough has been said up to this point to serve as a backdrop for a subject that has bred obsession of an altogether more passionate character: Titanic. I refer not to the movie but to the ship itself: is it a sign of possessiveness that Titanic anoraks omit the "the" that usually precedes the name of a ship? Little imagination is needed to understand this obsession. On April 15, 1912 a great new passenger liner on its maiden voyage across the North Atlantic came into contact with an iceberg, was fatally holed, and sank. Over 1,500 passengers and crew died in the freezing water. This may be an insignificant number compared to the dead of the two World Wars, but in 1912 those holocausts were still to come.
The disaster has bred legend prolifically. Much about that night is known far beyond the circle of fanatics. The White Star Company that owned the ship was blamed for ordering the ship to sail at an unsafe speed in order to break a record; this made the gashes in the hull so big as to confound the boast that the vessel was unsinkable. Lifeboats and life-saving equipment were inadequate. Poor steerage-class passengers in the depths of the ship, including many emigrants, had far less chance of being saved than the first-class passengers; it has been said that the crew were ordered to hold them back. White Star's chairman was rescued, which was considered such a disgrace that he lived as a recluse for the rest of his life. Captain E.J. Smith, the skipper, went down with the ship. The rescue ship Carpathia, which providentially was quite close, came late on the scene. The band was long believed to have played the hymn "Nearer my God to Thee" on deck rather than join the rush for the lifeboats. ("Re-arranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic" has become a standard metaphor that needs no explanation.)
I suspect that fascination with Titanic entered a new phase with the publication of Walter Lord's book A Night to Remember in 1956. I read it then almost at one sitting, and today it is still compelling. The film of the book was not in colour and inevitably lacked special effects, but it told the story straight in documentary fashion, and was both gripping and moving. Lord was not a historian or even a sailor, but worked in an advertising agency. He had long spent his spare time patiently interviewing survivors, who were then relatively numerous and studying the historical record. I would like to think of this modest, retiring bachelor who created a work of art as the king of anoraks.
The recent movie was in a quite different category: it romanticised a real-life tragedy in a way that bordered on bad taste, but was a huge success. I could no more stomach that than the delving inside the pathetic wreckage that had been tracked down on the ocean bed and much filmed — controlled archaeological exploration might have been reasonable, but exploitation for profit? I would have preferred to be left with my illusion of the great ship, still intact and beautiful, lying on its side, with the spirits of the deep guarding the dead within it.
Finally let me introduce The Titanic Historical Society, Inc., founded in 1963, "the premier information source for all things Titanic and White Star related". Its official journal, The Titanic Commutator, has so far published 133 issues. A visit to the Society's website http//www.titanic1.org will give an idea of this amazing business.
A few years ago there were just three or four survivors of the sinking, and when they appeared at Titanic congresses in the United States they were treated as if they had been to heaven and back. One was an English lady, still vigorous in old age but who had been too young in 1912 to remember what had happened. An older French lady aged over 100 did remember; her whole life had been blighted, and she always avoided publicity. This is nearer to the reality of the Titanic disaster.
A companion article will deal with another large metal construction which met a dramatic end, and which has its share of anoraks: the Crystal Palace.
christopher@hurstpub.co.uk
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