Or, ‘Ismay Dismay’ – couldn’t decide on a title for this blog – too many good ones!

So anyway, the Titanic Walking Tour group yesterday was the biggest ever – a new record!  52 people turned up on a rather grey Friday afternoon to walk through a building site to see the wonderful, evocative glimpses of Titanic heritage that are still tantalisingly on view – if you know where to look.

So it got me thinking again about the huge, enduring appeal of this story.  No matter where you’re from, what you do, who you are – it seems that the Titanic story exerts an irresistible fascination – it’s why That Movie was so successful across the board.  Whether you wept for Jack and Rose (I’ll never let go, Jack!) or for the beautiful piece of engineering and technology sinking to the bottom of the ocean (But this ship can’t sink! -She is made of iron, sir, and I assure you, she can), there was something for everyone to weep at…

And it’s the story that just keeps giving.  This week there were lots of newspaper articles about Bruce Ismay – the splendidly-moustachio’d Chairman of the White Star Line, who is one of the most famous and fascinating characters of the whole tragedy.  Titanic was Bruce’s idea, his vision – and his downfall.  It was he and William Pirrie, during a post-dinner brainstorming session, who came up with the audacious concept of the Olympic Class liners – the largest and most luxurious ships ever built.

So there must have been a huge satisfaction for Ismay as he joined Titanic’s maiden voyage – a vision become reality.  But when the iceberg struck, the dream turned into a nightmare.  He escaped the sinking ship on one of the last lifeboats, but when the Carpathia arrived in New York with the survivors on board, Bruce discovered that the world had turned against him.  Everyone wanted to find a bad guy – someone who could be the focus of all the anguish and grief – and Bruce, by being the Chairman of the line and having the temerity to escape the disaster, became that bogeyman.  The press tore into him, labelling him “Yellow Bruce”, and starting the rumours (never actually proved, but they stuck anyway) that Ismay had been bribing Captain Smith to speed up for a record-breaking arrival in New York, and that he had escaped the sinking ship by disguising himself as a woman.   (If you look at the picture you’ll see that Bruce actually had one fairly prominent facial feature which would make it quite difficult for him to pass as a woman, but there you go!)

So much we already knew – but new letters have emerged in a book published this week to add even more spice to the story.  It turns out that Bruce Ismay spent the rest of his life (he moved to a remote part of Co.Galway) confiding his pain not to his wife, Florence, but to another lady he had met on Titanic.  Maybe he felt he could only really talk to another survivor of the tragedy (Florence had not been with him on the ship).  But the tragic consequence was that Ismay’s marriage became more and more distant and frosty, while he poured out his heart in anguished letters to another woman – who, recognising the potential scandal, very wisely distanced herself further and further.  Which made Bruce disclose himself all the more.  Which made her withdraw all the faster.  Which made…. and so on!

Poor Bruce ended his days a virtual recluse.  Even now his name isn’t clear – That Movie cast him (again) as the bad guy, and dramatised that scurrilous rumour about the bribing of Captain Smith.  He was the man who conceived of the greatest ship ever built, but he is remembered as the man who scuttled on to the last lifeboat.

What a story!  What a fascinating, flawed, tragic character.  And Bruce’s story is just one piece of the compelling jigsaw of the Who’s, Why’s and If Only’s of the Titanic.  No wonder we can’t stop talking about it.