Page 16 THE VILLADOM TIMES IV • April 25, 2012 maintaining steam to keep the pumps, radio, and lights functioning. The tribute to the courage and dedication of these men is apolitical and convincing. The middle class officers and some of the working men sacrificed their lives so others could survive. The left hook comes from “Titanic” with “Dancing with the Stars” judge Len Goodman. As a young man, Goodman was a welder in the Harland & Woolf Shipyard, where the Titanic had been built and launched many years before Len signed on. As soon as I heard Goodman’s distinctive working-class accent, I knew the toffs were in trouble, and I was not deceived. Toffs are men who wear top hats. Working people are disenchanted with the sort of Brits the Americans seem to dote on, and Goodman gave the toffs both barrels. He had the numbers to back up his opinions. The numbers were impressive: 15,000 men worked on the Titanic for two years. The ship, which was the largest of its day, weighed 46,000 tons and was 880 feet long, which means it was heavier than the Battleship New Jersey despite a double hull that could not withstand an iceberg. The construction killed seven shipyard workers and the launch killed James Dobbins, 43, a shipwright whose leg was crushed by falling timbers. The Guarantee Group, eight engineers and draftsmen who were troubleshooters from Harland & Wolff, all shipped on the first and last voyage. All eight went down with the ship. The toffs did not monopolize courage in the Goodman account. All eight of the ship’s musicians kept playing hymns to comfort the passengers who could not find lifeboat seats as the ship went under. The 37 Italians in the kitchen and dining room staff died to the last man, and nobody remembered any panic on their part. Goodman also recounts stories in which the third class passengers – Irish, European, and Asian immigrants – were locked down in E Deck, at the bottom of the hull, so that they would not impede the escape of the first class and second class passengers. John and Phillip Kiernan, two Irish brothers headed for New Jersey, led some of the other third class passenger males in a brawl that got their women and children topside – and then stood by while some of the women and children made it to the lifeboat seats. None of the third class men did. Goodman’s statistic – substantiating Walter Lord’s accounts – demythologizes what happened. Sixty percent of all first class passengers, including a number of the men, survived; 25 percent of all third class passengers survived. The City of Southampton took the worst hit. Workers idled by a coal strike signed on as stokers. While some of these men proved to be heroes and some just wanted to survive, very few of them made it to the lifeboats. The musicians, the Italians, and the stokers were all dropped as employees about the time they dropped into the North Atlantic. When the handful of surviving stokers made it to New York, they found out they were unemployed and broke. Woolworth’s let them eat free at the lunch counter after the White Star line refused to pay them for time in the lifeboats. The myth of the Titanic was that of upper class nobility. The fact of the Titanic was that many of the working people and immigrants were heroic. New York came through for some of them. The Metropolitan Opera staged a benefit concert with Enrico Caruso and Mary Garden that raised a quick $12,000 so the stokers and immigrants would not have to sleep in the street. The London Symphony Orchestra, whose members missed the maiden voyage, arrived on another ship and raised another $120,000 in a tour of the United States and Canada. Good people voluntarily helped other people. Until they were put under pressure, the employers basically did not. Most Americans do not know enough foreign languages to assess how well the various non-communist European systems work for the people who live there, but anybody who speaks English can get a pretty good idea of what most working-class English people thought of their government. The heroism of London firefighters and rescue workers during the Nazi Blitz showed that the English had not lost the courage they had in the days of Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, and the Duke of Wellington. A few years later, the coal miners staged a strike in the middle of World War II. The English voted Winston Churchill out of office as soon as the war was over, which could show how they felt about the toffs. As we enter the second century after the sinking of the Titanic, we do not need a replay of Occupy Wall Street to show how we feel about Wall Street. We do, perhaps, need to reflect on how a fair minimum wage might show respect for Americans who still do useful work. A hundred years after the sinking of the RMS Titanic, the great ocean liner may sink again as the anniversary of the 1912 disaster recedes. Anyone who has been reading the news magazines or watching PBS now has state-of-the art knowledge of the sinking, and anyone who reflects on the recent spate of information has some insight into how times have changed since that fatal April 15 in 1912. When the Titanic sank, the newspaper accounts – followed by the early books and movies – focused on the gallantry and chivalry of the upper class males who stepped aside to let women and children into the lifeboats and then stayed aboard to die with dignity. Many men actually did this, and their courage cannot be disputed. The message was that blood and breeding could get us through any tragedy. John Jacob Astor IV put his 18-year-old second wife on a lifeboat and watched as she was rowed away. Astor’s estate was worth $80 million, but it did not buy him an illicit lifeboat seat. Ida Strauss chose to face death with her husband Isadore, owner of Macy’s. A ceremony over Titanic Weekend in a New York City park honored their dignified departure. Captain E.J. Smith went down with his ship, as did all the senior engineering and electrical officers. Lady Rothes, “the plucky little countess,” helped pull an oar in a lifeboat. She stayed on her feet to help care for grief-stricken passengers. These people and others like them fixed the image of what the sinking was like. Walter Lord, known as “Mister Titanic” after two of his books on the subject became best-sellers, pointed out some discrepancies in what could be called the Titanic Myth. Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon, a rich, titled, skilled swordsman and athlete and amateur singer, hogged a lifeboat for his wife Lucille and himself and a few of the “right people” and had it rowed away from the sinking ship with 40 empty seats. His argument was that the hoi polloi might cause the lifeboat to capsize. Titanic designer and executive Bruce Ismay, who was rescuing women and children, saw a lifeboat being lowered with just one seat left and jumped into it. Ismay had signed off on a design with an inadequate number of lifeboats. Gordon and Ismay may have thought they were doing the right thing. Social Darwinism, which was all the rage at the time, taught that lower class people were not worth much and the elite had to go on feeding and breeding at all costs. A lot of upper class people felt that way in private, but the fact that Gordon and Ismay acted that way in public while fellow millionaires and middle class officers were giving up their lifeboat seats and their lives led both men to be shunned. Both lived out reclusive lives as upper crust outcasts. This year’s Titanic updates included a right cross and a left hook. An Irish-German-UK production, “Saving the Titanic,” which was shown several times on PBS, uses live acting, diagrams, and computer graphics to depict the technical aspects of the sinking, and the bravery of the engineers, electricians, and stokers who died at their posts Occupy the Titanic? Letters to the Editor Dear Editor: Having attended the April 9 Mahwah Planning Board meeting and listened to the developer’s plans for increased traffic on roads leading to and from the proposed shopping mall, I can only envision a very serious threat to future public health and safety if this plan is accepted. Although their traffic engineer has proposed new roads to alleviate our cumulative concerns, my feeling is that they will only add to the confusing traffic weave patterns now in place. With an accident occurring any place, complete chaos seems inevitable. I cannot envision fire engines, ambulances, and rescue equipment being able to maneuver this roadway maze in a prompt and efficient manner. My sympathies lie with the people living in the Stag Hill area. The proposed plan calls for them to approach Mountainside Avenue by driving through the mall traffic and possibly stopping at a traffic light. Why should this Community involvement urged inconvenience be imposed on them to satisfy the needs of a shopping mall? Major intersections such as that of West Ramapo Avenue with Ramapo Valley Road, and Island Road, are already problems that will be further exacerbated. The people of the Rio Vista area will be affected. In fact, most main roads in Mahwah will be affected. I wish there were not such apathy by the residents of Mahwah and that more people would attend these public meetings to hear what’s being planned. This project is going to have an impact not only on the traffic of all our major roads, but will also affect future property values. All meetings of the planning board and the mayor and council are listed on our town website. I urge residents come and listen. Phyllis Stewart Mahwah