And the night was alive with a thousand voices

[sovay]

I was not planning on posting anything for the sinking of the Titanic, but this came courtesy of derspatchel: the Titanic in her own words.

"This is Titanic. CQD."

There's the Carpathia, the Californian, the Caronia, the Baltic. Those are not actors reading the Morse transmissions that flashed back and forth across the wireless of the North Atlantic, jaunty, terse, desperate, encouraging, steadfast, frustrated, lost. Those voices are the product of speech synthesis software, only as capable of dramatization as the clicks and beeps of the telegraph key—ghosts speaking, but the ghosts in the machine, not the sea or our minds. Everything resides in the words. The words are devastating.

CQD. SOS. SOS. SOS. CQD.

Comments

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Oh. Oh my. That's chilling. Zero at the bone.

Nine

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Devastating, indeed, even on the page. I don't dare listen tonight, but I will tomorrow.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

The Titanic has the honor of being one of the first ships to use SOS instead of the CQ CQ CQ for distress...

... --- ...

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Wow.

It's just . . . the calm effect of it, and yet you know what's going on behind the words, and that makes it all the more devastating.


(Though I do want to punch whoever threw that ad in right at the moment when Titanic falls silent. "All's Well That Ends Well -- in Gujarati!" SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Have you seen this, also from the BBC site? The words have faces.

[zdenka]

Cool and creepy.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

That's scary.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Jim MacDonald of Making Light posted today in praise of Captain Rostrom (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/013211.html#013211) of the Carpathia.

Like most people I've never really thought about what answering that CQD would have entailed - namely, entering the iceberg field that had just taken out the Ship That Couldn't Be Sunk. In the dark. At full speed.

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

File under things I will not be listening to! Ever! With a side of never!

I bet it's cool, though, in its eerie, forever-speaking way.

Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!

As awful as my sleep is this time of year, I have to think of Captain Rostron of the Carpathia, stolid company man of a rival company, steaming like mad into the wall of the greatest possible oh shit oh shit oh shit moment of his life, to try and help, and coming upon that white-littered sea. I hope he slept again, sometime, ever.