Waterfront disasters become unspoken tragedies
By now, we've all probably heard about the Costa Concordia's Jan. 13 grounding. It's got all the elements of a great story: Maritime tragedy, a disgraced captain and heroic passengers.
The story didn't end with the ship's evacuation either. The bodies of 15 victims are still missing, the captain hasn't gone to court and according to Franco Gabrielli, the head of Italy's Civil Protection Authority, salvaging the ship is expected to take up to 10 months. So we likely haven't heard the last of the Costa Concordia.
That probably means we haven't heard the last of the RMS Titanic comparisons, either. They've been coming from all sides For example, passenger Georgia Ananias described the grounding and subsequent evacuation as "everything you'd see on the Titanic and worse." The media's played a part, too, with headlines like "Costa Concordia Cruise Tragedy Conjures Titanic Memories" and "Costa Concordia: Titanic theme tune played as cruise ship hit rocks."
The comparison seems strange to me. The death toll for the Costa Concordia grounding, including those missing and presumed dead, is 32. The death toll for the Titanic was around 1,517. The former ship is grounded in the Mediterranean, the latter sank in the North Atlantic. On the other hand, the Titanic was famous for its luxurious quarters — even the third-class cabins were competitive for the time. Luxury is a big part of traveling on a modern cruise ship like the Costa Concordia. And, of course, both ended up involved in disasters.
Yet we should be careful when subscribing to Titanic comparisons. While the material loss of the Costa Concordia might be comparable to that of the Titanic, these comparisons are deceptive. The Titanic was built for carrying passengers across the Atlantic and the Costa Concordia was built for luxury cruises. In order to make more appropriate comparisons, we should look to the real modern inheritors of the Titanic's legacy: Ferries.
Ferries serve a utilitarian purpose that cruise ships don't — they are a means to an end rather than the end itself. Yet recent ferry disasters with death tolls higher than that of the Costa Concordia have not elicited comparisons with the Titanic.
For instance, 240 died in the September 2011 sinking of the MV Spice Islander I near Tanzania. Around 500 died when the MV Senopati Nisantara sank in December 2006 in Indonesia. Perhaps the most appropriate Titanic comparison has already been made. The MV Doña Paz, which sank in the Philippines in December 1987, was called "Asia's Titanic" in a National Geographic documentary of the same name, and with good reason: As many as 4,375 died as a result of her sinking.
What does all of this matter? First, these sorts of comparisons make the Titanic an actual human tragedy rather than just a movie with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. Second, they redirect our focus to ferry disasters — which often occur in the developing world — that too often are quickly forgotten by the media.
We'll likely be hearing about the Costa Concordia for months to come, but that doesn't mean there aren't other tragedies that deserve our attention. Such an exercise would be a good use of those vaunted critical thinking skills, the hallmarks of a liberal arts education. After all, why go through the competencies, capstones, and classes if you're not going to use your abilities to understand the world around you?
— Holley-Kline is a senior from Anchorage, Alaska majoring in Spanish and anthropology. opinion@thedepauw.com