Arthur Clarke - The Ghost from the Grand Banks

From the London Times (Hardcopy and NewsSat) 2007 April 15:

A Night to Forget?

Some artifacts have the power to drive men mad. Perhaps the most famous examples are Stonehenge, the Pyramids, and the hideous statues of Easter Island. Crackpot theories—even quasi-religious cults—have flourished around all three.

Now we have another example of this curious obsession with some relic of the past. In five years” time, it will be exactly a century since the most famous of all maritime disasters, the sinking of the luxury liner Titanic on her maiden voyage in 1912. The tragedy inspired dozens of books and at least five films—as well as Thomas Hardy’s embarrassingly feeble poem, “The Convergence of the Twain.”

For seventy-three years the great ship lay on the bed of the Atlantic, a monument to the 1,500 souls who were lost with her; she seemed forever beyond human ken. But in 1985, thanks to revolutionary advances in submarine technology, she was discovered, and hundreds of her pitiful relics brought back to the light of day. Even at the time, many considered this a kind of desecration.

Now, according to rumour, much more ambitious plans are afoot; various consortia—as yet unidentified—have been formed to raise the ship, despite her badly damaged condition.

Frankly, such a project seems completely absurd, and we trust that none of our readers will be induced to invest in it. Even if all the engineering problems can be overcome, just what would the salvors do with forty or fifty thousand tons of scrap iron? Marine archaeologists have known for years that metal objects—except, of course, gold—disintegrate rapidly when brought into contact with air after long submergence.

Protecting the Titanic might be even more expensive than salvaging her. It is not as if—like the Vasa or the Mary Rose —she is a “time capsule” giving us a glimpse of a lost era. The twentieth century is adequately—sometimes all too adequately—documented. We can learn nothing that we do not already know from the debris four kilometres down off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.

There is no need to revisit her to be reminded of the most important lesson the Titanic can teach—the dangers of over-confidence, of technological hubris. Chernobyl, Challenger, Lagrange 3 and Experimental Fusor One have shown us where that can lead.

Of course we should not forget the Titanic. But we should let her rest in peace.

Roy Emerson was bored, as usual—though this was a fact that he hated to admit, even to himself. There were times when he would wander through his superbly equipped workshop, with its gleaming machine tools and tangles of electronic gear, quite unable to decide which of his expensive toys he wished to play with next. Sometimes he would start on a project suggested by one of the countless network “magazines,” and join a group of similarly inclined hobbyists scattered all over the world. He seldom knew their names—only their often facetious call signs—and he was careful not to give his. Since he had been listed as one of the hundred richest men in the United States, he had learned the value of anonymity.

After a few weeks, however, the latest project would lose its novelty, and he would pull the plug on his unseen playmates, changing his ident code so that they could no longer contact him. For a few days, he would drink too much, and waste time exploring the personal notice boards whose contents would have appalled the first pioneers of electronic communication.

Occasionally—after the long-suffering Joe Wickram had checked it out—he would answer some advertisement for “personal services” that intrigued him. The results were seldom very satisfying, and did nothing to improve his self-respect. The news that Diana had just remarried hardly surprised him, but left him depressed for several days, even though he tried to embarrass her by a vulgarly expensive wedding present.

All play and no work was making Emerson a very dull Roy. Then, overnight, a call from Rupert Parkinson, aboard his racing trimaran in the South Pacific, abruptly changed his life.

“What’s your phone cipher?” was Rupert’s unexpected opening remark.

“Why… normally I don’t bother. But I can switch to NSA 2 if it’s really important. Only problem, it tends to chop speech on long-distance circuits. So don’t talk too fast, and don’t overdo that Oxford accent.”

“Cambridge, please— and Harvard. Here we go.”

There was a five-second pause, filled with strange beepings and twitterings. Then Rupert Parkinson, still recognizable though subtly distorted, was back on the line.

“Can you hear me? Fine. Now, you remember that last board meeting, and the item about the glass microspheres?”

“Of course,” Emerson answered, a little nervously; he wondered again if he had made a fool of himself. “You were going to look into it. Was my guess correct?”

“Bang on, old man—to coin an expression. Our lawyers had some expensive lunches with their lawyers, and we did a few sums together. They never told us who the client was, but we found out easily enough. A British video network—doesn’t matter which—thought it would make a splendid series—in real time, culminating with the actual raising. But they lost interest when they found what it would cost, and the deal’s off.”

“Pity. What would it cost?”

“Just to manufacture enough spheres to lift fifty kilotons, at least twenty million dollars. But that would be merely the beginning. You’ve got to get them down there, properly distributed. You can’t just squirt them into the hull; even if they’d stay put, they’d soon tear the ship apart. And I’m only talking about the forward section, of course—the smashed-up stern’s another problem.

“Then you’ve got to get it unstuck from the seabed—it’s half buried in mud. That will mean a lot of work by submersibles, and there aren’t many that can operate four klicks down. I don’t think you could do the job for less than a hundred million. It might even be several times as much.”

“So the deal’s off. Then why are you calling me?”

“Never thought you’d ask. I’ve been doing a little private venturing of my own; after all, we Parkinsons have a vested interest. Great-Granddad’s down there—or at least his baggage, in suite three, starboard.”

“A hundred megabucks worth?”

“Quite possibly—but that’s unimportant; some things are beyond price. Have you ever heard of Andrea Bellini?”

“Sounds like a baseball player.”

“He was the greatest craftsman in glass that Venice ever produced. To this day, we don’t know how he made some of his—Anyway, back in the eighteen-seventies we managed to buy the cream of the Glass Museum’s collection; in its way it was as big a prize as the Elgin Marbles. For years, the Smithsonian had been begging us to arrange a loan, but we always refused—too risky to send such a priceless cargo across the Atlantic. Until, of course, someone built an unsinkable ship. Then we had no excuse.”

“Fascinating—and now you’ve mentioned him, I remember seeing some of Bellini’s work the last time I was in Venice. But wouldn’t it all be smashed to pieces?”

“Almost certainly not: it was expertly packed, as you can imagine. And anyway, masses of the ship’s crockery survived even though it was completely unprotected. Remember that White Star dining set they auctioned at Sotheby’s a couple of years ago?”

“Okay—I’ll grant you that. But it seems a little extravagant to raise the whole ship, just for a few crates.”