I've just finished reading the 1976 novel "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" for class and it got me thinking about the R.M.S Titanic.
For those who haven't read it, the book tells the story of one Margaret "Daisy" Willoughby, a New York heiress on her way from England to America to marry her equally wealthy fiancé, a member of the Vanderbilt family. On board the ship, she meets and falls in love with one of the ship's crew, Jason Cleveland "Jake" Dalton. Unfortunately, the night before the Titanic is to dock in New York she strikes an iceberg and sinks, with 1500 dying (Jake included).
The book inspired two movies, the 1978 box-office bomb and the remake twenty years later that walked off with quite a few awards, and became one of the biggest hits of the decade and is still a benchmark romantic movie to some, even though, in contrast to the 1978 version, its lead roles were played by relatively unknown actors.
But I was wondering, the Titanic did have a run in with a berg on her maiden voyage, but managed to still limp into New York harbour early the Wednesday morning. Once repaired, she went on to set the record for the fastest Atlantic crossing that stood until the 1920s. During the World War she served as a hospital ship, and saw much of her splendour removed. Following the war, she returned to service as a liner, but found herself gradually being displaced by faster, larger liners. And then, in 1927, she made her final voyage before the trip to the scrappers from New York to England.
So what if the Titanic HAD sank on her maiden voyage with an as great a death toll as in the book (or higher). Would there be any changes made? Maybe getting rid of the Birkenhead system (women and children first), I mean, of those 1500 dead mentioned in the novel, most would've been the men, leaving families without their major breadwinners.
What do you guys think?