100 years on from the sinking of the unsinkable, this weekend marked the actual anniversary of the last night of Titanic's fateful maiden voyage. 
One particular activity which caught my attention has been on Twitter. Since mid-March @titanicrealtime have been tweeting in the guise of officers, crew, passengers (all classes), engineers etc. I've been unsure about this all along - is it insightful or unnecessarily voyeuristic? So many of the tweets seemed so obviously written with the benefit of hindsight - references to numbers of lifeboats, safety measures etc - that it seemed hackneyed to say the least.Then last night - the tweets increased in volume with a moment by moment, sometimes second by second narrative of the collision, sinking and final rescue of the 700 survivors by the Carpathia. I don't deny I was gripped but it made me wonder why? I can claim it was out of professional interest to see how a publishing company with product to sell treated the topic, but that would be disingenuous. What is it that draws us towards this subject time and time again?
There's been the commemorative Balmoral cruise with everyone dressed up in period costume to sail the exact course and dates - judging by the look of most passengers this was a great jolly, like some glorified murder mystery event rather than a more genuine commemoration of 1500 lost lives.
It made me think about other anniversaries and how we respond to them and how we might respond to them in the future. What about a hundred years on from 9/11? Will future generations dress up in turn of the century business garb and re-enact the last hours of the twin towers or take commemorative flights? I think most would agree the idea is abhorrent so what makes the Titanic different? What turns something from being a sombre cause for reflection into an excuse for a big party? And what is it about the story that has such staying power?
Oh and if you're interested the same publishing company behind @titanicrealtime are planning a blow by blow Twitter account of the Ripper murders from the perspective of the police involved.
that's such a good point about the 9/11. It was the people dressing up in costume and re enacting that i found most strange and the thought of people dressed in business suits re-enacting just sounds macabre. They've already done plenty of timeline stuff on 9/11 through real footage, so it's not the tweets that bother me as much, it's people actually wanting to recreate it.
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