​No end to the Titanic story with the dangers forever with us

At the time of writing I don’t know the detail of the demise of Titan, a submersible with five people on board who set out to pay a visit to the Belfast built Titanic lying in its graveyard 600km off Newfoundland.

When Titan was launched four days previously most of us, I suspect, admired the bravery of those in the tiny vessel and wished them well. We had hoped their efforts would give up new information on the unfortunate ship. It was not to be. Our thoughts go out to the families left behind.

But perhaps the ghosts of Titanic have never wanted to divulge their secrets. Past efforts to retrieve something from the doomed ship have only produced a few bits and pieces. We do know of course that three dogs who set off with their owners in Titanic managed to get into a lifeboat and were saved. If only dogs could have talked.

Having acquired my boating skills (still about average) after marrying into a family of boat enthusiasts more than half a century ago I’ve always known that the Titanic lesson was one no sensible sailor should forget.

Did I think we would still be talking about it today all these decades later? No. What I do realise is that boats and a love of the sea are inbred. I like boats but I’m reluctant to go out in anything more than a Force four to five.

The boat tradition lives on in our family. We have two boat loving sons who are fearless on the water and now our grandchildren are learning the ropes. And It’s likely that those two current generations will be talking about the Titanic long after we oldies are gone. The Titanic however is destined to keep her secrets. Indeed, why would we want to deprive this historic wreck of what it took to its grave? We still haven’t the technology to provide the vessels which would safely take tourists for diving expeditions there much less retrieve anything from her and that’s as it should be. Any relic prised from the ship could soon find itself in the best bidding house in London then spirited away to a foreign palace where the owner would want the joy of being admired for his `treasures’.

That’s not what we want for the treasures which left from a Belfast dock and which belong to our city whose menfolk laboured to build - a massive undertaking. They must have been gutted at its sinking; all that effort on low wages lying at the bottom of a foreign ocean. The Titanic should remain untouched as one of our most treasured slices of history. But this is asking too much of the curious. After all there is nothing technical that man can learn from it other than to avoid the seas with icebergs.

Our own little `ship’ hopefully will take us to the Scottish isles next month. But I don’t `do’ stormy conditions, a throwback to the days when my sons were little and balked at having to wear lifejackets even in good conditions. I’ve even been known to sleep in a lifejacket – just in case.