By Andrew W. Griffin

Red Dirt Report, editor

Posted: January 23, 2012

reddirtreporter@gmail.com

OKLAHOMA CITY – Writing a few days ago at the blog Mommyish, writer Mollie Hemingway addressed the Costa Concordia disaster in Italy, along with the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Additionally, also noted was the popular British costume drama Downton Abbey by noting that with the Titanic, a chivalrous “women and children first” attitude led to many men – including author and multi-millionaire John Jacob Astor IV – losing their lives, while with the  Costa Concordia disaster, women described “being pushed aside by hysterical men as they tried to board lifeboats.”

A sad statement.

As we have observed here at Red Dirt Report, we are seeing links between 1912 and 2012. This Costa Concordia shipwreck is quite shocking. And within hours of researching the Astor family, in light of John Jacob Astor’s death aboard the Titanic, I see the first episode of the BBC's Downton Abbey – quite coincidentally – and within the first 10 minutes of the first episode they are explaining that an heir to the English estate Downton Abbey died aboard the stricken Titanic. This, of course, was in April 1912. And the characters note the death of “J.J. Astor” – John Jacob Astor.

Astor, it should be noted, reportedly helped women get into Titanic's lifeboats as he stayed behind. While there was some confusion aboard the Titanic, it sounds like things were a lot crazier and chaotic aboard the Costa Concordia as it sank off the Italian island of Giglio.

There are a lot of weird, synchronistic things that appear to be linking events of 100 years ago to events of the present day.  As I write this, I just noted a Wall Street Journal piece headlined "The Costa Concordia, The Titanic, and Cowardice at Sea." 

The captain of the doomed Costa Concordia, it is being revealed, is a villain of the highest order. Somehow, as passengers sought to escape the ship, he allegedly "fell" into a lifeboat. This captain, a guy named Schettino, amazingly referenced the Titanic a few years earlier while talking about ship disasters, telling the reporter: "(I) would not have liked to be in the position of the captain of the Titanic."

Incredible! In addition, as wealthy men aboard the Titanic, including Astor, Benjamin Guggenheim (and his valet Giglio!) and Isidor Straus drowned as the Titanic sank bow-first into the icy waters of the North Atlantic, "wealthy Russians" are said to have paid to secure a place in a lifeboat as the Costa Concordia struck a reef and began to sink. Of course White Star Line chairman J. Bruce Ismay, a villainous jerk who boarded a lifeboat while 1,500 other Titanic passengers and crew went down with the ship, got on and was vilified to his dying day as being a cowardly rich guy who took the place of a woman or a child. Sounds like Ismay would have been at home on the Costa Concordia.

Writes Fraces Wilson in the WSJ, who also authored How to Survive the Titanic, or The Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay: "Ismay, like Schettino, became 'the most hated man in the world.' His justification for surviving an accident largely seen as having been his own fault was that he was an 'ordinary passenger' and not a member of the crew, but the subsequent inquiries described him as a 'super-captain.' The owner of the ship appoints the captain, has authority over the captain, and therefore has  ultimate responsibility for the actions of the captain." 

The question is, were people more courteous, thoughtful and chivalrous in 1912? Are we a coarser society in 2012? Comparing the examples of the Titanic and the Costa Concordia - separated by 100 years - are worth pondering.                                             

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