A century ago tonight, Royal Mail Ship Titanic struck an iceberg four days into her maiden crossing at 11:40 in the evening. She sank two and a half hours later, taking 1500 souls, including some of the world's wealthiest men, with her.
"Unsinkable ship sinks," the headlines declared.
To be fair, neither the engineers who designed her nor the builders who built her claimed that Titanic was unsinkable. That claim was the work of marketers and writers of advertising copy, who were no more dedicated to truth a century ago than they are today.
But the engineers were guilty of overoptimism about the number of lifeboats needed and the likelihood of rescue in event of a collision or sinking. The captain was guilty of proceeding at too high a speed even after small icebergs had been sighted.
Building a ship,operating it at sea and planning a voyage are always efforts at identifying and counteracting hazards of navigation. Such hazards are more easily identified after a disaster than before.
Planning ahead is an art. In my day, the navy had a word for the process of thinking through what to do in advance of the event: "forehandedness." It's one of my favorite words.
In our own time, we have seen the loss of Challenger, Columbia, the French Concorde, and countless airliners. All were thought to be safe until the unthinkable happened. The Greeks had a word for the phenomenon of human overreach: hubris.
It is still with us.
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