THE TITANIC SUITE (A rock/classical suite based on the sinking of the Titanic)
Music: by Steve Cameron Written and narrated by Paul Bura
A MYSTICAL AND PSYCHICAL LOOK AT THE SINKING OF THE TITANIC
About 30 years ago Steve Cameron, musician and composer, approached me with an idea that he was writing based on the now infamous TITANIC. He wanted me to write and narrate on stage the story of the Sinking of the Titanic. He gave me the list of musical ‘targets’ that the narration would incorporate which is listed below. I knew next to nothing about the Titanic accept the film starring - at that point in time - Kenneth Moore and called A NIGHT TO REMEMBER (a memory surfaces: my uncle, Bob Bura, was an extra on that production and is the bloke struggling to tie two deckchairs together in the vague hope that they would float!). Other than that I knew nothing. I went to the library and swatted up on the subject, then strangely certain EXTRA information came my way: little snippets of information caught my eye either in newspapers or magazines or on radio! This ‘extra’ information is called ‘Cosmic Coincidence’, information that not only made the text more exciting but was of great personal interest to me, as anything of a ‘mystical’ nature was ‘right up my alley’! Not only that but Steve Cameron himself was caught up in the psychic web of the story - not only as the composer of the TITANIC SUITE - and was personally involved. He had come by a model of the TITANIC when he first began to compose the score. He not only had a near miss in a car accident but all sorts of things began to happen to him in a negative sort of way which involved his family and children. He promptly went out into the Kent countryside and threw the model into a lake…where it sank! From then on all was well!
The year is 1912. Man’s achievements in the last decade were enormous. In 1903 the Wright brothers flew the first manned aircraft at Kittyhawk; Marconi had set the ball rolling for radio; the motor car already ploughing its way through quiet country lanes. The tall, proud sailing ships were now only engraved in picture books. Steam now, though already in the running with gas and electricity, was still a force to be reckoned with.
Wednesday, April the10th, 1912, Southampton Dock was full of the raging sound of proud anticipation, people in their thousands stood in their Sunday best were here to magnify and adore the largest most luxurious steam ship ever built. The ship was THE TITANIC. A ship so vast in its countenance that there were those who were afraid even to board her: ”We have come to sail the Atlantic not to climb Mount Everest!” Somebody was heard to say.
Flags swelling with patriotism, movie cameras clattering and clanking for posterity the might of this ship; relation embraced relation. Millionaires, their tears mingling with those of Lords and Ladies; and for those who could only bask in the virginity of this Maidens first voyage this was a happy time, a moving time
Leaving Southampton Dock the TITANIC’S vast suction almost pulled another immense ship from the White Star Line, the New York, into a near collision, her lines having snapped with the strain. A man was heard to mutter that this was a bad omen. His words were drowned out in laughter. He left the TITANIC at the next port.
The next four days passed happily. Complete with hand-books that mapped out the very soul of the TITANIC she was explored from stem to stern. The mock Parisian Café was filled to overflowing, the Squash courts splashed with the sweat of pleasure. The ship was a positive floating Hotel-de-lux. No one, no matter what class – 1st, 2nd or 3rd – had seen or experienced anything like it. The White Star Line had excelled. With here 16 water-tight compartments and double skinned belly the TITANIC was hailed ‘UNSINKABLE’ and who in this whole wide and wonderful world could doubt it!
Messages of congratulations continued to crackle down the wire. The radio operator was overloaded with the burden and strain of it, yet determined to do his job by keeping everybody happy.
Radio reports of ice conditions were sent to the bridge of the TITANIC. This was normal for this time of year. But other more urgent reports came in from ships the CARONIA, the BALTIC, the AMERIKA, the ANTILLIAN and the MESABA, but all were put to one side! The last ice-report dispatched came from the SS CALIFORNIAN after having stopped her engines in an ice-field. Ships in the vicinity noted unusual numbers of ice-burgs and enormous quantities of pack-ice which had drifted far to the southward of their usual limits! Ice-burgs were reported to the TITANIC to be only five miles away!
A radio transmission from the MESEBA to the TITANIC giving ice-burg warnings was sent. The TITANIC replied: ‘Received. Thanks.’ The MESABA’S operator waited for the usual acknowledgement from the TITANIC as such a message would be delivered at once to the Captain. No reply was received!
Visibility was excellent but the ice-burg was seen all too late! Although her engines were slammed into reverse it was of little use. A shuddering, grinding wrench shook the side of the ship, ice crashed onto her deck. Then silence. At first her damage was said to be slight, a few sleepy-eyed passengers asked questions but were assured all was well. Of course all was well, what could go wrong with an unsinkable ship?
She was taking water fast; the water-tight compartments were sealed. The captain ordered the life-boats to be uncovered, that everyone should wear their life-jackets. There was immense calm. Nobody really believed there was any danger, how could there be with all this warmth and luxury? It was only when the gigantic sound of escaping steam split the air that any sort of panic set in, but still this sense of unbelief, still a weird calm. The radio operator continued, until the last, to call for help: the code MGY for TITANIC, the code CQD for emergency. Even the new SOS code was sent for the first time in history! Distress rockets were fired. The lights of a ship seen but five miles away blinked its blindness, seeming not to notice or hear. It was then that a kind of blind panic settled on their collective minds, also a sense of unreality!
The TITANIC gradually sank off the coast of Newfoundland!
Did that vast ship have a consciousness of its own; did it rage its way, unfulfilled, with anger in its steel-like heart toward its destiny, a destiny so tragic that its impact ripped the Western world asunder with its wailing news?
We are told that the minds of those who remained behind with the dying body of this drowning ship were in a state of calm, their last ounce of human dignity and greatness held high for those sacred few who took to the boats, boats whose numbers were not enough, even though the ship was only half full…
…and the band played Dixieland as the boat went down…
Did they scream as any human would scream when two miles of ocean closed above their heads? Please God that no past life flashed its drowning way through the little consciousness that remained…
…and still the band played Dixieland as the boat went down…
In the hugely quiet and glass-like sea the dying TITANIC, her lights still ablaze like the eyes of the monsters she would meet in the depths:
Her three shafted propellers rose Like a hideously magnificent Tor Then sank in a cloud of blooded steam Sank to rise no more!
A survivor wrote: “Within the area described, which was as far as my eyes could reach, there arose to the sky the most horrible sounds ever heard by mortal man except by those of us who survived this terrible tragedy. The agonising cries of death from over a thousand throats, the wails and groans of the suffering, the shrieks of the terror stricken and the awful gasping for breath of those in the last throes of drowning, non of us will ever forget to our dying day!”
They said that this was the ship that God couldn’t sink; perhaps they should have asked Him to build it!
It is a fact that the Chief Officer of the TITANIC wrote a letter to his sister: “I still don’t like this ship…I have a queer feeling about it!”
A lady passenger on the TITANIC swore she heard a cock crow around midnight. She was suddenly filled with a strange foreboding. The lady was a Cornish woman and in Cornwall such a thing is considered a sign of disaster!
An artist, many thousands of miles away from the TITANIC , fell asleep in front of his sketch-pad, when he awoke he found that he had drawn a picture of a vast ship that had struck an ice-burg… people were seen to be drowning!
In 1898 a novelist named Morgan Robertson wrote a book about an enormous ocean liner, a liner far bigger than any that had ever been built. The ship was the height of luxury and carried very rich and influential people. His ship struck an ice-burg! The TITANIC was 66,000 tons; Robertson’s ship was 70,000 tons. The TITANIC was 882.5 feet long; the fictional one was 800 feet. Both vessels were triple screwed and both could reach speeds of over 24 knots. Both could carry about 3000 people and BOTH had life-boats for only a fraction of that number. Both boats were labelled: UNSINKABLE! The name of this UNSINKABLE ship was: The TITAN!
One last item: in England at that time the mummy - or mummy-board that lay over the TOP of the wrapped mummy - of an Egyptian Princess was being examined. On removing the mummy from its original tomb a curse of death to all who handled it was translated over the entrance to the tomb. Four people who had been actively involved with the Mummy died in mysterious circumstances. That mummy was on board the TITANIC when she went down!
But that’s not all, I have since found out more!
According to Dr. Carol Andrews, assistant keeper at the British Museum’s Department of Egyptian Antiquities:
“The TITANIC story is quite true: it’s supposed to have caused so many problems, striking members of staff down with disease if not death; then it was sold to an American who decided to ship it home and use the largest liner in the world, which happened to be on its maiden voyage: THE TITANIC!” “However this particular ‘coffin cover’ was supposed to have been saved - I’d love to know which lifeboat it was on - but it got to America somehow and continued to cause havoc. So the American sold it to a Canadian, who took it back to Canada and - you’ve guessed it – still continued to wreck havoc. So the Canadian put it on a ship to send it back to England and the ship he used was the Empress of Ireland. This ship was involved in a three-ship collision in the mouth of the St Lawrence with an even a greater loss of life than the TITANIC. However, this valuable Egyptian artefact did NOT sink to the bottom of the river with the rest of the ship. In fact it eventually made its way back to the British Museum. It has only left the museum once since then in 1990. We were foolish enough to lend it to Australia for an exhibition and I’m sorry to say that when it was flown out I was the person on the plane with it. I don’t believe in these things of course, but I don’t mind telling you that I was a whole lot happier when we landed on the ground in one piece in Australia.”
Note: When I went on stage at the MARLOW THEATRE, in Canterbury, I carried a glass of water. I held the glass of water aloft to the audience and quipped: “I thought that it was appropriate!” and got a round of applause. Then we ‘knew’ we were in for a good and successful night, in fact you could say that the Titanic Suite ‘went down’ very well! (Well, please yourself!)
