As a young boy, I went along on many fishing trips to the Mississippi River with my father. He'd rent a flat-bottomed, wooden boat from the Blask Brothers near Genoa, put his small motor on it, and we'd chug out into the channel for a day of fishing. I loved the sound of the waves slapping against the boat and feel the spray of the water against my face. It must have been that old Viking blood in my veins, passed down from long ago, that made me love the boating experience.
My great grandfather, Jonas Østrem, was a fisherman in Norway before he left for America. My grandmother, Inga Sherpe, would tell us stories of him leaving the farm in the mountains above Moi, Norway, and sailing down the lake and fjords to get out to the sea at Flekkifjord. One time they had been caught in a thick fog for many days. They had given up hope of ever getting back to Norway, when the fog lifted and they were in sight of the coast.
Maybe some of those "water genes" from my ancestors were passed down to me. I accompanied my father and his fishing friends on several trips to Canada and Hayward, Wisconsin. Those were fun times and even when the water got very rough and the waves rock and rolled the boat around, I felt a sense of adventure, not fear. There's something special about taking the best that nature can throw at you and coming out on top.
I also spent three weeks on a troop ship in the Pacific Ocean on the way to Vietnam. I can't say I enjoyed the experience, but I did enjoy being on the ship and watching the ocean roll by. Even when we endured several days in a very bad storm, I found the experience to be an exciting adventure instead of frightening. I guess I should have realized that bad things can happen to ships and people in storms. It must have been that old Viking blood again!
All those experiences went through my mind this week when I toured the Titanic exhibit at the Milwaukee Museum. I was at a convention in Lake Geneva and several of us non-golfers took the Titanic experience while the golfers chased their ball around the course,
I love history, and seeing the artifacts that had been recovered from the ship that lay almost two-and-a-half miles down on the bottom of the ocean, was very interesting to me. We listened to the story of the Titanic on an audio device we picked up at the beginning of the tour. We were also given a card with the name and history of a passenger. I was Reverend John Harper from England, on my way to Chicago to begin a series of revival meetings at the Moody Church. They told us that we would find out our fate at the end of the exhibit tour.
The Titanic was an example of a very expensive and luxurious ship, but in order to save some money they had gone with some cheaper, and not as strong, rivets. Those rivets proved to be the undoing of the Titanic when they were peeled away by the iceberg, allowing a gash to open and start flooding the ship. Another mistake was the shortage of lifeboats. They had added only the number of boats that were required by law, not the amount needed to hold all the passengers who were aboard. They thought the ship was unsinkable and those lifeboats would never be needed,
In hindsight, those mistakes cost the loss of the ship and many lives that should never have been lost. Some things never change. It seems that companies still try to cut corners to save money and provide only up to what the law requires, not what they know would provide a safer item, whether that's a vehicle, ship, plane, or building. The low bid usually gets the contract.
One part of the story that stands out for me is who lived and who died. Once people began to realize the ship was going to sink it became a life and death situation for everyone aboard. How do you pick who lives and who dies? I couldn't help but wonder how I would have reacted in that situation. Would I have been one of the men who tried to crowd on ahead of the women and children? I hope not. How would a person live with himself knowing he had taken that route in order to live?
The whole exhibit brought many of those questions to light for me. What would I have done if our troop ship had broken apart in the storm? At least in our case, there were no women and children on board, just a bunch of guys. But what if it had come down to only one lifeboat left and hundreds of us still on board? Would I have been willing to go down with the ship so others could live? That's a tough question.
When we came to the end of the exhibit, there was a list of all those who had survived and all who had drowned. I went down with the ship. At least in the "Titanic World" I had sacrificed my life so others could live. But the question still remains, what would have happened in my "Real World?"
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