Are you ready to hear a somewhat bizarre, somewhat surprising, and somewhat unsettling tale?  Well ready or not, here it comes. Some of you may be more familiar with the history of the electric chair than I was prior to conducting some research. But for those of you who don’t know anything about the origins of “old Sparky”– brace yourselves.

When the Titanic vanished beneath the Atlantic in the early hours of April 15th, 1912, she left a terrified mass of over sixteen hundred people behind her, gasping for breath and thrashing around helplessly in water temperatures well below zero. It was almost an hour before their cries were drowned out by silence. Yet the Titanic disaster raised voices that have yet to be silenced to this day.

“We have absolute faith in the Titanic. We believe that the boat is unsinkable.” This was the response of the White Star Line’s Phillip Franklin to a crowd of frenzied news reporters in New York. During the night, all sorts of sensational rumours had begun to surface about the new liner, and Franklin was in full damage control mode.

The people shivering in the half filled lifeboats could hardly believe their eyes and ears. In front of them, the largest moving object ever built was sagging helplessly into the ocean like some puppet with its strings cut. Row upon row of lights blazed at a madly slanted angle on the dark black mirror of the Atlantic. Up above, a string of pathetic distress rockets soared skywards, exploding in showers of pale white sparks that no one heeded. And, incredibly, from across the water came the sound of jaunty, upbeat music.

The luckiest ones died without even knowing it. A torrent of surging, ice cold seawater roared through the forward cabins containing the single men, drowning many of them in their bunks. Others were awoken by the long, grinding jar that shook clothes hanging on coat hooks and made glasses fall from nightstands. Stepping out of their bunks and reaching for the light switch, many men found a terrifying trickle of incoming water flowing across the cabin floor.

In the entire emotional roller coaster that is the Titanic disaster, few stories have aroused more anger and indignation than the departure of company chairman, Bruce Ismay, from the sinking ship. He left a foundering ship in a lifeboat, while literally hundreds of men, women and children were still left on the decks. In light of recent events in the Mediterranean with the Italian cruise ship captain, his story still has the power to simultaneously engage and enrage people; it remains a heavily charged emotional lightning rod to this day.

Consider the following scenario. You have a sinking ship, four hundred miles from the nearest land. The only responding rescue ship will not arrive for four hours, and the ship will not stay afloat for half that time. The water temperature is twenty eight degrees Fahrenheit. Anyone attempting to swim for it will freeze to death within minutes.

It is the late evening of Sunday, April 14th, 1912, and the North Atlantic is as still as the surface of a darkened mirror. The clear, moonless night sky up above is packed with millions of twinkling, benevolent stars. In short, it is a beautiful evening.

It was the biggest single building project on the planet since the pyramids of Giza. For three years, more than fifteen thousand sweating, swearing Irishmen laboured to bring it to life from the very mud of Belfast. It grew through freezing winters and searing hot summers. As it grew, it loomed over the entire city skyline.