Talk on "Revisiting the RMS Titanic : Facts and fiction" by Bijon B Shaha

Talk cum interactive session on
“Revisiting the RMS Titanic : Facts and fiction”
by Bijon B Shaha

Friday | 24th March 2017 | 6.00 pm – 7.30 pm

Organised by The International Centre Goa

Entry Free & Open to all

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Bijon B Shaha has served the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Govt of India in New Delhi, Mumbai and Goa.  In Goa he was the Director of the ETDC continuously for 12 years before retirement. He specialises in and conducts Industry Seminars and Workshop on different topics such as:
* Quality Management and Quality Technology
* System Reliability Tools
* Environmental Management
* Information Technology (Information Security and Linux)
* Technical Communication

In addition to conducting seminars and workshops in technology and management, he delivers public-lectures on topics of general interest such as cyber-security, the universal language esperanto, protecting environment, quality management,optical and other illusions, etc. in organisations such as:
– The International Centre – Goa
– Xavier Centre for Historical Research, Goa
– Rotary Club – Porvorim

He has knowlege of ships and ship-building, acquired in connection with conducting seminars and workshops for industries like Goa Shipyard Ltd.

Abstract:
None of the maritime disasters in human history has captivated our attention more than that of the sinking of the
RMS Titanic, the luxury passenger steamship that some people believed to be “practically unsinkable”, but went down in her maiden voyage in the North Atlantic ocean on the early morning of the 15th of April, 1912 killing 1517 people.

Within a span of two hours forty minutes, went down millions of man-hours of hard work that went into building her
and along with it, the pride and the glory of human achievement of the Edwardian era.

Since then, for 73 years tireless explorations and searches had been conducted to locate the wreck – all in vain.
Finally on September 1, 1985, a joint Franco-American expedition located the wreck of the Titanic lying on the ocean
floor at a depth of about 13,000 feet (3962 m).

Since that disastrous moment of the foundering of the ship, and also after the discovery of her wreck, innumerable novels, short-stories, essays, poems, news-items, memoirs, investigative reports, ethical questions, moral evaluations and legal judgments have been spoken, written or pronounced in many languages all over the world. These writings and pronouncements along with countless sketches, paintings, cartoons, postage-stamps, documentaries and feature-films have either glorified or vilified various members of the management, the crew and the passengers.

But in that process many myths have been created, many falsifications have been concocted, and many lies have been fabricated. Today, fictions surround facts to obfuscate reality and create a web confusion of ‘titanic’ dimensions. The presentation, using words, images and video-clips, both historic and contemporary, will look at the events of the ship’s construction at the Harland and Wolff Shipyard in Belfast, her maiden voyage as well as the discovery of her wreck 73 years later which brought to surface a series of facts hitherto unknown.

In the light of the above, and based on evidences, we will try to understand numerous errors, mistakes and blunders that were either the main causes or other contributory causes and their unfortunate ‘Swiss cheese-hole style’ line-up that lead to a disaster of such a mammoth proportions, and such a massive loss of human lives.