Disaster calls to us: Why we're obsessed with the Titanic submersible
A billionaire's hubris not withstanding
I probably don’t need to tell you about the tragedy of the OceanGate Titanic submersible. It’s the biggest story in the world, at least this week. And it’s easy to see why. It’s the rare news event that has basically everything humans enjoy in their stories. It’s a human interest tale; a technological disaster; an absolute nightmare. There’s a ticking clock; an insurmountable challenge; an impossible situation. It’s also a tale of hubris, of emerging details that turn this horrific hypothetical into a dark comedy. And with the increasing divide between the richest and poorest, seeing one of the former ignore every warning and doom himself can be cathartic. It has everything.
Most importantly, it’s happening in real time. Granted, that’s a common occurrence in the social media age, but people flock to Twitter, Reddit, and other places for a reason. It helps them keep up-to-date, but it also allows them to engage with the story personally and respond to it. Memes are obviously going to be rampant, but as reporters dig up more anecdotes, people continue to speculate and educate themselves over something as niche as submarine engineering or what the market for third-party controllers looks like.
Sure there are more horrific and internationally important stories out in the world right now. It’s easy to compare the Titanic submersible to the sinking of a refugee ship with hundreds on board and a rising death toll, for example. However, I blame a lot of media outlets for pointing us in specific directions based on what makes the most spectacular and controversial story. I think about a former boss who got excited at the prospect of local teenage sexting scandals, and it’s clear that what’s happening with the submersible isn’t anything new. In fact, it’s sort of the point.
In January 1925, a man named Floyd Collins, who was an experienced cave explorer, became trapped in Sand Cave. The area where he lived in Kentucky was rife with cave tourism along with a rush to capitalize on it, and Collins and his family had made their living off of digging up arrowheads and rocks and leading tours. However, a previous attempt to utilize a cave on his family’s land had failed, so Collins was seeking another route.
Collins had been spelunking since he was a kid, so this was a regular day for him — until it wasn’t. At one point, a rock fell on his foot and he became trapped 60 feet underground. For over 20 hours he lay on his back in the dark alone, his arms pinned at his sides and his body constricted by rock. The more he struggled, the more rock fell.
Once people realized he was missing, and likely trapped, they rushed over to Sand Cave. When his brother Homer Collins arrived at the site, he saw people had already started to congregate to coordinate the rescue. But it was proving difficult thanks to Collins’ position.
Slowly the crowd grew, but any idea was shot down for either being too risky or just flat-out ridiculous. Homer was working around the clock to ease his brother’s pain. Collins’ childhood friend Johnnie Gerald, who was also an experienced caver, showed up to climb down and remove rocks. Thankfully, there were multiple much more promising attempts.
For our purposes here though we’re going to talk about a reporter named William “Skeets” Miller, who arrived at the scene from the Courier-Journal in Louisville. He was young, inexperienced, but also small. He arrived at Sand Cave to report on the story, sure, but he was tiny enough that he took part in the rescue mission himself. He climbed down to where Collins was and spoke to the trapped man, who after multiple days trapped underground, was losing his mind. Miller’s account, boosted by his first-hand experience, was picked up by the AP Newswire. A later interview with Collins spread (“Tell them I am not going to give up: That I am going to fight and be patient and never forget them,” Collins said). The story blew up.
Mental Floss1 has an excellent account of the rescue effort, which lasted over two weeks. It’s a harrowing read, so it’s no wonder that the saga became a national phenomenon. It was picked up by newspapers, of course, through the wire, but radio, at that point a new medium, began posting bulletins from the site. Photographers and film crews captured pivotal moments. Thousands descended upon Cave City — at that point a town with a population of under 700. People set up food stands, held sermons, and brought in entertainment. Con artists took advantage. Conspiracy theories started circulating that it was all a hoax.
Collins’ story had all the makings of a news event. There was a ticking clock; an insurmountable challenge; an impossible situation. It’s a horror story, an absolute nightmare to many people. Even better, there were first-hand accounts from Collins himself. He could talk to reporters. It made the story way more intimate. Volunteers wanted to help and arrived in droves. If Collins lived, it would be a tale of American heroism, a feel-good story that everybody could relate to. A bunch of people banding together to save one man? It would be a feel-good story if they succeeded, and a tragedy if they didn’t.
Many call the Floyd Collins rescue the first media circus, although that’s not entirely accurate. However, spurred on by radio and the increasing connectivity of the world, it could be said it was one of early 20th century’s biggest non-war sensations. Miller would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting2. Multiple books were written about the debacle. Later the story would even go on to inspire a musical.
However, after days of clearing rock and seeking alternate routes, the cave collapsed. Rescuers continued to dig a shaft in the event that Collins was still alive. The effort went on for 18 days. By the time they got to him, he was already dead.
But Collins remained a tourist attraction. He was buried near Crystal Cave, but his body was eventually dug up by the land’s new owners, placed in a crystal coffin, and shown off to onlookers until the National Park Service purchased the land. It’s now a historical site.
In October 1987, Jessica McClure, an 18-month-old toddler, was playing with other kids in her aunt’s Midland, Texas backyard, where she ran a daycare, when she fell down a well. She fell 22 feet and became wedged in an 8-foot well casing, her right foot stuck above her head.
Unlike Collins’ ordeal, there were plenty of witnesses. Her mother, Reba McClure, had stepped inside to take a phone call and heard the children screaming. She called the police and said they arrived within three minutes. The rescue operation began immediately.
She was so far down that first responders couldn’t see her at first, but could hear her. They dropped down a microphone so they could keep tabs. The plan was to drill a parallel shaft and then dig across to where she was stuck. At first, they tried using a backhoe, but hit rock. Mining engineer David Lilly flew in from New Mexico and slightly changed tactics on the rescue, planning a horizontal shaft that would open up two feet below Jessica to spare her further injury. But getting through the rock would be a challenge and slowed down rescue efforts as people took turns breaking it down with a jackhammer. They would eventually turn to a water-based drill to get through the rest of the rock.
Lilly later told People Magazine3 of the saga, “Over the years I've seen it all… I've seen lots of fatalities. But I've never seen anything like this in my life.”
But as the rescue ramped up so did the media attention. The story of “Baby Jessica” was first picked up by local affiliates, but soon captured the eye of a fledgling 24-hour news network called CNN. It could mobilize quickly, and because it wasn’t restricted to morning and evening blocks, it could report on the effort as it was happening. People tuned in to get the latest updates — around 3.1 million households. Thus began what we know as the modern 24-hour news cycle.
“CNN could share stories in real time, creating a steady stream of contact — and alongside that, a communal experience,” wrote documentary filmmaker Mark Bone and writer Gregory Rosati, who worked on the CNN Films’ documentary short about the rescue. “The ongoing developments of a living, breathing baby trapped helplessly underground would help shape a 24-hour news cycle that people could connect with at any moment of the day.”
The media frenzy was unstoppable. Reporters and news vans swarmed the tiny home hoping to get a look. People were stuck to their seats wondering if she would make it out alive. It was easy to see why. There was a ticking clock; an insurmountable challenge; an impossible situation. It was also filled with optimism as people watched volunteers and responders work around the clock. As a neighbor told CNN, “You believed after (the rescue of McClure), if something happened to you or your child or your spouse or anybody that you knew, people were going to show up and help regardless.”
But Jessica was also a toddler, an innocent victim. Many of the rescuers on the scene told reporters later that they also had children or grandchildren, and saw their faces when thinking about her. Many people watching on CNN had kids, and thinking about something similar happening to them was unfathomable. From that CNN piece: “People felt that by watching, they were helping, with some viewers even skipping work to watch TV until they knew she was rescued.”
Anecdotes emerged from the rescue that made her feel closer to people than ever. Responders learned what her moods sounded like and heard her singing. She liked Winnie-the-Pooh.
After 58 hours though, it was time. As Time Magazine wrote, “At nearly 8 p.m. Central Time, all three networks switched to Midland.” A paramedic, Robert O’Donnell, who was small enough to enter the shaft, emerged with Jessica in his arms. She was covered in mud and bandages but she was alive.
The NY Daily News ran with a cover that shouted “ALIVE!” Time wrote, “Through Jessica, the nation had briefly been transported back to a time when anything seemed possible with enough prayer and hard, selfless, backbreaking work.”
People continue to watch as she went in and out of the hospital and monitored her progress. The photographer who snapped the money shot of her and O’Donnell emerging from the well won a Pulitzer. A trust fund was set up for her. Eight years later, O’Donnell would die by suicide.
Today, the story of Baby Jessica — now Adult Jessica — isn’t as well known. But if you search her name, you’ll get stories about what she’s up to now. You’ll see headlines like “Baby Jessica" Is All Grown up — What Is She up to Now?” 30 years after the rescue, People Magazine went to her Midland home, which she bought partially with money from the trust fund. She has kids, a husband, a job. She left it behind.
At the time of this writing, the passengers and pilot are presumed dead, with a debris field found near the shipwreck confirmed to be a part of the submersible. There were people who hoped that the people inside would be rescued but with the “ticking clock” having run out, it’s turned from rescue to recovery. I doubt the story is over, especially if authorities do anything about how this could’ve been prevented, but the public interest will undoubtedly wane like it always does.
I’m not here to moralize about the people who became trapped inside the submersible and how we should react. I believe it’s possible to feel horror, sadness, and a bit of glee at the same time. It’s pretty funny to think about the ghosts of the third-class passengers aboard the Titanic somehow cheering or the orcas who’ve been attacking boats banging pots. The Onion has been having an especially banger week because of this. And I’m sorry, but billionaires are destroying our world and to see that greed bite them in the ass for once is nice to see.
However, one of my first thoughts was about our collective fascination for certain current events — Floyd Collins, Baby Jessica, the Chilean miners, or the trapped Thai soccer team. We’re going to point fingers at each other concerning how we reacted. And now that the passengers are surely dead, I’m already seeing conversations about how we’ve responded (respect the dead, and all that). But the stories that enrapture us are all the same. It’s why the media pivots towards those stories despite arguably more important and impactful things happening. It might not be morally right, but it is fascinating to see what’ll be up next.
Reading list
Ed Zitron says what we’re all thinking. Like Cory Doctorow and the coining of the “enshittifcation” of the internet, Zitron argues that AI can’t destroy the internet. The internet has already destroyed itself. “AI might help profligate this kind of content, but you are completely delusional if you can’t see that the modern content mill of the internet is already full of crap specifically built to convince Google to give it more traffic.”
The media hasn’t learned anything from the Trump press cycle during his first run for President or the drama surrounding Obama’s second run, and it’s showing their whole ass in regards to RFK Jr. From Oliver Willis:
There are a lot of great breakdowns of Google’s new search tools (called SGE, now in beta and utilizing machine learning and its Bard AI chatbot). I liked this one from Tom’s Hardware that stresses one of the biggest issues we’ll have to face as journalists and readers is plagiarism.
In other AI news, Robert Evans of the Behind the Bastards podcast is at it again.
In union news: The Insider union striked and was able to strike (heh) a deal with management! ProPublica is the latest to unionize, which happened in the same week that they published the latest in the saga of the Supreme Court judges just engaging in super blatant conflict of interests.
A bit of housekeeping
Thanks everybody for reading. This is a bit of an experiment. The history of journalism is a fixation of mine, and I hope to do more essays about pivotal moments in the future. Let me know in the comments below if this is something you’ll like to see more of.
It’s been a while since my last post. I’ve been dealing with COVID and some burnout, but I’ll hopefully be back with a new one in the next two weeks. Until then!
-Carli
The Mental Floss article is what I used as my major source, although I’ve listened to podcasts and watched Internet Historian’s excellent video on it as well.
You can see more of what the reporting looked like in this newspapers.com blog post.
Thank you to Caver.net for scanning and uploading the original People Magazine article.