PORTAGE LA PRAIRIE, Man. – Two young boys listen eagerly to the story of how a sailor rushed to free dogs from a kennel on board the sinking Titanic.
The narrator of the story, Steve Santini, speaks with gripping detail of the sailor’s actions on that chill night in April 1912. Behind Santini, a model of the ocean liner offers a reminder of the ship’s titan proportions.
“One of the crew members couldn’t bear the thought of the dogs dying,” Santini tells the two attentive boys, “so he let them out.”
Read Also
Canola oil transloading facility opens
DP World just opened its new canola oil transload facility at the Port of Vancouver. It can ship one million tonnes of the commodity per year.
Exploring the history of the Titanic and its owner, the White Star Line, is a passion and a profession for Santini. This spring, he and business partner Vera Hermanns opened the Manitoba Museum of the Titanic in Portage la Prairie.
The museum, with more than 100 artifacts, conveys the story of why the Titanic was built, the events that conspired to sink it, and how its plunge to the dark depths of the Atlantic shook the world.
Santini now is publishing a book, The Science and Story of Titanic, where he shares knowledge gleaned through decades of research.
“It was the space race,” said Santini, the museum’s curator.
“They were all building bigger ships and faster ships and trying to carry more immigrants.”
Along with questions about the Titanic, Santini is often asked why the museum was built in Portage la Prairie, far removed from the seafaring world.
Santini said the Titanic and vessels like it had closer ties to the Prairies than most people think.
While remembered for the splendor of its upper deck, one of the Titanic’s main roles was to transport immigrants across the ocean to North America. Many of the immigrants who settled in Western Canada boarded vessels of its kind when coming to Canada, Santini said.
There were also affluent prairie passengers on board the Titanic when it collided with an iceberg and began its dramatic descent into the ocean.
Santini said Mary McDougald, a former Portage la Prairie resident, survived the sinking, but lost a son and her husband Mark Fortune, a wealthy real estate developer.
Charles Hays also died when the Titanic plunged to its watery grave 87 years ago. Hays, president of the Grand Trunk Railway, commissioned construction of the Fort Garry Hotel, a landmark in Winnipeg.
And by searching newspaper archives, Santini learned that Portage la Prairie residents were as moved by the tragedy as were people in other parts of the world.
Special church services were held in the community, he said, and the Salvation Army band marched up and down the city’s streets playing hymns for the dead. Fund-raisers were planned to help the survivors, especially children left orphaned by the ship’s sinking.
Santini believes the lessons to be learned from the Titanic’s sinking ring true today.
“People haven’t changed,” he said. “We think we’re too smart, and we place too much faith in technology.”
Santini seldom tires of talking about the Titanic. Among the topics he is most passionate about is the question of who bears blame for the ship’s sinking.
He dismisses a common view that captain Edward Smith was negligent and had ordered the vessel to travel at high speeds through a minefield of icebergs lurking in the Atlantic.
According to Santini, the ship’s chief radio operator failed to convey an iceberg warning to the bridge, which was the last warning before the ship collided, choosing instead to work on a backlog of passenger messages waiting to be sent from the radio room.
But there were other events, such as the darkness of the night, which also sealed the ship’s fate. The iceberg, said Santini, was a dark hue and the stillness of the night meant there were no large waves lapping at the edges of the berg to offer telltale signs of its presence.
“A great number of things all got together to sink that ship.”
