Barnes. Pdf

Titanic. He was thirty-five, had recently given up his job as science master at Dulwich College, and was crossing the Atlantic - 
according to subsequent family legend, at least - in half-hearted pursuit of an American heiress. When the Titanic struck its 
iceberg, Beesley escaped in the underpopulated Lifeboat 13, and was picked up by the Carpathia. Among the souvenirs this 
octogenarian survivor kept in his room was a blanket embroidered with the name of the rescuing ship. The more sceptical 
members of his family maintained that the blanket had acquired its lettering at a date considerably later than 1912. They also 
amused themselves with the speculation that their ancestor had escaped from the Titanic in women's clothing. Was it not the 
case that Beesley's name had been omitted from the initial list of those saved, and actually included among the drowned in the 
final casualty bulletin? Surely this was solid confirmation of the hypothesis that the false corpse turned mystery survivor had 
taken to petticoats and a high voice until safely landed in New York, where he surreptitiously discarded his drag in a subway 
toilet? 
I supported this theory with pleasure, because it confirmed my view of the world. In the autumn of that year I was to wedge 
into the mirror of my college bedsitting-room a piece of paper bearing the following lines: 'Life's a cheat and all things shew 
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it/I thought so once and now I know it'. Beesley's case offered corroboration: the hero of the Titanic was a blanket-forger and 
transvestite imposter; how just and appropriate, therefore, that I fed him false cricket scores. And on a wider scale, theorists 
maintained that life amounted to the survival of the fittest: did not the Beesley hypothesis prove that the `fittest' were merely 
the most cunning? The heroes, the solid men of yeoman virtue, the good breeding stock, even the captain (especially the 
captain!) - they all went down nobly with the ship; whereas the cowards, the panickers, the deceivers found reasons for 
skulking in a lifeboat. Was this not deft proof of how the human gene-pool was constantly deteriorating, how bad blood drove 
out good? 
Lawrence Beesley made no mention of female dress in his book The Loss of the Titanic. Installed at a Boston residential 
club by the American publishers Houghton Mifflin, he wrote the account in six weeks; it came out less than three months after 
the sinking it describes, and has been reprinted at intervals ever since. It made Beesley one of the best-known survivors of the 

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J
ULIAN 
B
ARNES
: A History of the World in 10 ½
 
Chapters 
56
disaster, and for fifty years - right up to the time I met him - he was regularly consulted by maritime historians, film 
researchers, journalists, souvenir hunters, bores, conspiracy theorists and vexatious litigants. When other ships were sunk by 
icebergs he would be telephoned by newsmen eager for him to imagine the fate of the victims. 
Forty or so years after his escape he was engaged as a consultant on the film A Night to Remember, made at Pinewood. 
Much of the movie was shot after dark, with a half size replica of the vessel poised to sink into a sea of ruckled black velvet. 
Beesley watched the action with his daughter on several successive evenings, and what follows is based upon the account she 
gave to me. Beesley was - not surprisingly - intrigued by the reborn and once-again-teetering Titanic. In particular, he was 
keen to be among the extras who despairingly crowded the rail as the ship went down - keen, you could say, to undergo in 
fiction an alternative version of history. The film's director was equally determined that this consultant who lacked the neces- 
[p. 175]
sary card from the actors' union should not appear on celluloid. Beesley, adept in any emergency, counterfeited the pass 
required to let him board the facsimile Titanic, dressed himself in period costume (can echoes prove the truth of the thing being 
echoed?) and installed himself among the extras. The film lights were turned on and the crowd briefed about their imminent 
deaths in the ruckled black velvet. Right at the last minute, as the cameras were due to roll, the director spotted that Beesley 
had managed to insinuate himself to the ship's rail; picking up his megaphone, he instructed the amateur imposter kindly to 
disembark. And so, for the second time in his life, Lawrence Beesley found himself leaving the Titanic just before it was due 
to go down. 
Being a violently-educated eighteen-year-old, I was familiar with Marx's elaboration of Hegel: history repeats itself, the 
first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. But I had yet to come across an illustration of this process. Years later I have 
still to discover a better one. 
II 
W
HAT WAS 
J
ONAH
doing inside the whale in the first place? It's a fishy story, as you might expect. 
It all began when God instructed Jonah to go and preach against Nineveh, a place which, despite God's substantial record of 
annihilating wicked cities, was still - obstinately, unaccountably - a wicked city. Jonah, disliking the task for unexplained 
reasons which might have had something to do with a fear of being stoned to death by the partying Ninevites, ran away. At 
Joppa he embarked on a boat to the farthest end of the known world: Tarshish, in Spain. He failed to understand, of course, that 
the Lord knew exactly where he was, and what's more had operative control over the winds and waters of the 
[p. 176] 
Eastern Mediterranean. When a storm of rare violence blew up the mariners, being superstitious folk, cast lots to determine 
which of those on board was the cause of the evil, and the short straw, broken domino or queen of spades was drawn by Jonah. 
He was promptly pitched overboard and just as promptly swallowed by a great fish or whale which the Lord had directed 
through the waters for this especial purpose. 
Inside the whale, for three days and three nights, Jonah prayed to the Lord and swore his future obedience so convincingly 
that God ordered the fish to vomit up the penitent. Not surprisingly, the next time the Almighty posted him to Nineveh, Jonah 
did as he was told. He went and denounced the wicked city, saying that like all other wicked cities of the Eastern 
Mediterranean it was about to be annihilated. Whereupon the partying Ninevites, just like Jonah inside the whale, repented; 
whereupon God decided after all to spare the city; whereupon Jonah became incredibly irritated, which was only normal in one 
who'd been put to a lot of trouble to bring the message of destruction, only for the Lord, despite a well-known, indeed historic 
taste for wrecking cities, to turn round and change his mind. As if this wasn't enough, God, tireless to prove himself top dog, 
now pulled a fancy parable on his minion. First he made a gourd spring up to protect Jonah from the sun (by 'gourd' we are to 
understand something like the castor-oil plant or Palma Christi, with its rapid growth and all-sheltering leaves); then, with no 
more than a wave of the silk handkerchief, he sent a maggot to destroy the said gourd, leaving Jonah painfully exposed to the 
heat. God's explanation of this little piece of street theatre ran as follows: you didn't punish the gourd when it failed you, did 
you; and in the same way I'm not going to punish Nineveh. 
It's not much of a story, is it? As in most of the Old Testament, there's a crippling lack of free will around - or even the 
illusion of free will. God holds all the cards and wins all the tricks. The only uncertainty is how the Lord is going to play it this 
time: start with the two of trumps and lead up to the ace, start with the ace and run down to the two, or mix them around. 
[p. 177]
And since you never can tell with paranoid schizophrenics, this element does give the narrative some drive. But what do we 
make of that gourd business? It's not very convincing as a logical argument: anyone can see there's a world of difference 
between a castor-oil plant and a city of 120,000 people. Unless, of course, this is the whole point, and the God of the Eastern 
Mediterranean values his creation no higher than vegetable matter. 
If we examine God not as protagonist and moral bully but as author of this story, we have to mark him down for plot, 
motivation, suspense and characterisation. Yet in his routine and fairly repellent morality there is one sensational stroke of 
melodrama - the business with the whale. Technically, the cetacean side of things isn't at all well handled: the beast is 
evidently as much of a pawn as Jonah; its providential appearance just as the sailors are tossing Jonah overboard smacks far 
too heavily of a deus ex machina; and the great fish is casually dismissed from the story the moment its narrative function has 
been fulfilled. Even the gourd comes off better than the poor whale, who is no more than a floating prison where Jonah spends 
three days purging his contempt of court. God finger-flips the blubbery jail hither and thither like a war-game admiral nudging 
his fleet across maps of the sea. 

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J
ULIAN 
B
ARNES
: A History of the World in 10 ½