Titanic (Scriptment) Page #2

The great ocean liner sits upright on the bottom, two and a half miles under the surface of the North Atlantic. A place where there is no light, no warmth, no sound. And where she has rested since the night she dropped here unannounced April 15th, 1912.

The lights and machinery give the site the feeling of an archeological dig, and it is clear these guys have been here for a while. In fact this is dive number 12 in an exhaustive series of salvage dives designed to recover the most valuable artifacts from inside the ship.

The 22 foot subs are like bugs moving next to the great sad ruin. Its vast bulk goes on into the darkness, far beyond the limits of visibility.

In 1912 it was the largest moving object ever made... 882 feet long, and weighing 46,000 tons. Its sinking shocked the world like the Challenger explosion and the Kennedy assassination combined. It is hard for us to understand the psychological impact of this disaster in its time.

It signaled the end of the age of innocence, the gilded Edwardian age... where science would allow us to master the world, bringing only change for the better in an upward spiral of peace, prosperity and enlightenment. Within the previous decade the automobile, the airplane, electric light, wireless communication, telephones, motion pictures, and Kellogg's Cornflakes had gone from invention to commonplace. There seemed to be no limit to what the human mind could accomplish. Man had mastered the physical world, and civilized his own base nature.

Yet within another few short years the world would see eleven million deaths to a world war made vastly more savage by technological advancements, and another 17 million deaths to the great influenza epidemic... a demonstration of how easily the natural world could lash back against our supposed mastery.

We would never trust technology again with such childlike faith. And, more importantly in the coming age of nuclear weapons, we would always have a reminder that the unthinkable could happen. And did.

Notwithstanding all precautions, safety systems, best intentions and the love of God... 1500 people died screaming in water 3 degrees below freezing in the middle of the night in the North Atlantic.

Mir One passes the lone bronze telemoter, the only remains of the wheelhouse. From here CAPTAIN SMITH surveyed his empire. And on this metal column hung the ship's wheel, which QUARTERMASTER HICHENS spun hard over to try and miss the iceberg ahead.

Mir One lands on the boat deck, next to the ruins of the Officer's Quarters. Mir Two, on the sand seventy feet below it, releases a small R.O.V. called SNOOP DOG.

BODINE:

Walkin' the dog.

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