酷兔英语
    当前位置:
  1. 首页
  2. 文章
  3. 英语新闻
  4. 双语新闻
  5. 正文

在法国瑟堡一家博物馆内举办的泰坦尼克号展览

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞


The Titanic wasn't unsinkable, but there's no keeping down the marketing on the eve of its big day.


不



This weekend marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, which slipped beneath the waves of the North Atlantic off Newfoundland in the early hours of April 15, 1912. Only about 700 of its more than 2,200 passengers survived.





St. Louis resident Peter Rager says he has been obsessed with the Titanic since he was five, when he saw the 1958 film 'A Night to Remember' on TV. On Saturday, Mr. Rager will put on his white tie and tails to attend an elaborate re-creation of the final first-class meal aboard the ship -- 11 courses, complete with wine pairings -- to be held at the Fox Theatre in downtown St. Louis.





Mr. Rager figures that after the weekend he'll go back to being 'an expert on something people don't really care about,' he says.





Places with direct Titanic connections are planning their own elaborate commemorations. New museums recently opened in Belfast, where the Titanic was built, and in Southampton, England, where the ship set out on its fateful maiden voyage. Memorial events are being held in Cherbourg, France, where the ship headed from Southampton, and Cobh, Ireland, its final port of call, as well as Cape Race, Newfoundland, which received the ship's distress signals. In London, the Royal Philharmonic this week performed the new Titanic Requiem co-written by the ailing Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees.





Many places not blessed with close historical ties are getting in on the action.





The St. Louis dinner is part of three days of events marketed with tie-ins to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter whose vacation on the RMS Carpathia led to the scoop of lifetime when the ship responded to the Titanic's distress signal and helped rescue survivors. St. Regis hotels are throwing champagne-parties in honor of the chain's founder, John Jacob Astor IV, who died aboard the Titanic -- not just in the New York hotel that Col. Astor opened in 1904 but also in more recently opened locations in Atlanta and in Tianjin, China.





Oswego, N.Y., on the banks of Lake Ontario, asserts no Titanic connection. But the city's H. Lee White Marine Museum will host a gala dinner on Saturday night in honor of the ship's passengers and will raffle off replica Titanic deck chairs for rearranging.





'The Great Lakes actually have more shipwrecks than the Bermuda Triangle,' says museum director Mercedes Niess, who adds that the museum did learn of a minister who, having survived the sinking, later took up residence in Syracuse.





At least Oswego is on the water. Branson, Mo., is in a landlocked state about 800 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. But that hasn't stopped some five million visitors from touring the half-scale Titanic replica that opened there in 2006. The 17,000-square-foot model, which sits in a man-made pond and rubs up against a fake iceberg, lets 'passengers' climb a re-created grand staircase, dip their hands in ice-cold water and try to stand upright on the sinking ship's sloping deck.





The Branson site and a sister attraction in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., are going all-out for the anniversary, with commemorations that will culminate in walls of fire pouring off the sides of the ships to ignite an eternal flame. Co-owner Mary Kellogg says the tone will be respectful.





'We will acknowledge and we will pay tribute,' Ms. Kellogg says.





It isn't surprising that the Titanic anniversary is drawing so much attention, says Paul Heyer, a communications studies professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario. The story of the ship's tragic end has been an object of fascination ever since it happened, says Mr. Heyer, whose 1995 book, 'Titanic Century: Media, Myth and the Making of the Cultural Icon,' has been reissued and updated to coincide with the centennial, on sale for $48.





Efforts to make a buck on the disaster are nearly as old as the disaster itself. The first film version, a silent short starring actress and actual Titanic survivor Dorothy Gibson, came out less than a month after the sinking. More than a dozen others have been released since, including James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster 'Titanic,' which has been rereleased in 3-D for the centennial.





Those in search of a physical souvenir had their chance April 6 when the TV shopping network QVC held a special sale of Titanic items, including $69 bottles of Legacy 1912 Titanic Fragrance. QVC sold 8,000 bottles of the new perfume, based on the essences -- 'delicate lemon and neroli, blushing rose with warm sheer amber for today's modern woman' -- contained in vials recovered from the Titanic debris field by a salvage company. First-class passenger Adolphe Saafeld, a German chemist and perfume maker, lost the vials when the ship sank. Mr. Saafeld himself survived.





Perhaps seeing the anniversary as the top of the Titanic market, the salvage company itself is looking to cash out. Under internationalmaritime law, RMS Titanic Inc. held the exclusive salvage rights to the area surrounding the wreck. The company's parent, Premier Exhibits Inc., is selling off all of its 5,000-plus salvaged artifacts in an auction that some experts say could fetch $200 million.





In a statement, the company said it hoped to 'put these artifacts in the hands of a steward who can take care of them for the next 100 years without the pressures of meeting monetization of the assets.'





For some Titanic enthusiasts, no souvenir or shore-based re-creation is sufficient. Earlier this week, more than 1,300 passengers boarded the MS Balmoral in Southampton for a cruise re-creating the Titanic's route.





A smaller second ship, the Azamara Journey, set out from New York. The two were to meet at the site of the Titanic's sinking for a ceremony at 2:20 a.m. Sunday.





Ben Casselman / Ann Zimmerman


Copyright © 2023 Qeto All rights reserved.
商务合作 | 联系我们 | 关于我们 | 版权声明 | 隐私条款 | 如果智培

京ICP备05059198号-1 京公网安备 11011202003401号