For today’s #ThrowbackThursday, we’re dipping deep into our archives to pay tribute to the essential workers of the Titanic.
Although almost every single one of them tragically and unwillingly died to due to the White Star Line’s decision to not clutter one of the most opulent ships ever built with enough lifeboats, all were later honored by the sunken ship’s wealthiest survivors as 1912’s bravest souls.
“True working-class heroes those chums were, doing everything they could to save each other while we continued dancing in sweet, blissful denial of all that was happening around us,” said the ship line’s managing director, J. Bruce Ismay in a newspaper interview. “That is, until it was finally time to bribe a man loading lifeboats to let me cut in front of that particularly whiny pregnant madame and safely abandon ship.”
Ismay reflected on what more could have been done to rescue the more than 1,500 people who drowned after the ship struck an iceberg and sunk.
“I suppose we could have easily prepared for such a catastrophe and saved everyone on board, but the ship’s aristocrats had already spent such a fortune on the daily lobster, filet mignon and champagne meal plan,” Ismay said. “It just didn’t seem fair to charge them a tiny bit more for this sold-out luxury voyage just to make sure everyone would survive the ship sinking in the icy North Atlantic. These are people with children who need to be sent away to only the most elite boarding schools lest they be inconvenienced in any way.”
Sure the essential workers wouldn’t have had it any other way, Ismay recalled his last interactions with the staff of the doomed ship before it went under.
“As my lifeboat floated away from the madness, I called out to all those still aboard to tell them how brave they were – how I would keep them in all my thoughts and prayers,” Ismay said. “I remember them calling back to me ‘Luck you, piece of wit, luck you!’ I shall remember them all as charming heroes instead of people I royally fucked over.”
At press time, Needling reporters were able to confirm that 108 years later, people from all over the world are still pissing on Ismay’s grave.
