Bill Rea I watched a documentary on TV Friday night on a topic that has always interested me.

And as I watched, it dawned on me that we’re likely to see a lot more of these programs in the year that is to come.

The documentary was entitled The Real Titanic. Not surprisingly, it dealt with the Titanic disaster. And the reason why I say we’d better get used to more of these shows is we’re a little more than year away from the 100th anniversary of the ship’s sinking.

As documentaries go, I didn’t think it was terribly good, although it offered a few insights into this historic event that I had never put much thought to.

As some of you may know, the story of Titanic has interested me for years. I was, at one time, a member of the Titanic Historical Society, although I confess I let my membership lapse a couple of years ago. I have read a lot of books on the subject, secure in the knowledge that for every one I’ve gone through, there are about six that I’ll probably never see.

So I like to think of myself as sort of knowledgeable about Titanic, although I’m also fully aware there are a lot of facts about the incident out there that I will never know, at least not unless I can win the lottery and start devoting myself full-time to tracking down these facts.

And as strange as it seems, considering the experts have had almost 100 years to figure out what happened, there always seems to be some little chunk of info that comes to light at irregular intervals. And as these little details emerge, the story continues to grow.

For example, it was assumed for many years that the ship went down in one piece, and those who asserted it had broken in two before going down were dismissed as being mistaken. Then they found the wreck at the bottom of the sea about 25 years ago in two parts, and the experts had to rethink what they had thought. As one writer observed, one of the witnesses who maintained the ship went down whole actually clung to one of the railings and was dragged down far into the drink before he let go and swam to the surface, in frigid water. People should have realized from the start that such a man would have had other things on his mind at a time like that. He wouldn’t have bothered taking inventory of how many piece of ship were nearby.

It was also assumed for many years that Titanic came to grief because a spur on the iceberg tore a long hole in the starboard side of the ship. It wasn’t until some years later that experts did some figuring and concluded that what actually happened was the ship brushed against the berg, forcing plates in the hull in, popping rivets and that caused a lot of little breaches in the hull over roughly 300 feet. The combination of those little holes was enough to sink the ship.

The documentary I watched Friday night actually did quite a good job of explaining that part of the disaster. It helped me overlook a couple of inaccuracies.

But there were a couple of interesting aspects to this documentary.

There was the presentation of what could be seen as a plausible explanation as to why the lifeboats weren’t properly lowered. The assumption has always been no general alarm was raised because of a desire to avoid panic. The program suggested another reason was it wasnt seen to be necessary because it was first thought that help was close at hand, when it really wasn’t.

I don’t know how true this all is. I’m not an expert on the technicalities involved, noramIahistorian. I’m just a casual student of a particular event in history.

And since we’re coming up on the 100th anniversary of the sinking of Titanic, I expect we’re going to be hearing and seeing a lot more in the months to come.

Another thing to remember is were just a little less than 24 years away from the 100th anniversary of the birth of Elvis. I think we can count on a lot of observances of that occasion too.