1.Remembering SS Canberra, The Last Hurrah Of A Golden Age (Brisbane Times, 6 Feb 2018)
Almost 60 years ago, in March 1958, a massive ship rolled into the ocean from the same Belfast shipyard that had launched the Titanic. Dame Pattie Menzies travelled half the way round the world to smash champagne on the hull of the SS Canberra, one of the last hurrahs of the golden era before jet aircraft replaced ocean liners.That era is remembered at a new exhibition which opened last weekend at London’s Victoria and Albert museum – where the Canberra has been chosen to represent the end of an era.
2.Last Chance To See The Titanic?(Radio Canada International, 5 Feb 2018)
The Canadian firm Sub C, has partnered with the U.S. operation, OceanGate Inc. in a venture to take a handful of people down to the wreck in a deepwater submersible. OceanGate’s “Cyclops 2” which can hold five people, is the only privately owned submersible capable of descending to the depth of the Titanic. It may be the last anyone will see of the iconic ship. Canadian scientists Henrietta Mann and Bhavleen Kaur at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in examining rust samples taken from the ship on earlier dives, had discovered a previously unknown iron eating bacteria since named “Halomonas titanicae”. In their study published in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology in 2010, they estimated that the accelerated rusting and decomposition means the ship could simply crumble and basically disappear into a mere rusty stain on the ocean floor within a matter of years. In 2010 they gave the ship only another 15-20 to be recognisable.