November 5, 2008

Guest: Brad Matsen, author of "The Further Adventures of Shadow Divers, John Chatterton and Richie Kohler: Titanic's Last Secrets"
Featured Saint of the Day: Venerable Solanus Casey

Today Deacon Rick and Jenny spoke with Brad Matsen, the author of "The Further Adventures of Shadow Divers, John Chatterton and Richie Kohler: Titanic's Last Secrets." "Titanic's Last Secrets" is a book about the untold story of the men and women who built the Titanic. It uncovers an elaborate cover-up by those who built the Titanic. Thomas Andrew, who designed Titanic, orginally mapped out that it would be built with thicker steel and more lifeboats. When these original drafts were presented to the ship-building company they were changed using the Board of Trade Regulations for ship-building, which at the time were twelve years old.

The stimulating factor between uncovering the myth that Titanic sank in one piece was uncovered in 2005 by John Chatterton adn Richie Kohler. They went to the wreckage of the Titanic searching for something different, and discovered two pieces of the bottom of the boat that hadn't been discoverd yet. By taking pictures of these pieces of the Titanic and later studying them, they discovered through the edges of the steel that hte ship had bent into a V one way before inverting the other direction. This caused the whole bottom of the ship to fall out. The Titanic, did then, break in teh middle adn go down in two pieces. This also solves some mysteries as to why it sank so quickly.

The shipping companies at the time had held that the Titanic had gone down in one piece, mostly to save the reputatoin of Brittish ship-making. Because this cover-up passed, there were no charges against the building company for faulty structure. Also the building company was then able to settle the insurence claims for much less than it would have been with these charges.

When Brad was asked to write the book, he asked what the survivors had to say about the sinking. Through his search of a database of inquiries and diving into the words of the survivors, he discovered that many of them said that the Titanic went down "without a ripple." That began this search for the truth, an adventure shared between Brad Matsen, John Chatterton and Richie Kohler. Brad spoke of the rewards of research, to sit down and discover the deeper truth. He phrased it as a "wonderful pusuit that rewards you as you're going along."

While the story of the Titanic doesn't directly correlate to our Catholic Faith, we can draw life from this search for Truth. We as Catholics need to take the intiative in our daily walks of faith to dive deeper into the truth. When we submerse ourselves in the richness of this Faith of ours we become more fully ourselves and are able to see rhyme to the mysteries of life.