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RALPH B. WHITE
MEMORIAL
2008
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FEED BACK
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Take an unusual journey with an artist and book writer to a place where few people have gone. Two and a half miles beneath the ocean to where Titanic rests, is where Roger has travelled and taken photos of the ill-fated ship which he later put to canvas in great works of art. Read the "Foreword by James Cameron" which appears in the inside cover and is placed below for your convenience. For me to try and describe this book or to do a review, would be an injustice to what "James Cameron" has put so perfectly. To order a copy of this incredible book, simply "click on the book (above)" which will take you to his web site and the information necessary to obtain your own copy. Don't hesitate! Get one while they last and purchase one as a gift for Christmas or a birthday or special event!! This book is destined to be a best seller and a Titanic Collectible!!! Act now and mention that you heard about it at the Canadian Titanic Society!!!
Foreword by James Cameron
Academy Award-winning director of Titanic
And Ghosts of the Abyss
It was the tradition, in the days before photography was invented, for the great expeditions of the Age of Exploration to take with them an artist to chronicle their journey and the things they found. The images created by these brave artists, of strange animals and exotic plants, of the crumbling ruins of mysterious lost civilizations, and of the bizarre tribal regalia of the indigenous peoples who were encountered, brought to life the tale of the journey when the explorers returned to their home ports. Thus, amazed Europeans first saw giraffes and elephants, the pyramids of the Maya, and the sequoias of California.
Roger Bansemer revives that time-honored tradition with his visual chronicle of an expedition to Titanic. With the enthralled eye of a newcomer, he takes the reader through the entire experience of the voyage, with special attention paid to his dive to the wreck.
Titanic has passed from history into legend, and from our world into the underworld. It lies two and half miles below the surface of the North Atlantic, which is about as remote and inhospitable a place a person can visit. To visualize this, imagine you are in a jetliner at 12,500 feet altitude, and you look down at an 800-foot ship on the sea below. It will appear to be a tiny sliver. If you could strip away the water, this is how Titanic would appear below you as seen from your ship at the surface. And this is the distance you will descend when you make a dive to the wreck.
In the eternal blackness, where no sunlight has ever penetrated since the world began, and in crushing pressure created by the millions of tons of seawater above her, The Titanic stands above the seafloor like some ancient ruin. The once-mighty reciprocating steam engines tower over four stories tall and look, as my friend Bill Paxton said when he saw them from the port of the Mir submersible, lie “twin sphinxes guarding a forbidden tomb”. It is an eerie, silent place, a place of mystery and tragedy. It is a tomb, in a very literal sense, but also a monument to human folly and the limits of technology. And yet we celebrate our engineering and technology every time we descent to those depths, entrusting our lives to our inner-space craft.
Having made two expeditions to the Titanic site myself, and twenty-four dives to the wreck, I found Roger Bansemer’s narrative and accompanying images to be comfortably familiar. The Russian Mir pilots and scientists are my friends, with whom I have made four voyages of exploration. As I sit writing this in a hotel room near the docks of Port Everglades, Florida, I am about to embark on my fifth deep-ocean expedition, again with my Russian colleagues. The research vessel Akademik Keldysh is my second home. And Roger has captured life aboard her perfectly. All the usual suspects are accurately represented; Anatoly Sagalevich, the creator of the submersibles and the driving force behind the Russian deep submergence program; Genya Chenayev, sub pilot extraordinaire; Ralph White, the adventurer who’s seen and done it all; and all the others aboard who labor and sacrifice to keep the dream of deep ocean exploration alive.
Roger’s images and words will allow the readers to feel as if they have been on the voyage themselves, spent time with these people, and made the ultimate deep dive to the grave of the great liner herself. No one who sees the wreck of the Titanic leaves that place unchanged, and this book conveys that experience beautifully.
--- James Cameron
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"Roger Bansemer" (artist/author) with "Anatoly Sagalevitch" (chief scientist of the Russian research vessel, "Akademik Mstislav Keldysh") and "Ralph B.White" (Titanic Explorer (33 dives to TITANIC) and "Second vice-president of "Canadian Titanic Society").
Copyright-2003 all rights reserved (Canadian Titanic Society-(Est.-1998)
