It was the product of a capitalist culture that put a premium on ever greater size and speed. It met all regulatory requirements (just). It was considered too big to fail. Parallels between the Titanic and the banks and companies that foundered in the financial and economic crisis are numerous.
Now an excellent book – Frances Wilson’s How To Survive the Titanic – has refocused attention on J Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line that owned the ship. He survived after boarding one of the few lifeboats he had ordered for the vessel, earning opprobrium, disgrace and an unshakeable notoriety as the corporate villain in subsequent films and fiction. The story raises questions about how society treats modern business leaders who fail and what could be done to mitigate or prevent failures in the first place.
No one wants captains of industry to perish, but the sense that they should go down with the ship persists. Christopher Ward, author of another recent Titanic book, And the Band Played On, wrote in The Spectator magazine that the audience at a Scottish literary festival cheered when he invited comparisons between Ismay and Sir Fred Goodwin, who piloted Royal Bank of Scotland?towards?disaster?yet?escaped with most of his pension. Lehman Brothers went down with Richard Fuld, but the estimated $480m he was paid while in charge continues to rankle. Having scuttled the News of the World, Rupert and James Murdoch of News Corp face heavy public criticism of their handling of the phone-hacking scandal.