History Department

Cynthia Power has won the Pro Vice-Chancellor’s Essay Prize for the spring 2015 semester for her paper, “Condemnation, Corruption and Culpability: The Inquiries by the United States and Great Britain into the Sinking of the RMS Titanic.” This essay was written in the distance offering History 3806 (“Titanic Histories”)  for Dr. Valerie Burton.

 Immediately after the Titanic was lost in 1912, the two countries most involved, the United Stated and Great Britain, set up Inquiries to determine why the disaster happened and what could be done to prevent a recurrence. The proceedings were transcribed in an early “crowd-sourcing” project and posted online, thus giving the public access to some of the most immediate first-hand accounts of the disaster (http://www.titanicinquiry.org/).  A cartoon, however, first alerted Cynthia to the complications of corruption in the British Government, regulatory incompetence, concerns over immigrants, and the ‘Trust-busting’ attitude prevalent in America. It caricatures the man in charge of the U.S. Inquiry. Senator William Smith’s reputation was severely impugned in the cartoon and elsewhere, unfairly as it turns out.

In an essay that starts by asking whether he deserved the ridicule of his critics, Cynthia examines accountability -- the role of the state and of popular media in making bureaucracies, businesses, professionals, and individuals responsible for disasters that cause loss of life. These aspects became of interest in the course of a semester’s work that drew her into a commitment to studying  the wealth of material and the scope of issues raised by Titanic’s loss. She would like to thank her instructor for a course that made history topical. She is grateful as well to her fellow students for the diversity of opinions and strong presentations they contributed to “Titanic Histories”. Although classmates never met in person the class had a great atmosphere.

Cynthia has completed several distance courses as a 3rd year History major at Memorial University and states that the high quality of online instruction at Memorial and ease of access to related material are instrumental in her continuing her studies.