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Doni McLerran
Member
Username: donita
Post Number: 40
Registered: 2-2007
| | Posted on Sunday, May 20, 2007 - 4:49 am: | 
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I posted this on the Father Maturin thread, but I think it's just going to get lost there. (If one of the moderators would like to delete that post on the other thread, that's fine.)
My question is regarding the infant that Father Maturin handed to someone in a lifeboat, saying, "Find its mother." Is there any thoughts about who the baby might have been?
-Doni
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Jim Kalafus
Member
Username: jak
Post Number: 2844
Registered: 12-2000
| | Posted on Sunday, May 20, 2007 - 11:57 am: |
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If the story is not a newspaper fabrication, then the infant could be any of the 30 or so that did not survive~ the stories of those that did survive being fairly well established. It was not Mrs. Docherty's baby, nor was it that of Mrs. Wickings-Smith or Mrs. Cox. 99% certain it was not the Booth infant, either. So, if Father Maturin's last noble gesture in fact happened, it has an element of futility to it because he placed the infant into one of the boats that was wrecked.
But, to me, this story always seemed one of those too-pat-to-be-true disaster tales that spring up around prominent figures who die at sea and who, therefore, are not around to contradict them. If he went to the nursery, why did he take just one baby? Was removing just one baby from the spot where its mother would be most likely to go in order to retrieve it something a man who had witnessed death many times in his career and who, as a result, was probably not operating in a blind panic would do? Barring intentional abandonment~ always a possibility~ it is not realistic to expect that the infant became irretrievably separated from its mother or caregiver on the boat deck. Unlike toddlers and older children, infants cannot get caught up in a crowd and stampeded away from their caregivers, and although things were chaotic aboard the Lusitania, condtions were not such that a mother who dropped her infant could not bend over to retrieve it. Just as Mrs. Cox did. And, "Find its mother?" On the surface it seems like a brave statement, but when one thinks about it, the first response is "how?"
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Doni McLerran
Member
Username: donita
Post Number: 42
Registered: 2-2007
| | Posted on Sunday, May 20, 2007 - 12:35 pm: |
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That's true, it most certainly could be a Lusitania legend. I rather hope that is the case if the alternative is the baby didn't survive.
Thanks for the response!
-Doni
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Matthew Bird
Member
Username: matthewbird
Post Number: 7
Registered: 10-2007
| | Posted on Friday, October 5, 2007 - 9:57 pm: |
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Shame if it happened and the boat was wrecked.
Jim could be right, after Titanic sunk there were reports of Captain Smith appearing at Collapsible B after the ship had sunk and handing them a live baby before vanishing.
This could be a similar thing. |
Martin Owen Cahill
Member
Username: martin
Post Number: 567
Registered: 5-2002
| | Posted on Saturday, March 1, 2008 - 1:47 am: |
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"This could be a similar thing."
sounds like Midrash to me.
Any observant Jews among us will, I think, understand this straight away.
Midrash is when an element of a story at one point in time is repeated in another further on. It is used in religous texts and is abundant in Judaeo-Christin writings.[I can't comment on Islamic texts as I am not familiar with them]
i.e. Israelites spent 40 years wandering in the desert is seen in the Gospel of Matthew as Jesus going into the desert for 40 days [and nights].
The comments here about the Maturin baby bring this up in my mind. especially when the Captain Smith story is considered.
both stories speak of the need for human courage in times of great difficulty. World War I was certainly one of those times.
Martin
"No Sir, We just hit the cruiser"
helmsman on Queen Mary
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