Cape Town Image: Titanic Memorial – Washington DC – 2012-04-12 – 0018

A Cape Town Rhodes Memorial tagged image from photographer – Tim Evanson as published on Flickr.

Titanic Memorial – Washington DC – 2012-04-12 – 0018

Image by Tim Evanson

The Titanic Memorial, on the shores of the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. The 13-foot-tall red granite figure of a nude young man clothed in a wind-swept tunic honors the men who gave their lives so that women and children could be saved.

The statue was designed by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, who won a public competition. It was sculpted by John Horrigan from a single block of red granite. The granite came from Westerly, Rhode Island. The concrete 30-foot-wide exedra (bench) with dolphins on the end which surrounds the base of the statue was designed by Henry Bacon, who also designed the Lincoln Memorial.

Authorized by an Act of Congress in 1917, it was unveiled on May 26, 1931, by Helen Herron Taft, the widow of President William Howard Taft. The memorial was paid for by the Women’s Titanic Memorial Association.

The memorial was originally located where the Kennedy Center now stands. The memorial was placed in storage in 1966, and installed without ceremony in its present location in 1968.

The Women’s Titanic Memorial Association laid a wreath at the memorial every April 15 between 1931 and 1966. In 1979, the Men’s Titanic Society was formed to honor the memorial once more. Every April 14, the society hold’s a black-tie dinner at the National Press Club. The menu mimics the type of meal served to first-class passengers about the doomed liner. Around midnight the 15 members of the Men’s Titanic Society (all men, by the way) leave via limousine for the memorial. At 12:20 AM, the exact moment of the Titanic’s sinking, they make a champagne toast to the men who died aboard the Titanic — and praise the courage, sacrifice, and calm of the men who died.

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