Now here’s an ocean liner you’ve probably heard of: the Titanic. At the new ocean liner exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, visitors can see a wooden deck chair from that doomed ship. They can also examine an advertisement for the ship’s second voyage. The cheapest tickets sold for $36.25. But, as you probably know, the ship’s scheduled second crossing of the Atlantic never happened.

Something titanic has great size or strength. The Titanic ocean liner had both. It also had a gymnasium, libraries, and restaurants. Around the time it was built in 1912, people had become more and more confident in technology. Ocean liners were the biggest machines in the world. They seemed to deserve the trust people placed in them. They grew bigger, better, faster, and fancier every year! People even said, “The Titanic is unsinkable!”

The Titanic’s first voyage proved them wrong. The captain made the boat move very fast to impress his passengers. But the ship neared an iceberg during the night. By the time crew members saw the ice looming in the darkness, it was too late to slow down or turn fast enough. The ship hit the ice. It broke apart and sank less than three hours later. Around 1,500 people died. Just over 700 were rescued. Some famous and wealthy people rode aboard the ship. But many more were immigrants on their way to the United States. The last Titanic survivor, Millvina Dean, died in 2009. She was 97. In 1985, over 73 years after the Titanic sank, researchers found the broken ship at the bottom of the ocean.

When the Titanic sank, people started to think differently. Maybe technology didn’t deserve their faith after all. They saw it couldn’t always keep its promises. Things could go terribly wrong instead. In time, they started to see another lesson too: “Pride goes before destruction.” (Proverbs 16:18)