HIGH IN THE CROW'S NEST, lookouts Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee scanned the black horizon. Myriad stars reflected in an ocean surface as inky as an oil slick. Suddenly, dead ahead, loomed a large, dark mass.

Fleet rang three bells for danger. Then he phoned the ship's bridge and said, "Iceberg, right ahead."

Quartermaster Robert Hitchens spun the wheel, but it was too late. R.M.S. Titanic and a blue-green iceberg collided in the Atlantic. Two-and-a-half hours later, the "practically unsinkable" ship vanished, taking more than 1,500 lives with it.

Jack Thayer, who survived by crawling onto an overturned lifeboat, said the sinking "not only made the world rub its eyes and awake, but woke it with a start, keeping it moving at a rapidly accelerating pace ever since, with less and less peace, satisfaction and happiness. . . . To my mind the world of today awoke April 15th, 1912."

More than 92 years later, Titanic evokes a host of historical and literary clichés: The hubris of total faith in technology; the twilight of a golden age; the vulnerability of humanity in a scary universe. We felt a similar shock at the explosion of two space shuttles and the events of 9/11.

No wonder Titanic refuses to go gently into that good night. The ship remains at the center of a whirlwind of literary and film portrayals. Some are faithful to the facts; others not so much. (more)