48
B+WLive wires, Post Office linesmen, Emo, Co Laois.
O’Connell Street from Elvery’s, Dublin 1942.Window shopping, Kodak’s shop window,
Grafton Street, Dublin.The results, clearly intended to show as
much detail as possible of life in what
was then the largest ship in the world,
are extremely well observed, technically
proficient and full of information. They also
reveal a steady progress from fairly mundane
visual documentation to considerable
artistry, as Frank’s final powerful and
dramatic image of the liner steaming awayTitanic even left Southampton it looked as
if there might be an accident when another
liner broke free of its moorings and drifted
towards the Titanic: ‘A voice beside me said,from Cobh to her doom demonstrates.
After the Titanic sank, and some 1,500
passengers and crew had died, the press
devoured as many of Frank’s unique
photographs as possible. The tragedy was
front page news all over the world, and his
pictures were the closest newspapers could
get to what it was like to be a passenger on
the ill-fated liner. More than a century later,
they still are.F
rank Browne also had a way
with words, and I rather wish
he had written more about his
time aboard the Titanic than the
account published years later in
the magazine of his old secondary school.
Take, for instance, this simple but telling
description of the sense of scale he felt when
he found himself boarding this Goliath of
the seas and climbing three flights of stairs:
‘Left and right stretched a wall of steel that
towered high above the roof of the station
that we had just left. We were about 40ft
above the quay level, and yet scarce halfway
up the side of the ship. Below us the people
looked tiny, while 120 yards aft we could
see the second class passengers crossing the
gangway into their portion of the ship.’
Elsewhere in his account, Browne’s
journalistic instinct is apparent. Before the44-50_FRANK_BROWNE ER/MB.indd 4844-50_FRANK_BROWNE ER/MB.indd 48 27/02/2015 10:2627/02/2015 10:26