So who is this guy with the warped mind that is behind all of this you say?  Well after much thought and from your generous e-mails, I have decided to answer everyone's questions.  My name is Gabe and I live in a small town in Ohio called Chillicothe and the first capitol of our state.  Besides my passion for Titanic and reading obviously, I am also very passionate baseball fan and my beloved Cubbies.  As for my passion for the Titanic, it all began when I was very young.

     When I was 6 ('77) years old, my Grandmother used to tell me bedtime stories about this huge ship that was on her maiden voyage to New York with prominent people, schoolteachers, doctors.  Immigrant families who were coming to the New World to start a new and prosperous life also took the voyage.  But along the way, this huge ship struck an iceberg and because this ship was considered "unsinkable", it did not carry enough lifeboats for everyone on board, killing over 1500 people.  She used to tell me of the heroic tales that took place and the sacrifices that some of the passengers took for others to live.  And as she would conclude the end of the story she would mention the ship’s name, TITANIC. 

     Now being 6 years old, I was fascinated with the tale and the legend behind the Titanic.  As the years went on, I became more fascinated with the ship.  I watched my first Titanic movie a few years later, staring Barbara Stanwyck, Clifton Webb, and Robert Wagner.  Then what really caught my attention was in 1980, when Jack Grimm, a multi-billionaire from Texas, had sponsored an expedition to look for and photograph the Titanic.  That’s when I started to dream about one day, someone would find and raise her back to the surface.  I also wanted to know more about her, the people who had started the idea, the designers that designed her, the builders that created her and the passengers and crew that had sailed her.  And most important, the legendary stories of the heroes who sacrificed their lives for others to live on that fateful cold, and dark night.  So I went to the library to find out more, absorbing every book that I could get my hands on.  From Wynn Wade’s  “Titanic: End Of A Dream” to Walter Lord’s “A Night To Remember” I read them all.  But I what I really wanted to see, was fiction.  I wanted to see fictional books that would talk about the possibilities of finding and raising her to the surface.  It was something that I would know soon enough.

     In the summer of ’84, while I was vacationing with my parents at the Grand Ole Oprey Hotel in Nashville, TN, I noticed this book on the bookshelf with what looked like a stern of a ship rising out of the water.  And then I saw the words in big bold letter at the top of the novel, “RAISE THE TITANIC!”  Without even hesitating I took what money my parents gave me and spent it all on the book.  I was so excited to know that there were  was an author out there that had the same dream as I did about seeing her being raised back to the surface, and hoping that there were more books out there.  Now here I am, a junior high kid with a book that is pretty much beyond my reading level at that time with over 300 pages to read!!

     Well my eighth grade year came along and I had an English Teacher, Mr. Ater, who had this obsession of us doing book reports all the time.  His class was pretty hard in the first place, with a very high grading curve that was impossible to break.  So being the smarty-pants that I was, when he asked us what book we were going to read, most of the kids in my class had taken the easy path and chose a pretty easy and short book to read for their report.  When it was my turn to tell him what book I was going to read, I knew the title of the book would impress him and maybe, I hoped, a little bit more respect from the class.  Well when I told him, he said, “It’s a good book, and I hope you read it instead of watching the movie because I can tell the difference between the two.”  I was in shock.  Not for why he said it but for what he said.  I didn’t know they had made the book into a movie.  I was really excited now.  I would read the book and then rent the video and watch it for myself.  It took me 2 weeks to read the book and to write my book report.  And I still had a week before I had to give my report. 

     That weekend I was at my grandparents house and I remember that they had a RCA LCD machine.  I also remember our local video store rented the disks.  So I called the video store and asked them if they had “Raise The Titanic!” on LCD.  When they said yes, I asked them if they had it in and if I could have them hold it for me.  The lady on the other end said “Honey, trust me, it’ll still be in when I get there.  I was shocked that it wasn’t a hot title.  I read the novel and I loved every minute of it!  I couldn’t understand why until I watched it for myself.  The movie wasn't even close to what the novel had.  Feeling disappointed, I finished my book report, got the "A" and moved on with my life.  About a year later I picked up several new Cussler novels, Treasure and Cyclops and I never looked back.  I was addicted to Dirk Pitt® and Dr. Cussler's work ever since.  But the  novel that keeps knocking in the back of my head is "Raise The Titanic".  And it wasn't until 97 did I ever think about doing a website about it.  More on that on the History Page.