Mythmaking and the Archival Record: The Titanic Disaster as Documented in the Archives of the Seamen's Church Institute of New York and New Jersey

No event in maritime history has produced a more powerful resonance in the national cultural memory than the Titanic disaster. Over time, the historical experience of the event has been transformed into a mythic narrative that is both compelling and useful to the society that created it. This paper offers a case study of the Seamen's Church Institute of New York and New Jersey as a usable example, both in terms of the history of the institute's "hidden" archival collection and of the history of the institute itself, of the role that archives and archivists play in the process of cultural mythmaking and in reclaiming historical experience.