She used to own one of those damn necklaces, too.

I don't know about you, but I intend to write a strongly worded letter to the White Star Line about all of this.

Jack Dawson, Titanic

A recent conversation with Laurie brought up the following question:  if you could travel in time, where (or more accurately when) would you go?

Laurie expressed her desire to travel on the Titanic, with the unexpected codicil that she'd like to be one of the survivors. I can certainly understand wanting to see the Titanic during its heyday, but I'm not sure I'd want to go so far as to experience the accident itself, although I'm relieved to hear that Laurie wouldn't want to go down with the ship. She went on to explain that she'd be a rich heiress, at which point I stopped her. 

"Wait, how would you become a rich heiress in 1912?  From whom would you inherit your riches?"

Travelling back in time and experiencing historical events in person is an interesting idea, and something that I think would appeal to a lot of people, but the practical aspects of arranging that sort of a first person temporal holiday are daunting, to say the least.  I don't object to someone wanting to be a rich heiress - no one wants to travel below the waterline, especially in this case - but how do you introduce participants from the future into a well documented, dead-end scenario like the death of the Titanic?

Let's lay down some ground rules first.  Changing the timeline is completely verboten - no going up to the bridge and holding the crew at gunpoint to make them change course, but even smaller Butterfly Effect changes have to be avoided.

We also want to make sure that there are no twonkies. In the parlance of time travel, a twonky is an anachronistic artifact, like a Coke can in a medieval midden - the name comes from a 1942 short story by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore.  Avoiding possible twonkies in this situation is especially important because we already know that James Cameron is going to be all over the place in a submersible with an Imax camera less than a hundred years later.  So, Laurie, my apologies, but just to be safe, no iPod. No iPod, no earbuds, no camera, no bottled water, no protein bars, no pantyhose, no running shoes, no Tylenol, no tampons, no hand sanitizer:  roughing it, in other words.

The passenger list of the Titanic is a known historical fact, which either already includes Laurie's name (indicating that she makes the trip into the past from her future timeline) or does not.  But even if she's not on the list, that doesn't mean that she can't go.  Because we know who was on the ship, Laurie could just find someone with a ticket*, whack them on the back of the head, and take their place.

That might actually be the best option, given the difficulties of laying hands on sufficient legal tender for the time period to allow for a ticket purchase.  A top of the line First Class Parlor Suite on the Titanic weighed in at £870, or $4,350**, which is a lot of antique money to find, let along buy. Alternatively, you could haul a big stack of gold back in the time capsule and sell it in 1912, but given that the price of gold in 1912 was about $21, you'd need to take about 210 ounces of gold - that's about $350,000 in today's market.

Other options include counterfeiting the money, or even just making a preliminary trip and robbing a few banks, but again, it's important to avoid making ripples in the time stream.

However, a little research reveals that although there are several Smiths on the ship, they all appear to be married couples rather than heiresses.  (There are also a couple of Trouts, but that's an inside joke.)  So if Ms. Smith is going to be on the Titanic, it's either under an assumed name, or as a stowaway.

Being a stowaway is an interesting solution, in that it avoids all of the issues with passenger lists and money and so forth.  On the other hand, you have to find a place to sleep without being noticed, and discretion is equally important while exploring the ship.  After all, it would be a very bad thing to be locked in the brig without your time travel ticket when the ship started to sink.

This is all based on the assumption that Ms. Smith is the only person who would want to add the ultimate cruise experience to her resumé.  As previously discussed, easy access to time travel allows an infinite number of visitors to arrive at Shakespeare's childhood home if they so wish. Similarly, everyone who has ever or would ever want to be on the Titanic has to show up during that narrow four day window. The joke is that eventually the entire Titanic passenger list would consist of time travelling visitors rather than any of the actual people who originally bought the tickets.***

And me?  Oh, I wanted to see the Beatles in concert in 1965.  A modest ambition, I realize, but at least I don't need to practise treading water in a cork life vest - just in case.

- Sid

* A rich heiress, presumably.

** To be fair, this is a worst case scenario.  A first class berth accommodation was about a quarter of this price, but after all, we are talking about rich heiress territory.

 *** In this scenario, the ship doesn't need to hit an iceberg.  It sinks under the unexpected weight of a million temporal tourists.