{"id":385111,"date":"2026-07-03T16:30:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T16:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/385111\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T16:30:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T16:30:08","slug":"the-rms-titanics-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/385111\/","title":{"rendered":"The RMS Titanic\u2019s legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\"UNSINKABLE\u2014Titanic<\/a><\/p>\n

UNSINKABLE\u2014Titanic Anniversary Weekend on the Queen Mary is run by Moorpark resident Paul Carganilla. Carganilla, right, host of the \u201cTitanic Legacy\u201d podcast, in his home studio with a prop from the movie \u201cTitanic\u201d given to him by his wife. Courtesy Paul Carganilla STEEPLETON\/Acorn Newspapers<\/p>\n

In a home recording studio in Moor\u00adpark, VHS copies of the movie \u201cTi\u00adtanic\u201d piled waist-high against a wall might, to the untrained eye, look like the remnants of a video store gone under.\n<\/p>\n

To Paul Carganilla, they are evidence of a global community.\n<\/p>\n

Carganilla hosts a podcast called \u201cTitanic Legacy,\u201d where he explores the 1912 tragedy and the 1997 James Cam\u00aderon movie that sprang from it. It\u2019s a passion that owes its start to a boyhood visit to his grandparents\u2019 home, but one that has developed through the adult lens of research.\n<\/p>\n

He is quick to deflect the title of expert, despite having amassed a collec\u00adtion of rare props, survivor autographs, and firsthand historical accounts that would rival a small museum exhibit. For Carganilla, 44, the Titanic is not just a tragedy from 1912; it is a living narrative. The story of the magnificent vessel that famously sank on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York remains a source of inspi\u00adration, serving as the foundation for a vibrant international community.\n<\/p>\n

\"GUEST<\/a><\/p>\n

GUEST PANEL\u2014Paul Carganilla hosts a discussion with cast and crew of the movie \u201cTitanic,\u201d as part of the Titanic Anniversary Weekend in April at the Queen Mary in Long Beach. Courtesy Paul Carganilla<\/p>\n

Carganilla\u2019s journey began not in a theater but on his grandparents\u2019 couch, flipping through a copy of National Geographic shortly after Dr. Robert Ballard discovered the wreck in the mid-\u201980s.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI was 5 years old,\u201d he recalled. \u201cSome of my earliest memories are seeing the images of the wreck on the bottom of the ocean and my grandfa\u00adther telling me there were hundreds of people on this ship when it sank.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

That childhood spark was fanned into a flame by the 1997 James Camer\u00adon film \u201cTitanic,\u201d which reignited the public\u2019s obsession. For Carganilla, the hook was never just the disaster\u2014it was humanity of the event.\n<\/p>\n

Whether he is discussing the tragic nobility of the ship\u2019s architect, Thomas Andrews, or the villainous reputation of Bruce Ismay\u2014chairman and man\u00adaging director of the White Star Line, the shipping company that operated the Titanic\u2014 Carganilla is drawn to the \u201cwhy\u201d of the story.\n<\/p>\n

\"\u00a0\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI always say follow your heart\u2019s fire, and it leads you where you\u2019re meant to go in life,\u201d he said. That philosophy led him during the pandemic to create a podcast that transcends mere trivia, focusing instead on the creators, artists and descendants who keep the spirit of the ship alive today.\n<\/p>\n

Originally launching a variety show to interview creatives, Carganilla no\u00adticed a pattern: 40 percent of his epi\u00adsodes were about the Titanic.\n<\/p>\n

Recognizing a clear signal from his audience\u2014and his own passion\u2014he launched \u201cTitanic Legacy.\u201d The pod\u00adcast quickly became a hub for global enthusiasts, with roughly 40 percent of his listenership tuning in from outside the United States. While noting that listener statistics often reveal cities he has never even heard of, Carganilla takes special pride in his reach across the Atlantic.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat brings me a lot of joy,\u201d he said, \u201cis that I get a lot of listeners from Ireland and England and areas where Titanic really originated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Titanic, he said, has taken his family on a number of adventures, including to Washington, D.C. (visiting the Ti\u00adtanic Senate hearing room and Titanic Memorial); Belfast, Ireland (where Ti\u00adtanic was built); New Jersey (chief cook Charles Joughin\u2019s grave); New York City (White Star Line office where folks would go check to see if their loved ones survived).\n<\/p>\n

Carganilla wanted to take that digi\u00adtal connection into the physical world. When a small Titanic event at the Queen Mary in Long Beach was slated to be a one-off gathering, he decided to pick up the torch\u2014and what started with a modest gathering of 30 or 40 has grown under his organization.\n<\/p>\n

By this past April, the event drew 150 attendees per day for four days.\n<\/p>\n

With the Queen Mary now officially on board to help expand the program\u00adSCOTT ming, the event is poised to grow even larger, with dates already set for April 11-14, 2027.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cMy favorite thing about life is connecting people who share the same passions,\u201d he said. \u201cTitanic is still bring\u00ading people together, which is pretty magical.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Carganilla\u2019s dedication goes be\u00adyond the microphone. His collection is a tactile archive of Titanic culture. He possesses rare items, including a piece of deck plating and coal from the wreckage, and even wax coffee cups used during the filming of the movie to create the illusion of cups floating in the sinking dining room.\n<\/p>\n

Then there are the VHS tapes.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI had the idea that I could become the savior of \u2018Titanic\u2019 VHS tapes and collect as many as possible,\u201d he said with a laugh, telling a visitor that he\u2019s amassed somewhere in the neighbor\u00adhood of 130.\n<\/p>\n

Impressive as that may be, he even\u00adtually discovered a TikTok creator who has enough copies to fill an ocean liner compared to Carganilla\u2019s dinghy.\n<\/p>\n

While eventually realizing he could not compete with the viral collector\u2019s 6,000 copies, Carganilla\u2019s reputation preceded him and now he receives un\u00adsolicited boxes of tapes from strangers across the country who want their collections to go to a good home.\n<\/p>\n

Despite his love for the subject, Car\u00adganilla is a grounded voice in the fan\u00addom. He is quick to swat down the more nonsensical theories that plague the community\u2014specifically the \u201cSwitch Theory,\u201d which posits that the Titanic was swapped with her sister ship, the Olympic, for an insurance scam.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a bunch of baloney,\u201d he said, noting that the facts simply do not support the conspiracy.\n<\/p>\n

He prefers to keep the conversation focused on the reality: the mechanical failures, the human error, and the hu\u00adbris that led to the catastrophe.\n<\/p>\n

With an eye toward 2027, Carganilla has locked in key participants: celebrat\u00aded Titanic historian Don Lynch and the creators of \u201cTitanic: Honor and Glory,\u201d who are working to reconstruct the entire vessel in a fully explorable digital environment.\n<\/p>\n

Whether he is writing screenplays, analyzing films like \u201cThe Adjustment Bureau,\u201d or meticulously organizing his collection, Paul Carganilla remains a man defined by his passions. By follow\u00ading his heart\u2019s fire, he not only built a podcast, he bridged past and present\u2014 ensuring that the human stories of the Titanic continue to resonate long after the ship came to rest on the ocean floor.\n\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UNSINKABLE\u2014Titanic Anniversary Weekend on the Queen Mary is run by Moorpark resident Paul Carganilla. Carganilla, right, host of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-385111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}