Titanic float and Iceberg

The members of the 1998 Renton Eagles Travel Club entered the float division in three parades with a replica of the Titanic and iceberg. With the combined efforts of dozens of talented people and hundreds of man (and woman!) hours, the Titanic and it's infamous iceberg came into being. Not only did they enter three parades, they won the three they entered! We had a great time participating the the Renton River Days Parade on August 1st in which we won the Mayor's Award and 1st Place in the Float Division. Our second parade was the City of Auburn parade where the float again won 1st place. On September 7th, we won 1st place in the Float Division and Best Overall Entry in the Black Diamond Labor Day Parade. What an exciting summer!

The following pictures were taken at our first parade
during Renton River Days on August 1, 1998.


Here is the entire float. The Titanic is a scale model. One inch equals one foot. The iceberg is made of chicken wire and ground cloth that was sprayed with foam and then painted white. The metal frame underneath allows it to sit on top of my Dad's Jeep. Some of the RETC members wanted a penguin on the iceberg until it was pointed out that penguins do not live up north. The polar bear was much more appropriate.	Here is a picture of the stern of the boat. The mast reaches about 18 feet into the air. You can't see it in this picture but it does say TITANIC and LIVERPOOL on the back. We had to have someone walking ahead of the float with a walkie-talkie to warn my Dad of low hanging tree limbs and electrical wires.

That is my Dad on the right, Wayne Heath, accepting the trophy for the Mayor's Award. Out of approximately 180 entrants in the parade we won! We even beat the City of Lynwood's $40,000 professionally made float. Since only one is given out, it is kind of a "Best In Show".	We decided to let the polar bear "carry" the trophy down the parade route. He was the only one that could be trusted not to run off with it! Everyone wanted to take home that trophy!

Here we are in our little lifeboats, each one individually numbered. They were made out of thick cardboard with a 1 X 2 frame. They were not the easiest things in the world to walk in!	Here I am in my lifeboat at the front of the iceberg. That little window you can see just behind my head is the only opening my Dad had to see out as he drove the iceberg down the parade route.

Here is a closer view of the side of the Titanic with the Mayor's Award. The windows had yellow cellophane in them to make it look like all the lights were on. There are even rope ladders coming down from the mast and lines attached to the empty boat davits. A CD player inside the boat played the music from the movie soundtrack as we went down the parade route.	The theater in downtown Renton just happened to be showing Titanic at the time. I snapped this picture as we rolled past the theater.

Anyway, that was our Titanic adventure. The float has now been retired. Somehow they managed to get the boat off of the flatbed in one piece and she rests comfortably amid the carrots and cucumbers in Mel's garden. Since the hull was made of cardboard, it only took a few rainy days for her to begin falling apart. She will be missed but she provided a lot of great memories for us while we had her!

And just for the record, our Titanic had three very successful outings.
The original boat didn't even make it through her first!