In the early morning hours of 15 April, 1912

RMS Titanic sank, 375 miles south of Newfoundland. Over 1500 people died.

The Titanic on April 10, 1912:



Speed, conditions, insufficient life boats - human hubris.

She was a beautiful ship. It's a shame all those lives were lost for easily preventable reasons, more life boats, reduced speed, a Captain who was a little more cautious.

NutmegCT said:

Speed, conditions, insufficient life boats - human hubris.

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A perfect storm for disaster. We went to the Titanic exhibit when it came through Albuquerque a couple of years ago. They had lots of artifacts recovered from the site on display.

And in Belfast they now really milk their "Titanic District." This is the location of the dry-docks where the ship was built. I saw two T-shirts that were amusing (and typical Irish humor of the area):
1) "Titanic - It Was Fine When It Left Here"
2) "TITANIC - Built By An Irishman, Sunk By An Englishman"
There is a nice memorial with just names in downtown Belfast.

Boink said:

And in Belfast they now really milk their "Titanic District." This is the location of the dry-docks where the ship was built. I saw two T-shirts that were amusing (and typical Irish humor of the area):
1) "Titanic - It Was Fine When It Left Here"
2) "TITANIC - Built By An Irishman, Sunk By An Englishman"
There is a nice memorial with just names in downtown Belfast.

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Have also seen "The Titanic was built by experts and the Ark by an Amateur." Was at a meeting last week and one of the attendees mixed a metaphor perfectly - she described her situation as "it's hard to turn the Titanic around." We all affirmed that turning the Titanic was the least of her problems.

Unfortunately for them the British Board of Trade rules that governed things like lifeboats had not kept up with the rapidly increasing size of liners. 10 years before the largest transatlantic liner in service was less than half Titanic's size. Radio was new and that service was provided to the ship mostly by the Marconi company so the operators were not line employees on any ship so had to prioritize passenger traffic since that was what Marconi was paid for. And Captain EJ Smith himself, who didn't join the ship until Southamton, is to have said to a reporter before the ship left that he'd had a completely unremarkable career having never had to deal with possible loss or injuries or serious damage to a ship during his 40 some years at sea. No wonder he seems to have gone into shock and been unable to make tough decisions during those nearly 3 hours after the strike, he'd never had to learn how to handle them. And none of the other officers really had experience with this sort of thing either and had no real leadership. Plus there was a last minute shuffling of officers bringing in a new chief officer and bumping the everyone down in duties and the 6th officer off the ship. None knew of the testing of the lifeboats to successfully lower 70 men either, so were concerned over having them break if loaded to capacity leading to the unrealistic expectation of loading more passengers from gangway doors in the hull once the boats were in the water. So yes it was a perfect storm of inexperience and complacency it seems.

And related to Titanic, most don't know that surviving second officer Lightoller was one of the British civilians to make runs in his personal boat to Dunkirk in 1940 rescuing British and French soldiers from the beaches.

Despite it's size, it's interesting to compare the Titanic to a large, modern cruise ship (like the largest - The Allure). Check on this photographic comparison. There are other, probably better, graphical comparisons on-line (like side shots).

Boink said:

Despite it's size, it's interesting to compare the Titanic to a large, modern cruise ship (like the largest - The Allure). Check on this photographic comparison. There are other, probably better, graphical comparisons on-line (like side shots).

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I know some of today's cruise ships are humongous! That picture makes the Titanic look like a tug boat for the Allure.

Of course cruising across the Atlantic then would be more comparable to taking a train or airplane ride today than to a modern cruise ship. 100 years ago there was little attempt to provide entertainment beyond some ships having a small orchestra. Today, for being as they say 5 times bigger and probably more than that in usable square footage terms, the passenger capacity isn't 5 times larger, but instead around 2.70 times Titanic's.

Which brings up another thing, Titanic was running around 1000 passengers short of capacity, it could have been perhaps 2500 lost instead of 1500.

If you ever make it to the Graveyard Of The Atlantic museum on Hatteras Island North Carolina, they have the distress call that was received by the "Marconi Wireless" station in Buxton. When the operator forwarded it to New York City he was told to stop tying up the frequency with jokes. They found the paper, years later when they renovated, in the walls of the radio shack, where it had been stuffed with all the other old messages for insulation.

And the carbon in the steel made it very very brittle - hence the huge gash. I also have to say (said slightly jokingly above) that the problem with "unsinkable" ships is that we start to place too much faith in technology, or achievement or science or even faith or church or ...... As I read the stories there was an arrogance associated with every part of that ship (and in fairness with the whole passenger ship blue ribband industry) Those who fail to learn the lessons of history ......

Like the stacks leaning back all the more to make look fast sitting still.

Served my apprenticeship in the big boat factory in Belfast and the Canberra was also built there . Worked on the first oil rig with 3 legs that was launched from a regular slipway.

Just finished watching a documentary about the Titanic on Smithsonian channel. It pointed out some of the areas where the James Cameron movie took literary license and departed some from what really happened. The movies was about 80 % accurate.

Here's some Titanic trivia: what was the "false funnel"?

NutmegCT said:

Here's some Titanic trivia: what was the "false funnel"?

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Without cheating, and looking it up, I'm guessing one of the smoke stacks was not really needed, and only put there to make the ship look right.

I know the answer, but only because I went to a Titanic exhibit a while back when it rolled through Albuquerque.

mikephillips said:

... surviving second officer Lightoller was one of the British civilians to make runs in his personal boat to Dunkirk in 1940 rescuing British and French soldiers from the beaches.

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There's a dude with some stories to tell.

After loading passengers into lifeboats and seeing the boats off, he stayed behind and went down with Titanic. When a boiler exploded below decks he was caught in a blast of air and literally puked to the surface. Eventually, he was picked out of the water by a lifeboat. Appropriately for the highest ranking surviving officer, he was the last person to board the rescuing ship, the Carpathia.

JPSmit said:

And the carbon in the steel made it very very brittle - hence the huge gash. I also have to say (said slightly jokingly above) that the problem with "unsinkable" ships is that we start to place too much faith in technology, or achievement or science or even faith or church or ...... As I read the stories there was an arrogance associated with every part of that ship (and in fairness with the whole passenger ship blue ribband industry) Those who fail to learn the lessons of history ......

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Oh dear, another rehash of a disproved theory about the steel.
The rivets sprung, the plates came apart. The steel was fine.

Also, the Titanic was by no means a Blue Riband candidate, too slow!

Roger said:

Oh dear, another rehash of a disproved theory about the steel.
The rivets sprung, the plates came apart. The steel was fine.

Also, the Titanic was by no means a Blue Riband candidate, too slow!

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That was more or less the explanation they gave on a documentary I watched on the Smithsonian channel the other night. The force of the ice (which was considerable) basically popped the rivets and caused the plates to separate where they overlapped, thus loosing the watertight seal.