Can we discuss the Titanic?

[CatWoman]

Not the movie.

The actual tragedy.

Anyone else here consumed with that event?

There is no such thing as an "unsinkable" ship.

I wonder, when it finally went down, how many survivors and/or lifeboats it took down with it?

[northzax]

1. well technically

if they went down with the ship, they weren't survivors, were they?

[CatWoman]

5. let's not be a smarty pants

by survivor, I meant someone who was able to get off the ship and make it to a lifeboat.

[northzax]

8. there is no record

of the ship dragging any launched lifeboats down with her. nor is there a record of a lifeboat capsizing after the ship went down that I am aware of. So I guess the answer would be zero.

[CatWoman]

9. but logic dictates

that would have been a possibility, no?

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

10. not given the time it took the ship to sink, the fact that lifeboats were

all filled and the fact that another ship was in the area to rescue those in lifeboats. The water conditions were relatively calm that night and there is ample evidence that had they had sufficient lifeboats for all the passengers, they all very well might have survived..the water was intolerable temperaturewise..the air was not.

[northzax]

27. especially since most of the lifeboats

weren't even close to filled to capacity.

[King_Crimson]

37. 2,200 on board...

around 715 survived. And all lifebosts were NOT filled to capacity!

[King_Crimson]

38. Wanna go on board Titanic?

http://www.eventhorizon.com/samples/titanic/gallery/1.html
This is a virtual tour...the best I've found yet!

[LeftCoast]

2. I think the story is so captivating because it's a modern greek tragedy

It's amazing, but if there is any one mortal sin we humans seem to have as a genetic trait, it's hubris. Still as true today as it was in the days of the ancient Greeks, in the age of the Titanic, or even today in Bush's fall from grace. <Had to get that little jibe in there> hehe

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

3. i thought all the lifeboats were used..that was the problem

There were only half as many lifeboats as passengers (as a result there must now be enough lifeboats per passenger on any vessel)

That's what regulation is all about - stopping the titanic from taking everyone down with it :D

[Don_G]

24. Not All The Lifeboats Were Used

And they had more passengers than lifeboats. Another thing was that the ships at the time weren't required to have a Radioman on duty at all times and the two nearest ships did nothing until they heard of the tragedy hours and deaths later.

The "Titantic" changed that and established a few International Regulations for ships-at-sea.

[Ladyhawk]

36. There were two collapsible life boats that floated off

at the last second, so yes, I think all life boats were used. It's just that most of the first to be launched were woefully underloaded because people didn't realize that there was a life-threatening problem. Obviously, the collapsibles didn't have many people in them, either. One of them launched upside down and men had to stand and keep moving in order to keep from freezing to death. This is how one of the wireless operators made his escape.

Only one ship, The Californian, was in range to help--only about an hour's distance. It saw the Titanic launch rockets, but since the rockets were white instead of red, they didn't think much of it. They thought that distress rockets were supposed to be red. The Californian's wireless operator had retired for the night. There was no law requiring wireless operators to be employed 24 hours a day.

The second ship, The Carpathia from the Cunard line, immediately started steaming toward the Titanic, but they were too far away to help in time.

[Ladyhawk]

4. I've read two documentaries on the subject.

One was the requisite A Night to Remember. It was pretty good, but the best book I've read about the Titanic is Her Name, Titanic by Charles Pellegrino. That book has stories from survivors and traces the story of Robert Ballard, the man who found the Titanic. It is an absorbing book.

I recently lent it to my nephew, but he won't read a book unless an outside source motivates him, so I went ahead and got the Titanic DVD. He needs to be aware of this incredible story.

And if you haven't read the book I recommended, do it. It's a wild ride.

By the way, there are a lot of weird-ass true coincidences that will make your brain explode. For example, prior to the building (and sinking) of the Titanic, a man named Morgan Robertson wrote a story about a huge unsinkable ship called the Titan that hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage, killing most of the people on board. Wild stuff.

[HawkerHurricane]

28. Wreck of the Titan

Was a direct warning to the Cunard line. Cunard was building ships named Gigantic, Majestic, Atlantic (something about the 'ic' ending...) but were building them with fewer and fewer safety features. Several ships had had brushes with icebergs at night, and a faster ship (like Cunard was building) was 'asking for it'. He named the ship in his novel 'Titan' because it was predictable that Cunard would use 'Titanic', and he wanted to make the connection without using the actual name.

[Ladyhawk]

34. Even if it was a direct warning,

he got quite a few specifics right. I'm not saying he was clairvoyant--I don't believe in that kind of stuff--I'm merely saying the coincidences were strange. The name of the book was Futility or The Wreck of the Titan. He also wrote a book that bore a striking resemblance to World War II many years before it began.

[regnaD kciN]

40. Uh...not Cunard...

Cunard's ships had names ending in -ia (Lusitania, Mauretania, Berengaria, and so on). The White Star Line, owned by J.P. Morgan, used the -ic suffix, including (of course) Titanic. Cunard did buy out White Star in the late 1930s, but that was well after the events concerning the Titanic.

[madrchsod]

6. i`ve been watching

this program while painting the walls.as a former steelworker and assembler i really like watching these kinds of programs.

[ProudGerman]

7. Wouldn't a ship made of cork be unsinkable?

Sorry, I just couldn't resist.

But the tragedy is why I never watched the movie. I just couldn't accept trying to wrap a love story around one of the greatest maritime tragedies of all time. The idea was disgusting to me, "watch these 2 people fall in love while you spend hours watching people you know are gonna die". Why Titanic, why not Hiroshima or Dresden?

I used to be consumed with it I guess, but the hype for the movie completely killed that for me.

[ulysses]

12. tragedies are romantic

as are acts of war, as long as the audience is on the side of the righteous - thus "Pearl Harbor" and "Enemy at the Gates" (which, I have to say, contains positively the most alluring sex scene ever shown in an American movie) but no "Hamburg" and no "Enemy at the Gates" set in Normandy instead of Stalingrad.

(note: this post should in no way be construed to be an example of anti-Americanism. Just making a point about Hollywood.)

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

13. They aren't romantic with greasy little Leo Di Caprio in the starring role

what a loser ..but Kate Winslet's pasty little titties were cute..I gotta thing for redheads. :D

[ulysses]

15. the car scene made the whole thing

but I'll take Rachel Weisz any day. :9

[CatWoman]

16. what do you two think you're doing!!!!!

Thieves!!!

Hijackers!!!!!!

Possums!!!!

[ulysses]

17. ahem!

Yes! The Titanic. Foundered on Kate Winslett's breasts as I recall...*cough*...

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

18. They were tiny little life rafts!

[ulysses]

20. that Edwardian steel

was pretty brittle - high carbon content, dontcha know...

[JohnKleeb]

35. lol uly and nsma

Not sure who I will take but I am going third party.

*hops on plane to Prague*
lol
That girl was on the cover of the SI Swimsuit issue.

[LynneSin]

39. Give it a decade or 2 and it'll be about 9/11

I cringe when I think about that and I wouldn't hold it past the movie makers. If you've seen that crap of a movie called "Pearl Harbor", the filmmakers will descrate anything out there!

[FireHeart]

48. I would love to see

a luxury liner built entirely from cork :)

It probably would be unsinkable. But also very...umm..unusual.

The movies sucked. When you know the ending, why bother?

[bleedingheart]

11. according to my dad's family my grandmother was supposed

to ride steerage on the titanic... but that was a rumor... She arrived about a month after the disaster on a different ship. Supposedly she had been to ill to take the maiden voyage of the titanic..

if she had been on it she would have surely drowned.

[kcwayne]

14. Class warfare

when you read the list of survivors and deceased, it is very notable that if you were poor (and therefor riding on the lower decks) you were likely to have perished.

The wealthy passengers, whose cabins were on the upper deck, survived in large numbers.

There was negotiation for the seats in the lifeboats since there were not enough. It must have been horrifying to have been in the postition to make those decisions, but I wonder why so many women and children were left to perish, when many men took to the lifeboats.

Yet some of the "gentlemen" made the concious decision to stay on board knowing they would die, when they could have used their power to boot someone out of the boat. Guggenheim, and Astor come to mind.

[regnaD kciN]

41. Don't base your conclusions too much on Cameron's movie...

In fact, the largest percentage of casualties were among the crew.

And the reason for the high rate of third-class deaths had nothing to do with the movie's notion that the crew just decided to lock up the third-class passengers until those in first class could get the lifeboat spaces. The real problem was that most steerage passengers were emigrants from continental Europe to the U.S., and couldn't speak English, while the crew members couldn't speak their language. There was a lot of miscommunication during the evacuation of the ship which proved to be fatal.

[Fight_n_back]

19. I saw on Fox News

that it waS Hillary's fault.

[CatWoman]

22. Hi, Yang!!!!!!!!!

:hi:

:D

:*

[Fight_n_back]

25. Hey gorgeous

missed ya

[Jack_Sparrow]

21. but it's not a pirate ship!

But freeze in Davy Jone's Locker they did! Arrr!

[supernova]

23. Titanic.com

From the Titanic (ship, not the movie)

Of the more than 2200 men, women and children, passengers and crew aboard Titanic when she brushed up against the iceberg, only 705 survived. That's only 32% of the people onboard the ship. Those who survived made it into the lifeboats and were picked up by the Cunard liner Carpathia later in the morning.

I thought part of the problem was there weren't enough life boats and some boats even launched 1/2 full because the scene was so chaotic. I can't imagine just standing on deck and waiting to die. How horrific for those people. :cry:

On this page is a chart breaking down passengers by class and survivor status.

http://www.titanic.com/story/5/The_rescue

[TheRedMan]

26. Some oddball stuff

The holes that did in the titanic were roughly a total area of twelve square feet (the size of the average coffee table) but since they were distributed between compartments, a large enough volume was flooded to case the Titanic to begin to sink. This lifted the stern out of the water, causing it to be unsupported, as a result stressing the new waterline in a way no ship has ever bee ndesigned to handle (except FLIP), and causing the Titanic to break in half.

Also, the steel had a large amount of sulfur impurities (I'm a materials engineer) which embrittles steel, and more importantly raises the ductile-to-brittle transition temperature to ABOVE that of North Atlantic seawater, as a result, the steel fractured in a brittle fashion (like a dish would) instead of a ductile fashion (stretching and bending, and importantly absorbing energy). But this steel also represented the state-of-the-art circa 1911, and it is unrealistic to expect better of the makers.

HOWEVER, it should also be noted that two sister ships to the Titanic, the Olympic and Brittanic, were made identically with steel from the same foundry. Both enjoyed long service lives until one was torpedoed in WWII (the Brittanic, I think). Which leads invariably to the conclusion, that the Titanic WOULD have survived had they not hit the damn iceberg.

I think the hubris element was overplayed here, though. The ship's architect recognized almost immediately upon inspecting the damage that the ship was doomed. Had the captain arrogantly rammed the iceberg instead of trying to miss it, the ship would also have had a better shot (though the passengers would not have enjoyed that experience, either).

[KittyWampus]

29. Intentionally Ram The Iceberg?

"Had the captain arrogantly rammed the iceberg instead of trying to miss it, the ship would also have had a better shot (though the
passengers would not have enjoyed that experience, either)."

I really don't understand the physics of this suggestion... can someone explain why that might have helped?

[HawkerHurricane]

30. Simple answer

The Titanic sank more because the placement of the hole (along the side, flooding 3 compartments at once). If they had hit head on, only one compartment would have flooded, and the ship would not have sunk.

Of course, hitting an iceberg at that speed head on would have caused more injuries.

[regnaD kciN]

43. Absolutely true...

A direct hit would have flooded, at most, the first compartment or two; which meant the ship would have stayed afloat and could have been towed to Canada for rebuilding the bow.

Of course, "the captain" had no such decision since his shift was over and he was in his cabin at the time of the accident. First Mate Murdoch was at the helm, and probably lacked the experience to know that it would have been safer to hit it head-on.

[Astarho]

31. From what I understand

about the compartments they could be sealed off so if one was flooded the water could be contained. The problem was that even though they could be sealed off side by side, they did nothing about the top so the water could flood over from one compartment to the next, like an ice cube tray.

Even the three that were flooded would not have been enough to sink the ship, had the top been sealed off.

[PurityOfEssence]

47. Great post, but must quibble...

You beat me to it on the 12 square feet and steel; to me it's just fascinating that such a huge ship could go down in under three hours with less aggregate "holes" than the area of a doorway...

Gotta quibble about the Britannic, though: she was sunk (probably by a U-boat laid mine) during World War 1 (1916) in the Mediterranean while serving as a hospital ship. She had a very short life too, never actually getting to serve a single passenger trip, since she was completed just as the war broke out. Olympic, on the other hand had a long career.

Great post, though, especially with the reference to FLIP.

[BiggJawn]

32. Lifeboats woefully underloaded.

They were designed to carry around 68 people, and given the dead calm that night, they could have possibly carried more, but quite a few left with less than 25-30 people aboard.

There were 4 Englehardt collapsible lifeboats, which gave "Titanic" a capacity 10% in excess of what the Regs required.
There was really no thought given as to how to lanch these boats, because they were stowed on top of the boat deck cabin roof, far from the davits. And they weighed about a ton each.

"Titanic" is a hobby of mine...

[Rhiannon12866]

33. Yes, this is an event that consumed me in my youth

I read ``A Night to Remember'' more than once and perused the passenger lists until my eyes were bleary. It was such an avoidable tragedy, which I believe is the reason that people are drawn to it.

If I had my copy of that book with me, I could answer your questions easily. The problem, as I remember it, was that because the ship was considered unsinkable, there were just too few lifeboats for the huge number of passengers and the first lifeboats that were sent into the ocean were less than half full. No one was taking this collision seriously and no one wanted to leave the comfort of the ship.

This was also still in the days of a class system. Those in steerage or third class didn't stand a chance. They were, in many cases, barred from coming up to the main decks that housed the lifeboats. I do remember reading that more men in first class were saved than children in steerage.

There were also many instances of bravery. If you think about it, the sinking of the Titanic probably affected that generation in many ways as 9/11 did us, today. This tragedy haunted the survivors their entire lives and it was the end of an era for the American public. I have heard it said that these people were never to feel safe again.:-(

[regnaD kciN]

44. Why there were "so few lifeboats"...

It had nothing to do with illusions of unsinkability. Rather, the British safety regulations hadn't been updated in a long time, and were based on ships much smaller than the megaliners then common.

One other point, which most people miss: those who made it onto Titanic's lifeboats were lucky, because wireless had just started being installed on ships, and they were able to contact other nearby ships and give their approximate position, thus allowing the Carpathia to arrive within a few hours. Before wireless, lifeboats were really only useful for shipwrecks that took place near the shore. To make it into a lifeboat in mid-Atlantic, not too much earlier, merely meant that you would have a few days/weeks more of hoping you would cross paths with another ship, while you slowly starved to death. This may well be why so many people weren't willing to take a position in the boats, even if one was offered. Basically, one fact of ocean travel was that, if your ship went down in the middle of the ocean, you were finished one way or another. It was only wireless communications that made such an event ultimately survivable.

[Rhiannon12866]

46. Thanks for refreshing my memory, JDWalley!

I do remember the facts about wireless communications. I believe that it was also common practice to shut down communications at night, so it was a miracle that other ships heard the distress calls. If I remember, the Californian was much closer, but did not take the distress calls seriously. The Carpathia was much further away, but sailed as quickly as possible to the Titanic's last known location. The people in the lifeboats thought that they were hallucinating, since this was the Titanic's sister ship and they bore a striking resemblance. I must read A Night to Remember over again. I used to be up to speed on all the particulars.:-)

[oldshoe]

42. Is the Titanic a metaphor

for our current ship of state?

I wonder if fly boy can take off its deck and seek asylum elsewhere? Although he dodged the draft, Sweden and Canada will probably not want him. Unless of course he brings Neil and all that Silverado money to pay for his upkeep.

[regnaD kciN]

45. I am reminded of The Onion's "Our Dumb Century" book...

...whose story on the Titanic was titled World's Largest Metaphor Sinks After Hitting Iceberg.

;-)

[Rhiannon12866]

49. Link?

I think I missed that story, though I am subscribed to The Onion.:shrug: