And so, for many and good reasons, the ship's company who set sail from Southampton on the first and last voyage of the world's greatest vessel believed that she was unsinkable.
And unsinkable she was by any of the seemingly possible accidents of wind and weather or deep-sea collision. She could have taken the blow of a colliding ship on bow, quarter or abeam and remained afloat, or even made her way to port. Bow on, and under the half speed called on by careful seamanship, she could probably have come without fatal injury through the ordeal of head-on collision with an iceberg.
The One Fatal Peril.
But there was just one peril of the deep against which this mighty ship was as helpless as the smallest of coasting steamers - the long, glancing blow below the waterline, due to the projecting shelf of an iceberg. It was this that sent the "Titanic" to the bottom in the brief space of 2½ hours, and it was her very size and the fatal speed at which she was driven, which made the blow so terrible.
The Climax of Seventy-five Years Development.
The “Titanic,” with the sister vessel “Olympic,” set the latest mark in the growth of the modern ocean liner toward the ship one thousand feet in length. The “Britannia” of 1840 was 207 feet long; the “Scotia” of 1862 was 370 feet and the "Bothnia" of 1874, 420 feet long. The "Servia" in 1881 was the first ship to exceed 500 feet with her length of 515 feet. In 1893, the "Campania" carried the length to 625 feet; and the first liner to pass 700 feet was the "Oceanic," whose length on deck was 704 feet. The "Mauretania" was 10 feet short of 800 feet; and then with an addition of nearly 100 feet the "Olympic" and "Titanic" carried the over-all length to 882½ feet; the tonnage to 46,000 and the displacement to 60,000. The indicated horsepower of the "Titanic" was 50,000, developed in two reciprocating engines driving two wing propellers and a single turbine driving a central propeller. The ship had accommodations for a whole townful of people (3,356, as a matter of fact), of whom 750 could be accommodated in the first class, 550 in the second, and 1,200 in the third. The balance of the company was made up of 63 officers and sailors, 322 engineers, firemen, oilers, and 471 stewards, waiters, etc.
Warned of the Iceberg Peril.
When the "Titanic" left Southampton on her fatal voyage she had on board a total of 2,340 passengers and crew. The voyage was uneventful until Sunday, April 14th, when the wireless operator received and acknowledged a message from the "Amerika," warning her of the existence of a large field of ice into which her course would lead her toward the close of the day.
Full Speed Through the Ice Field.
The "Titanic" had been running at a steady speed of nearly 22 knots, having covered 545 miles during the day ending at noon April 14th; yet, in spite of the grave danger presented by the ice field ahead, she seems to have maintained during Sunday night a speed of not less than 21 knots. This is made clear by the testimony of Mr. Ismay, of the White Star Line, who stated at the Senate investigation that the revolutions were 72 as against the 78 revolutions which gave her full speed. She could make about 22½ knots at full speed, and 72 revolutions would correspond to about 21 knots.
The Captain Takes a Chance.
How such an experienced commander as Captain Smith should have driven his ship at high speed, and in the night, when he knew that he was in the proximity of heavy ice fields is a mystery which may never be cleared up. The night, it is true, was clear and starlit, and the sea perfectly smooth. Probably the fact that conditions were favorable for a good lookout, coupled with the desire to maintain a high average speed on the maiden trip of the vessel, decided the captain to "take a chance." Whatever the motive, it seems to be well established that the ship was not slowed down; and to this fact and no other must the loss of the" Titanic" be set down.
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Add CommentInteresting how, in the last paragraph of the article, the author dismisses eyewitness accounts of the ship breaking apart and imagines the Titanic impaling the ocean floor and standing upright.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGreed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJ.P. Morgan's greed killed the Titanic, by building the world's three biggest ships simultaneously, despite a clear lack of skilled workers and steel. He wanted to get these death traps in the water and earning to pay off the massive loan, and beat Cunard Lines.
So he was allowed to use thin, brittle, sulfur-contaminated hull plate, smaller iron rivets instead of steel, and less than a third the needed number of lifeboats because his ad copy fooled maritime regulators. They really did believe she was unsinkable. Those unsightly boats just cluttered up decks passengers need for gamboling and shuffleboard! Begone!
Morgan's bean counters continually overruled the inexperienced engineer and puked out the Olympic, a ship so flimsy, the sides could be seen "panting" (flexing in and out by over three inches) at speed. The Olympic's frame began cracking on the first day of sea trials and workers slapped steel bandages all over it to make it seaworthy. Her sister ship, the Britannic, snapped in half and sank just four years later after hitting a mine in WWI. She sank in less than an hour. Her watertight doors and portholes had been left open.
Eyewitness testimony as to the flimsiness of these craft was suppressed, from the Titanic snapping in half, to White Star attempting to spirit several officers out of the country to prevent them from testifying at the inquiry. We will never know just how bad these ships were, because many of those who knew went to the bottom. But we DO know what J.P. Morgan did on that fateful night.
He inexplicably changed his plan to make the maiden voyage, and stayed home to deal with a change in art import laws as he raped Europe of priceless antiquities.
Most people didn't even know Morgan owned the Titanic, much less that he killed over a thousand people by trying to be the biggest and the cheapest. The press reprinted White Star Lines advertising copy verbatim, as the era's latest version of "too big to fail."
And it didn't fail, for Morgan. After the rigged inquiry blamed the idiot captain, E.J. Smith, for speeding into a known ice field at night without even bothering to provide his lookouts with binoculars, the insurer paid Morgan his money back. Smith may have been chosen for his recklessness, having caused three collisions with other ships by tearing around in port at full speed, and crushing the top of a tug with the Olympic's giant rudder. If anything went wrong, Morgan could blame the captain's inability to keep track of where other objects were in relation to the floating city.
The original report on the Titanic sinking is a model of good reporting: a credit to the Scientific American of old! The lack of lifeboats is a terrible comment on bad old British malpractice (I am a British citizen), in a world dominated by the bean-counters and people deluded enough to believe their own publicity. There never has been, and probably never will be, an unsinkable ship. The sinking of the Costa Concordia shows that there are no limits to human stupidity and arrogance.The ship sank probably because the captain was showing off to a pretty girl(see your other article about men being "cognitively impaired by attractive woman"). The passengers of this ultra-modern ship had not yet had their lifeboat drills, as the ship had only left port that morning. The Spirit of Free Enterprise (British Ferry) sank within minutes of leaving harbour a few years ago. So accidents can happen at any time, in the calmest weather.
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