The Titanic

[Jabba 18389]

I'd like to propose a thread for those who have followed the story of the Titanic. This coming week will mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the ship and the scandalous loss of life.

 

I've been a Titanic follower and hobbyist for a long time and have tried to discover historic value of this event. For some reason, the Titanic has meaning for me, and I hope with your indulgence, to post factoids along the way. Anyone else a fan?

[CristyCurves 169032]

It is a remarkable,sad story,now,rather tommorow, it will be 100 years old.April 10th the "safest ship" on the planet set sail,april 14th at 1140 pm it struck an iceburg and because of the lack of life boats and an inexperienced crew ,1522 people lost their lives.There were only 20 lifeboats for a passenger and crew list of 2200 people.

[backrubman 64800]

I found this news article gave me some new insight, something I didn't before know, in particular the paragraph in bold. Of course it is clear why the Californian stopped. Navigating the ice field in the dark of night was just too dangerous but the Captain of the Titanic wanted to make the record books: he did.

 

CAPE RACE, N.L. - In a remote Marconi wireless station on the southeast tip of Newfoundland, the bland stream of "Wish you were here" messages from passengers aboard RMS Titanic ended with the inconceivable.

 

"My God, Mr. Gray, the Titanic has struck an iceberg and is calling CQD," head operator Walter Gray would later recall being told by his subordinate, J.C.R. Godwin, at 10:25 p.m. EST on April 14, 1912.

 

It was just before midnight, ship's time, and the luxury liner would be under water in less than three hours.

 

CQD was the early Morse code distress call used by Marconi installations. Titanic's head operator Jack Phillips, a good friend of Gray's from Marconi training, also sent out the more novel SOS.

 

Cape Race was the closest land base to the stricken ship, which met its fate about 600 kilometres southeast in the North Atlantic's freezing Iceberg Alley.

 

For the first hour or so after that first distress call, "there was no thought of the ship sinking," Gray wrote in his memoir "The Life Story of an Old Shetlander."

 

After all, the jewel of the White Star Line had been glorified as unsinkable.

"It was only when Phillips announced ...'We are now sinking slowly by the head. Putting women and children off in boats. Weather remains clear and calm,' that the horror gripped," Gray wrote.

 

Gray and his three-man crew continued to relay fading signals from Phillips in a desperate effort to get help from nearby vessels.

 

The actual Marconi logs at Cape Race were lost to fire or were accidentally thrown out, according to differing historical accounts.

But a log later replicated from those notes by one of Gray's assistants, Robert

 

Hunston, documents in eastern standard time the last messages between Titanic and other ships.

 

"11:00 p.m. Titanic continues calling for assistance and giving position."

"11:36 p.m. Olympic asks Titanic which way latter steering. Titanic replies: 'We are putting women off in boats.' "

"12:50 a.m. Virginian says last he heard of Titanic was at 12:27 a.m. when latter's signals were blurred and ended abruptly. From now on boats working amongst themselves relative to Titanic disaster. Nothing more heard from Titanic."

 

About two hours and 40 minutes after striking the iceberg, the fabled ship had filled with water and was speeding toward the ocean floor.

 

Just over 700 people would be rescued from lifeboats or makeshift rafts, including Titanic's assistant wireless operator Harold Bride who survived on an overturned collapsible lifeboat. More than 1,500 people died.

 

It's unclear why the closest ship, the Californian, did not respond from where it had stopped several kilometres away in an icefield. An inquiry after the disaster heard that the wireless operator had gone off shift and never heard the pleas for help, and that Titanic's emergency rocket flares were either misinterpreted or downplayed.

 

There are also contradictory accounts about who first heard the Titanic distress call.

 

Dave Myrick's family lived and worked for generations at Cape Race. His great uncle, Jimmy Myrick, was a 14-year-old wireless apprentice the night the Titanic sank. According to family lore, he told a relative decades later that he happened to be alone as the ship's distress call came in while senior operators were briefly out of the wireless room.

 

"Young Jim heard the CQD, SOS from the Titanic," Dave Myrick said in an interview at the Myrick Wireless Interpretation Centre at Cape Race.

"He rushed out looking for Mr. Godwin and found him subsequently coming back in."

 

Godwin then found Gray, who had been checking the engines that powered the station.

 

"Mr. Gray took over the operation then and everything else that followed was sworn to secrecy. Young Jimmy was sworn to never tell that he was left alone for even a few minutes."

 

Such details are fodder for debate. But there's no doubt about the huge role that tiny Cape Race played as the disaster unfolded, said Lynn-Marie Richard, curatorial assistant at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax.

"They were first to receive the message," among land-based wireless stations, she said.

 

"For Gray to be on the receiving end, knowing that this was his friend ... it must have been a terrible, terrible feeling."

And that was just the beginning of an onslaught over the next hours and days of frantic messages from relatives, politicians and newspaper editors all scrambling for details, she said.

 

"You can imagine this little station in Newfoundland, how busy they would have been, the calls they would have had, and the responsibility of trying to satisfy everybody."

 

Telegraph messages were handled with strict confidentiality.

Gray would later write that his first reports on Titanic were shared only with "the ship's owners in New York, Southampton and Liverpool; to a certain New York newspaper and to my company in Montreal, all of this being in accordance with standing orders."

 

Larry Daley, president of Titanic Expeditions Inc. in St. John's, is planning a re-enactment on the night of April 14-15, as a ship over the Titanic wreck site sends the exact same messages to a wireless operator at Cape Race.

"We can do this safely and through regulations because we're not actually sending the distress signals over the airwaves," he said in an interview.

Instead, it will be a closed-circuit re-enactment using satellite transmission that won't go out to ships in the region, Daley explained.

 

"Cape Race was the 911 of the day," he said of the lonesome seaside station that "played a pivotal part in the rescue and saving over 700 lives."

[Athos 108589]

There are lots of Titanic centenary events taking place here in NL.

 

Serious fans could have taken a cruise recreating the voyage, scheduled to be over the ship's resting place at the time of the crash.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/04/08/ms-balmoral-recreate-titanic-voyage-100-years_n_1410556.html

 

We're having a big iceberg season, so fingers crossed history doesn't repeat itself.

 

I found it interesting that the memorial cries had to leave two days earlier than the titanic as the modern ship isn't as fast!

 

Porthos

[Phaedrus 209521]

Apparently, the whole "unsinkable" thing is a post-sinking myth - the issue didn't arise before the Titanic actually went down :)

[AndyofHalifax 15339]

Although this is only tangentially related, James Cameron has certainly been doing some interesting things lately. Like going to the bottom of the Marianas trench, the deepest place in the world.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/mar/26/james-cameron-mariana-trench-dive

 

There are lots of activities in Halifax to commemorate the anniversary, including some restaurants doing meals that were served on the Titanic and bands that are playing the songs that would have been played on board. Halifax has a museum with many Titanic artifacts and is the harbour where the survivors and the dead were taken to after the sinking.

[Studio 110 by Sophia 150333]

Is anyone seen the 3-d movie? I may go this weekend:)

[Guest Ou**or**n]

It is a 3D conversion which I find makes a good movie darker and blurry. I saw Thor as a 3D conversion and was very disappointed. Buy the Blu-Ray and watch it at home for a much better experience.

[tokan 16826]

I've been interested in the Titanic since I was a little kid. There was just something about it, not just it's sinking on it's maiden voyage but all the way through it's construction that I found so interesting. It was the largest ship ever built up to that time, and some of the pictures you see of some of the engine parts and boilers are crazy, especially when you see one of the workers standing beside it. And the fact that if you stood it on it's side it would be close to three quarters of the height of the empire state building is impressive.

[Jabba 18389]

On this day, 100 years ago, the slippery slope to a classic story begins. The Titanic left Southhampton to begin it's date with destiny.

 

Construction of Hull # 401 (Titanic) started on March 31 1909 in Belfast. Constructed by Harland and Wolff, the ship took almost 3yrs to build. The level of craftsmanship for the Olympic class ships was unbelievably beyond the standard of the day. Titanic, along with her sister, Olympic, was the crowning achievement of luxury for the White Star line. That was White Star line's calling card. The Olympic & Titanic were not the fastest ships of the time but they were the height of luxury passage. The original H&W slipways and fitting dock are still visible through Google Maps.

 

The Titanic departed Belfast for South Hampton at 8:00 pm on April 2, 1912. Several challenges lay ahead for equipping the ship for the cross Atlantic journey. Staffing, supplying & training for a ship of this size was a new experience for everyone. The Captain (Edward John Smith), who, despite his years with White Star, had absolutely no experience with the technology. His officers were similarly unequipped. Nobody had any experience with this monster.

 

A national coal miners strike meant there was a shortage of coal for the epic maiden voyage. IMM (International Mercantile Marine Co) grabbed coal from the Olympic and filled Titanic's holds. IMM, an American conglomerate, owned White Star. The Titanic was, effectively, an American ship - not British.

 

Finally stocked for the journey, Titanic pushed-off from Southhampton at 12pm GMT April 10 1912 and arrived Cherbourg, France at 6:30pm. While departing from the Southhampton dock, she almost collided with another smaller vessel; the New York. The Titanic passed by the New York and the draft of the Titanic drew the New York away from its dock. Some quick action narrowly avoided a collision. Ironically, New York was to be Titanic's port of call...one which she never made.

 

More to come...

[Guest p**h*x]

The Chronicle Herald has a really nice Titanic section on their website and they're even posting articles about the Titanic from their archives and have included PDF's of the actual clippings from the paper in 1912. I've been captivated by the stories all night. It is super awesome!

 

http://thechronicleherald.ca/titanic

[LuxeMulvari 65764]

Apparently, some scientist watched the movie, and proceeded to tell James Cameron the star field over titanic in the movie was incorrect for the night of April 12th, 1912. So for the re-release, James Cameron went in and corrected it. So now it's even more historically accurate, right down to the star field :)

 

There have also been alot of strange coincidences with that ship, including a book called "Futility:The wreck of the Titan" in which the author, Morgan Robertson, pretty much copies the story of the titanic, down to exact numbers of people and measurements. The strange part? The book was written 14 yrs before Titanic even existed.....

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futility,_or_the_Wreck_of_the_Titan

http://www.cracked.com/article_18421_6-insane-coincidences-you-wont-believe-actually-happened.html

 

Some other creepy Titanic coincidences.........

http://josiehermit.hubpages.com/hub/Titanic-Strange-Coincidences-and-the-Unsinkable-Ship

http://www.psychics.co.uk/encounters/coincidences/titanic.html

 

 

A neat little documentary about the unknown bodies and relatives trying to name them.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiXM9mM7hx8

 

 

That ship was cursed!

[Jabba 18389]

Apparently, some scientist watched the movie, and proceeded to tell James Cameron the star field over titanic in the movie was incorrect for the night of April 12th, 1912. So for the re-release, James Cameron went in and corrected it. So now it's even more historically accurate, right down to the star field :)

 

Great articles!

Cameron is definitely a perfectionist personality.

 

I did notice an inaccuracy in Cameron's Titanic. The real Titanic had 3 rungs in the handrail at the front (where Jack & Rose did the flying scene). Cameron inserted a 4th rung so Rose wouldn't have to hike her skirt up to her neck to get on the bottom rung. I'll have to call him up & tell him he's got another change for the 3D release. Passengers on the real Titanic would never have been allowed near the anchor well in the bow anyway. Might as well have put Jack & Rose in the Crow's nest.

 

Real Titanic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt8s6E22Muc

Cameron Titanic:

[Jabba 18389]

Friday the 13th.

The last full day without drama for the Titanic. I wish I could make a REALLY long distance call to warn the crew.

[Guest S****r]

I remember hearing that a book had been written years earlier with almost the same story line--big new ship, think it was called Unsinkable. It struck ice and almost everyone on it died. Anyone know the details of that book. It was one of those "strange, but true" incidents.

[Jabba 18389]

I remember hearing that a book had been written years earlier with almost the same story line--big new ship, think it was called Unsinkable. It struck ice and almost everyone on it died. Anyone know the details of that book. It was one of those "strange, but true" incidents.

 

 

Luxie wrote in her post:

There have also been alot of strange coincidences with that ship, including a book called "Futility:The wreck of the Titan" in which the author, Morgan Robertson, pretty much copies the story of the titanic, down to exact numbers of people and measurements. The strange part? The book was written 14 yrs before Titanic even existed.....

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futilit...k_of_the_Titan

[roamingguy 300292]

http://travel.ca.msn.com/biggest-titanic-myths-exposed#image=1

 

RG