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The ship. Titanic was the largest ship in the ... world in 1912 ; Titanic was the fastest ship in the world in 1912 ; Tiatanic was geniuinely believed to be unsinkable ; Titanic was originally to have been named Gigantic ; Titanic's owners were trying to save money in her construction, causing them to cut corners on quality and safety ; Regulations stated that there should be enough lifeboats for everyone on board ; Titanic's owners opposed the addition of more lifeboats, in order to give passengers more room on the promenade decks -- Omens. The Titanic disaster was predicted 14 years before it happened by writer Morgan Robertson ; Catholic workers at Harland & Woff sabotaged Titanic because her hull number was anti-Catholic ; A worker was accidentally sealed into Titanic's hull when she was under construction in Belfast ; Titanic's construction, launch and sailing were plagued by bad luck ; Titanic was sunk by a mummy's curse -- Maiden voyage. Titanic was filled to capacity on her maiden voyage ; Titanic was on fire when she left Southampton ; Titanic was carrying gold bullion ; Titanic nearly collided with another ship as she left Southampton ; Captain Smith was accident prone ; Titanic was trying to win the Blue Riband for the fastest Atlantic crossing ; Titanic was short of coal, because of a coal strike ; Owner Bruce Ismay acted as a 'super-captain' and ordered Captain Smith to maintain full speed despite the unusual ice warnings they had received ; Titanic was trying to take the shorteset route to New York at the time of the accident ; Captain Smith should have slowed down for ice ; Crucial ice warnings never made it to Titanic's bridge because the wireless operator was too busy and tired ; Captain Smith was drunk at the time of the collision -- Passengers. 'Molly' Brown was treated with condescension by other First Class passengers because she was 'new money' ; Alice Cleaver, nursemaid to a family in First Class, had previously been convicted of killing her own child ; Two kidnapped children survived the sinking of the Titanic ; There were professional 'card-sharps' travelling on Titanic as First Class passengers ; Stewardess Violet Jessop survived the sinking of both the Titanic and her sister ship, the Britannic ; All eight members of the Goodwin family died in the sinking -- 'Iceberg, right ahead!'. 'Keep a lookout for small ice' was a standing joke amongst Titanic's lookouts ; Titanic's lookouts could smell the ice that night ; If Titanic's lookouts had had binoculars, they'd have seen the iceberg earlier ; Titanic was going at the maximum speed she was capable of when she sighted the iceberg ; Titanic's engines were put in reverse just before the collision, making the ship less responsive to her helm and compounding the accident ; If Titanic had been going more slowly, she could have turned more quickly ; Titanic's rudder was too small for her size, making her hard to turn ; Hard-a-starboard was the only helm order given to avoid the iceberg ; Captain Smith was in bed when Titanic collided with the iceberg ; Titanic collided with a lone iceberg ; Titanic struck a blue or dark iceberg ; If Titanic hand carried searchlights, the lookouts would have seen the ice earlier ; The lookouts had reported seeing icebergs before the collision ; The iceberg which sank the Titanic was identified the day after the sinking by a smear of red paint along its side -- Collision. Everyone on board Titanic felt a terrific jolt as she collided with the iceberg ; Some Third Class passengers woke up to find their cabins awash ; Passengers used chunks of the iceberg in their drinks after the collision ; The iceberg ripped a 300 foot gash along the side of the ship ; The steel and rivets used to make Titanic were of inferior quality ; if she'd been made with better metal, the iceberg wouldn't have sunk her ; If the bulkheads of Titanic's watertight compartments had been higher she wouldn't have sunk ; If Titanic had had longitudinal bulkheads, those would have contained the water and stopped the ship from sinking ; If Titanic had rammed the iceberg head-on, she would have survived ; Engineers and stokers were trapped below by the watertight doors as they came down after the collision -- SOS. Titanic did not send a distress signal until 47 minutes after the collision ; Titanic was the first ship to use the distress signal SOS ; Titanic's distress signal gave the wrong position ; Carpathia was the first ship to pick up Titanic's disterss signal ; The Frankfurt, 150 miles away, was told, "You fool, standby and keep out', when she contacted Titanic ; Titanic's distress message was picked up on the roof of a New York department store -- The Californian incident. The Californian was about 20 miles away from the sinking Titanic ; The Californian saw Titanic's distress signals, but ignored them ; There was a 'mystery ship' between the Titanic and the Californian which could have saved everyone, but it sailed away without responding to Titanic's distress signals ; If the Californian had gone to help, everyone on the Titanic could have been saved -- Women and children first. Captain Smith had a mental breakdown following the collision, which rendered him ineffective ; Titanic's passengers were reluctant to get into the lifeboats ; Titanic's officers thought her lifeboats might break if they were lowered fully loaded ; Titanic's second officer prevented men and even boys from entering lifeboats even though there was space for them ; One man excaped by pretending to be a woman in order to get into a lifeboat ; Titanic developed a list to port when sinking and passengers were ordered to the starboard side to correct it ; Titanic's First Officer allowed a lifeboat with a capacity of 40 to leave with only five passengers in it ; Third Class passengers were kept below as Titanic sank and were prevented from entering the lifeboats ; If Titanic had had more lifeboats, everybody could have been saved -- Final moments. Captain Smith advised those on board near the end to 'Be British' ; The band played Nearer, My God, To Thee, as the ship sank ; Titanic's Marconi operators knocked a stoker unconscious and left him to die ; Ismay pushed his way into Collapsible C, the last lifeboat to be launched on the starboard side ; Titanic's engineers died at their posts below decks ; Titanic's boilers exploded as she sank ; Titanic broke in half as she sank ; Col. John Jacob Astor IV was crushed by a falling funnel as the ship sank ; First Officer Murdoch shot one or two passengers before shooting himself ; Captain Smith committed suicide as the ship went down ; Most Titanic victims drowned -- Rescue. The Carpathia averaged 17.5 knots during her 58-mile dash to reach the Titanic ; Chief Baker Charles Joughin survived for several hours in the freezing water ; 'Molly' Brown tried to make lifeboat number six go back to pick up survivors, but was prevented by Quartermaster Robert Hichens ; Many more people would have been saved if more lifeboats had attempted to return to pick up survivors from the water ; Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon offered those in Lifeboat No. 1 £5 each if they would agree not to return to the ship to pick up survivors ; The barking of a Newfoundland dog alerted Carpathia to Titanic's lifeboats ; Operators on the Carpathia withheld information about Titanic's sinking in order to sell their story to the papers -- Statistics. A higher percentage of Irish people died on the Titanic than any other nationality ; A higher percentage of third class men died than second class men ; More first class men were saved than third class men. ; A higher percentage of Titanic's male passengers were saved than crew ; More women were saved from the Titanic than men -- Aftermath. Bodies of First and Second Class passengers were taken to Halifax for burial, but Third Class passengers were buried at sea ; One of Titanic's lifboats was found drifting in the Atlantic a month after the sinking with the bodies of three victims still in it ; Titanic and her cargo were re-insured immediately after the disaster ; The ship that sank was actually the previously damaged Olympic in an insurance scam that went wrong ; Ismay developed a lifelong opiate addiction after the sinking and withdrew from society ; The British inquiry into the sinking was a whitewash ; RMS Titanic Inc. now owns the wreck ; The wreck of the Titanic may one day be raised. Read More |
Summary, etc.: |
"April 15th, 2012, will be the 100th anniversary ... of the sinking of the Titanic. People have an endless fascination with the Titanic, yet much of what they know today is a mixture of fact and fiction. In one hundred and one brief and engaging chapters, Tim Maltin, one of the foremost experts on the Titanic, reveals the truth behind the most common beliefs about the ship and the night it sank. From physics to photographs, lawsuits to love stories, Maltin doesn't miss one tidbit surrounding its history. Heavily researched and filled with detailed descriptions, quotes from survivors, and excerpts from the official inquiries, this book is guaranteed to make readers rethink everything they thought they knew about the legendary ship and its tragic fate."-- Read More |