On today’s date it’s been a Century since the Titanic was lost…
On April 10, 1912, the Titanic, largest ship afloat, left Southampton, England on her maiden voyage to New York City. The White Star Line had spared no expense in assuring her luxury. A legend even before she sailed, her passengers were a mixture of the world’s wealthiest basking in the elegance of first class accommodations and immigrants packed into steerage.
She was touted as the safest ship ever built, so safe that she carried only 20 lifeboats – enough to provide accommodation for only half her 2,200 passengers and crew. This discrepancy rested on the belief that since the ship’s construction made her ‘unsinkable,’ her lifeboats were necessary only to rescue survivors of other sinking ships. Additionally, lifeboats took up valuable deck space.
Four days into her journey, at 11:40 P.M. on the night of April 14, she struck an iceberg. Her fireman compared the sound of the impact to ‘the tearing of calico, nothing more.’ However, the collision was fatal and the icy water soon poured through the ship.
It became obvious that many would not find safety in a lifeboat. Each passenger was issued a life jacket but life expectancy would be short when exposed to water four degrees below freezing. As the forward portion of the ship sank deeper, passengers scrambled to the stern. John Thayer witnessed the sinking from a lifeboat. ‘We could see groups of the almost fifteen hundred people still aboard, clinging in clusters or bunches, like swarming bees; only to fall in masses, pairs or singly, as the great after part of the ship, two hundred and fifty feet of it, rose into the sky, till it reached a sixty-five or seventy degree angle.’ The great ship slowly slid beneath the waters two hours and forty minutes after the collision
The next morning, the liner Carpathia rescued 705 survivors. One thousand five hundred twenty-two passengers and crew were lost. Subsequent inquiries attributed the high loss of life to an insufficient number of lifeboats and inadequate training in their use.
…more at EyewitnessHistory.com
- Titanic, 100 years on, Apr 10th 2012 (learningfromdogs.com)
- 100 years later, tragedy of the Titanic still resonates (vancouversun.com)
- Titanic History Revised (lewrockwell.com)
- The Titanic at 100 years (boston.com)
- The Canine Casualties of the Titanic Disaster (newsfeed.time.com)
- Titanic still captures imagination 100 years on (entertainment.inquirer.net)
Posted on April 11, 2012, in Announcement, Education, event, history, News, Opinion, quote, World News and tagged John Thayer, lifeboat, New York City, RMS Carpathia, Southampton. Bookmark the permalink. 1 Comment.