Having appeared over on the Dish of the Day thread, I though that Titanic is worthy of a thread of her own

Arguably the most famous ship and most famous shipwreck in history, RMS Titanic struck an iceberg on the night of the 14th April 1912 and sank at around 2.20am on the 15th.

Titanic departs Southampton on the 10th April 1912;

Harland & Wolff

Titanic (right) with her sister ship Olympic at the Harland & Wolff Shipyard in Belfast;

The Iceberg;

Titanic Iceberg

The route of the Titanic and the Iceberg:

Contemporary newsreel footage;

Lifeboat "Collapsible D" photographed from Carpathia, 7.15am on the 15th April;

Plan of the Boat Deck;




Plan of the Boat Deck of RMS Titanic showing the location of the lifeboats. The main lifeboats are marked in green, while the emergency cutters are highlighted in red. Two of the collapsible lifeboats are marked in purple. The other two (not on this diagram) were situated on the roof of the officers' quarters behind the wheelhouse.

Yes, the Titanic sinking was tragic with the loss of many lives but I often wonder why there is so much publicity given to the Titanic yet on the "Empress of Ireland"  sinking after the collision with SS Storstad on the ST Lawrence River (Canada) on May29 1914 very little is ever published.

She sank in a matter of fourteen minutes and the death toll as a result of this accident was 1012 people.


Do you think that because the accident happened a few months before the n outbreak of World War 1 could have been one of the reason that so little publicity was given to the sinking of "Empress of Ireland.


Have a read through:

http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/empress-of-ireland.html

Dirk and Triceratops, excuses to interrupt the thread...
Dirk, if you want to look at my message of 12 April 22h38 to Ferval in het "Archaeology of excrements" thread
about "spiegeltent" and "spiegelpaleis"...what's your memory about that?

Kind regards to both, Paul.

Paul,

 have done so and posted a reply.

Dirk

Violet Jessop was a stewardess onboard RMS Titanic. After Titanic hit the iceberg and began to founder, being a member of the crew she was ordered up on deck to help manage passengers. She was later ordered into lifeboat 16, and as the boat was being lowered one of the Titanic's officers gave her a baby to look after. The next morning she and the other survivors in the boat were picked up by RMS Carpathia.

But interestingly she had also been a stewardess on Titanic's sister ship, RMS Olympic, when on 29 September 1911, Olympic collided with HMS Hawke, began taking on water and had to limp back to Southampton. Furthermore, during WW1 Jessop served as a nurse for the Red Cross, and was on the Britannic, the third sister ship of Titanic, which was then serving as a hospital ship in the Aegean, when on the morning of 21 November 1916 Britannic struck a mine and quickly sank. Violet Jessop ended up in the water but managed to get hold of a life belt, and was later pulled from the water by other survivors in a lifeboat.

After the war she continued to work for the White Star Line, but having been on Olympic during a collision, and onboard Titanic and Britannic when they sank, I wonder how many passengers would have wanted her onboard with them.



Violet Jessop when she was assigned to Britannic.

Meles meles,

 Did not know about this and cannot recall of ever having read about the nurse and baby.
Was the story ever followed up and is it known what happened to the baby?

From wiki:

"According to Violet, while on board the Carpathia, a woman grabbed the baby she was holding and ran off with it without saying a word. ..... Years after her retirement, Violet claimed to have received a telephone call, on a stormy night, from a woman who asked Violet if she saved a baby on the night that the Titanic sank. "Yes," Violet replied. The voice then said "I was that baby," laughed, and hung up. Her friend and biographer John Maxtone-Graham said it was most likely some children in the village playing a joke on her. She replied, "No, John, I had never told that story to anyone before I told you now." Records indicate that the only baby on boat 16 was Assad Thomas, who was handed to Edwina Troutt, and later reunited with his mother on the Carpathia."

Violet Jessop, "Miss Unsinkable", seems to have quite relished the notoriety of having been sunk twice, so maybe it's a case of her story growing in the telling.

Meles meles wrote:

From wiki:

"According to Violet, while on board the Carpathia, a woman grabbed the baby she was holding and ran off with it without saying a word. ..... Years after her retirement, Violet claimed to have received a telephone call, on a stormy night, from a woman who asked Violet if she saved a baby on the night that the Titanic sank. "Yes," Violet replied. The voice then said "I was that baby," laughed, and hung up. Her friend and biographer John Maxtone-Graham said it was most likely some children in the village playing a joke on her. She replied, "No, John, I had never told that story to anyone before I told you now." Records indicate that the only baby on boat 16 was Assad Thomas, who was handed to Edwina Troutt, and later reunited with his mother on the Carpathia."

Violet Jessop, "Miss Unsinkable", seems to have quite relished the notoriety of having been sunk twice, so maybe it's a case of her story growing in the telling.

Meles meles.

 thanks for that information.
Yes , you could be right in mentioning that Violet Jessop seems to have relished her story. And if it is indeed the truth then I think it would have been given more publicity.

I've not read her biography or her memoirs but I gather from wiki and other popular online sources that she was a devout catholic who always carried her rosary in her apron and who strongly believed in the power of prayer. She also comes across as rather superstitious, and believing in the power of charms and in ordained luck, fate, karma or something like that.

In her memoirs she says that on the Titanic's maiden voyage she brought a copy of a translated Hebrew prayer that an old Irish woman had given her. Upon settling down in her bunk she found that prayer and read it, and then made her roommate read it. It was a strangely worded prayer that Violet says was supposed to protect her against fire and water. (Hmmm). And there's also the funny business with the phone call which claimed to be from the child she'd long ago rescued ... an incident she said she'd never told to anyone else, and which she'd only just divulged to her friend ... who was also just in the process of writing her biography.

Call me an old cynic but she sounds like someone who relished a good bit of drama and was not averse to providing the necessary dramatic twist if it would improve the story. She may not actually have been lying but perhaps rather in her mind she sincerely believed the more dramatic sequence of events to be true. All in all though something doesn't quite ring true.

Possibly another 'deluded' soul, keen to embellish the 'real world' to enhance the history of what happened with how she believed it should have occurred?

If you like recolourized old photos, there are quite a few of RMS Titanic at Titanic in color

Despite the site's name there are lots more photos of Olympic and Britannic - including some restored photos of interiors - because of course they lasted a lot longer than their ill-fated sistership.


Olympic (L) alongside Titanic (R) at Belfast, 6 March 1912.


Titanic casts off from Southampton, 10 April 1912.


Titanic leaving Southampton, 10 April 1912.


The news breaks in London, 15 April 1912.

If you have two hours, forty-one minutes and eighteen seconds to spare you might want to watch this animation of the Titanic sinking in "real time". Here are the events and their timing as gleaned from eye-witness accounts from the tragedy.


0:30 - Iceberg spotted.
1:05 - Titanic collides with iceberg.
6:06 - The ship has stopped as damage inspections are carried out.
7:44 - Captain Smith orders engines to 'Half Ahead'.
19:41 - Titanic stops for the last time.
20:04 - Excess steam is vented.
38:08 - The Titanic begins taking on a 'starboard list'.
43:03 - Thomas Andrews estimates 1-2 hours before the ship sinks.
46:23 - The first distress calls are sent out.
48:38 - Lights of another ship are spotted on the horizon.
53:07 - Most lifeboats are prepared to evacuate passengers.
58:20 - Carpathia responds to Titanic's distress calls.
1:01:29 - Lifeboat 7 is launched.
1:05:03 - Lifeboat 5 is launched.
1:05:21 - The D-Deck gangway doors are opened.
1:06:04 - The telegraph operators begin using 'SOS'.
1:07:22 - Lifeboat 5 encounters lowering difficulties.
1:08:02 - Officer Boxhall launches the first distress rocket in an attempt to signal the ship on the horizon.
1:10:24 - The Carpathia confirms it is on it's way.
1:11:03 - Steam stops venting from the funnels.
1:13:20 - The starboard list is eliminated as Boiler Room 5 floods.
1:21:28 - Lifeboat 8 leaves.
1:28:22 - Suction pumps are activated.
1:31:33 - Lifeboat 6 is launched.
1:36:57 - Water is up to the Titanic's nameplate.
1:39:37 - Titanic begins listing to port.
1:41:43 - Lifeboat 16 is launched.
1:46:54 - Lifeboat 14 is launched.
1:51:18 - Lifeboat 14 is dropped 4 feet into the sea from its falls after they jammed.
1:51:42 - Lifeboat 12 is launched.
1:52:29 - Lifeboat 9 is launched.
1:58:53 - Lifeboat 11 is launched.
2:00:41 - Lifeboat 13 is launched.
2:05:21 - Lifeboat 13 is pushed aft by the discharging condenser, jamming it on the falls.
2:05:50 - Lifeboat 15.
2:05:42 - Lifeboat 13 cannot release itself as Lifeboat 15 comes down on top of it.
2:07:07 - Lifeboat 13 is released and is pulled out from underneath Lifeboat 15 as 15 lands in the water.
2:07:38 - Lifeboat 2 is launched.
2:09:31 - The lights on the horizon disappear.
2:11:52 - Lifeboat 4.
2:12:22 - Lifeboat 10.
2:22:12 - It is now 2AM. The Titanic has 20 minutes left.
2:26:10 - Collapsible Boat D is launched.
2:29:39 - The last messages from the Titanic are heard.
2:30:46 - Collapsible A is slid off the Officers' Quarters roof.
2:31:03 - The Wireless Room is abandoned.
2:31:42 - Collapsible B is thrown from the roof of the office quarters. It lands upside down in the water.
2:34:01 - Survivors distinctly hear 4 explosions from deep within the ship.
2:39:23 - All remaining power is lost. The ship breaks in two.
2:40:36 - Titanic is gone. Rescuers do not arrive for another hour and 40 minutes.
2:40:51 - Titanic is heard below the surface as it breaks apart, implodes and falls to the sea floor.

Given those timings, it took the crew until 2am to launch the wooden lifeboats which were available. Even if the ship had been carrying enough lifeboats for everyone, it is doubtful if they would have managed to launch them.

Titanic was unusual in that it sank by the head, allowing both port and starboard side lifeboats to be launched. In the case of the Empress of Ireland, mentioned by Dirk, and the later sinking of the Lusitania, these ships capsized, meaning only the lifeboats on one side could be used.

In 1879, another Atlantic liner, SS Arizona, collided with an iceberg. Unlike Titanic, the Arizona collision was head on resulting in a crumpled bow but no underwater rupture.

Even these days with state of the art navigation aids and all, icebergs still sink ships, especially ones almost totally submerged. "The Explorer", as recently as 2007, came a cropper after a collision which inflicted remarkably similar damage to that which sank the Titanic, a gash long enough to traverse one bulkhead (though in this case only about a foot in length). All 154 personnel on board managed to evacuate successfully, though were then drifting about for five hours in lifeboats in Antarctic waters before finally being rescued by the Norwegian cruise ship "Nordnorge".

An earlier, 1833, disaster in ice off Newfoundland;

Lady of the Lake

Triceratops wrote:

Given those timings, it took the crew until 2am to launch the wooden lifeboats which were available. Even if the ship had been carrying enough lifeboats for everyone, it is doubtful if they would have managed to launch them.

Titanic was unusual in that it sank by the head, allowing both port and starboard side lifeboats to be launched. In the case of the Empress of Ireland, mentioned by Dirk, and the later sinking of the Lusitania, these ships capsized, meaning only the lifeboats on one side could be used.

I think its credit to her design that she sank without a list in 2 hours. We still don't know really  how substantial the damage was only that it whatever occurred was enough to flood 5 compartments (was it sprung plates,a large rent in her side etc).

Compare her to Lusitania. Lusitania went down in minutes, not hours with a heavy list that pretty much made launching her life boats impossible. Lusitania had been part funded by the British government so that she could be converted to a Armed Merchant Cruiser is required.So she should have been pretty sturdy.

What ever happened on her was pretty catastrophic,the most recent theory I have read is that of a boiler explosion (and I personally think the most likely). Unfortunately because of the state of the wreck (and she really is a wreck) its highly unlikely that definitive proof will ever be found (or the expensive paintings supposedly still on board!).

Ironically Titanic's sister Britannic also sank extremely quickly in the Aegean after striking a mine. Ironic because she had been completed with the experience of Titanic's sinking included into her design and structure.She should have been much, much more resilient.

It however all went to waste. Because of the heat of the Aegean portholes were left open, and crucially a fireman's passage that run along the length of her boiler spaces was left unsecured with the watertight doors open (confirmed by some very brave divers who ventured into the wreck).

So again like Lusitania, she went down fast.

I will add this to the Titanic thread since I was going to mention that ship in this query. I am reading Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg (and finding it a bit hard-going with so much emphasis on the sea flows and ice floes and ship parts and not a lot of diffentiation of the characters beyond the main one and one referred to throughout as "the mechanic" whom she has some sort of relationship with) and it mentions the Hans Hedtoft going down in 1959 hitting an iceberg with 95 passengers and crew perishing. This was a Greenland ship (another reason why I am finding it hard-going - I don't know Greenland at all really or Denmark's relationship to it, though I am finding that quite interesting), which might explain in part why it is not better known. 

Which is my query why is the Titanic SO well-known and this one virtually unheard of?

Actually Titanic and her sisters were outdated in design terms when built. Compare them with the Cunard near-equivalents (Lusitania, Mauretania etc).

Green George wrote:

Actually Titanic and her sisters were outdated in design terms when built. Compare them with the Cunard near-equivalents (Lusitania, Mauretania etc).

I think outdated is a bit harsh. They were certainly different to the Cunard greyhounds, but that's a reflection on White Stars design brief than in built obsolescence. The Olympic,Titanic and Britannic were meant to be the ultimate in luxury and habitability - even steerage was better.

They weren't meant to be racing the Atlantic trying to obtain the Blue Riband. That wasn't their job.

Thats why they had a mixture of triple expansion engines and steam turbine (2 x triple expansion 1 x low pressure turbine). They were relatively efficient steamers in terms of coal usage and could keep a steady pace (without vibration which affected the Cunard greyhounds at speed). One justifiable criticism is that their rudders were probably too small.

Considering the damage she received she did well to last as well and as long as she did. She settled by the bow on pretty much an even(ish) keel. Had she taken even a moderate 5-10 degree list there would have been real difficulty in getting any of the boats away. One side would swing away from the ship, the other would have been in contact with side.
Lusitania went down in 18 minutes listing 15 degrees in absolute chaos. They couldn't get the boats out. 4 minutes in she lost all electrical power.

Now obviously there are differences in the circumstances and nobody is 100% sure how catastrophic the damage was or what actually caused it. Everything from high explosive to coal dust to a boiler explosion has been mooted.

Thanks to 100 years of submersion and the RN depth charging the wreck Lusitania is now little more than collapsed heap of corroding steel. So I doubt that any conclusive answer can be found.
Britannic sank in about 45 minutes . 45 minutes isn't a lot of time but its certainly more than the 18 minutes that Lusitania took.
So they were strong vessels even if they weren't the fastest.

Caro wrote:

Which is my query why is the Titanic SO well-known and this one virtually unheard of?

Why the sinking of the RMS Titanic is re-told almost to the exclusion of other such stories is indeed puzzling. Trike mentioned the case of the SS Arizona in 1879, although admittedly that didn't result in a sinking. Earlier that same decade, however, in 1873 was the story of the RMS Atlantic which was also a White Star Liner built by Harland & Wolff in Belfast and which also sunk on her maiden voyage to New York with great loss of life. Hardly anyone has heard of the Atlantic or of the many other sinkings which have happened over the years. For some reason, however, the story of the Titanic has captured the imagination of the public and internationally too.

A similar phenomenon exists with the story of naval mutinies. There have been many mutinies over the centuries yet by far the most famous is that of HMS Bounty in 1789. A story re-told in countless films, documentaries and books etc. Yet many people have never heard of, say, the mutiny on HMS Hermione eight years later. Why the story of Bounty is world famous while that of Hermione and other mutinies are virtually unknown seems to be just the way it is. Maybe it has something to do with the popular psyche not being able (or willing) to cater for multiple stories of the same genre. And the same seems to go for the Titanic.

What is also worth noting regarding the business of keeping the memory of the Titanic alive in popular culture is how this has changed over the years. In the first 30 years or so after the disaster there were several films made about it in Britain and also in Germany. Since the 1950s, however, it has in large part been a North American phenomenon. On this side of the Atlantic the story of the Titanic (if left alone) could well have sunk to the depths of history as a maritime footnote. On the other side of the Atlantic, however, it has generally been North Americans of British descent and/or sympathies who have periodically over the last 70 years kept the story afloat. For example:

Walter Lord - historian, author of A Night To Remember (1955) - American
Terry Gilliam - comedian, producer/director of Time Bandits (1981) - American
Robert Ballard - oceanographer, discoverer of Titanic wreck (1985) - American
Dan Ackroyd - actor, writer of Ghostbusters II (1989) - Canadian
James Cameron - director, writer of Titanic (1997) - Canadian

This fascination with the story of the Titanic eventually rubbed off on the British Isles perhaps because of the shared culture etc. I remember that until not very long ago the sinking or the RMS Titanic was even seen as something of an embarrassment in places such as Belfast. As relatively recently as 2002 at the time of the 90th anniversary of the sinking, that city was still generally indifferent to the matter. How things have changed since.

Vizzer wrote:

Caro wrote:

Which is my query why is the Titanic SO well-known and this one virtually unheard of?

Why the sinking of the RMS Titanic is re-told almost to the exclusion of other such stories is indeed puzzling. Trike mentioned the case of the SS Arizona in 1879, although admittedly that didn't result in a sinking. Earlier that same decade, however, in 1873 was the story of the RMS Atlantic which was also a White Star Liner built by Harland & Wolff in Belfast and which also sunk on her maiden voyage to New York with great loss of life. Hardly anyone has heard of the Atlantic or of the many other sinkings which have happened over the years. For some reason, however, the story of the Titanic has captured the imagination of the public and internationally too.

A similar phenomenon exists with the story of naval mutinies. There have been many mutinies over the centuries yet by far the most famous is that of HMS Bounty in 1789. A story re-told in countless films, documentaries and books etc. Yet many people have never heard of, say, the mutiny on HMS Hermione eight years later. Why the story of Bounty is world famous while that of Hermione and other mutinies are virtually unknown seems to be just the way it is. Maybe it has something to do with the popular psyche not being able (or willing) to cater for multiple stories of the same genre. And the same seems to go for the Titanic.

What is also worth noting regarding the business of keeping the memory of the Titanic alive in popular culture is how this has changed over the years. In the first 30 years or so after the disaster there were several films made about it in Britain and also in Germany. Since the 1950s, however, it has in large part been a North American phenomenon. On this side of the Atlantic the story of the Titanic (if left alone) could well have sunk to the depths of history as a maritime footnote. On the other side of the Atlantic, however, it has generally been North Americans of British descent and/or sympathies who have periodically over the last 70 years kept the story afloat. For example:

Walter Lord - historian, author of A Night To Remember (1955) - American
Terry Gilliam - comedian, producer/director of Time Bandits (1981) - American
Robert Ballard - oceanographer, discoverer of Titanic wreck (1985) - American
Dan Ackroyd - actor, writer of Ghostbusters II (1989) - Canadian
James Cameron - director, writer of Titanic (1997) - Canadian

This fascination with the story of the Titanic eventually rubbed off on the British Isles perhaps because of the shared culture etc. I remember that until not very long ago the sinking or the RMS Titanic was even seen as something of an embarrassment in places such as Belfast. As relatively recently as 2002 at the time of the 90th anniversary of the sinking, that city was still generally indifferent to the matter. How things have changed since.

Why?

Well I'd argue for several reasons.

Firstly,she was the one of the biggest ships in the world at that time (a time when ships were a matter of national pride) and she foundered on her first voyage. The equivalent would have been rolling out the first Concorde  and having it suffering a bird strike on its first commercial flight. There have been many crashes in advent of air travel but nobody remembers or even hears about them all. However if you were to ask somebody about Concorde,its pretty good bet that would know about the Paris crash. Why? Well she was a "premier/exclusive" aircraft and secondly one of them came to a terrible end.  Prior to flight the only real way to traverse the globe was by sea and had been since the dawn of civilisation so people were well used to ships simply not appearing at their destinations as they understood the dangers of sea travel. Ships were the workhorses of nations - nobody mourned the loss of old nags but they would mourn the loss of a thoroughbred.

Secondly,you have a high up member of the nautical society stating that she was [practically] unsinkable. Now the word 'practical' was left out of the quote in many cases leading to the ship being called 'unsinkable' in the press. When this widely lauded ship sinks with such a loss of life its no surprise that she gains an infamy that most other unfortunate vessels don't . A good comparison would be HMS Hood.
Hood was the biggest ship in the world for 20 years, she was the darling of the British people and was described by the press as the "Mighty Hood". 

She was sunk in under 6 minutes with virtually all her crew. For this reason she is one of the more rememberable battleships of old. Could people name HMS Barham as the very famous battleship that was caught on film exploding as she rolled over? I doubt it. HMS Repulse? probably not.  Hood was more than a ship, she was a figurehead.

Same with Titanic. One of the biggest,supposidly indestructible,built up as unsinkable.


Thirdly. The drama, the class system and turn of the century "celebrity"....

Most of the survivors came from the 1st class passengers list. A lot of the lifeboats were nowhere near full. There was nowhere near enough lifeboat capacity. There would have been but the capacity was ditched so that the first class promenades wouldn't be obstructed. In other words, to allow the first class passengers a better view and wider walkway the lower class passengers chances were sacrificed. If ever there was a more classic example of how the upper classes felt about those below ,this was it.

The other thing to remember is who was on the ship for that voyage. There were a lot of big names and families from both sides of the pond. The creme d la creme of society. Today society raves about Z list nobodies with big breasts, footballers,soap stars and certain music artists. In 1912 things were different. They were from the gentry, the well heeled,  big businessmen were the celebrities of the age. And a lot of them went down with the ship.

Todays equivalent would be like having Madonna,Tom Hanks,Lady Gaga,Richard Branson,Neymar,Messi etc on the same plane or liner perishing. We would remember the plane or boat for years.


Fourthly. We were not that far into the age of the moving picture. Whereas prior people had to rely on newspapers and illustrated news (which depended on the ability  to read) you now have moving images. We had pictures of Titanic leaving Queenstown,we had images of the dead being pulled out of the sea etc. All available at the local picture house.




Incidentally even the Nazi's got in on the movie act and produced a Titanic propaganda film about the British social class and how they murdered their poor! So they knew a good tale when they saw one!



As disasters go there are few that occurred so slowly and yet had so much drama. In a lot of disasters death is instantaneous or lasts a minute tops. Its over very quickly. On titanic you have two hours (ish) of bravery, incompetence ,self sacrifice, selfishness and a class system. 



For that reason Titanic is a far more well known maritime disaster than say the sinking of HMS Birkenhead (where the concept of "women and children first" originated) or the SS Wilhelm Gustloff

Interview from BBC archives with Titanic assistant storekeeper Frank Prentice:

Titanic could have survived had she hit the iceberg at a slightly different angle. By cruel fate it hit at almost the perfect angle to sink it. Very sad.

Indeed, as I think Trike posted somewhere above, in 1879 another Atlantic liner, SS Arizona, while en route from New York to Liverpool steamed at full speed (albeit only 15 knots) straight into an iceberg which, probably fortuitously, had not been spotted by her look-outs and so her captain did not attempt any evasive action. The bows were very badly crumpled back and she took in water, but only up to the first bulkhead. She therefore remained afloat and was able to proceed slowly to Newfoundland where she underwent temporary repairs before continuing across the Atlantic for more substantial repair in Scotland.

This is interesting .
Was this bottle thrown overboard from the "Titanic" .
Actually there is quite a bit more information when looking what Wikipedia has to say

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/titanic-message-bottle-sinking-ship-b1846786.html


Dirk