Why and how did the unsinkable Titanic sink? The ship "Titanic"

On April 14, 1912, the world was still well-fed, impudent and unsinkable. Mankind subjugated the power of steam and electricity - it no longer needed God. Therefore, by the end of Black Saturday, April 14, rock reminded of itself. Heavy salty waves closed over the most ambitious dream of mankind after the Tower of Babel - the luxurious Titanic. Nobody was supposed to survive. It was an execution.

Studying the details of the shipwreck, the researchers can not get rid of a strange feeling: everything that happened was lined up in an endless goal of absurd, inexplicable and tragic misunderstandings. Thousands of petty human oversights merged into one monstrous absurdity, as if everyone around was deliberately working to bury a giant liner in the black Atlantic depths.

Literally a week before the disaster, when the liner was sailing from Southampton to Sherba, all the sentinels had binoculars. And when the four-pipe ship rushed at full speed into the Atlantic clogged with ice floes, no one turned out to have binoculars except the captain, but he was not at all going to be a lookout.

Miss Mary Young, a second-class passenger, had binoculars and saw the fatal iceberg half an hour before the collision, but she did not tell anyone. The sailor in the observation "nest" on the mast noticed him two and a half minutes before the edge of the ice floe cut through the side of the Titanic and the water rushed into the "watertight" compartments of the hold.

But even without binoculars, an experienced sentinel is able to see much earlier - unless, of course, we are talking about a "black" iceberg. They are extremely rare, violating all the laws of physics, for some reason ice blocks turn over in the water, exposing to the surface not a white frosted iceberg crown, but a translucent dark green part. It is believed that the chance of meeting a “black iceberg” is about one in a thousand. Of course, the Titanic got this chance.

Meanwhile, the Black Ice Killer was spotted by one of the ships ahead of the Titanic on the busy New York route. Usually, information about dangerous ice floes is immediately transmitted to the ships following behind. But ... it was on April 14 that the ship's radio station "Titanic" went out of order. Radiotelegraphers Phillips and Bride fiddled with the Marconi apparatus for seven hours straight and repaired it a few hours before the disaster.

However, in seven hours, 250 telegrams were immediately accumulated, which had to be sent to New York. They were paid in advance by passengers who hurried to inform their relatives that the Titanic had arrived at its destination port a day ahead of schedule, setting a new Atlantic crossing speed record. Therefore, telegraph operators simply did not have time to receive warning messages from other ships.

A thousand nonsense! For some reason, only 20 of the 32 boats on the liner turned out to be. But these 20, in turn, departed from the ship only half loaded, which is why 473 more people remained on the sinking ship. Third class passengers did not have life jackets. Moreover, none of the crew members were trained to use vests until they went out to the ocean from Queenstown.

The ship's captain had no direct telephone connection to the radio room, although there were telephones in 50 first-class passenger cabins. At the same time, in the tragedy of absurdities and mistakes, there are several fatal scenes that cannot be explained from the point of view of human logic. Twelve miles from the sinking ship was the steamer Californian, frozen for the night, whose crew watched with interest as white flares flashed above the unfamiliar ship on the horizon.

"Falling stars?" suggested the officer in charge of the Californian. “No, you jokers!” Jung replied with a smile. In vain the fourth officer, Boxhall, barely holding on to the tilted deck of the Titanic, released his "crackers" eight times into the starry sky. After all, signal flares, meaning a call for help, are red. Everyone at sea knows this. And if an officer fired a red rocket from the Titanic, the Californian would have managed to lift 1,400 people on board, frozen in icy water among the wreckage.

But he released white. Because there were Turkish baths and pools, palm trees and chapels, caged parrots and boxes of first-class Burgundy on board, but no red flares. By whose will the Californian's radio operator turned off his receiver and went to bed just a few minutes before the first signal for help was sent on the air from the nearby Titanic.

"CQD" - the then analogue of "SOS" - was heard even in ... Egypt, in Port Said, 3000 miles from the site of the tragedy, but not on the Californian, in the line of sight. An impenetrable magical wall grew between the two courts that night - they were close, but forever far from each other. And therefore, on the sinking ship, they did not notice the signals given by the lantern officer of the Californian.

And he filed them just in case, but received no answer. Of the two thousand people rushing about on the rearing deck of the liner, no one noticed the flashes of light on the horizon.
Bitter coincidences the very next day after the tragedy gave rise to persistent rumors about the mystical doom of the Titanic. They remembered the “bad sign” - in the very first minutes of the voyage, leaving the port of Southampton, the Titanic almost collided with the New York ship, which was standing at a nearby pier.

The powerful propellers of the Titanic created undercurrents of such force that the New York was irresistibly pulled towards the giant liner - a collision was barely avoided. Then the surviving passengers began to talk about more and more mysterious signs that did not bode well for the Titanic from the very first minutes of its voyage.

The ceremony of launching the Titanic on May 31, 1911 was organized with great fanfare: thousands of guests and journalists were invited, special postcards and souvenirs were issued, 23 tons were used to lubricate the “sleigh”, along which the monstrous carcass of the steamer slid off the slipway into the water. locomotive oil and liquid soap. Rockets were launched into the sky, dozens of bottles of champagne were broken ... For some reason, the organizers forgot only one thing - they did not consecrate the ship according to the Christian maritime custom.

Maybe it all started already when the ship was given a name? The titans, the children of the earth goddess Gaia, in Hellenic mythology personified the blind, unrestrained and aggressive forces of nature. The Titans challenged the celestial Olympians, intending to seize power over the world - and each time they were defeated and driven back into the deep bowels of their mother earth.

The creators of the Titanic - the bosses of the transatlantic company White Star Bruce Ismay and Lord James Pirrie - conceived their brainchild as a kind of cutting-edge challenge to nature, thrown to her by the scientific and technological revolution. Like the Eiffel Tower, the ship was designed to demonstrate the triumph of the daring human mind. It was a hundred feet longer than the former Atlantic champion, the Lusitania, owned by rival Cunard, and 1,004 tons heavier than its younger brother, the Olympic.

The attack of gigantomania took possession of the creators so much that they built four pipes on the Titanic, although in reality only three worked (therefore, the shots from the films where all four pipes of the Titanic are pouring smoke cause a smile). The fourth was ordered to be added by the owner of the holding, multimillionaire Pearson Morgan.

The Titanic's maiden voyage was conceived as an event on a scale comparable to mine's in scale with the major supershows of the century. A first-class ticket cost about $ 50,000 in today's money. Hundreds of people paid money not because they needed to go to New York. They bought tickets for the show. They got it.

All the newspapers wrote about the “unsinkability” of the Titanic: a system was created that put an end to the centuries-old struggle of man with the elements. Even icebergs are no longer scary, because this is not the first time that, having collided with ice floes, steamships remained afloat - in 1879 this happened with the Arizona, in 1879 with the Concordia, in 1911 with the Columbia. All vessels received holes below the waterline, but none of them sank. The Titanic was far better prepared for the iceberg than any of those ships.

It sank in an hour and a half. When the news of his death reached London, one of the master warlocks there figured out that the liner's ship number - 390904 - after the operation of "turning" numbers into letters, reads like a short blasphemous phrase "No Pope". This observation became another argument in the treasury of "facts" and "prophecies" that predetermined, in the opinion of many, the fate of the Titanic.

Among the first, by the way, there was a version about the mysterious “cursed diamond”, which was allegedly in the possession of one of the passengers (it was not possible to verify the information about the diamond, but it is known for certain that the pearl necklace of Mrs. Widener, who successfully escaped, was then worth 16 million). They also talked about a certain “universal villain” who was on board the liner: as if providence, sending one and a half thousand people to the bottom, actually pursued the goal of destroying only one of the passengers. The search for the villain is still ongoing.

The list of famous personalities is very long - along with the Titanic, Colonel Archibald Butt, military adviser to US President Taft, millionaire Gutenheim, who, according to legend, managed to change into a tailcoat in order to meet his death like a gentleman in a flooded cabin, died. Another millionaire, 21-year-old Asley Widener, became a victim of the Titanic (his mother came to the port of New York to meet the Titanic on her own train of four Pullman cars).

The ocean floor became the grave of the Strauss spouses, owners of the Macy's chain of stores that are still flourishing in the United States. The death of these people is also inexplicable. If you think logically, someone else, but millionaires and aristocrats, in the first place, would find places in lifeboats.

There were almost three times more people of the lower classes among the dead, according to statistics. And disputes still do not subside: is it true that third-class passengers were locked in the holds. This forces some scientists to put forward their own version of the ship's fatal doom. In their opinion, the fatal purpose of the catastrophe is to intensify the class struggle in the Old and New Worlds.

Indeed, the total wealth of first class passengers on the Titanic exceeded $ 500 million. And more men from first class were saved than women from third class. And this is despite the tough maritime rules "Places in boats - for women and children!" “On the example of the Titanic, the poor were convinced that if the world perishes, only the rich will survive,” said a third-class passenger who escaped in an interview ...

However, if you follow this logic, among the 705 who survived, John Jacob Astor, one of the richest people of his time, must have been. He was returning with his young wife (the second in a row and already pregnant) from a trip to Egypt. A day after the death of the liner, the secular publication American published a 4-page article about the deceased Mr. Astor and only at the end mentioned the rest of the victims of the disaster.

Astor's wife escaped, and her husband's disfigured body was identified only by the monogram on his shirt - he was fished out of the water a week later. Astor had to save himself, the amazed New York rich repeated to each other in shock. A lot of things weren't supposed to happen that night, but Providence had its eyes on the Titanic. Isn’t pride dictated every word in the book of the deceased John Jacob Astor, in which he tells how a person in the year 2000 will live on Mars and Saturn, and giant steamships “will cross the Atlantic in four and a half days” and “will be stable like a fortress "?

As the Titanic sank into the ocean, eight musicians on the mangled deck continued to play - and they died, all eight, when the waves washed them overboard overnight. When the bow of the ship came off and went deeper, they played "Autumn". And then the last song started. It was called "God Gets Closer".

The dead carcass of the Titanic had collapsed into the depths, and now the people in the lifeboats were slowly freezing to death. The Californian standing nearby, as if in the grip of an obsession, was still unable to notice them and come to the rescue. The rest of the ships were terribly far away - the Russian steamship "Burma" heard "SOS" and hurried to the rescue, but even at full speed it could only be in time in the morning.

Mount Temple is 60 miles away, Baltic is 55 miles away, Olympic is 70 miles... Salt water doesn't freeze at minus one degree Celsius. The crests of cold waves rolled over the low sides of the boats, which were mostly women and children, many of them hysterically trying to jump overboard to share the fate of their loved ones.

In the boat "A" people were sitting waist-deep in icy water, and after half an hour the corpses of two women had to be thrown overboard - they froze right in the boat. Rescue boat number 12 was twice covered by a wave - it did not sink only by a miracle. As the doctors later calculated, any of the 705 surviving passengers had no chance of living more than 12 hours ...

The small, low-powered vessel, the Carpathia, was 58 miles southeast of the crash site when the ship's radio operator, Francis Cottam, heard a hysterical "CQD" from the sinking Titanic. He later recalled that he caught the signal at the very last moment, already removing his headphones from his head and about to sleep. Cottam did not have a replacement. Had he fallen asleep five minutes earlier, the captain of the Carpathia would never have known that the Titanic was already sinking. The captain's name was Arthur Rostron. He never drank, smoked, or cursed. Even in the age of steam and electricity, in the era of the most ambitious dreams of mankind, he did not forget how to pray.

Subordinates nicknamed Rostron "electric spark" - for the ability to instantly make strong-willed decisions. The willpower of this man was well known. At 23, when Rostron joined the Kunard company, he once and for all forbade himself to drink alcohol. I stopped smoking two years later. He swore extremely rarely - exactly once a month, as one of the officers calculated - and each time later he asked the Lord aloud for forgiveness for the foul language that escaped his tongue.

For the first time, Arthur Rostron went to sea as a boy, at the age of 13, together with his father. They say that it was during the “sea baptism” of the boy that a certain incident occurred that had a strong impact on his psyche - since then Rostron has been praying every day.

When the radio operator Kottam, his face contorted with horror, burst onto the captain's bridge and mumbled incoherently something about the sinking Titanic, Arthur Rostron, as usual, made a decision instantly. First, he turned to the crucifix hanging on the wall and whispered a few words. Then he turned to his subordinates. “We are turning the ship around,” he said. It was a very risky decision - there were already eight hundred passengers aboard the Carpathia.

Rushing to the aid of the victims of the disaster, the captain sent the ship to a terrible area of ​​​​accumulation of icebergs, one of which turned out to be fatal for the Titanic. Carpathia, with its only pipe, developed a speed of only 14 knots - therefore, Rostron ordered all additional resources of steam, hot water and electricity to be transferred to the boilers. At full speed, a small and unsightly ship flew into the kingdom of icebergs. Needless to say, the sentinels, alas, also did not have binoculars? Providence took into account a lot, it did not take into account the will of Arthur Rostron.

The owners of the Titanic were going to bring the liner to New York a day ahead of schedule so that there would be a record. The record was set by the Carpathia - she arrived at the crash site almost an hour earlier than she could and than everyone expected. Captain Rostron won only an hour of time from fate, but an hour turned out to be more valuable than a whole day. They did. 705 passengers were taken on board.

"Carpathia" now really looked like a crowded Noah's Ark: dining rooms and corridors were hastily converted into hospital wards, tables were turned into beds, and yet dozens of people only had enough space on the floor .. All the doctors from among the passengers of the "Carpathia" were mobilized for treatment sick and wounded, all healthy women are sent to the kitchen to cook hot broth and coffee ...

When the Carpathia, overloaded with people, slowly and carefully entered the port of New York and moored at Pier 41, when the crowd on the pier burst into tears and flashbulbs flickered away, the second officer of the Carpathia recalled one detail in a conversation with reporters: during the entire four-hour raid to the place where the Titanic sank, Captain Rostron… prayed.

“His lips were moving,” the officer said, “this is understandable: at such a speed, we also almost did not have a chance to notice the iceberg in time.” A few days later, Rostron himself confessed to one of the journalists: “I still can’t get rid of a strange feeling.

When we walked among the ice, it seemed to me that someone else's hand was at the helm. She was the one who steered the ship. It is possible that it was this feeling that made him order a short church service aboard the Carpathia immediately after the last of the victims was taken aboard. Only after the end of the service, Rostron gave the order to move on to New York.

Arthur Rostron overcame the will of Providence. Or maybe it just slipped away. After all, the main thing has already been done: a terrible blow has been dealt to the pride of mankind. That's enough ... And in honor of Arthur Rostron, a special medal of the US Congress was issued.

He was knighted by British royal decree. After some time, Sir Arthur led the entire passenger fleet of the Cunard company. In many cities in England, the USA, France and Ireland, monuments have been erected to him. On one of them - in the vicinity of Southampton - the inscription is embossed - "To Sir Arthur Rostron. Who turned the "age of steam" into the "age of the spirit."

Noah's ark called "Carpathia" sank quietly and imperceptibly to everyone on July 1, 1918. The old 13600-ton ship was hit by three torpedoes fired by a German submarine. Of the 75 people, five died from the explosion, the remaining 70 safely reached the nearby British warship Snowdrop. "Carpathia" disappeared under water very quickly in just 15 minutes. However, she never claimed the title of "unsinkable".

And what happened to another captain, Stanley Lord, who took his Californian out from under the very nose of trouble? Both the British and American commissions of inquiry into the circumstances of the sinking of the Titanic found him indirectly guilty of this. He was removed from naval service and died in obscurity. The son of Stanley Lord stubbornly tried to rehabilitate his father's name. In the 1950s, he repeatedly applied to both commissions with requests for a re-investigation. But everything was in vain. Stanley Lord fulfilled the will of Providence. It no longer needed him and rewarded him with oblivion.

You have already read and heard about the Titanic many times. The history of the creation and crash of the liner is overgrown with rumors and myths. For more than 100 years, the British steamship has been haunting the minds of people trying to find the answer - why did the Titanic sink?

The history of the legendary liner is interesting for three reasons:

• it was the largest ship for 1912;
• the number of victims turned the catastrophe into a global failure;
• finally, James Cameron, with his film, singled out the history of the liner from the general list of maritime disasters, and there were quite a few of them.

We will tell you everything about the Titanic, as it was in reality. About how long the Titanic is in meters, how much the Titanic sank, and who was really behind the massive disaster.

Where did the Titanic sail from and to?

We know from Cameron's film that the liner was bound for New York. The American up-and-coming city was to be the final stop. But far from everyone knows for sure where the Titanic sailed from, considering that London was the starting point. The capital of Great Britain was not in the ranks of seaports, and therefore the steamer could not leave from there.

The fateful flight began from Southampton, a major English port, from where transatlantic flights ran. The path of the Titanic on the map clearly shows the movement. Southampton is both a port and a city located in the southern part of England (Hampshire).

See how the route of the Titanic ran on the map:

Dimensions of the Titanic in meters

To understand more about the Titanic, the causes of the disaster must be disclosed, starting with the dimensions of the ship.

How many meters is the Titanic in length and in other dimensions:

exact length - 299.1 m;

width - 28.19 m;

height from the keel - 53.3 m.

There is also such a question - how many decks did the Titanic have? Only 8. Boats were located on the top, therefore the upper deck was called the boat deck. The rest were distributed according to the letter designation.

A - deck I class. Its peculiarity is limited in size - it did not lie down the entire length of the vessel;

B - anchors were located in the front of the deck and its dimensions were also shorter - by 37 meters of deck C;

C - deck with a galley, a mess for the crew and a promenade for class III.

D - walking area;

E - cabins I, II classes;

F - cabins II and III classes;

G - deck with boiler rooms in the middle.

Finally, how much does the Titanic weigh? The displacement of the largest ship of the early 20th century is 52,310 tons.

Titanic: the story of the crash

What year did the Titanic sink? The famous disaster occurred on the night of April 14, 1912. It was the fifth day of the trip. Chronicles indicate that at 23:40 the liner survived a collision with an iceberg and after 2 hours 40 minutes (2:20 a.m.) it went under water.

Things from the Titanic: photo

Further investigations showed that the crew received 7 weather warnings, but this did not prevent the ship from reducing its speed limit. The iceberg was sighted directly ahead of us too late to take precautions. As a result - holes in the starboard side. Ice damaged 90 m of hull and 5 bow compartments. This was enough to sink the liner.

Tickets for the new liner were more expensive than for other ships. If a person was used to traveling in first class, then on the Titanic he would have to transfer to second class.

Edward Smith, the captain of the ship, began the evacuation after midnight: a distress call was sent, the attention of other ships was attracted by flares, lifeboats went to the water. But the rescue was slow and uncoordinated - there was an empty place in the boats while the Titanic was sinking, the water temperature did not rise above two degrees below zero, and the first steamer arrived in time only half an hour after the disaster.

Titanic: how many people died and survived

How many people survived on the Titanic? No one will say the exact data, as they could not say this on the fateful night. The list of Titanic passengers initially changed in practice, but not on paper: some canceled the trip at the time of departure and were not crossed out, others traveled anonymously under assumed names, and others were listed as dead on the Titanic several times.

Photos of the sinking of the Titanic

It is only approximately possible to say how many people drowned on the Titanic - about 1500 (minimum 1490 - maximum 1635). Among them was Edward Smith with some assistants, 8 musicians from the famous orchestra, large investors and businessmen.

Classiness was felt even after death - the bodies of the dead from the first class were embalmed and placed in coffins, the second and third classes were given bags and boxes. When the embalming agents ran out, the bodies of unknown third-class passengers were simply thrown into the water (according to the rules, unembalmed corpses could not be brought to the port).

The bodies were found within a radius of 80 km from the crash site, and due to the current of the Gulf Stream, many were dispersed even further.

Photos of dead people

Initially, it was known how many passengers were on the Titanic, although not completely:

crew of 900 people;

195 first class;

255 second class;

493 people of the third class.

Some passengers left at intermediate ports, some called. It is believed that the liner went to the fatal route with a staff of 1317 people, of which 124 are children.

Titanic: scuttling depth - 3750 m

The English steamer could accommodate 2,566 people, of which 1,034 seats were for first-class passengers. The half-load of the liner is due to the fact that transatlantic flights were not popular in April. At that time, a coal strike broke out, this disrupted coal supplies, schedules and changes in plans.

The question of how many people escaped the Titanic was difficult to answer, because the rescue operations took place from different ships, and the slow connection did not provide fast data.

After the crash, only 2/3 of the delivered bodies were identified. Some were buried locally, the rest were sent home. In the disaster area, bodies in white vests were found for a long time. Of the 1,500 people who died, only 333 bodies were found.

How deep is the Titanic

When answering the question about the depth at which the Titanic sank, one must remember about the pieces carried by the currents (by the way, they learned about this only in the 80s, before that it was believed that the liner sank to the bottom entirely). The wreckage of the liner on the night of the crash went at a depth of 3750 m. The bow was thrown 600 m from the stern.

The place where the Titanic sank, on the map:

In which ocean did the Titanic sink? - in the Atlantic.

Titanic lifted from the bottom of the ocean

They wanted to raise the ship from the moment of the crash. Initiative plans were put forward by relatives of the dead from the first class. But 1912 did not yet know the necessary technologies. The war, lack of knowledge and funds delayed the search for the sunken ship for a hundred years. Since 1985, 17 expeditions have been carried out, during which 5,000 items and large plating have been raised to the surface, but the ship itself has remained at the bottom of the ocean.

What does the Titanic look like now?

In the time since the crash, the ship has become covered in marine life. Rust, painstaking work of invertebrates and natural decomposition processes have changed the structures beyond recognition. By this time, the bodies had already completely decomposed, and by the 22nd century, only anchors and boilers would remain from the Titanic - the most massive metal structures.

Even now the interiors of the decks have been destroyed, the cabins and halls have collapsed.

Titanic, Britannic and Olympic

All three ships were manufactured by the Harland and Wolf shipbuilding company. Before the Titanic, the Olympic saw the world. It is easy to see a fatal predisposition in the fate of the three ships. The first liner was wrecked as a result of a collision with a cruiser. Not such a large-scale disaster, but still an impressive failure.

Then the story of the Titanic, which received a wide response in the world, and, finally, the Gigantic. They tried to make this ship especially durable, given the mistakes of previous liners. He was even launched into the water, but the First World War disrupted the plans. The giant became a hospital ship called the Britannic.

He then just managed to carry out 5 quiet flights, and on the sixth there was a disaster. Having been blown up by a German mine, the Britannic rapidly sank. The mistakes of the past and the preparedness of the captain made it possible to save the maximum number of people - 1036 out of 1066.

Is it possible to talk about evil fate, remembering the Titanic? The history of the creation and crash of the liner were studied in detail, the facts were revealed, even through time. And yet the truth is only now being revealed. The reason the Titanic is attracting attention is to hide its true motive - to create a currency system and destroy opponents.

Building

Construction and equipment

Specifications

Bulkheads

The Titanic was built to stay afloat if any 2 of its 16 watertight compartments, any 3 of the first 5 compartments, or all of the first 4 compartments were flooded.

The first 2 bulkheads in the bow and the last in the stern were solid, all the rest had sealed doors that allowed the crew and passengers to move between compartments. On the flooring of the second bottom, in the bulkhead "K", there were the only doors that led to the cooling chamber. On decks "F" and "E" in almost all bulkheads there were airtight doors connecting the rooms used by passengers, all of them could be battened down both remotely and manually, using a device located directly on the door and from the deck that reached bulkhead. To batten down such doors on the passenger decks, a special key was required, which was available only to the senior stewards. But on deck "G" there were no doors in the bulkheads.

In the bulkheads "D" - "O", directly above the second bottom in the compartments where the machines and boilers were located, there were 12 vertically closed doors, they were controlled by an electric drive from the navigation bridge. In case of danger or accident, or when the captain or watch officer deemed it necessary, the electromagnets, on a signal from the bridge, released the latches, and all 12 doors lowered under the influence of their own gravity and the space behind them turned out to be hermetically closed. If the doors were closed by an electric signal from the bridge, then it was possible to open them only after removing the voltage from the electric drive.

Deck "G" captured only the bow and stern, between which the boiler rooms were located. The forward part of the deck, 58 m long, was 2 m above the waterline, gradually lowered towards the center of the liner and at the opposite end was already at the level of the waterline. There were 26 cabins for 106 third class passengers, the rest of the area was occupied by the luggage compartment for first class passengers, the ship's mail and the ball room. Behind the bow of the deck there were coal bunkers, which occupied 6 watertight compartments around the chimneys, followed by 2 compartments with steam pipes for reciprocating steam engines and a turbine compartment. This was followed by the aft part of the deck 64 m long with warehouses, pantries and 60 cabins for 186 third-class passengers, which was already below the waterline.

Masts

One was aft, the other was on the forecastle, each was steel with a teak top. On the front, at a height of 29 m from the waterline, there was a mars platform (“crow's nest”), which could be reached by an internal metal ladder.

Service premises

In front of the boat deck there was a navigation bridge, 58 m away from the bow. On the bridge there was a wheelhouse with a steering wheel and a compass, immediately behind it was a room where navigation charts were stored. To the right of the wheelhouse were the navigational cabin, the captain's cabin and part of the officers' cabins, to the left - the rest of the officers' cabins. Behind them, behind the front funnel, was the cabin of the radiotelegraph and the cabin of the radio operator. In front of deck "D" there were living quarters for 108 stokers, a special spiral ladder connected this deck directly to the boiler rooms, so that stokers could leave for work and return without passing by the cabins or saloons for passengers. In front of deck "E" there were living quarters for 72 loaders and 44 sailors. In the first part of the "F" deck there were quarters of 53 stokers of the third shift. Deck G contained quarters for 45 stokers and oilers. RMS in the name stands for Royal Mail Vessel. The ship had a post office and a warehouse on decks "F" and "G", where 5 postal workers worked.

Second bottom

The second bottom was located about one and a half meters above the keel and occupied 9/10 of the ship's length, not capturing only small areas in the bow and stern. On the second day, boilers, reciprocating steam engines, a steam turbine and electric generators were installed, all firmly fixed on steel plates, the remaining space was used for cargo, coal and drinking water tanks. In the engine room section, the second bottom rose 2.1 m above the keel, which increased the protection of the liner in case of damage to the outer skin.

Power point

Propellers of the Titanic before launching the ship

The registered power of steam engines and turbines was 50 thousand liters. With. (actually 55 thousand hp). The turbine was located in the fifth watertight compartment in the stern of the liner, in the next compartment, closer to the bow, steam engines were located, the other 6 compartments were occupied by twenty-four double-flow and five single-flow boilers that produced steam for the main machines, turbines, generators and auxiliary mechanisms. The diameter of each boiler was 4.79 m, the length of the double-flow boiler was 6.08 m, the single-flow boiler was 3.57 m. Each double-flow boiler had 6 fireboxes, and the single-flow boiler had 3. In addition, the Titanic was equipped with four auxiliary machines with generators, each with a capacity of 400 kilowatts, generating electricity at a voltage of 100 volts. Next to them were two more 30-kilowatt generators. High-pressure steam from the boilers went to 2 triple expansion steam engines, which rotated the side propellers. From the machines, the steam then entered the low-pressure turbine, which drove the middle propeller. From the turbine, the exhaust steam entered the condensers, from where fresh water went back to the boilers in a closed cycle. The Titanic developed a decent speed for its time, although it was inferior to the competitor's turbo ships - Cunard Line.

Pipes

The liner had 4 pipes, each of which had a diameter of 7.3 m, a height of 18.5 m. The first three removed smoke from the boiler furnaces, the fourth, located above the turbine compartment, served as an exhaust fan, a chimney for ship kitchens was connected to it . A longitudinal section of the vessel is presented on its model exhibited at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, where it is clearly seen that the last pipe was not connected to the fireboxes. The fourth chimney was purely cosmetic to make the ship look more powerful.

Electrical supply

10,000 light bulbs, 562 electric heaters were connected to the distribution network, mainly in first-class cabins, 153 electric motors, including electric drives for eight cranes with a total capacity of 18 tons, 4 cargo winches with a capacity of 750 kg, 4 elevators, each for 12 people. In addition, electricity was consumed by the telephone exchange and radio communications, fans in the boiler room and engine rooms, apparatus in the gym, dozens of machines and appliances in the kitchens, including refrigerators.

Connection

The telephone exchange serviced 50 lines. The radio equipment on the liner was the most modern, the power of the main transmitter was 5 kilowatts, the power came from an electric generator. The second, an emergency transmitter, was powered by batteries. 4 antennas were strung between the two masts, some up to 75 m long. The guaranteed range of the radio signal was 250 miles. During the day, under favorable conditions, communication was possible at a distance of up to 400 miles, and at night - up to 2000.

The radio equipment came on board on April 2 from the Marconi company, which by this time had monopolized the radio industry in Italy and England. Two young radio officers assembled and installed the station all day, for verification, a test connection was immediately made with the coast station at Malin Head ( English), on the north coast of Ireland, and with Liverpool. On April 3, the radio equipment worked like clockwork, on this day a connection was established with the island of Tenerife at a distance of 2000 miles and with Port Said in Egypt (3000 miles). In January 1912, the Titanic was given the radio call sign " MUC', then they were replaced by ' MGY", previously owned by the American ship Yale. As the dominant radio company, Marconi introduced its own radio call signs, most of which began with the letter "M", regardless of its location and the country of residence of the vessel on which it was installed.

Swimming and crash

Many celebrities of that time took part in the first trip of the liner, including the millionaire and major industrialist John Jacob Astor IV and his wife Madeleine Astor, businessman Benjamin Guggenheim, the owner of Macy's department store Isidor Strauss and his wife Ida, the eccentric millionaire Margaret Molly Brown, who received the nickname "Unsinkable" after the death of the ship, Sir Cosm Duff Gordon and his wife, fashion designer Lady Lucy Duff Gordon, popular at the beginning of the century, businessman and cricketer John Thayer, British journalist William Thomas Steed, Countess of Rotskaya, military assistant to US President Archibald Butt , film actress Dorothy Gibson and many others.

North and South transatlantic routes. ice conditions

The threat to shipping in the North Atlantic is icebergs breaking off from glaciers in western Greenland and drifting under the influence of currents. Danger is also borne by ice fields originating in the Arctic Basin, as well as off the coast of Labrador, Newfoundland and in the Strait of St. Lawrence, and drifting under the influence of winds and currents.

The shortest route from northern Europe to the United States runs along the coast of Newfoundland, directly through the zone of fog and icebergs. In order to streamline navigation in the North Atlantic, in 1898, shipping companies entered into an agreement establishing 2 transatlantic routes, passing much to the south. For each of the routes, separate routes were determined for steamers moving west and east, separated from each other at a distance of up to 50 miles. From mid-January to mid-August, during the season of the greatest ice danger, steamers moved along the South Route. The rest of the year, the Northern route was used. This order usually made it possible to minimize the likelihood of encountering drifting ice. But 1912 turned out to be unusual. From the South Highway, along the western route of which the Titanic also moved, reports of icebergs came one after another. In this regard, the US Hydrological Service raised the issue of moving the route to the south, but the corresponding decisions were made belatedly, after the disaster.

Chronology

• Wednesday, April 10, 1912
  • 12:00 p.m. — The Titanic leaves the Southampton harbor and narrowly avoids colliding with the American liner New York. There are 922 passengers on board the Titanic.
  • 19:00 - stop in Cherbourg (France) to take on board 274 passengers and mail.
  • 21:00 - Titanic left Cherbourg and headed for Queenstown (Ireland).

• Sunday, April 14, 1912
  • 09:00 - Caronia reports ice in the region of 42 ° north latitude, 49-51 ° west longitude.
  • 13:42 - "Baltik" reports the presence of ice in the area of ​​41°51'N, 49°52'W.
  • 13:45 - America reports ice at 41°27'N, 50°8'W.
  • 19:00 - air temperature 43 ° Fahrenheit (6 ° C).
  • 19:30 - air temperature 39 ° Fahrenheit (3.9 ° C).
  • 19:30 - The Californian reports ice at 42°3'N, 49°9'W.
  • 21:00 - air temperature 33 ° Fahrenheit (0.6 ° C).
  • 21:30 - Second Officer Lightoller warns the ship's carpenter and watchmen in the engine room that it is necessary to monitor the fresh water system - water in the pipelines may freeze; he tells the lookout to watch the appearance of ice.
  • 21:40 - Mesaba reports ice at 42°-41°25'N, 49°-50°30'W.
  • 22:00 - air temperature 32 ° Fahrenheit (0 ° C).
  • 10:30 p.m. - Sea water temperature dropped to 31° Fahrenheit (-0.56°C).
  • 11:00 p.m. — The Californian warns of ice, but the Titanic's radio operator cuts off the radio before the Californian can give the area's coordinates.
  • 23:39 - At a point with coordinates 41 ° 46 'north latitude, 50 ° 14 ' west longitude (later it turned out that these coordinates were calculated incorrectly), an iceberg was sighted at a distance of about 650 meters straight ahead.
  • 23:40 - Despite the maneuver, after 39 seconds, the underwater part of the vessel touched, the hull received numerous small holes for a length of about 100 meters. Of the 16 watertight compartments of the vessel, 6 were cut through (in the sixth, the leak was extremely insignificant).

Stages of the sinking of the Titanic

• Monday, April 15, 1912
  • 00:05 - The trim on the nose became noticeable. An order was given to uncover the lifeboats and convene the crew and passengers to the assembly points.
  • 00:15 - the first radiotelegraph signal for help was transmitted from the Titanic.
  • 00:45 - The first flare is fired and the first lifeboat (No. 7) is launched. The bow deck goes under water.
  • 01:15 - Class 3 passengers are allowed on deck.
  • 01:40 - The last flare is fired.
  • 02:05 - the last lifeboat is launched (collapsible boat D). The bow of the boat deck goes under water.
  • 02:08 - The Titanic jerks violently and moves forward. A wave rolls over the deck and floods the bridge, washing passengers and crew members into the water.
  • 02:10 - the last radiotelegraph signals were transmitted.
  • 02:15 - The Titanic lifts the stern high, exposing the rudder and propellers.
  • 02:17 - Electric lighting goes out.
  • 02:18 - The Titanic breaks in two as it sinks rapidly.
  • 02:20 - The Titanic sank.
  • 02:29 - At a speed of about 13 miles per hour, the bow of the Titanic crashes into the ocean floor at a depth of 3750 meters, burrowing into the sedimentary rocks of the bottom.
  • 03:30 - flares fired from the Carpathia are noticed from lifeboats.
  • 04:10 - Carpathia picked up the first lifeboat from the Titanic (boat No. 2).
  • 08:30 - Carpathia picked up the last (No. 12) lifeboat from the Titanic.
  • 08:50 - Carpathia, taking on board 710 people who escaped from the Titanic, heads for New York.
• Thursday, April 18, 1912
  • The Carpathia Arrives in New York

clash

Photo of an iceberg taken by the chief steward of a German ship Prince Adalbert on the morning of April 16, 1912. The steward was unaware of the disaster at the time, but the iceberg caught his attention because it had a brown streak at its base, indicating that the iceberg had hit something less than 12 hours earlier. It is assumed that the Titanic collided with him.

Recognizing an iceberg in a light haze, the forward looking Fleet warned “there is ice in front of us” and hit the bell three times, which meant an obstacle right on the course, after which he rushed to the telephone connecting the “crow’s nest” with the bridge. Moody's sixth mate, who was on the bridge, responded almost instantly and heard a cry of "ice right on the nose!!!" (“ice right ahead!!!”). With a polite thank you, Moody turned to the officer of the watch, Murdoch, and repeated the warning. He rushed to the telegraph, put his handle on "stop" and shouted "right to board", while simultaneously transmitting the order "full back" to the engine room, pressed the lever, which included closing the watertight doors in the bulkheads of the boiler rooms and the engine room.

Photo of an iceberg taken from the cable-laying ship Mine”, which was one of the first ships to discover the corpses of passengers and the wreckage of the ship. Presumably, the Titanic could have collided with this particular iceberg, since, according to the crew, “ Mines", it was the only iceberg near the crash site.

According to the terminology of 1912, the command "right on board" meant turning the stern of the vessel to the right, and the bow to the left (since 1909, Russian ships have already used the natural giving of commands, for example: "left rudder"). Coxswain Robert Hitchens ( English) leaned on the handle of the steering wheel and quickly turned it counterclockwise until it stops, after which Murdoch was told "Right rudder, sir!" At that moment, the helmsman Alfred Oliver and Boxhall, who was in the chart house, ran to the bridge when the bells rang out in the "crow's nest". A. Oliver, in his testimony in the US Senate, however, definitely stated that at the entrance to the bridge he heard the command "rudder left" (corresponding to a turn to the right), and this command was carried out. According to Boxhall (British Inquiry question 15355), Murdoch reported to Captain Smith: "I turned to port and reversed, and was about to turn to starboard to get around him, but he was too close."

It is known that lookout binoculars were not used on the Titanic because the key to the binocular safe was missing. He was taken in by Captain Blair's second mate when the captain kicked him off the team, taking on board a team member from the Olympic. It is possible that the lack of binoculars was one of the reasons for the crash of the liner. However, the existence of binoculars became known only 95 years after the shipwreck, when one of them was exhibited at the Henry Eldridge and Sons auction house in Devizes, Wiltshire. The second mate of the Titanic was to be David Blair, for which he arrived on April 3, 1912 from Belfast to Southampton. However, the management of the White Star Line replaced him at the last moment with Henry Wild, the first officer from a similar ship, the Olympic, because he had experience in operating such large liners, as a result of which Blair in a hurry forgot to hand over the key to the person who came to his place . However, many historians agree that the presence of binoculars would not have helped to prevent a catastrophe. This is also confirmed by the fact that the lookouts in the "crow's nest" noticed the iceberg before those on the bridge who had binoculars with them.

The Titanic is sinking

lifeboats

There were 2,224 people on board the Titanic, but the total capacity of the lifeboats was only 1,178. The reason was that, according to the rules then in force, the total capacity of lifeboats depended on the tonnage of the ship, and not on the number of passengers and crew members. The rules were drawn up in 1894, when the largest ships had a displacement of about 10,000 tons. The displacement of the Titanic was 46,328 tons.

But even these boats were only partially filled. Captain Smith gave the order or instruction "women and children first". The officers interpreted this order in different ways. Second mate Lightoller, who commanded the launching of the boats on the port side, allowed men to take places in the boats only if rowers were needed and under no other circumstances. First Officer Murdoch, who commanded the launching of the boats on the starboard side, allowed the men to go down if there were no women and children. So, in boat number 1, only 12 seats out of 65 were occupied. In addition, at first, many passengers did not want to take seats in boats, because the Titanic, which had no external damage, seemed safer to them. The last boats filled better, because it was already obvious to the passengers that the Titanic would sink. In the very last boat, 44 seats out of 65 were occupied. But in the sixteenth boat that left the side there were many empty seats, passengers of the 1st class were saved in it.

The crew did not even have time to lower all the boats that were on board. The twentieth lifeboat was washed overboard when the front of the steamer went under water and she floated upside down.

The report of the British commission on the results of the investigation into the circumstances of the sinking of the Titanic states that "if the boats had been delayed a little longer before launching, or if the doors of the passage had been opened for passengers, more of them could have got on the boats." The reason for the low survival rate of class 3 passengers with a high degree of probability can be considered obstacles placed by the crew for the passage of passengers to the deck, closing the doors of the passage. People in boats, as a rule, did not save those who were in the water. On the contrary, they tried to sail as far as possible from the wreck, fearing that those in the water would capsize their boats or be sucked into the funnel from a sinking ship. Only 6 people were picked up alive from the water.

Refusal of assistance by the steamer "Californian"

"Californian"

Serious criticism fell upon the SS Californian team and personally on the captain of the ship, Stanley Lord. The ship was only a few miles from the Titanic but did not respond to its distress calls and missile signals. The Californian warned the Titanic by radio of ice buildup, which caused the Californian to stop for the night, but the warnings were condemned by the Titanic's senior wireless operator, Jack Phillips.

British investigation evidence showed that at 10:10 p.m., the Californian observed the ship's lights to the south. Captain Stanley Lord and third officer S. W. Groves (who was released by Lord at 11:10 p.m.) later decided that it was a passenger liner. At 11:50 p.m., the officer saw that the ship's lights were flickering, as if they had been turned off or turned sharply, and that the port lights appeared. By order of the Lord, Morse light signals were sent to the ship between 11:30 p.m. and 1:00 a.m., but they were not received.

Captain Lord retired to his cabin at 11:00 p.m. to spend the night, however, Second Officer Herbert Stone, while on duty, notified Lord at 1:10 a.m. that the ship had fired 5 missiles. Lord wanted to know if these were company signals, that is, colored flashes used for identification. Stone replied that he did not know and that the missiles were white. Captain Lord instructed the crew to continue signaling the ship with a Morse lamp, and went to bed. Three more rockets were seen at 1:50 am and Stone noted that the ship looked strange in the water, as if it was tilted. At 2:15 am, Lord was notified that the ship was no longer in sight. The Lord asked again if the lights had any color and was informed that they were all white.

The Californian eventually answered. At approximately 5:30 am, Chief Officer George Stewart woke up wireless operator Cyril Farmstone Evans and informed him that rockets had been seen during the night and asked him to contact the ship. He received news of the sinking of the Titanic, Captain Lord was notified, and the ship went to assist. It arrived much later than the Carpathia, which had already picked up the survivors.

The investigation revealed that the ship the Californian had seen was actually the Titanic, and that the Californian could have come to its rescue, so Captain Lord acted inappropriately by not doing so. However, Lord maintained his innocence for the rest of his life, and many researchers argue that the famous positions of the Titanic and the Californian make it impossible for the former to be the infamous "Mystery Ship," a topic that "evoked ... millions of words." and … hours of heated debate”, and continues to do so [ non-authoritative source?] .

The composition of the dead and the survivors

Almost all the women and children from cabins 1 and 2 were saved. More than half of the women and children in Class 3 cabins died as they had difficulty finding their way up through the maze of narrow corridors. Nearly all of the men also died. The tragedy of the Paulson family claimed the lives of Alma's mother and all her four young children, whom Father Niels was waiting in vain for in New York.

338 men (20% of all adult men) and 316 women (74% of all adult women) survived, including Violette Jessop, Dorothy Gibson, Molly Brown, Lucy Duff Gordon, Countess of Roth and others. Of the children, 56 survived (slightly more than half of all children).

The last of the Titanic's passengers, Millvina Dean, who was two and a half months old at the time of the sinking of the liner, died on May 31, 2009 at the age of 97. Her ashes were scattered to the wind on October 24, 2009 in the port of Southampton, from where the Titanic began its only voyage.

A peculiar record belongs to Jessop's maid, Violette, who survived accidents on all 3 Olympic-class ships. She worked on the Olympic when it collided with the cruiser Hawk; escaped from the Titanic, and subsequently survived when the Britannic sank by hitting a mine during the First World War.

The sinking of the Titanic is one of the largest maritime disasters

Among the disasters that occurred outside of hostilities, the Titanic ranks third in terms of the number of victims. The sad leadership is behind the Doña Paz ferry, which collided with an oil tanker in 1987. More than 4,000 people died in the collision and subsequent fire. The second place is held by the wooden paddle steamer Sultana, which sank on April 27, 1865 on the Mississippi River near Memphis due to the explosion of a steam boiler and fire. The total death toll on the steamer exceeded 1,700, the largest disaster on a riverboat.

Theories about the causes of the accident

sheathing

On the other hand, this test only proves that modern steel is much better than the one used at the beginning of the 20th century. It does not prove that the steel used to build the Titanic was of poor quality (or not the best) for its time.

In the first years of the 21st century, in a number of mass media, with reference to the latest studies of the ship's hull by deep-sea submersibles, the opinion was expressed that in a collision with an iceberg, the ship did not receive a hole, and its skin withstood the blow. The cause of death was that the hull rivets could not prevent the divergence of its sheets, and outboard water began to flow into the resulting long gap.

radio operators

The internal communication system of the liner was extremely unsatisfactory, there was no direct communication with the captain - he had to report all messages orally. The reason was that the radiotelegraph station was considered a luxury, and the main task of the telegraph operators was to serve especially wealthy passengers - it is known that in just 36 hours of operation, radio operators transmitted more than 250 telegrams. Payment for telegraph services was made on the spot, in the radio room, and at that time was very expensive, tips were received in large quantities.

The radio log from the Titanic did not survive, but according to the surviving records from various ships that had contact with the liner, it was possible to more or less restore the picture of the work of radio operators. Reports of drifting ice and icebergs began to arrive already in the morning of the fatal date - April 14, the exact coordinates of the high-risk zone were indicated. The Titanic continued to sail on, without swerving off course or slowing down. At 19:30, in particular, a telegram came from the Mesaba transport ship: “I report ice from 42 degrees to 41 degrees 25 minutes north latitude and from 49 degrees to 50 degrees 30 minutes west longitude. I saw a large number of icebergs, ice fields. At this time, the senior communications officer of the Titanic, Jack Phillips, worked for the benefit of the passengers, transmitting an inexhaustible stream of messages to the Cape Ras station, while the most important message never reached the captain, lost in a pile of paper - the Mesaba radio operator forgot to mark the message as "Ice Report" with prefix MSG, which meant "personally to the captain." This little detail overshadowed Philips' selfless work.

On the other hand, on April 14, in addition to this message, several more iceberg warnings were received from other ships. The captain took certain measures, in particular, the officers were warned of the danger verbally and in writing, and those looking ahead were ordered to look for the presence of icebergs. Therefore, it cannot be said that Captain Smith did not know about them.

Iceberg

The news about the absence of binoculars from the lookout was received with criticism (according to many testimonies, the binoculars were only on the Belfast-Southampton segment, after this stop Hogg, on the orders of the captain, for some reason folded them in his cockpit). There is an opinion that having binoculars looking ahead, despite a moonless night, would notice an iceberg not a quarter of a mile (450 m), but 2 or 3 miles (4-6 km). On the other hand, binoculars narrow the field of view, so they are only used after when the lookout noticed something. Lookouts without binoculars spotted the iceberg before the watch officer with binoculars.

If there were even a slight wave or swell in the ocean, he would see white lambs at the “waterline” of the iceberg. As it later became known, the Titanic collided with a “black” iceberg, that is, with one that had recently turned over in the water. The side facing the liner had a dark blue color, because of this there was no reflection (an ordinary white iceberg under such a condition could be seen from a mile away).

The question of what prevented the first assistant W. Murdoch from discovering the iceberg in a timely manner remains open. The captain of the Carpathia, Rostron, said that 75% of the objects in the sea are detected from the bridge earlier than from the "crow's nest". When his steamer sailed at night to the site of the accident of the Titanic, all the icebergs on their way were seen from the bridge before they were found by lookouts (British Inquiry, questions 25431-25449).

Maneuvering

There is an opinion that if Murdoch had not given the order to reverse immediately after the command "left rudder", the Titanic would certainly have avoided a collision, since the reverse negatively affects the effectiveness of the rudder. In this case, however, the time required to execute the command is overlooked. This takes at least 30 seconds and the command was probably received with a delay; - commands for the engine room are rarely given along the route of the liner (the last one was given three days before), so no one is standing at the engine telegraph. The team simply did not have time to execute, otherwise the Titanic would have experienced a strong vibration, but no one mentions it. According to the testimonies of the survivors, the cars stopped and reversed after the collision, so this command had no practical significance.

There is also an opinion that the most correct decision would be to start only the left car in reverse. Working the propellers apart would help speed up the turn and slow down the speed. The middle propeller was driven by a steam turbine that ran on the residual steam from the onboard machines; this turbine had no reverse gear. Thus, the stopped screw, behind which there was a single rudder of a very small area, created a turbulent flow in which the already inefficient rudder almost completely lost its effectiveness. Perhaps even in order to avoid a collision, it would be necessary, on the contrary, to increase the speed of the middle propeller to increase the effectiveness of the steering wheel. Moreover, the reverse takes a considerable time, and, therefore, there were practically no chances to quickly reduce the speed.

Attention should be paid to the fact that the accident occurred on the first flight. The navigators had no experience in operating this vessel, which explains the untimely and inefficient maneuvering attempts. At the same time, Captain Smith, First Officer Wild, and First Officer Murdoch, who was on duty at the time of the accident, had experience working on the Olympic built according to a similar project. In 1903, in a critical situation, Murdoch, with his timely and decisive actions, canceling the command of his superiors, saved the steamer Arabic from a collision.

There are also suggestions that the Titanic would have remained afloat if the rudder had not been shifted and the ship would have "rammed" the iceberg, taking a hit on the stem. The device of partitions was just aimed at the "survival" of the ship in a head-on collision, while the sides of the ship were not protected. “Wilding, a shipbuilder from Belfast, calculated that the bow of the ship would be indented by 25-30 meters, but the ship would not die. It would be instant death for those who were at the bow of the vessel at that time, but the inertia of the course would be rather slow, comparable to a car traveling at this speed, which had its brakes instantly pressed to the stop,” says Barnaby. However, Murdoch is justified by the fact that he did not have the ability to measure the distance to the iceberg and could not know that the maneuver he had taken would not succeed. Therefore, he can hardly be reproached for the fact that he did not give a command that would obviously kill people.

Buoyancy

The liner was not designed to flood all the first five compartments. Such a design, although possible, is extremely expensive - the only ship built this way, Great Eastern, was unprofitable. The unprofitability of this giant ship is confirmed by the fact that it was not found possible to use it for its intended purpose, and it went down in history as a cable ship used in laying the transatlantic telegraph cable. It is also impossible not to take into account the likelihood of risk. After all, apart from the Titanic, in peacetime, not a single ship suffered such damage.

Slowing down or avoiding the iceberg field

Despite warnings about icebergs, the captain of the Titanic did not slow down or change route. But that was standard practice at the time. So, during the investigation into the death of the Titanic, Captain Gerhard C. Affeld, who commanded 5 transatlantic ships, showed that, having received warnings about icebergs, he never changed the route and reduced speed only in case of fog or bad weather. He studied the logbooks of the ships entrusted to him. According to these logs, other captains, having received warnings about icebergs, also did not change the route and, as a rule, did not slow down. On the other hand, not everyone followed this practice: the Californian ship closest to the Titanic, having reached the iceberg field, stopped at its border (and gave the Titanic a warning that was ignored).

Delayed reaction on the bridge

Lookout Reginald Lee testified that he spotted the iceberg from a distance of "half a mile (926 m) maybe more, maybe less." The Titanic would cover half a mile in 80 seconds. Helmsman Hichens testified that by the time of the collision the ship had managed to turn 2 points. Since the windows of the wheelhouse were darkened so that the light did not interfere with the observation from the bridge, Hichens could not see the iceberg. An experiment on the twin steamer Olympic showed that a turn of 2 points would take 37 seconds, counting from the moment the command was given. The authors of the book Report into the Loss of the SS Titanic: A Centennial Reappraisal, published on the occasion of the centenary of the shipwreck, restore the timing of the accident, and put forward a version of “missed 30 seconds” after the signal of the lookouts, who left Murdoch for something to visually detect an iceberg, assess the situation and make a decision.

Causes of the tragedy

Subjective reasons

The main subjective cause of death was the outdated rules of the British Merchant Shipping Code, which made the number of lifeboats dependent on the tonnage of the ship, and not on the number of passengers. The rules were established in 1894 when the tonnage of passenger ships did not exceed 12,952 tons, and all ships of 10,000 tons and above fell into one category. For such vessels, regulations required that the lifeboats had enough space for 962 people. The tonnage of the Titanic was 46,328 tons.

The owners of the Titanic, formally fulfilling the instructions (and even slightly overfulfilling them, since the Titanic's boats had 1,178 seats, not 962), provided the ship with an insufficient number of boats. Despite the fact that there were enough lifeboats to board 1178 people, only 704 were saved. There were certain subjective reasons for this. For example, second mate Charles Lightoller, who commanded the launch of the boats on the port side, followed Captain Smith's order "women and children first" literally: he allowed men to take places in the boats only if rowers were needed and under no other circumstances.

Based on the stories of Charles Lightoller, his granddaughter Lady Patten put forward a new version of the sinking of the transatlantic liner. According to the writer, the Titanic did not sink because it was sailing too fast, because of which it simply did not have time to avoid a collision with an iceberg. There was plenty of time to dodge the ice block, but the helmsman, Robert Hitchens, panicked and turned the helm in the wrong direction. The ship received a hole, due to which it eventually sank. However, passengers and crew could have been saved if the Titanic had stopped immediately after the collision. In addition, the nearest ship was only a few miles from the liner. The manager of the company that owned the huge ship, Joseph Bruce Ismay, convinced the captain to continue sailing, fearing that the incident could cause him considerable material damage. He wanted to save the Titanic, but he thought only about the financial side of the matter. The rate of water entering the holds of the liner has increased exponentially. Water entered the hull at a rate of approximately 400 tons per minute. As a result, the ship sank in a matter of hours. About why the liner went down, Lightoller told only his relatives. According to Patten, her relatives feared for their reputation and therefore did not want to disclose the true causes of the 1912 disaster. “My relatives died a long time ago, and I realized that I was the only one in the world who knew about the true cause of the sinking of the Titanic,” the writer said.

Objective reasons

The cause of the collision and loss of the vessel was a combination of adverse factors:

• The iceberg belonged to a rare type of so-called. "black icebergs" (turned over so that their dark underwater part hits the surface), because of which it was noticed too late.
• The night was windless and moonless, otherwise the lookout would have noticed the "lambs" around the iceberg.
• The speed of the steamer was too high, due to which the impact of the iceberg on the hull was of maximum force. If the captain had ordered in advance, when entering the iceberg belt, to reduce the speed of the ship, then perhaps the impact force on the iceberg would not have been enough to break through the Titanic's hull.
• The non-transmission of several telegrams from neighboring ships by members of the radio room, busy sending private telegrams from wealthy passengers for money, about the dangerous proximity of icebergs to Captain Smith, which lowered his vigilance.
• The best steel of the time, from which the Titanic was made, became brittle at low temperatures. The water temperature that night was +2…+4 °C, which made the ship's hull very vulnerable.
• The poor quality of the rivets that connected the plating sheets of the side of the ship, when an iceberg hit, the heads of forged iron rivets, which replaced the originally provided steel rivets, crumbled due to their “porosity” due to the inclusion of foreign impurities in them.
• The arrangement of partitions between the compartments was made based on a frontal impact, and the doors between the partitions simply could not withstand the pressure of water and broke under its pressure.

Flood depth

On September 1, 1985, an expedition led by the director of the Institute of Oceanology in Woods Hall, Massachusetts, Dr. Robert D. Ballard, discovered the Titanic's bedrock at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean at a depth of 3750 meters.

The distance between the remains of the bow and stern of the Titanic is about 600 meters.

The remains of the ship were discovered 13 miles west of the coordinates that the Titanic transmitted in its SOS signal.

In April 2012, one hundred years after the shipwreck, the wreck acquired the protection of the 2001 UNESCO Convention for the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage. From now on, the states parties to the Convention have the right to prevent the destruction, looting, sale and unauthorized distribution of objects found at the shipwreck. They can take all necessary measures to protect the wreckage of a sunken ship, as well as to ensure that the human remains resting in them are properly treated.

Conspiracy theory

Reflection of the Titanic in art

The crash of the liner has become one of the most famous disasters in the history of mankind. To some extent, the image of the Titanic has become a symbol of the death of something that seemed powerful and unsinkable, a symbol of the weakness of human technogenic civilization before the forces of nature. The catastrophe was widely reflected in art, especially mass art. The first film dedicated to the disaster - " Escaped from the Titanic" - appeared already in May 1912, a month after the crash. In the same year, 1912, but before the catastrophe occurred, Morgan Robertson's book "Futility, or the death of the Titan" ("Futility, or the death of the Titan") was published, the action of which took place on board a passenger ship " Titan, similar in description and displacement to the Titanic. In this book, the Titan dies after colliding with an iceberg in the fog while sailing from New York to the UK. As a result, a legend appeared about the “prediction” of the Titanic disaster by Morgan Robertson. This fact is reinforced by the fact that despite the publication of the book in 1912, it was written in 1898.

The film " Titanic", Released in 1997, was the leader in box office receipts in the world box office for 13 years ($ 1,845,034,188, of which $ 600,788,188 - in the USA), but in 2010 the record "Titanic" was broken by the film "Avatar", released by the same director; In April 2012, on the centenary of the disaster, Cameron releases his old film in 3D.

The death of the ship was dedicated to many songs of performers and groups playing in different genres. In particular, in the song of the same name by the Austrian artist Falco (1992), the Titanic is seen as a symbol of decadence, the end of an era, in the song of the Russian group Nautilus Pompilius from the album of the same name Titanic (1994), the floating ship appears as a symbol of death and doom.

see also

• Titanic Belfast (museum)

Notes

1. About the fate of the superliners of the company "White Star Line" (Retrieved April 8, 2012)
2. Do you know | RU
3. Museum "Titanic Belfast"

The legendary maiden voyage of the Titanic was supposed to be the main gala event of 1912, but instead it became the most tragic in history. An absurd collision with an iceberg, an unorganized evacuation of people, almost one and a half thousand dead - this was the only voyage of the liner.

The history of the creation of the ship

Banal rivalry served as an incentive to start building the Titanic. The idea of ​​​​creating a liner better than that of a competitor company came up with the owner of the British shipping company White Star Line, Bruce Ismay. This happened after their main rival, the Cunard Line, set sail in 1906, their largest ship at that time, called the Lusitania.

The construction of the liner began in 1909. About three thousand specialists worked on its creation, more than seven million dollars were spent. The last work was completed in 1911, and at the same time the long-awaited descent of the liner into the water took place.

Many people, both rich and poor, sought to get the coveted ticket for this flight, but no one suspected that in a few days after the departure, the world community would discuss only one thing - how many people died on the Titanic.

Despite the fact that the White Star Line company managed to outperform a competitor in shipbuilding, the subsequent damage to the company's reputation. In 1934, it was completely absorbed by the Cunard Line company.

The first voyage of the "unsinkable"

The solemn departure of the luxurious ship was the most anticipated event of 1912. It was very difficult to get tickets, and they were sold out long before the scheduled flight. But as it turned out later, those who exchanged or resold their tickets were very lucky, and they did not regret that they were not on the ship when they found out how many people died on the Titanic.

The first and last flight of the largest liner of the White Star Line was scheduled for April 10, 1912. The ship's departure took place at 12 o'clock local time, and already 4 days later, on April 14, 1912, a tragedy occurred - an ill-fated collision with an iceberg.

Tragic foresight of the sinking of the Titanic

A fictional story about which later turned out to be prophetic was written by British journalist William Thomas Stead in 1886. With his publication, the author wanted to draw public attention to the need to revise the rules of navigation, namely, he demanded that the number of seats in ship's boats correspond to the number of passengers.

A few years later, Stead returned to a similar theme in a new story about a shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean, which occurred as a result of a collision with an iceberg. The death of people on the liner occurred due to the lack of the required number of boats.

How many people died on the Titanic: the composition of the drowned and the survivors

More than 100 years have passed since the most discussed shipwreck of the 20th century, but each time new circumstances of the tragedy are clarified and updated lists of those who died and survived as a result of the shipwreck appear.

This table gives us comprehensive information. The ratio of how many women and children died on the Titanic speaks most of all about the disorganization of the evacuation. The percentage of surviving representatives of the weaker sex exceeds even the number of surviving children. As a result of the shipwreck, 80% of the men died, most of them simply did not have enough space in the lifeboats. A high percentage of deaths among children. These were mostly members of the lower class who failed to get on deck in time for evacuation.

How were people saved from high society? Class discrimination on the Titanic

As soon as it became clear that the ship did not have long to stay on the water, the captain of the Titanic, Edward John Smith, gave the order to put women and children in lifeboats. At the same time, access to the deck for third-class passengers was limited. Thus, the advantage in salvation was given to representatives of high society.

A large number of dead people has become the reason that for 100 years investigations and litigation have not stopped. All experts note that class affiliation also took place on board during the evacuation. At the same time, the number of surviving crew members was greater than the representatives of the III class. Instead of helping the passengers into the boats, they were the first to escape.

How was the evacuation of people from the Titanic?

Properly unorganized evacuation of people is still considered the main cause of mass deaths. The fact of how many people died during the crash of the Titanic indicates the complete absence of any control over this process. The 20 lifeboats could accommodate at least 1,178 people. But at the beginning of the evacuation, they were launched half-filled, and not only by women and children, but also by whole families, and even with tame dogs. As a result, the occupancy of the boats was only 60%.

The total number of passengers on the ship, excluding crew members, was 1316 people, that is, the captain had the opportunity to save 90% of the passengers. Class III men were able to get on deck only towards the end of the evacuation, and therefore even more crew members were saved in the end. Numerous clarifications of the causes and facts of the shipwreck confirm that the responsibility for how many people died on the Titanic rests entirely with the captain of the liner.

Memoirs of eyewitnesses of the tragedy

All those who pulled out of the sinking ship into a lifeboat received unforgettable impressions from the first and last voyage of the Titanic. The facts, the number of dead, the causes of the disaster were obtained thanks to their testimony. The memoirs of some of the surviving passengers were published and will forever remain in history.

In 2009, Millvina Dean, the last woman survivor of the Titanic, passed away. At the time of the shipwreck, she was only two and a half months old. Her father died on a sinking liner, and her mother and brother escaped with her. And although the memory of that terrible night was not preserved in the woman’s memory, the catastrophe made such a deep impression on her that she forever refused to visit the shipwreck site and never watched feature films and documentaries about the Titanic.

In 2006, at an English auction, where about 300 exhibits from the Titanic were presented, the memoirs of Ellen Churchill Candy, who was one of the passengers on the ill-fated flight, were sold for 47 thousand pounds.

The published memoirs of another Englishwoman, Elizabeth Shuts, helped in compiling a real picture of the catastrophe. She was the governess of one of the first class passengers. In her memoirs, Elizabeth indicated that the lifeboat she was evacuated to had only 36 people, only half of the total available seats.

Indirect causes of the shipwreck

In all sources of information about the Titanic, the main cause of its death is a collision with an iceberg. But as it turned out later, this event was accompanied by several indirect circumstances.

In the course of studying the causes of the disaster, part of the ship's skin was raised to the surface from the bottom of the ocean. A piece of steel was tested, and scientists proved that the metal from which the hull of the liner was made was of poor quality. This was another reason for the crash and the reason for how many people died on the Titanic.

The ideally smooth surface of the water prevented the discovery of the iceberg in time. Even a slight wind would have been enough for the waves breaking on the ice to make it possible to detect it before the collision occurred.

The unsatisfactory work of the radio operators, who did not inform the captain in time about the ice drifting in the ocean, the too high speed of movement, which did not allow the ship to quickly change course - all these reasons together led to the tragic events on the Titanic.

The sinking of the Titanic is the worst shipwreck of the 20th century.

A fairy tale that turned into pain and horror - this is how you can characterize the first and last voyage of the Titanic liner. The true story of the disaster, even after a hundred years, is the subject of controversy and investigation. The death of nearly 1,500 people with empty lifeboats is still unexplained. Every year more and more new causes of the shipwreck are named, but none of them is able to return the lost human lives.

a ”Frederick Fleet noticed an iceberg right on the course about 650 m from the liner. Striking the bell three times, he reported to the bridge. The first assistant commanded the helmsman: "Left aboard!" - and moved the handles of the machine telegraphs to the "Full back" position. A little later, so that the liner did not hit the iceberg with the stern, he commanded: “Right on board!”. However, the Titanic was too large for a quick maneuver, and continued to move by inertia for another 25-30 seconds, until her nose began to slowly deviate to the left.

At 23:40, the Titanic tangentially collided with an iceberg. On the upper decks, people felt a slight push and a slight trembling of the hull; on the lower decks, the blow was more noticeable. As a result of the collision, six holes were formed in the starboard plating with a total length of about 90 meters. At 00:05, Captain Smith ordered the crew to prepare the lifeboats for launch, then went into the radio room and ordered the radio operators to broadcast a distress signal.

Around 0:20 children and women were put into the boats. At 1:20 the water began to flood the forecastle. At this time, the first signs of panic appeared. The evacuation went faster. After 1:30 a.m., panic broke out on board. At about 2:00 the last boat was lowered, at 2:05 the water began to flood the boat deck and the captain's bridge. The remaining 1,500 people on board rushed towards the stern. The trim began to grow before our eyes, at 2:15 the first chimney collapsed. At 2:16 the power went out. At 02:18, with a bow trim of about 23°, the liner broke. The bow, falling off, immediately went to the bottom, and the stern filled with water and sank two minutes later.

At 2:20, the Titanic completely disappeared under the water. Hundreds of people swam to the surface, but almost all of them died from hypothermia. On two collapsible boats that did not have time to launch from the liner, about 45 people were saved. Eight more were rescued by two boats returning to the crash site (No. 4 and No. 14). An hour and a half after the Titanic was completely submerged, the steamer Carpathia arrived at the disaster site and picked up 712 survivors of the crash.

Reasons for the crash

After the tragedy, commissions were held to investigate the causes of this incident, and, according to official documents, the collision with the iceberg was the cause, and not the presence of defects in the ship's structure. The commission based its conclusion on how the ship sank. As noted by some survivors, the ship went to the bottom as a whole, and not in parts.

As the commission concluded, all the blame for the tragic catastrophe was placed on the captain of the ship. In 1985, oceanographer Robert Ballard, who had been searching for a sunken ship for many years, was lucky. It was this happy event that helped shed light on the causes of the disaster. Scientists have determined that the Titanic broke in half on the surface of the ocean before it sank. This fact again drew media attention to the reasons for the sinking of the Titanic. New hypotheses arose, and one of the assumptions was based on the fact that low-grade steel was used in the construction of the ship, since it is a well-known fact that the Titanic was built on a tight schedule.

As a result of lengthy studies of the wreckage raised from the bottom, experts came to the conclusion that the cause of the disaster was low-quality rivets - the most important metal pins that tied together the steel plates of the ship's hull. Also, the studied wreckage showed that there were miscalculations in the design of the ship, and this is evidenced by the nature of the sinking of the ship. It was finally established that the stern of the ship did not rise high into the air, as previously believed, and the ship broke into pieces and sank. This indicates clear miscalculations in the design of the ship. However, after the disaster, this data was hidden. And only with the help of modern technology it was found that it was these circumstances that led to one of the most terrible tragedies of mankind.