Where was the Titanic found? How were people saved from high society? Class discrimination on the Titanic. Stages of the sinking of the Titanic

On the night of April 14-15, 1912, the Titanic, the most modern passenger liner at that time, making its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, collided with an iceberg and soon sank. At least 1,496 people died and 712 passengers and crew were rescued.

The Titanic disaster very quickly acquired a mass of legends and conjectures. At the same time, for several decades, the place where lost ship, remained unknown.

The main difficulty was that the place of death was known with very low accuracy - it was about an area 100 kilometers in diameter. Given the fact that the Titanic sank in an area where the depth of the Atlantic is several kilometers deep, the search for the ship was very problematic.

Titanic. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

The bodies of the dead were going to be raised with dynamite

Immediately after the shipwreck, the relatives of wealthy passengers who died in the disaster proposed to organize an expedition to raise the ship. The initiators of the search wanted to bury their loved ones and, to be honest, to return the valuables that had gone to the bottom along with their owners.

The decisive attitude of the relatives stumbled upon a categorical verdict of experts: technologies for searching and lifting the Titanic from great depth at that time it simply did not exist.

Then a new proposal was received - to drop dynamite charges to the bottom at the alleged site of the disaster, which, according to the authors of the project, were supposed to provoke the ascent from the bottom of the corpses of the dead. This dubious idea also did not find support.

Started in 1914, the First World War postponed the search for the Titanic for many years.

The interior of the veranda for first-class passengers on the Titanic. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Nitrogen and ping pong balls

Again, the search for a liner was discussed only in the 1950s. At the same time, proposals for possible ways lifting it from freezing the hull with nitrogen to filling it with millions of ping-pong balls.

In the 1960s and 1970s, several expeditions were sent to the Titanic sinking area, but all of them were not successful due to insufficient technical training.

In 1980 Texas oil tycoon John Grimm financed the preparation and conduct of the first large expedition to search for the Titanic. But, despite the availability of the most modern equipment for underwater searches, his expedition ended in failure.

Played a major role in the discovery of the Titanic ocean explorer and part-time US Navy officer Robert Ballard. Ballard, who was involved in the improvement of small unmanned underwater vehicles, back in the 1970s became interested in underwater archeology and, in particular, the secret place of the sinking of the Titanic. In 1977, he organized the first expedition to search for the Titanic, but it ended in failure.

Ballard was convinced that it was possible to find the ship only with the help of the latest deep-sea submersibles. But it was very difficult to get such at your disposal.

Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Dr. Ballard's Secret Mission

In 1985, having failed during an expedition on the French research vessel Le Suroît, Ballard moved to the American ship R / V Knorr, with which he continued the search for the Titanic.

As Ballard himself told many years later, the expedition, which became historic, began with a secret deal concluded between him and the command of the Navy. The researcher really wanted to get the Argo deep-sea research apparatus for his work, but the American admirals did not want to pay for the work of the equipment to search for some kind of historical rarity. The ship R / V Knorr and the apparatus "Argo" were supposed to carry out a mission to survey the sites of the death of two American nuclear submarines "Scorpion" and "Thresher", which sank back in the 1960s. This task was secret, and the US Navy needed a person who would not only be able to perform the necessary work, but also be able to keep it secret.

Ballard's candidacy was ideal - he was famous enough, and everyone knew about his passion for finding the Titanic.

The explorer was offered: he could get the Argo and use it to search for the Titanic if he first found and explored the submarines. Ballard agreed.

Only the leadership of the US Navy knew about the Scorpion and Thresher, for the rest, Robert Ballard simply explored the Atlantic and searched for the Titanic.

Robert Ballard. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

"Comet tail" at the bottom

He coped with the secret mission brilliantly, and on August 22, 1985 he was able to start searching for the liner that died in 1912 again.

None of the most advanced technology would have ensured his success if it were not for the experience accumulated earlier. Ballard, when examining the sites of the death of submarines, noticed that they left a kind of " comet tail from thousands of debris. This was due to the fact that the hulls of the boats were destroyed when sinking to the bottom due to the enormous pressure.

The scientist knew that when diving on the Titanic, steam boilers exploded, which meant that the liner had to leave a similar “comet tail”.

It was this trail, and not the Titanic itself, that was easier to detect.

On the night of September 1, 1985, the Argo apparatus found small debris at the bottom, and at 0:48 the camera recorded the Titanic's boiler. Then it was possible to find the bow of the ship.

It was found that the bow and stern of the broken liner are located at a distance from each other, at a distance of about 600 meters. At the same time, both the stern and the bow were seriously deformed when diving to the bottom, but the bow was still better preserved.

Ship layout. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Home for underwater inhabitants

The news of the discovery of the Titanic became a sensation, although many experts were quick to question it. But in the summer of 1986, Ballard carried out a new expedition, during which he not only described in detail the vessel at the bottom, but also made the first dive to the Titanic on a manned deep-sea vehicle. After that, the last doubts dissipated - the Titanic was discovered.

The last shelter of the liner is located at a depth of 3750 meters. In addition to the two main parts of the liner, tens of thousands of smaller fragments are scattered along the bottom in an area of 4.8 × 8 km: parts of the ship's hull, remains of furniture and interior decoration, dishes, personal belongings of people.

The wreckage of the ship was covered with multi-layered rust, the thickness of which is constantly growing. In addition to multi-layered rust, 24 species of invertebrates and 4 species of fish live on and near the hull. Of these, 12 species of invertebrates clearly gravitate towards the wreckage, eating metal and wooden structures. The interiors of the Titanic are almost completely destroyed. Wooden elements were swallowed by deep sea worms. The deck decks are covered in a layer of clam shells, and rust stalactites hang from many of the metalwork.

Wallet recovered from the Titanic. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

All that's left of the people is shoes?

In the 30 years that have passed since the discovery of the ship, the Titanic has been rapidly collapsing. His state of the art such that there can be no talk of any lifting of the vessel. The ship will forever remain at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

There is still no consensus on whether human remains have been preserved on and around the Titanic. According to the prevailing version, all human bodies have completely decomposed. However, periodically there is information that some researchers still stumbled upon the remains of the dead.

But James Cameron, director of the famous movie "Titanic", on personal account more than 30 dives to the liner on Russian deep-sea vehicles Mir is sure of the opposite: “We saw shoes, boots and other footwear at the site of the sunken ship, but our team has never come across human remains.”

Things from the "Titanic" - a profitable product

Since the discovery of the Titanic by Robert Ballard, about two dozen expeditions have been carried out to the ship, during which several thousand items have been raised to the surface, ranging from personal belongings of passengers to a piece of plating weighing 17 tons.

It is impossible to establish the exact number of items raised from the Titanic today, since with the improvement of underwater technology, the ship has become a favorite target of "black archaeologists" who are trying to get rarities from the Titanic by any means.

Robert Ballard, lamenting this, remarked: “The ship is still a noble old lady, but not the lady I saw in 1985."

Things from the Titanic have been sold at auction for many years and are in great demand. So, in the year of the 100th anniversary of the disaster, in 2012, hundreds of items went under the hammer, including a cigar box that belonged to the captain of the Titanic (40 thousand dollars), a life jacket from the ship (55 thousand dollars), a master key first class steward ($138,000). As for the jewelry from the Titanic, their value is measured in millions of dollars.

At one time, having discovered the Titanic, Robert Ballard intended to keep this place a secret so as not to disturb the resting place of one and a half thousand people. Perhaps he didn't do it in vain.

And this fact is not surprising, because at the time of construction and commissioning, "" was one of the largest liners in the world. His first voyage, which is also the last, took place on April 14, 1912, because the ship, after a collision with an ice block, sank 2 hours and 40 minutes after the impact (at 02.20 on April 15). Such a large-scale catastrophe has become a legend, and in our time the causes and circumstances of its occurrence are being discussed, feature films are being shot, and researchers continue to study the remains of the liner at the bottom and compare them with photographs of the ship taken in 1912.

If we compare the model of the bow shown in the photo and the remains that now lie at the bottom, it is difficult to call them identical, because the front of the ship was heavily immersed in the silt during the fall. Such a spectacle greatly disappointed the first researchers, since the location of the wreckage did not allow to inspect the place where the ship hit the ice block without the use of special equipment. The torn hole present in the case, clearly visible on the layout, is the result of hitting the bottom.

The remains of the Titanic are at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, they lie at a depth of about 4 km. The vessel cracked in the process of submerging under water and now its two parts lie on the bottom, at a distance of about 600 meters from one another. Within a radius of several hundred meters near them are multiple debris and objects, including a huge piece of the ship's hull.

Panorama of the bow of the Titanic, the researchers managed to make by processing several hundred images. If you look at it from right to left, you can see the winch from the spare anchor, which sticks out directly above the bow edge, then the mooring device is noticeable, and next to it is an open hatch leading to hold No. 1, breakwater lines go from it to the sides. The lying mast, under which there are two more hold hatches and winches for lifting cargo, is clearly visible on the superstructure deck. The captain's bridge used to be located on the front of the main superstructure, but now it can only be found at the bottom in parts.

On the other hand, the superstructure with the captain's and officer's cabins and the radio room is well preserved, although it is crossed by a crack that has formed in place of the expansion joint. The visible hole in the superstructure is the location of the chimney. Another hole behind the superstructure is the well, where main staircase Titanic. A large torn hole located to the left is the place of the second pipe.

Photo of the main anchor on the port side of the Titanic. It remains a mystery how he did not fall down in the process of hitting the bottom.

Behind the Titanic's spare anchor is a mooring device.

Even 10-20 years ago, on the mast of the Titanic, one could see the remains of the so-called "crow's nest", where the lookouts were located, but now they have fallen off. The only reminder of the "crow's nest" is the hole in the mast, through which the sailors-lookout could get on spiral staircase. The tail behind the hole was once a bell mount.

Comparative photos of the deck of the Titanic, which housed the lifeboats. On the right, you can see that the superstructure on it is torn in places.

The Titanic staircase that adorned the ship in 1912:

Photo of the remains of the ship, taken from a similar angle. Comparing the two previous photos, it's hard to believe that this is the same part of the ship.

Behind the stairs were equipped with elevators for 1st class passengers. Only individual elements remind of them. The inscription, which can be seen in the photo on the right, was opposite the elevators and pointed to the deck. It is this inscription - a pointer directing to deck A (the letter A, made of bronze, has disappeared, but traces still remain).

Deck D, 1st class lounge. Although most of the wooden finish has been eaten away by microorganisms, and individual elements reminiscent of the front staircase have been preserved.

The 1st class lounge and the Titanic restaurant, located on deck D, had large stained glass windows that have survived to this day.

This is exactly what "" would look like along with the largest modern passenger liner, which is called "Allure of the Seas».

It was put into operation in 2010. A few comparative values:

Allure of the Seas has 4 times the displacement this characteristic at the Titanic;
a modern liner - the record holder has a length of 360 m, which exceeds "" by 100 m;
maximum width of 60 m compared to 28 m of shipbuilding legend;
the draft is almost the same (almost 10 m);
the speed of these ships is 22-23 knots;
the number of command staff of "Allure of the Seas" - more than 2 thousand people (attendants "" - 900 people, mostly they were stokers);
the passenger capacity of the giant of our time is 6.4 thousand people (y - 2.5 thousand).

The Titanic is the largest and most luxurious liner of its time. He was not embarrassed to be called unsinkable, and he really seemed like that. She set out on her maiden voyage at noon on the tenth of April from the English port of Southampton. The final destination was to be american city NY. But the Titanic, as you know, did not reach the shores of the United States ...

Collision of the Titanic with an iceberg

On April 14, 1912, the liner at full speed (at a speed of 22.5 knots, it was almost the maximum speed) was rushing along North Atlantic. Nothing foreshadowed the tragedy, there was complete calm. An orchestra was playing on the upper deck in a restaurant with a beautiful interior. Rich people from the first class drank champagne, walked under open sky and enjoy the wonderful weather.

Late in the evening on April 14, at 23:39, two lookouts (as the sailors who observe the situation from a comfortable position during the voyage are officially called) noticed an iceberg right on the course and reported this by phone to the bridge. Officer William Murdoch immediately commanded "Left rudder." Thus he tried to prevent a collision.

But the multi-ton ship could not turn instantly, although in this case every second was worth its weight in gold - a block of ice was getting closer. And only after about half a minute the nose of the Titanic began to tilt to the left. Ultimately, the visible part of the iceberg "missed" the ship without hitting the starboard side.

The Titanic managed to turn two points, which was enough to prevent a head-on collision, but the liner still could not completely get away from the ice block - it ran into its hidden part, which was under water. This contact lasted approximately nine seconds. As a result, six holes were formed - all of them were below the waterline.

Contrary to popular misconception, the iceberg did not "cut" the bottom of the liner. Everything was a little different: from the strong pressure, the rivets on the skin burst, the steel sheets arched and gaps appeared between them. Through them, water began to penetrate into the compartments. And the penetration rate, of course, was huge - more than seven tons per second.

The iceberg bent the ship's hull, resulting in a leak

Further chronology of the tragedy

Most of the passengers on the upper deck did not feel any threat at first. The stewards, who served appetizers in the restaurant, noted only a slight clinking of spoons and forks on the tables. Some of the passengers felt a slight jolt and rattle, which ended quickly. Some people thought that the propeller blade just fell off the ship.

On the lower decks, the first consequences were more tangible: the local passengers heard an unpleasant rattle and rumble.

Exactly at midnight, Thomas Andrews, the man who designed the Titanic, came to the bridge. He had to assess the nature and severity of the resulting damage. After reporting on the incident and inspecting the ship, Andrews told everyone in the audience that the Titanic would definitely sink.

Soon the ship began to list noticeably. The 62-year-old captain of the ship, Edward Smith, gave the order to prepare the boats and start calling passengers for evacuation.

And the radio operators, in turn, were ordered to send SOS signals to all nearby ships. They did this for the next two hours, and only a few minutes before the complete sinking, Smith freed the telegraphers from work.

Distress signals were received by several ships, but almost all of them were too far from the Titanic. At 00:25 a message about the tragedy on the Titanic was received by the Carpathia ship. It was located at a distance of 93 kilometers from the crash site. Immediately, the captain of the Carpathia, Arthur Rostron, sent his ship to the area. The Carpathia, hurrying to help people, managed to reach a record speed of 17.5 knots that night - for this, all electrical appliances and heating were turned off on the ship.

There was another ship that was even closer to the Titanic than the Carpathia - only 10 nautical miles (this is equal to 18.5 kilometers). Theoretically, he could help. We are talking about the ship "Californian". The Californian was surrounded by ice, and therefore its captain decided to stop the ship - it was planned to start moving again only the next morning.

At 11:30 p.m., Titanic radio operator Phillips and Californian radio operator Evans were talking to each other. Moreover, Phillips at the very end of this dialogue rather rudely asked Evans not to clog the air, since at that moment he was transmitting a signal to Cape Race (this is a cape on the island of Newfoundland). After that, Evans simply turned off the power in the radio room and went to sleep. And 10 minutes later, the Titanic collided with an iceberg. Some time later, the Titanic sent the first distress call, but the Californian could no longer receive it.

On top of that, there were no red emergency flares on the Titanic. Confidence in the unsinkability of the ship was so high that no one bothered to take the red rockets with them. Then it was decided to fire volleys with ordinary whites. The calculation was that the crew of a nearby ship would guess that the Titanic was in trouble. The Californian officers did see white rockets, but they thought it was just some kind of fireworks. A fantastic series of misunderstandings!

At half past one in the night, passengers began to be seated in boats. It immediately became clear that there were not enough places for everyone. In total, there were twenty boats on board and their total capacity was 1178 people.

By order of Captain Smith, his assistant Charles Lightoller, who supervised the evacuation process on the port side of the liner, only children and women were taken into the boats. Men, according to the captain, were obliged to be on the ship to the last. But William Murdoch, another assistant to Smith, who led the evacuation on the starboard side, gave places in the boats and men when there were no women and children in the line of those gathered.

At about 02:15, the nose of the liner suddenly dropped down and the rest of the ship moved forward. A large cold wave swept across the decks, many people were simply blown overboard.

Around 02:20, the Titanic completely disappeared under ocean water. The liner was so huge that it took 160 minutes to sink.

After the stern was completely submerged, hundreds of people swam to the surface. They swam in icy water among all sorts of things from the ship: wooden beams, pieces of furniture, doors, etc. Many tried to use all this as a watercraft.

Temperature ocean water that night was −2°С ( sea water does not freeze at this temperature due to the concentration of salt in it). A person here died from severe hypothermia on average within half an hour. And many of those moving away from the sunken ship on boats heard the heartbreaking cries of those who did not have enough space in the boats ...

At about 04:00, the Carpathia appeared in the area of the sinking Titanic. This ship took 712 people on board, after which it headed for New York. Among the rescued, 394 people are women and children, 129 people are men, and another 189 people are members of the ship's crew.

The number of those who died in this shipwreck was, according to various sources, from 1400 to 1517 people (it is difficult to give an exact figure, because there were many stowaways on the Titanic). Thus, 60% of passengers from first class cabins managed to escape, 44% from second class cabins, 25% from those who bought third class tickets.

Characteristics of the Titanic

When commissioned, the Titanic was 269 meters long and about 30 meters wide. The height of the liner was also impressive: from the waterline to the uppermost boat deck, it was 18.5 meters here (and if you count from the keel to the top of the first tube , it would have turned out to be 53 meters in general). The draft of this liner was 10.5 meters, and the displacement was 52,310 tons.

"Titanic" in 1912 in the port of Belfast (this is where it was built)

The liner was powered by several four-cylinder steam engines and steam turbine. At the same time, steam for them, as well as for all kinds of auxiliary mechanisms, was produced in 29 boilers. It is worth noting specifically that none of the ship's thirty mechanics survived. They remained in the engine room and supported the operation of the steam units to the last.

The role of movers on the Titanic was performed by three propellers. The diameter of the central screw was 5.2 meters, it had four blades. The screws located along the edges had a larger diameter - 7.2 meters, but they had three blades. Propellers with three blades could make up to 80 revolutions per minute, and the central one - up to 180 revolutions per minute.

Above upper deck There were also four pipes sticking out, each 19 meters high. The Titanic had a double bottom and had sixteen airtight compartments. They were separated by watertight bulkheads. According to calculations, the ship would have remained afloat even if any two compartments or four consecutive compartments at the bow or stern were flooded. But on the night of the tragedy, the iceberg damaged five compartments - one more than allowed.

Composition of the crew and passengers

It is known that in tragic voyage there were many people in the ship's crew who had not undergone special training: stewards, stokers, stitchers (the so-called people whose task was to bring coal to the fireboxes and throw ash overboard), coca. There were very few qualified sailors - only 39 sailors and seven officers, assistants to the captain. Moreover, some of the sailors did not even have time to get to know the Titanic's device well, as they were accepted into the service just a few days before sailing.

It is worth talking a little about the passengers. Passenger composition was extremely diverse - from mendicant emigrants from Sweden, Italy, Ireland, sailing for a better life V New World, to hereditary millionaires such as John Jacob Astor IV and Benjamin Guggenheim (both dead).

Benjamin Guggenheim put on his best tailcoat and began to drink whiskey in the hall - so he spent last hours life

In accordance with the cost of the purchased ticket, there was a division into three classes. For those who swam in the first class, a swimming pool, a gym for physical education, a bathhouse, a squash court, an electric bath (a kind of "ancestor" of a solarium) and a special section for pets were provided. There was also a restaurant, elegant dining rooms, and smoking rooms.

By the way, the service in the third class was also worthy, better than on some other transatlantic steamers of that time. The cabins were bright and comfortable, they were not cold and clean enough. The dining room served not too refined, but quite acceptable dishes, there were special decks for walking.

The premises and spaces of the ship were strictly divided according to classes. And passengers, say, third class were forbidden to be on the deck of the first class.

Titanic in books and films

The terrible events that happened on the Titanic in April 1912 served as the basis for many literary works, paintings, songs and films.

The first book about the Titanic was written, paradoxically, long before it sank. The little-known American writer Morgan Robertson published the story "Futility, or the Death of the Titan" back in 1898. It described as if unsinkable ship"Titan", which crashed on an April night, colliding with a certain iceberg. There were not enough boats on the Titan, and so many of the passengers died.

The story did not sell well at first, but after the incident of 1912, interest in the book increased sharply - there were quite a few coincidences between the events described in the story and the real wreck of the Titanic. And key specifications the fictional "Titan" were similar to the characteristics of the real "Titanic" - a truly amazing fact!

Morgan Robertson and his story, where the death of the Titanic was predicted to some extent

And the first feature film about the tragedy was released in May of the same 1912 - it was called "The Escaped from the Titanic". It was 10 minutes long, silent and black and white. The main role here was played by Dorothy Gibson, an actress who herself found herself on the Titanic that ill-fated night and found her salvation in boat number seven.

In 1953, director Jean Negulesco turned to the theme of the tragic journey of the Titanic. According to the plot, a husband, wife and their two children sort things out on the Titanic. And everything seems to be getting better, but then the liner stumbles upon an iceberg and begins to go to the bottom. The family has to endure separation, the wife and daughter sail away on the boat, the son and father remain on the sinking ship. The film, by the way, received one "Oscar" in the same 1953.

But the most famous film about the sinking of the liner is James Cameron's Titanic, which appeared in theaters (and then on DVD) in 1997. He won as many as eleven Oscars and for a long time was considered the highest grossing film in general in history.

Authoritative experts on the sinking of the Titanic (for example, historian Don Lynch and marine painter Ken Marshall) took part in preparing the script and creating the scenery for Cameron's film. Collaboration with respected experts made it possible to accurately convey some episodes of the crash. Cameron's Titanic new wave interest in the history of the liner. In particular, after the release of the film, the demand for books and exhibitions related to this topic increased.

Discovery of the Titanic at the bottom of the Atlantic

The legendary ship lay at the bottom for 73 years before it was discovered. More specifically, it was found in 1985 by a group of divers led by oceanographer Robert Ballard. As a result, it turned out that under the enormous pressure of the water, the Titanic (the depth here was about 4000 meters) fell apart into three parts. The wreckage of the liner was scattered over an area with a radius of 1.6 kilometers. Ballard and his associates first of all found the bow of the vessel, which, apparently, due to its large mass, had sunk heavily into the ground. Food was found 800 meters away. Nearby were seen and the remains of the middle part.

Between the large elements of the liner at the bottom, one could also see small items testifying to that era: a set of copper cutlery, unopened wine bottles, coffee cups, door handles, candelabra and ceramic baby dolls...

Later, several expeditions to the remains of the Titanic were conducted by RMS Titanic, which legally had the rights to fragments of the liner and other related artifacts. During these expeditions, more than 6,000 items were raised from the bottom. They were subsequently valued at $110 million. These items were exhibited in thematic expositions or sold at auctions.

But why wasn't the Titanic fully lifted up? Alas, this is not possible. Experts have found that any attempt to raise the hull of the liner will lead to its destruction, and therefore it is likely to remain at the bottom forever.

Documentary "Titanic": the death of a dream"

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 after Tower of Babel the dream of mankind - 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 consciously worked to bury 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 breaking all the laws of physics, ice blocks for some reason they turn over in the water, exposing not the white frosted crown of the iceberg to the surface, 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 with a radio room, although telephones were 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 on board the ship were Turkish baths and swimming pools, palm trees and chapels, caged parrots and crates of first-class burgundy, 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.

Titanic Creators - Bosses 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 eiffel tower, the ship was intended 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 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, someone, 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 as stable as a fortress"?

When the Titanic sank into ocean depth, eight musicians on the mangled deck continued to play - 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, Baltik is 55 miles, Olympic is 70... Salty water does not 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 steam resources to be transferred to the boilers, hot water and electricity. 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.

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.

First and last flight the largest liner of the White Star Line was appointed on 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 new history about the shipwreck 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 priority in salvation was given to representatives high society.

Big number dead people was 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 main reason mass death of people. 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 the lifeboat received unforgettable impressions from the first and last flight liner 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 memories of that terrible night the woman’s memory was not preserved, the catastrophe made such a deep impression on her that she forever refused to visit the shipwreck and never watched art 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, is too high speed 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. True story catastrophe 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.