Titanic year of tragedy. History of the Titanic: Past and Present. Alleged versions of the tragic death
Many have heard, many have read, but many still do not know the real and bitter truth about the death of the world's largest passenger liner with the mighty name "Titanic". It belonged to the British company White Star Line. In just two years, shipbuilders managed to construct the impossible, and already on May 31, 1911, the Titanic was launched. His first cruise flight turned into a huge tragedy, the news of which swept over the course of two days around the world. What happened? How did the Titanic sink? How could the most unsinkable ship in the world be at a depth of 4 km? The owners of the company declared that God himself could not sink the Titanic. Maybe he got mad at people?
But let's move on to more real facts. So, on April 10, 1912, from the port of Southampton set sail greatest ship of all times and peoples "Titanic" on board which at that moment were the most famous people Great Britain. These were businessmen, actors and actresses, scientists and writers, etc. The Titanic went on a 7-day voyage through Atlantic Ocean in New York City, stopping along the way at small ports for delivery and reception of cargo, as well as disembarkation and embarkation of passengers. The fifth day of the exciting journey was fatal for all the passengers of the liner. Crossing the Atlantic, at about 3:00 am, the starboard side of the ship was cut by a small iceberg, which was not immediately noticed by the looking sailor. As many as five lower compartments were flooded in a matter of minutes.
After 2.5 hours, the Titanic disappeared into the depths of the sea. Of the 2,200 people, only 715 were able to escape. Almost 1,500 people tragically died. And now the most intriguing question arises, who is to blame for this tragedy? God? Shipbuilders? or not the professionalism of the captain of the ship? But nevertheless, after numerous investigations, objective and subjective reasons for the death of the Titanic were still collected, but we will talk about them a little later. To begin with, one should delve into these facts and analyze the broader reasons that influenced the outcome of events and the death of innocent people.
Responsible for the sinking of the Titanic
shipbuilders
Let's start, perhaps, with shipbuilders, namely with the ship's plating itself. In 1994, a study was carried out with a piece of the skin of the sunken Titanic. The results were very deplorable, because. the plating was so thin that even the smallest piece of ice floe could inflict enormous damage on it, and if we take into account the huge Iceberg, then the damage was still not very big, thanks to the actions of the captain of the ship. The impact caused by the iceberg was tragic because the ship's hull plating included phosphorus in its composition, which, at low temperatures, caused this plating to break. The inability of shipbuilders to create high-quality steel at that time, as well as ship designs, makes them also guilty of this tragedy. It was also known that the construction design of the Titanic included the use of the necessary materials, but most of them were of poor quality or were not available at all. This is proven by the fact that some people made a lot of money on this and shipbuilders may not be guilty of this.
radio operators
Now about no less important employees of the ship - radio operators. In 1912, radio communication on the high seas was new, and not every ship could establish it. The bottom line is that the radio operators, for some unknown reason, were not part of the ship's crew, but worked for the Marconi company, which was engaged in the transmission of paid messages in the form of Morse code. Currently, they can be compared with SMS messages on the phone.
Based on the surviving records, the radio operators managed to transmit more than 250 radiotelegrams on April 14, and the signals that came from other ships that also sailed across the Atlantic were simply ignored by the radio operators, because. they needed to make money. According to the records of radio operators, which were not taken into account by them, it became known that the Titanic had been alerted of the danger with the exact coordinates since 20-00 on the evening of April 14. There were even messages for the captain personally, in which it was written about nearby icebergs, but the radio operators were too lazy to deliver this information to the captain, and continued to send paid messages. But the entire crew of the ship was instructed in advance about possible glaciers, because. route passed through them.
Iceberg
Video - Titanic. The mysteries of the death of the liner
As you can see, the Titanic still managed to sink, and not only for the above reasons, there are several more. Perhaps the most important of them is the lack of binoculars from the looking sailor, who was on the ship, but was locked in a safe, and the second mate had the key. It was David Blair, who was removed from the flight for unknown reasons. He simply forgot to give this key to his reliever, so the looking sailor could not see the danger. With binoculars, trouble could be foreseen for 6 km., And without binoculars, the sailor could notice just 400 meters away. It was calm and the night was moonless. Even the weather conditions that night were against the ship, because the light of the moon in any case was able to reflect on the iceberg and give it away in advance.
It was also known that the iceberg was black, which means that it had turned upside down shortly before. It is possible that even under the moon the shine of the iceberg could not be noticeable, because. its white side was under water.
The fact that the first assistant did not notice the iceberg first is not clear. it is always more visible on the bridge than from the "eagle's nest" of a sailor.
About maneuver
It should be clarified that the captain of the ship was not on the bridge at the time of the crash, he was replaced by first assistant Murdoch. The results of the studies carried out indicate that the first officer gave the order "Left rudder" and immediately after that gave the order "Reverse". But the second command was carried out late and the reverse was made after a collision with an iceberg. It is believed that if Murdoch ordered, on the contrary, to increase speed, then the turn of the ship would not be smooth, but sharp. Perhaps the experience of the team failed in this situation as well. they did not participate in the testing of the ship after launching, but to create a maneuver of such huge ship very difficult without preparation. Some believe that if the Titanic had not changed course, but had rammed an iceberg, it would have remained unscathed, because. the bow of the ship was protected and could only get a small dent at most.
Having considered the expanded picture of the circumstances of that night, we should return to the objective and subjective reasons for the sinking of the Titanic.
Subjective causes of the sinking of the Titanic
1. The rules of the British Merchant Shipping Code were outdated. They said that lifeboats were put on a ship depending on its tonnage, and not on the number of passengers. This means that there were not enough boats on the Titanic, so about 500 more people were not saved.
2. There is evidence that the helmsman, at the command "Take to the left", turned the steering wheel to the right.
3. The director of the company, J. Ismay, was sailing on board the ship, but he ordered the captain to sail on and not take any action so as not to incur losses. The captain followed his order, but water entered the compartments at a rate of 350 tons per minute.
4. To date, no one has survived after the crash. Those who escaped died a natural death. Last Passenger The Titanic died in 2009. It was a woman who was on the Titanic as a 5 year old child. Only she knew the true truth of the death of the ship, which her relatives told her, but the secret died with her.
Objective reasons for the sinking of the Titanic
1. Due to the fact that the iceberg turned over, because he was melting at that time, he was not visible from the ship.
2. The speed of the ship was very high. As a result, the blow was the most powerful. The fault here is solely the captain of the ship.
3. Radio operators, busy sending paid messages, didn't tell the captain important information about danger. Considering that they were not part of the team, this does not relieve them of responsibility.
4. Steel Titanic at the time was not best quality. The pressure on her low temperatures led her to brittleness and brittleness. There is no fault of the shipbuilders here, because. they performed work with the raw materials that were purchased by the management of the shipbuilding company.
5. All compartments of the ship were protected by iron doors, but the pressure of the water was so strong that they simply shattered into small pieces. Thus, compartment after compartment was filled with water.
6. The lookout did not have binoculars, which reduced the radius of his view from the "eagle's nest".
7. The ship did not have red flares, the launch of which meant a signal of danger. As a result of this, white rockets were launched, which did not matter to neighboring ships.
This article did not consider the ships that came to the aid of the Titanic on that fateful night, but it is worth noting the fact that the closest ship that was near the Titanic was a ship with poachers who hunted seals that night, but saw the launch white rockets, they thought that this was a signal that they needed to stop and the captain of this ship ordered his crew to sail as quickly as possible in the opposite direction. Perhaps, thanks to these poachers, if they had not swum away, much would have been saved. more people, but there was no radio communication on their ship.
Thus, having analyzed the most true facts about how the Titanic sank, one can only guess which reason is still the most truthful.
The sinking of the Titanic scientific facts video
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On the night of April 14, 1912, the largest and most luxurious liner in the history of mankind rushed to the shores at full speed. North America. Nothing foretold the death of the Titanic. On upper deck an orchestra played in an elegant restaurant. The richest and most successful people drinking champagne and enjoying the beautiful weather.
According to the official story, the Titanic was wrecked because it was moving at too high a speed in icy waters, and when the lookout spotted an iceberg directly ahead, there was no way to avoid a collision. The ship hit the ice block on a tangent, but received such serious damage that after three hours it sank to the bottom. Shenan Meloni, however, believes that the iceberg is only one of the factors that killed the steamer.
In the process of carefully studying photographs taken ten days before the Titanic left Southampton, the journalist found traces of soot on the inside of the skin. It was in the place that was subsequently damaged in the collision. The fire in the fuel storage, according to experts, started during high-speed tests at the dock in Belfast.
The owners of the ship knew that a fire was raging in the bowels of the Titanic, but they turned out to be so greedy that they decided not to cancel the flight. In order for the passengers not to suspect anything, the ship was turned around in the port of Southampton on the other side. The officers were ordered to keep their mouths shut.
The liner set sail, but a team of 12 people could not cope with the fire. Gradually, the skin heated up to a thousand degrees Celsius. Metallurgical experts consulted by Meloni stated that steel becomes brittle at this temperature, losing up to 75% of its strength.
For this reason, when hitting an iceberg, six holes with a total length of about 90 meters formed at once in the bow compartments of the vessel. The ship's unsinkability system could not cope with such serious damage.
The death of the Titanic, the journalist concludes, was due to a nightmarish combination of three factors: ice, fire and criminal negligence.
Nothing foretold trouble
A few minutes later, the sentinel spotted an iceberg. And a little later, the Titanic, the ship giant size, will collide with a drifting iceberg, and after a while it will all be over. This is how it starts great mystery big ship. The next day, the sinking of the Titanic will become legend, and its history will be the greatest mystery 20th century.
international sensation
Already in the morning of the next day, the office of the owner of the Titanic was stormed by dozens of newspaper reporters. They wanted to know the location of the sinking of the Titanic and demanded clarification. The relatives of the passengers on the ocean liner were outraged. A short telegram from Cape Reis reported: "At 11 p.m. local time, the largest ship, the Titanic, transmitted a distress signal." The company's president, Laster Whites, reassured reporters: "The liner is unsinkable!" But the very next day, all the world's newspapers were full of sensational reports: “The safest in the world, the Titanic (ship) sank in the icy abyss of the Atlantic Ocean. On the fifth day of its tragic flight, the liner claimed 1,513 human lives.”
Disaster investigation
The sinking of the Titanic shook both sides of the Atlantic. The question of why the Titanic ended up at the bottom is haunted to this day. From the very beginning, people wanted to know in detail what was the reason for the sinking of the Titanic. But the court's decision read: "The liner hit an iceberg and went to the bottom." The Titanic (the dimensions of the ship, by the way, were very impressive) died from a banal collision with a floating block of ice. It seemed incredible.
Alleged versions of the tragic death
The point in the history of this catastrophe has not yet been set so far. Fresh versions of the death of the Titanic arise even today, a century later. There are several possible hypotheses. Each of them deserves close attention. The first version says that another sunken liner lies on the Atlantic bottom. It sounds like science fiction, but it is this version of the death of the Titanic that has real grounds. Some researchers argue that it is not the sunken ship Titanic that lies on the ocean floor, but its twin, the Olympic liner. The version seems fantastic, but it is not without evidence.
Great Britain ocean monster
On December 16, 1908, the firstborn was laid in Belfast - the Olympic steamer, later - the Titanic (the dimensions of the ship reached almost 270 meters in length) with a displacement of 66 thousand tons. Until now, representatives of the shipyard consider it the most advanced project that has ever been implemented. The ship was as tall as an eleven-story building and spanned four small city blocks in length. This ocean monster was equipped with two 4-cylinder steam engines and steam turbine. Its power was 50,000 horsepower, to electrical network the liner was connected to 10,000 light bulbs, 153 electric motors, four elevators, each of which was designed for 12 people, there were a large number of telephones. The ship was truly innovative for its time. Silent elevators, steam heating, a winter garden, several photo labs and even a hospital with an operating room.
Comfort and respectability
The interior decoration looked more like a fashionable palace than a ship. Passengers dined in a sumptuous Louis XVI-style restaurant and drank coffee on a sun-drenched veranda lined with climbing plants. Bridge parts were played in spacious halls, and elite cigars were smoked in soft smoking rooms. The Titanic had a rich library, a gym and even a swimming pool. A business class ticket to the Titanic would cost $55,000 these days. The liner became the flagship of the White Star Line. Pretty much the same in terms of comfort technical specifications the liner "Olympic" lost the championship without a fight. It was he who was supposed to become the star of transatlantic flights. But frequent accidents made him an outsider, and endless penalties, litigation and repair costs only added to the headaches for managers.
Unsolved version
The solution was obvious: to replace the beat-up Olympic, which had no insurance policy, with a new insured Titanic. The history of the ship "Olympic" was very unpresentable. However, just by changing the plates on the liners, similar as two drops of water, several problems could be solved at once. The main thing is the payment of insurance in the amount of one million pounds sterling, which could improve the financial affairs of the company. Small accident, big money, it's done. People should not have suffered, because the liner is unsinkable. In the event of an accident, the ship will drift, and ships passing by along the busy ocean route will pick up all the passengers.
Strange passenger behavior
Versions of the sinking of the TitanicThe main real evidence of this unprecedented scam is the refusal to travel 55 first-class passengers. Among those who remained on the shore were: John Morgan, the owner of the liner. Henry Frick, steel magnate and partner. Robert Breccon, US Ambassador to France. The famous rich man George Vanderbilt. The mystery of the death of the Titanic has an indirect confirmation of the version of the insurance scam, namely the strange behavior of Captain Edward Smith, who, by the way, was the captain of the Olympic during its first voyages.
The last captain
Edward Smith was considered one of the best commanders of his time. Working for the White Star Line, he received about 1,200 pounds a year. Other captains did not earn even half of this money. However, Smith's career was far from rosy. Many times the ships that he managed got into all sorts of accidents, ran aground or burned. It was Edward Smith who commanded the Olympic in 1911, when the uninsured ocean liner had several serious accidents. But Smith managed not only to escape punishment, but even to get promoted. He became the captain of the Titanic. Could the company's management, knowing about the captain's previous mistakes, assign him to the Titanic, and even just one flight? Could she use compromising evidence on the captain, so that in case of disobedience with a scandal, she could fire the person who brought the company huge losses? Perhaps the captain chose between a shameful write-off on the shore just before retirement and participation in a scam invented by his superiors. This was the last flight for Edward Smith.
What was the first mate thinking?
Another inexplicable mystery of the death of the Titanic is the strange behavior of William Murdoch, the first mate. Murdoch was on duty the night of the accident. When he received a message about an impending iceberg, he gave the order to direct the ship to the left and reverse, which is strictly prohibited. Is it possible that the first mate made a mistake and this is the reason for the death of the Titanic? But Murdoch has already encountered similar situation and he always did the right thing, directing the ship with his bow to an obstacle. In all sailing textbooks, this maneuver is described as the only correct one in this situation. On that last voyage for the Titanic, the chief mate acted differently. As a result, the main blow fell not on the bow, where the ship has the strongest place, but on its side. Almost a hundred meters of the starboard side opened like a tin can. The Titanic, whose death story is described in less than ten seconds, was practically dead. That is how long it took to pass the death sentence on the largest and most beautiful ship in the world. Why did Murdoch make a fatal mistake? If we assume that he, too, was in collusion, then the answer to the death of the Titanic is by itself.
What were the owners of the liner hiding?
Today, it is impossible to prove the version of the insurance scam, the White Star Line company was closed, the Olympic ship was scrapped, and all the documentation was destroyed. But even if we assume that the death of the Titanic was not rigged, it certainly was not without human error.
Mystery box key
Many years have passed since the sinking of the Titanic. The history of the ship, however, was continued in 1997, when a key was sold at a London auction for one hundred thousand pounds. He opened only one box on the Titanic, but it was this key that was not on board that fateful night. A chain of strange circumstances, a series of fatal coincidences and simply human negligence accompanied the superliner from the very beginning to the end of its first and last flight. Well, the item sold for fabulous money at the London auction was the usual key to an ordinary box. It contained the only equipment with which it was possible to recognize the danger threatening the ship - binoculars.
Forgetful XO
The thing is that locators appeared only in the 30s of the last century. And at that time, its functions were performed by the human eye. From the very high point on the ship, the sailor constantly looked forward along the course of the ship. The liner weighing 66 thousand tons, traveling at a speed of 45 km / h, has very low controllability, and the sooner the lookout notices the danger, the more likely it is to avoid it. Ordinary binoculars were the only help. Starpom Blair, for unknown reasons, was removed from the ship at the last moment. Frustrated, he simply forgot to give the shifter the key to the box where the binoculars were kept.
Encounter with an unusual iceberg
Titanic history of the shipForward looking had to rely only on their own vigilance. They noticed the iceberg too late, when it was almost impossible to change the situation. In addition, this iceberg was different from the others, it was black. During the drift, a huge block of ice melted and turned over. An iceberg that has absorbed tons of water has turned dark. It was incredibly difficult to spot him. If that fatal iceberg for the Titanic had been white, perhaps the sentinels would have seen it much earlier. Especially if they had binoculars.
"Titanic": the story of death, the beginning of events
But the strangest thing is that the command of the ship could have learned about the possibility of a collision with an iceberg much earlier than the forward lookers reported it. Radio operators, the voice and hearing of the Titanic, repeatedly received reports of ice floes drifting in the area. An hour before the lookout spotted the iceberg, the radio operator on the steamship California warned of the potential danger. But on the Titanic, the connection was rudely cut off. Even earlier, a few hours before the collision, Captain Edward Smith personally read three telegrams warning of ice floes. But they were all ignored. Officer Murdoch could interrupt the chain of human miscalculations by giving the fatal order: “Full back! Left hand drive." In the event of a head-on collision of the Titanic with an iceberg, there would be much more time for the evacuation of passengers. Perhaps the ship could keep afloat.
human negligence
Further errors followed one after another. The evacuation order was issued only 45 minutes after the collision. Passengers were asked to put on life belts and gather on the upper deck near the boats. And then it suddenly turned out that there were only twenty boats on the Titanic, which could accommodate no more than 1300 people, 48 lifebuoys and cork vests for each passenger and crew members. However, the vests were useless for northern regions Atlantic. The person who got into cold water died of hypothermia in half an hour.
Prophetic predictions of a science fiction writer
Immediately after the disaster, the whole world was shocked by an incredible coincidence. The date of the sinking of the Titanic is April 15, 1912. And fourteen years before the tragedy, an unknown London journalist Morgan Robertson finished his new novel. The science fiction writer spoke about the journey and the death of the huge transatlantic liner Titan: “On a cold April night at full speed, the steamer ran into an iceberg and sank.” Moreover, the science fiction writer accurately indicated the place of the sinking of the Titanic. The novel turned out to be prophetic, and the science fiction writer was dubbed Nostradamus of the 20th century. Indeed, there were many coincidences in the book: the displacement of the ship, its maximum speed, and even the number of propellers and lifeboats. Moreover, a few years later, the writer published his new novel, in which he predicted a war in the United States and Japan. Another coincidence: a copy of the book about the ship "Titan" was on the ship with one fireman. The sailor read it in the first days of the voyage, and the plot impressed him so much that he simply ran away in one of the ports. And this was not the only crew member who escaped from the Titanic. It remains a mystery whether everyone who escaped had read the book before, or whether they had better reasons.
Eyewitness accounts of the tragedy
Immediately after the sinking of the Titanic, special commissions were set up in England and the United States to investigate its causes. The surviving passengers talked about the loud bang that they heard after the collision with the iceberg. It was like an explosion. According to one version, a fire raged in the coal bunker of the liner. Some researchers believe that it started even before the Titanic left the port, others are sure that the fire broke out during the voyage.
A bit of history
Britain was being transformed by the technological revolution. Starting from the 30s of the 19th century, steam-powered merchant ships began to cross the Atlantic. The technology proved promising, and the admiralty of the kingdom concluded that steam would render the sailing fleet obsolete. When reports appeared in London that a steam engine was already being tested in France, which had also entered the struggle for naval dominance, the British had no choice but to accept the challenge. At first, large paddle wheels were used, which were installed on opposite sides of the sides. For the first time, a replacement for the paddle wheel appeared about ten years later, in the 40s of the 19th century. Shipbuilders came to the conclusion that the propeller is much more efficient than the wheel. Only after its invention and placement under the bottom of the ship did steam traction become a decisive advantage. But in most cases it remained experimental developments, sometimes the innovation was used on warships. Steam engines became widespread only in the 20th century, and coal was the only fuel for a long time. In the future, the transition from coal to fuel oil will be a step to the next level of development. But in the days of the Olympic-class superliners, ships powered by internal combustion engines were as rare as the steam engine of the first half of the 19th century. Be that as it may, the fire on board should not have affected the life of the ship and its passengers. There could not be any emergencies on the liner, this is the Titanic.
Further developments
Captain Smith ordered to localize the bunker in which the fire was raging. Due to the lack of oxygen, the fire should have died out, the problem would have resolved itself. A fire on board is a good enough reason to drive the liner to the nearest port with all your might. But when the Titanic hit the iceberg, it ripped open the skin of the ship, and oxygen got into the bunker. resounded powerful explosion. Many years later, after an underwater study of the remains of the ship, this version had additional arguments. A huge fault passes exactly where the coal compartments were. For the first time, the version of the fire appeared on the pages of American newspapers even before the surviving passengers and crew members of the Titanic were taken to New York. Not having factual material, and using only rumors, newspapermen composed the most incredible stories about tragedy. In any case, when the stokers were interrogated, they denied the fact of a fire, although it would seem that after the disaster they had nothing to hide. On the other hand, according to some accounts, Captain Smith went down to the boiler room and ordered everyone to be silent about the burning coal. What actually happened to the giant liner, we do not yet know. The Titanic, whose sinking story has become the subject of documentaries and feature films, will always be of interest to future generations.
New version of the death of the liner
The nature of the Titanic's fault not only fuels the version of the fire in the hold, but also allows some researchers to make an unexpected assumption. The liner sank another ship. At the beginning of the 20th century, a new secret weapon was tested in the seas. Perhaps the Titanic was hit by a torpedo. The version seems unusual, but the facts of the break and torn edges that could result from a torpedo attack make it serious. If the Titanic was torpedoed after all, one can only hope that someday researchers will get to that part of the ship, the study of which will help shed light on this version.
On April 14, 1912 at 11:40 p.m., the Titanic collided with an iceberg. As a result of a sliding collision with an ice block, the lining of the starboard side of the giant ship was damaged for a distance of one hundred meters, and water began to flow into five watertight compartments of the Titanic. In the sixth compartment, the leak was insignificant. But the 16 compartments into which the hold was divided, although they were considered watertight, their bulkheads were not hermetically connected to the decks from above, and the water overflowed into the other as one compartment was filled. This explains the gradually increasing trim (tilt of the ship in the longitudinal plane) on the bow of the Titanic, which ultimately led to the death of the giant.
However, this is precisely the sinister charm of this story, that not everyone agrees with the official version of death. There are other versions - one more bizarre than the other.
Let's start with the fact that at present the official version is considered to be this: the ship died not just because of a collision with an iceberg, but because of the high speed with which the Titanic was going.
And now - alternative versions, each of which has its adherents in the world club of mystery lovers.
1. A fire in the coal compartment that arose even before sailing and provoked an explosion first, and then a collision with an iceberg.
This one has existed for a long time, but one of the experts who has devoted more than 20 years to studying the history of the Titanic, Ray Boston, has put forward new evidence for this theory. According to him, the fire in the sixth hold of the ship broke out on April 2, and it was not possible to extinguish it. The owner of the ship, John Pierpont Morgan, decided that the Titanic would quickly get to New York, disembark the passengers, and then the fire would be extinguished. The ship went to sea with a fire on board, and during the voyage there was an explosion. The high speed of the Titanic at night, when the danger of collision with ice was especially high, can be explained by the fears of Captain Edward John Smith that his ship would fly into the air before arriving in New York. Despite numerous ice warnings from other ships, Smith did not slow down, causing the Titanic to collide with an iceberg.
2. Conspiracy theory: this is not the Titanic at all! This version was put forward by Robin Gardiner and Dan Van Der Watt, experts in the study of the reasons for the death of the ship, published in the book “The Titanic Mystery”. According to this theory, the wreck is not the Titanic at all, but its twin brother, the Olympic. These boats were virtually indistinguishable from each other. On September 20, 1911, the Olympic collided with the British Navy cruiser Hawke, resulting in severe damage to both ships. The owners of Olimpik suffered heavy losses, since the damage that was inflicted on Olimpik was not enough to cover the insurance payment. The theory is based on the assumption of a possible fraud in order to obtain insurance payments by the owners of the Titanic. According to this version, the owners of the Titanic intended to send the Olympic to the area of possible ice formation and at the same time convinced the captain not to slow down so that the ship would be seriously damaged when it collided with an ice block. This version was initially supported by the fact that a sufficiently large number of objects were raised from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, where the Titanic lies, but nothing was found that would carry the name Titanic. This theory was refuted after the details were raised to the surface, on which the Titanic's tail (building) number was stamped - 401. The Olympic had a tail number of 400. In addition, the Titanic's minted tail number was discovered and on the propeller of a sunken ship. And even despite this, the conspiracy theory still has a number of followers.
3. The Titanic was torpedoed by a German submarine. There is a version that the Titanic sank not at all from the damage that the iceberg inflicted on it, but from a torpedo fired by a German submarine, and in order to receive the same insurance payment. And the commander of the submarine, who agreed to be a participant in the scam, was a relative of one of the owners of the Titanic. But this theory does not have strong arguments in its favor. If the torpedo somehow damaged the hull of the Titanic, this would not have gone unnoticed by both passengers and crew members.
4. Mystical version: the curse of the pharaohs. It is known for certain that one of the historians, Lord Canterville, transported on the Titanic in a wooden box a perfectly preserved Egyptian mummy of a priestess - soothsayer. Since the mummy had a fairly high historical and cultural value, it was not placed in the hold, but placed directly next to the captain's bridge. The essence of the theory is that the mummy influenced the mind of Captain Smith, who, despite numerous warnings about ice in the area where the Titanic sailed, did not slow down and thereby doomed the ship to certain death. In favor of this version they say famous cases mysterious death people who disturbed the peace of ancient burials, especially mummified Egyptian rulers. Moreover, the deaths were associated precisely with a clouding of the mind, as a result of which people committed inappropriate actions, there were often cases of suicide. Pharaohs had a hand in the sinking of the Titanic?
5. Steering error. One of latest versions Titanic deserves to die special attention. It appeared after the novel by the granddaughter of the second mate of the captain of the Titanic, Ch. Lightoller, Lady Patten, “Worth its weight in gold”, was published. According to the version put forward by Patten in his book, the ship had enough time to dodge the obstacle, but the helmsman, Robert Hitchens, panicked and turned the helm in the wrong direction. A catastrophic error caused the iceberg to inflict fatal damage on the ship. The truth about what really happened on that fateful night was kept secret in the family of Lightoller, the oldest surviving officer of the Titanic and the only survivor who knew exactly what caused the sinking of the ship. Lightoller withheld this information for fear that the White Star Line, which owned the ship, would go bankrupt and his colleagues would lose their jobs. The only person to whom Lightoller told the truth was his wife Sylvia, who passed on her husband's words to her granddaughter. In addition, according to Patten, such a large and reliable liner as the Titanic sank so quickly because, after a collision with an ice block, it was not immediately stopped, and the rate of water entering the holds increased hundreds of times. The liner was not immediately stopped because the manager of the White Star Line, Bruce Ismay, persuaded the captain to continue sailing. He feared that the incident could cause considerable material damage to the company he leads.
6. The pursuit of the Blue Ribbon of the Atlantic. There were and still are many supporters of this theory, especially among writers, since it appeared precisely in writers' circles. The Blue Ribbon of the Atlantic is a prestigious shipping prize awarded to ocean liners for the fastest crossing of the North Atlantic. At the time of the Titanic, this prize was given to the Mauritania ship of the Cunard company, which, by the way, was the founder of this award, as well as the main competitor of the White Star Line. In defense of this theory, the opinion is put forward that the president of the company that owned the Titanic, Ismay, encouraged the captain of the Titanic, Smith, to arrive in New York a day ahead of schedule and receive an honorary prize. This allegedly explains the high speed of the ship in the dangerous area of the Atlantic. But this theory can easily be refuted, because the Titanic simply physically could not reach the speed of 26 knots at which the Mauritania of the Cunard company set a record, which, by the way, lasted more than 10 years after the disaster in the Atlantic.
Hello my dear readers! Today I would like to talk about serious things, even tragic ones. On April 15, the whole world celebrates an unfortunate event ... This is the date of the death of the Titanic, which contemporaries considered an unsinkable liner.
Surprising is the fact that so far, despite official version catastrophe, there are different opinions and versions of what happened on that ill-fated night.
The place where the Titanic sank
The Titanic was rightfully considered the most luxurious ship of the beginning of the last century, so the news of its death shocked the entire world community. According to official figures, about 1,500 people died, including passengers and crew members. Despite the fact that the twentieth century brought many disasters, catastrophes and wars, the tragedy of the Titanic remains an equally tragic event, interest in which has not subsided to this day. The event that took place near the island of Newfoundland on the night of April 14-15 was overgrown with many rumors and conjectures that have a sufficient number of followers.
The place where the Titanic sank on the map has the following coordinates - 41046' north latitude and 50014' west longitude.
However, it was later established that the declared data were incorrect, so even now there is no exact information regarding the exact coordinates of the crash site. This is not the only oddity that accompanied this whole story, so let's try to figure out some versions of what happened, because the tragedy itself is not limited to a collision with an iceberg, it is more extensive and complex.
Versions of the tragedy
Perhaps we will not know until the end of the whole truth of that night, despite the investigations. Of course, they brought some clarity to what happened, but there are still a lot of "blank spots" that still remain a mystery. Some evidence contradicted others, some evidence, if checked and studied in more detail, became more than doubtful - all this gave rise to many speculations and legends on this topic, which have their followers today.
Some of these versions may look incredible, but history shows us that a rational explanation of what is happening may not always be possible. Be that as it may, we need to talk about it, seek the truth, and then the truth will make us stronger. Another question is that the truth can hardly be known to you and me - to ordinary inhabitants who draw information from the Internet. In any case, we can study various versions and reasons for what happened, and everyone will decide for himself which one is close to him personally.
The first version is a conspiracy of the powers that be
We all love conspiracy theories, some of which smack a bit of schizophrenia and paranoia. However, some facts look so indisputable that you involuntarily move from the category of skeptics to a group of doubters, at least. In the story of the Titanic, everything is also very mysterious and controversial. But let's start in order.
Many people agree that the disaster with the Titanic was planned in advance. No matter how wild it may sound, but this is indicated by several curious facts. For example, John Morgan, a well-known American billionaire and, concurrently, the owner of the company that owned the liner, canceled his ticket exactly one day before the expected departure.
You probably say that this is nothing more than an ordinary coincidence? Maybe, but Morgan's example was followed by another 55 people who were supposed to swim in the first class. I think it is not worth mentioning that only rich people travel in the first classes, and if you consider that among these 55 there are such people as John Rockefeller, Henry Frick and Alfred Vandelfield, who were close friends of Morgan himself, then this suggests certain reflections.
I understand that the cancellation of the cruise cannot be considered the only evidence of this version.
But there are several other points that indirectly confirm this interpretation of events, or at least make us take a fresh look at them.
So, in 1907, an agreement was signed on the creation of a new cruise ship, which had no analogues in the world. Two sides - Bruce Ismay (by the way, a close associate of Rockefeller and Morgan) and Lord Pirri started a truly large-scale production, the result of which should be that very unsinkable ship. Then they said that the liner had a heavy-duty bottom, and the Titanic itself could stay afloat, even if four of its compartments were flooded.
However, in the 90s of the last century, Russian experts took samples of the Titanic's metal at depth in order to conduct a study. The results shocked many. It turned out that this is not just an ordinary metal, but also with a large addition of sulfur, which made it very brittle at low temperatures. Many wonder why the production of the Titanic, an advanced liner at that time, the advertising campaign for which was in full swing, used such poor quality steel. The explanation that a design error was made does not stand up to scrutiny.
There is a version that in this way the company saved its money, but they could not help but know that such steel would not withstand even the slightest collision in icy water, so such negligence is also in doubt. It also remains unclear why there were no searchlights on the Titanic, because this liner was considered the most modern and advanced. Also a miscalculation of the designers?
Indeed, there are many oddities.
By the way, one of the first who escaped that tragic night was our old friend Bruce Ismay. It was he who was among the first who boarded the lifeboat, after which he waited for the arrival of the RMS Carpathia steamer, which also belonged to the White Star Line company that manufactured the Titanic. An order was even given to rescue first-class passengers first, and the lower deck was ordered to be locked up. It was there that there were 1,500 people, among whom were many women and children who died that fateful night.
The second version is a substitution
The next version, which can also be attributed to a conspiracy theory, is the story of the Olympic. Few people know, but this is an exact copy of the Titanic, which was only two inches shorter than it, i.e. the length of the usual matchbox. Feel what I'm getting at?
The fact is that it was visually impossible to distinguish one ship from another. In addition, a separate book can be compiled about the misadventures of Olympus. So, immediately after launching, he collided with a dam. Then a large number of small and major accidents, so it's safe to call it an "unfortunate ship".
That is why many insurance companies did not want to deal with such an unlucky liner, not wanting to insure it, which the owners of the ship so zealously sought. It was decided to put the Olympic in the docks until a decision was made on its future fate.
We have a plan
Here, a version began to emerge, according to which the White Star Line company wished to get rid of the Olympic in a very original way, passing it off as the Titanic, which, by the way, was insured. Considering that they are structurally and outwardly very similar, it was not difficult to do this at all.
It is enough just to replace the plate with the name of the liner, change some interior items, etc. The plan really looks logical, because no one will even suspect about the substitution, quite reasonably believing that in front of him is the very “unsinkable” Titanic, and not the “eternal loser” Olympic.
Naturally, no one was going to intentionally sink the liner, because it is unlikely that anyone was convinced by the version that modern Titanic could drown from a normal collision with an iceberg. It is reasonable to assume that
the plan was to provoke a collision of the ship, and then sail safely to New York, and the owners of the company, in turn, will receive an impressive amount that is due to them under insurance.
Considering that Edward Smith, the captain of the ship, literally deliberately drove at high speed along a dangerous route, ignoring all sorts of warnings about icebergs nearby, then this version becomes quite plausible.
But, in 1985, when the hull of a sunken ship was discovered at a depth, this version was officially refuted. The fact is that the number 401 was clearly visible on the propeller of the liner, i.e. the serial number of the Titanic, while the number of the Olympic was the number 400. One could question this fact, assuming that the company replaced the propeller after a collision with another ship (and there were many in the history of the Olympic), but the serial number of the Titanic is found on other parts of the ship, so this moment can be closed. Although I agree, the version is interesting.
The third version is the fight for the Blue Ribbon
If you are a pragmatic person, then you will probably be interested in the pro version. blue ribbon". This award was given to those ships that crossed the Atlantic Ocean the fastest. Naturally, serious competition immediately flared up between the companies, because winning this award promised quite big advantages.
No, the winner did not receive a cash prize, but the ship itself received something more - this is a worldwide honor in the maritime industry, as well as an authority that can hardly be obtained in other ways. Such prestige inevitably led to material gain, because the vessel that received this award received a contract for the delivery of all kinds of mail - a very profitable business at that time. And judge for yourself, if you were a millionaire, which liner would you sail on? Of course, the one with the prestigious award.
At that time, the ship that owned the Blue Ribbon was Mauritania, owned by a longtime rival of the White Star Line. It is clear that the owners of the company were sleeping and saw how they would wipe their noses at the enemy, so they made a bet on the Titanic, hoping that it would cross the Atlantic Ocean faster than Mauritania. That is why, the captain of the Titanic walked on dangerous area, deliberately cutting the path.
Initially, the route assumed a small detour to avoid collision with icebergs, which are enough in that stretch of water. But Smith deliberately ignored the danger, driving at all times in a straight line, wanting to beat. This may seem crazy, but Smith naively assumed that even if a collision occurred, it would not lead to tragic consequences, and the record itself could only be postponed to a later date.
Such carelessness was very costly.
By coincidence, after the collision with the iceberg, five compartments were flooded, i.e. one more than the Titanic could carry. In addition, the captain counted on the fact that the iceberg would not break through the strong steel of the liner, because, in his opinion, this should not happen. Here we again return to the issue of the quality of the metal used in the production of the Titanic.
In addition, many supporters of this version lose sight of one important point. The fact is that the speed of Mauritania, the last owner of the Blue Ribbon before the Titanic, was 26 knots. The maximum speed of the Titanic itself was no more than 24 knots, so it is not clear how he could get ahead of Mauritania. Again, many will say that the captain knew this, so he deliberately did not slow down, moving along shortest route so there is no consensus. Riddles, riddles, riddles…..
Schizoteric reasons for the sinking of the Titanic
In a word, there are quite a few versions on the topic of the tragic death of the Titanic. This is something I haven't talked about yet. German torpedo, allegedly sunk the Titanic, and the curse of the Egyptian mummy! That's where the real schizophrenia I talked about at the beginning. So that you can appreciate the full scale of the rumors that still circulate around this tragedy
on the story about the mummy - I will dwell in more detail
In general, it was a very long time ago (we are talking about a mummy), a certain person lived in Egypt, who had the gift of foresight. Whether it really was so or not, I will not undertake, and this is not relevant to the case. So, our soothsayer died, after which they made a mummy out of her according to a long tradition. They found it during excavations that were carried out near Cairo at the end of the nineteenth century.
The mummy was buried with big amount various treasures, among which was the image of Osiris. There was an inscription flaunting and its meaning was literally as follows - you will crush with your eyes anyone who dares to stand in your way. This therefore applied to the mummy and those likely offenders who would attempt on her.
The mummy was bought first by one collector, then by another, and so on, along the chain. All of them died from a terrible curse that swirled around the mummy, but who will understand the true causes of their death? If a person dies at the age of 90, then the mummy is unlikely to be the cause. In the end, the mummy is bought by an unnamed American millionaire who wishes to smuggle it from England to the US.
I don't think it's necessary to explain which vessel he chose for this.
According to legend, the mummy was kept in an ordinary wooden box in the immediate vicinity of the captain's bridge. Naturally, the rogue Smith, being a curious fellow by nature, looked into this cherished box. Meeting the eyes of the mummy, the captain immediately lost his mind. This forced him to drive through a dangerous stretch of water where icebergs drifted, while still not slowing down.
Surprisingly, there are supporters of this theory
However, they miss one point. The meaning of mummies is the ability to preserve the shell of the body so that the soul of the deceased can return. Return to the place from which she, in fact, fluttered. It would be logical to assume that the main task of the mummy would be to get rid of all kinds of risk and situations where her precious body could suffer.
It is clear that after she would have been in ice water, the mummy would have survived no more than a couple of days. Quite a dubious approach to self-preservation, frankly ... In general, this kind of version is the prerogative of the yellow press, so we will not judge them about it.
A thinking person simply will not take such a newspaper in his hands, but let the rest of them entertain themselves at their leisure with such tales.
By the way, I would like to apologize to Edward Smith, whose image I portrayed somewhat frivolously. Despite the fact that he led the Titanic on a dangerous route, he was a man of honor to the end. He stayed on the already dying ship, making no attempt to escape. It is an old maritime tradition, when the captain does not leave the sinking ship, and every time it literally takes your breath away.
In general, you and I are unlikely to get to know everything about the events that took place on the night of April 15th. Therefore, our best act will be to honor the memory of all dead passengers and crew members, once again remembering them.
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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 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 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 communication 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 ship number liner - 390904 - after the operation of "turning" numbers into letters, it 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, 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 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.
