The year the Titanic sank. Collision of the Titanic with an iceberg. High liner speed

The unsinkable Titanic, the pride and curse of the White Star Line.

This week humanity is celebrating the anniversary of famous ship in the world: exactly 100 years ago, on May 31, 1911, the passenger liner of the Olympic class was launched, which was beautifully and powerfully called the Titanic.

Millvina Dean (1912-2009) is the youngest passenger on the Titanic who miraculously escaped death. Millvina was two months and 27 days old at the time of the crash.

According to another (fortunately comic) theory, the Titanic sank from a collision with the Japanese lizard Godzilla.

Everyone knows that on April 15, 1912, in less than twelve months, the brainchild of the White Star Line sank in the waters of the Atlantic after colliding with an iceberg. Some, however, believe that the true causes of the disaster still remain in the shadows. In other words, for a whole century we have been fooled and deceived, but in fact “it was not like that, it was not like that at all.”

"Titanic" and "Olympic": changed!

In 1998, a book by a well-known expert on the unknown, Robin Gardiner, “Titanic”: the ship that did not sink? The absurd death of the ship and the mass of coincidences that led to the disaster forced Gardiner to look for a conspiracy in what had happened. And such a conspiracy was discovered, more precisely, reconstructed in Gardiner's brain: it turns out that it was not the Titanic that sank in the Atlantic Ocean, but the Olympic, skillfully disguised as it, the first ocean liner series of the same name.

In September 1911, while the Titanic was still under construction, the already launched Olympic collided near Southampton with the Royal Navy cruiser Hawke. The Olympic team was found guilty of the collision, which means that the White Star Line could not receive insurance. The company faced a huge financial gap. It was then that it was decided to go for a monstrous forgery: renaming the ships, passing off the damaged Olympic as the Titanic, sinking it and getting insurance. According to Gardiner, after the death of the pseudo-Titanic, the real Titanic continued to plow the seas under the name of Olympic until 1935, when it was finally sent to retire.

But what about the iceberg? Forget: there was no iceberg! There was a black-painted ship with its lights out, waiting for the Titanic at a predetermined spot, and in the darkness mistook the passengers for an iceberg. Of course, there were officers on board the Titanic who carried out a sinister plan. The owners of the White Star Line miscalculated in only one thing: their "unsinkable" ship sank too quickly to save all or almost all of the passengers (there would be enough lifeboats for everyone, because if the liner was sinking slowly, each boat would have time to make several raids).

Immediately upon the release of the book, specialists in the history of the Titanic did not leave stone unturned from Gardiner's theory, which does not prevent it from existing to this day. The hour is uneven, someone will also remember the third ship, the Britannic: during the First World War it was converted into a floating hospital, in November 1916 it hit a mine and sank, taking the lives of thirty people with it.

"Titanic" and "Titan": a prophecy

Immediately after the death of the Titanic, the editors of several publishing houses recalled the story of the writer-marine painter Morgan Robertson "Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan", created 14 years before the ill-fated voyage. According to its plot, the world's largest ocean liner "Titan" makes a voyage across the North Atlantic and dies on a calm April night when it collides with an iceberg, and most of the passengers drown because the ship does not have the proper number of boats. Main character, a degraded Navy officer, is hired on the Titan as a sailor, saves the young daughter of his former lover from death, and in the finale gains everything that he once lost.

According to the characteristics of the "Titan" Robertson differed slightly from the "Titanic": the length of the hull - 20 meters less, maximum speed- four knots more, passengers - 2500 (on the Titanic - 2207), lifeboats - 24 (on the Titanic - 20). Both the iceberg and the region coincided Atlantic Ocean, and a quiet night in April. True, only 13 people escaped the Titanic, while 705 passengers survived the death of the Titanic. In addition, the Titan did not sail from England to the United States, but in the opposite direction.

In 1898, when Morgan Robertson wrote Futility, no publisher dared to publish his manuscript on the grounds that it was too fantastical. The story was published in 1914 in the same collection with a story describing a future naval war between Japan and the United States, which begins with a Japanese surprise attack on American ships near the Philippines and Hawaii. In reality, kamikaze attacked the American fleet in Pearl Harbor on Oahu, an island in the Hawaiian archipelago.

How the author of "Futility" himself reacted to the death of the "Titanic" is unknown. On March 24, 1915, Robertson died at the age of 53 at the Alamak Hotel in Atlantic City. The fault was, perhaps, an overdose of mercury iodide, which was considered a medicine in those days, and was later banned from sale.

Interestingly, the matter is not limited to Robertson's story: when the Titanic sank, the next issue of the American Popular Magazine was already sent to print with Main Clue Garnett's story "The White Ghost of Disaster" - again about the tragic collision of an ocean liner with an iceberg in the Atlantic. ocean.

Titanic, Pope and Mummy

Immediately after the disaster, numerous legends arose about the curse that lay on the ship. The press immediately connected the death of the Titanic with the fact that the bosses of the White Star Line company deliberately refused to baptize their ships. They also said that when the liner was launched into the water, the traditional bottle of champagne was not broken on the side of the ship.

In Belfast, where the Titanic was built, a strange belief arose: that the ship was assigned the number 390904, which, if you look at it in the mirror, resembles the word “NOPOPE”, that is, the call “No Pope” common among Irish Protestants - “ No to the Pope." It was believed that in this way the owners of the Harland and Wolff shipyard, which built the ship, decided to demonstrate their anti-Catholic sentiments. This shipyard was famous for hiring mostly Protestants - either because Messrs. Harland and Wolf really despised catholic church, or due to the fact that the shipyard was located in the eastern part of Belfast, where there were one or two Catholics and counted. Be that as it may, in fact, the number of the Titanic was not 390904, but 401.

There are also legends associated with the most famous (after Leonard DiCaprio) passenger of the Titanic - the British journalist and writer William Thomas Stead who died in the disaster. Stead spent his life vehemently castigating the vices of Victorian society, including child prostitution, and as a journalist earned himself a scandalous reputation. Among other things, he published the story "From the Old World to the New" (1892), in which he described (presciently?) the death of a certain ship from a collision with an iceberg.

However, in connection with the Titanic, Stead is most often referred to in the context, paradoxically, of the "curse of the mummy." According to legend, shortly before the disaster, the journalist purchased a cursed mummy from the British Museum. Egyptian pharaoh. Hiding the mummy under the bottom of the car, Stead secretly delivered it to the Titanic and allegedly told other passengers about it the night before the ship met its icy fate.

Of course, the British Museum did not sell any mummy to Stead. Another thing is that no one can forbid people to believe in the curse of the Titanic. How else to come to terms with the catastrophe, if you do not explain it by the intervention of otherworldly forces?

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 explorers, since the location of the wreckage did not allow them to inspect the place where the ship hit the ship. 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. Despite the fact that most of the wooden trim has been eaten away by microorganisms, some 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 how "" would have looked 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).

105 years ago, the only voyage of the Titanic began. We offer interesting real stories liner passengers.

On April 10, 1912, the British liner Titanic left Southampton Port for her first and last voyage. Four days later, after a collision with an iceberg, the now legendary liner crashed. There were 2208 people on board the ship and only 712 passengers and crew members managed to escape. 3rd class passengers buried alive at the bottom of the ocean, and millionaires choosing the best seats in half-empty lifeboats, an orchestra playing until the last moment and heroes saving their loved ones at the cost of their own lives... All this is not only footage from a Hollywood movie, but also real stories of passengers from the Titanic.

The real cream of society gathered on the passenger deck of the Titanic: millionaires, actors and writers. Not everyone could afford to buy a class I ticket - the price was $60,000 at current prices.

3rd class passengers bought tickets for only $35 ($650 these days), so they were not allowed to go above the third deck. On the fateful night, the division into classes turned out to be more tangible than ever...

One of the first in lifeboat jumped Bruce Ismay - CEO company " white star Line", which owned the Titanic. The boat, designed for 40 people, set sail from the side with only twelve.

After the disaster, Ismay was accused of boarding a lifeboat, avoiding women and children, and of instructing the captain of the Titanic to increase speed, which led to the tragedy. The court acquitted him.

William Ernest Carter boarded the Titanic at Southampton with his wife, Lucy, and their two children, Lucy and William, and two dogs.

On the night of the disaster, he was at a party in the ship's restaurant. first class and after the collision, together with his comrades, he went on deck, where the boats were already being prepared. First, William put his daughter in boat number 4, but when it was his son's turn, they were in trouble.

Right in front of them, 13-year-old John Rison boarded the boat, after which the boarding officer ordered that teenage boys not be taken on board. Lucy Carter resourcefully threw her hat on her 11-year-old son and sat down with him.

When the boarding process was completed and the boat began to descend into the water, Carter himself quickly got into it, along with another passenger. It turned out to be the already mentioned Bruce Ismay.

Roberta Mahoney, 21, worked as a servant to the countess and sailed on the Titanic with her mistress in first class.

On board, she met a brave young steward from the ship's crew, and soon the young people fell in love with each other. When the Titanic began to sink, the steward rushed to Roberta's cabin, brought her to the boat deck and put her in the boat, giving her his life jacket.

He himself died, like many other crew members, and Robert was picked up by the Carpathia ship, on which she sailed to New York. Only there, in her coat pocket, did she find a badge with a star, which, at the moment of parting, the steward put in her pocket as a memory of himself.

Emily Richards sailed along with her two young sons, mother, brother and sister to her husband. At the time of the disaster, the woman was sleeping in the cabin with her children. They were awakened by the screams of their mother, who ran into the cabin after the collision.

The Richardses were miraculously able to climb through the window into the descending lifeboat No. 4. When the Titanic completely sank, the passengers of her boat managed to pull seven more people out of the icy water, two of whom, unfortunately, soon died of frostbite.

The famous American businessman Isidor Strauss and his wife Ida traveled in first class. The Strauss have been married for 40 years and have never parted.

When the ship's officer invited the family to board the boat, Isidore refused, deciding to give way to women and children, but Ida also followed him.

Instead of themselves, the Strauss put their maid in the boat. Isidore's body was identified by a wedding ring, Ida's body was not found.

Two orchestras played on the Titanic: a quintet led by 33-year-old British violinist Wallace Hartley and an additional trio of musicians who were hired to give Café Parisien a continental touch.

Usually two members of the Titanic orchestra worked in different parts of the liner and in different time, but on the night of the death of the ship, all of them united into one orchestra.

One of the rescued passengers of the Titanic wrote later: “Many heroic deeds were committed that night, but none of them could compare with the feat of these few musicians, playing hour after hour, although the ship sank deeper and deeper, and the sea to the place where they stood. The music they played gave them the right to be included in the list of heroes of eternal glory."

Hartley's body was found two weeks after the sinking of the Titanic and sent to England. A violin was tied to his chest - a gift from the bride. Among the other members of the orchestra, there were no survivors ...

Four-year-old Michel and two-year-old Edmond traveled with their father, who died in the crash, and were considered "orphans of the Titanic" until their mother was found in France.

Michel died in 2001, he was the last male survivor on the Titanic.

Winnie Coates was on her way to New York with her two children. On the night of the disaster, she woke up from a strange noise, but decided to wait for the orders of the crew members. Her patience snapped, she rushed about the endless corridors of the ship for a long time, getting lost.

Suddenly met by a member of the crew directed her to the boats. She stumbled on a broken closed gate, but just at that moment another officer appeared, who saved Winnie and her children by giving them his life jacket.

As a result, Vinnie ended up on the deck, where she was boarding boat No. 2, on which, literally by a miracle, she managed to dive ..

Seven-year-old Eva Hart escaped the sinking Titanic with her mother, but her father died in the crash.

Ellen Walker believes she was conceived on the Titanic before it hit the iceberg. “It means a lot to me,” she admitted in an interview.

Her parents were 39-year-old Samuel Morley, the owner of a jewelry store in England, and 19-year-old Kate Phillips, one of his employees, fled to America from the man's first wife, seeking to start a new life.

Kate got into a lifeboat, Samuel jumped into the water after her, but did not know how to swim and drowned. "Mom spent 8 hours in a lifeboat," Helen said. "She was wearing only a nightgown, but one of the sailors gave her his jumper."

Violet Constance Jessop. Until the last moment, the stewardess did not want to be hired on the Titanic, but her friends convinced her because they thought it would be a "wonderful experience."

Before that, on October 20, 1910, Violet became a flight attendant. transatlantic liner"Olympic", which a year later, due to unsuccessful maneuvering, collided with a cruiser, but the girl managed to escape.

And from the Titanic, Violet escaped on a boat. During the First World War, the girl went to work as a nurse, and in 1916 she got on board the Britannic, which ... also went to the bottom! Two boats with a crew were pulled under the propeller of a sinking ship. 21 people died.

Among them could be Violet, who was sailing in one of the broken boats, but again luck was on her side: she managed to jump out of the boat and survived.

Fireman Arthur John Priest also survived a shipwreck not only on the Titanic, but also on the Olympic and Britannic (by the way, all three ships were the brainchild of the same company). Priest has 5 shipwrecks on his account.

On April 21, 1912, the New York Times published the story of Edward and Ethel Bean, who were on the Titanic in second class. After the crash, Edward helped his wife into the boat. But when the boat had already sailed, he saw that it was half empty, and threw himself into the water. Ethel dragged her husband into the boat.

Among the passengers of the Titanic was the famous tennis player Carl Behr and his lover Helen Newsom. After the disaster, the athlete ran to the cabin and brought the women to the boat deck.

The lovers were ready to say goodbye forever when the head of the White Star Line, Bruce Ismay, personally offered Beer a place on the boat. A year later, Karl and Helen got married, and later became the parents of three children.

Edward John Smith is the captain of the Titanic, who was very popular with both crew and passengers. At 2:13 am, just 10 minutes before the ship was completely submerged, Smith returned to the captain's bridge, where he decided to meet his death.

Second mate Charles Herbert Lightoller was one of the last to jump off the ship, narrowly avoiding being sucked into the ventilation shaft. He swam to the collapsible boat B, which was floating upside down: the Titanic's pipe that broke off and fell into the sea next to him drove the boat away from the sinking ship and allowed it to stay afloat.

American businessman Benjamin Guggenheim helped women and children into lifeboats during the crash. When asked to save himself, he replied: "We are dressed in our best clothes and are ready to die like gentlemen."

Benjamin died at the age of 46, his body was not found.

Thomas Andrews - first class passenger, Irish businessman and shipbuilder, was the designer of the Titanic ...

During the evacuation, Thomas helped the passengers into the boats. Last time he was seen in the first class smoking room near the fireplace, looking at a painting of Port Plymouth. His body was never found after the crash.

John Jacob and Madeleine Astor, the millionaire science fiction writer, were traveling first class with their young wife. Madeleine escaped on lifeboat number 4. The body of John Jacob was raised from the depths of the ocean 22 days after his death.

Colonel Archibald Gracie IV is an American writer and amateur historian who survived the sinking of the Titanic. Returning to New York, Gracie immediately began writing a book about his voyage.

It was she who became a real encyclopedia for historians and researchers of the disaster, thanks to the large number of names of stowaways and 1st class passengers who remained on the Titanic contained in it. Gracie's health was badly damaged by hypothermia and injuries, and he died in late 1912.

Margaret (Molly) Brown is an American socialite, philanthropist, and activist. Survived. When panic arose on the Titanic, Molly put people into lifeboats, but she herself refused to sit there.

"If the worst happens, I'll swim out," she said, until eventually someone pushed her into the number 6 lifeboat that made her famous.

After Molly organized the Titanic Survivors Relief Fund.

Millvina Dean was the last of the surviving passengers of the Titanic: she died on May 31, 2009 at the age of 97 in a nursing home in Ashurst, Hampshire, on the 98th anniversary of the liner's launch.

Her ashes were scattered on October 24, 2009 in the port of Southampton, from where the Titanic began its first and last flight. At the time of the death of the liner, she was two and a half months old.

Many decades have passed since terrible disaster, and no one doubted what exactly sent the magnificent Titanic to the bottom of the ocean. When the "unsinkable" ship, the largest, most luxurious ocean liner of its time, crashed into an iceberg on its very first voyage in 1912, it carried more than 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers to the bottom with it. As the ship slipped in North Atlantic, along with it, the secrets disappeared - how and why it sank.

Titanic is a British transatlantic steamship, the second Olympic-class liner. Built in Belfast at the shipyard "Harland and Wolf" from 1909 to 1912 by order of the shipping company "White Star Line". At the time of commissioning, it was the largest ship in the world. On the night of April 14-15, 1912, during the first flight, it crashed in the North Atlantic, colliding with an iceberg.

The Titanic was equipped with two four-cylinder steam engines and steam turbine. All power point had a capacity of 55,000 liters. With. The ship could reach speeds of up to 23 knots (42 km/h). Its displacement, which exceeded the twin steamer Olympic by 243 tons, was 52,310 tons. The ship's hull was made of steel. The hold and lower decks were divided into 16 compartments by bulkheads with sealed doors. If the bottom was damaged, the double bottom prevented water from entering the compartments. Shipbuilder magazine called the Titanic virtually unsinkable, a statement widely circulated in the press and among the public. In accordance with outdated regulations, the Titanic was equipped with 20 lifeboats, with a total capacity of 1,178 people, which was only a third of the ship's maximum load.

Titanic (on the left in the photo) in the port
Titanic in port

Two government investigations that were conducted in the wake of the disaster agreed that it was the iceberg, and not the defects and weakness of the ship itself, that sank the Titanic. Both commissions of inquiry concluded that the ship went to the bottom as a whole, and not in parts. There were no major breaks. The blame for the nightmarish disaster fell solely on the unfortunate captain of the ship, I. Smith, who also died along with the entire crew. Smith was blamed for the fact that the Titanic was rushing at a speed of 22 knots (41 km) through a dangerous ice field well known to sailors - in dark waters, off the coast of Newfoundland. The Titanic incident was over, it seemed, once and for all.

The clues lay at the bottom of the sea

However, doubts and questions about what could sink the seemingly indestructible ship remained. In 1985, when oceanographer Robert Ballard, after many years of searching, finally found the remains of the ship at a depth of about 4 km on the ocean floor, he discovered that in fact the Titanic had split in half on the surface of the ocean before sinking.

Why did it split in half? the experts wondered. Was the invincible Titanic weak in design?

Several years have passed since the discovery of Ballard, and now the first wreckage of the ship is raised from the ocean floor. A new hypothesis for the death of the Titanic is the low-grade steel used in the construction of the ship. However, a group of researchers came to the conclusion that it was not the steel that went to the skin of the ship, it was low-grade. Of poor quality were the rivets, the most important metal pins that held together the steel plates of the ship's hull. What's more, the recently found pieces of the bottom of the Titanic clearly indicate that the ship's stern never rose high into the air, as many Titanic experts, including Cameron, initially believed. In fact, the ship broke into pieces and sank, floating relatively flat on the surface of the ocean - a clear sign of flaws in its design, which were hidden after the disaster.

With the construction of the "Titanic" hurried

"Titanic" was built on a tight schedule - in response to the production of a new generation by a competitive company high-speed liners. The Titanic and its smaller siblings, the Olympic and Britannic, were the most grandiose ships in the history of shipbuilding. They were real colossi! - 275 meters from bow to stern! - even tall skyscrapers gave in to them. Specially equipped to withstand the threats of the North Atlantic, including huge waves and sudden collisions, these sister ships were also - as a matter of course - the safest. The Titanic could keep afloat even if 4 of its 16 watertight compartments were flooded - a real miracle for a ship of such giant size!

On the night of April 14, 1912, however, in just a few days of the Titanic's maiden voyage, its Achilles' heel played its sinister role. The ship was not nimble enough to avoid the iceberg that the lookouts (at the time, the only way to spot an iceberg) were shouting about at the last minute and in pitch darkness. The Titanic did not directly collide with the fatal iceberg, but drove over it on its right side. The ice tore holes in the ship's steel plates, flooding six "watertight" compartments.
Two hours later, the Titanic overflowed with water and sank.

Achilles' heel of the Titanic

Experts continued to look for explanations for the death of a ship equipped in accordance with all safety rules. And they came across a potentially weak link: more than three million rivets that fastened the ship's hull. Taking a sample of 48 of these metal rods, raised from the ocean floor, scientists found in them a high concentration of "dross" - sediment from melting. Because of this scale, the metal becomes brittle and may crack.

Not because of cheapness, but because time was running out, the builders of the Titanic began to use low-grade material. When the Titanic hit the iceberg, the weak steel bars in its bow cracked, exposing the seams in the hull and hastening the ship's demise. It is no coincidence that the water, flooding six compartments fastened with low-grade steel rods, stopped exactly where the high-grade steel rivets began.
Thus, one of the secrets carried away by the Titanic to the bottom of the ocean was discovered. If all the rivets that held the Titanic were made of stainless steel, the disaster could have been avoided. Not without reason, immediately after the death of the Titanic, two other giant ship- The Olympic and Britannic, built at the same shipyard and at the same time as the Titanic, were urgently and comprehensively strengthened: the steel plating of the hull doubled and were raised much higher than the bulkhead. The shipbuilding company clearly recognized defects and unacceptable miscalculations in high-speed - just to keep up with competitors! - the race to build the Titanic, tried her best to fix them and hide them from experts, insurance agents and all inquisitive mankind.

In 2005 new expedition went to the site of an old disaster. And very soon I found an answer to the questions that concern everyone. This time, the divers did not look at the main wreck on the seabed, but took a little to the side, where they found two large fragments from the bottom of the ship. When they began to analyze the jagged edges of these fragments of the bottom, they came to a startling conclusion. It was impossible for a ship to split in the way that experts believed for decades - with the stern rearing over the ocean at a 45-degree angle, and before the ship's hull broke in two. From these significant bottom wrecks it can be judged that their split was interrupted in the middle - a sure sign that the ship then listed at a small angle (about 11 degrees), that her stern was still buoyant when she cracked. If the back of the ship were to rise from the water at a 45-degree angle, as stunningly depicted in Cameron's film, the stern would quickly break away from the ship's hull and solid bottom fragments found at the bottom would be torn in two.

James Cameron and a team of scientists tried to reconstruct the course of events from the Titanic's collision with an iceberg to its complete sinking:

The tilt of the ship is a matter of life and death

It would seem, what does it matter how exactly the ship broke into pieces? For the passengers on the Titanic, it was a matter of life and death. In the cinema, the stern of the ship rises up and then goes, along with the whole hull, to the bottom. This is a long dramatic performance. In reality, the ship listed quite a bit as the water flooded the bow, and the passengers on board had a false sense of security.

The passengers and many of the crew did not understand the gravity of the situation. When the water flooded the bow of the hull sufficiently, the ship, remaining afloat, broke in two and sank in minutes.

Interestingly, most of the survivors confirm this unexpected course of events. Charlie Jugin, the Titanic's chef, was standing close to the stern as the ship began to sink, but he didn't see any signs of the hull breaking. There was no suction funnel, no colossal splash. Jugin said that he calmly sailed away from the ship without even getting his hair wet.

Farewell, cinematic romantic "Titanic"!

Unlike Cameron's film, a giant wave did not come from the crash site - none of those sitting in the rescue boats noticed it when the stern of the ship disappeared under water. One of the former passengers of the Titanic told how he slipped into the water, turned around - and did not see the ship.

So, farewell to the heartbreaking image of the Titanic with its stern raised high, plastered with doomed passengers, their common death cry, and now the ship plunges into the water at a steep angle! Unfortunately or fortunately, nothing like that actually happened.

Although some of those in the lifeboats saw the stern of the ship raised high in the air, this could be optical illusion. At an 11-degree tilt with the propellers sticking out in the air, the Titanic, already a twenty-story building, seemed even higher, and its roll in the water even steeper.

Could the Titanic be stronger, more enduring? Undoubtedly. High-quality steel rivets and a tighter, double-skinned hull could have prevented disaster, or certainly kept the ship afloat many times longer.

ABOUT terrible death luxury liner Titanic in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean everyone knows. Hundreds of people distraught with fear, heart-rending female cries and children's crying. Third-class passengers buried alive at the bottom of the ocean are on the lower deck and millionaires choosing the best seats in half-empty lifeboats are on the upper, prestigious deck of the ship. But only a select few knew that the sinking of the Titanic was planned, and the death of hundreds of women and children was another fact in a cynical political game.

April 10, 1912 Port of Southampton, England. Thousands of people in the port of Southampton gathered to see the liner Titanic, on board of which 2000 lucky people went on a romantic trip across the Atlantic. The cream of society gathered on the passenger deck - mining magnate Benjamin Guggenheim, millionaire John Astor, actress Dorothy Gibson. Not everyone could afford to buy a first class ticket for $3,300 at the prices of that time, or $60,000 at the prices of today. Passengers of the 3rd class paid only 35 dollars (650 dollars in terms of our money), therefore they lived on the third deck, not having the right to go upstairs, where the millionaires were accommodated.

Tragedy Titanic still remains the largest peacetime maritime disaster. The circumstances of the death of 1,500 people are still shrouded in mystery.

The archives of the British Navy confirm that for some reason there were half as many boats on the Titanic as needed, and the captain knew even before the collision that there would not be enough seats for all the passengers.

The crew of the ship ordered first to rescue passengers of the 1st class. One of the first to board a lifeboat was Bruce Ismay, CEO of the company. White Star Line", which belonged Titanic. The boat in which Ismay sat was designed for 40 people, but she left the side with only twelve.

The lower deck, where there were 1,500 people, was ordered to be locked so that third-class passengers would not burst upstairs to the boats. Panic broke out below. People saw how water began to flow into the cabins, but the captain had an order to save rich passengers. The order - only women and children, was made much later, and according to experts, the sailors were primarily interested in this, since in this case they became rowers on boats and they had a chance of salvation.

Many passengers of the second and third classes, without waiting for the boats, threw themselves overboard in life jackets. In a panic, few people understood that it is almost impossible to survive in icy water.

sinking of the titanic

In the list of passengers of the third class, which only recently became public, the name of Winni Goutts (Winnie Couts), a modest Englishwoman with two sons, appears. In New York, the woman was waiting for her husband, who a few months earlier got a job in America. It will seem incredible, but 88 years later, on February 3, 1990, Icelandic fishermen picked up a woman with that name on the shore. Wet, frozen in tattered clothes, she cried and screamed that she was a passenger Titanic and her name is Winnie Couts. The woman was taken to a psychiatric hospital and for a long time was mistaken for a madwoman, until one of the journalists found her name in the handwritten lists of Titanic passengers. She described the chronology of events in detail and never got confused. The mystics immediately put forward their version - they fell into the so-called space-time trap.

After the declassification of the archives Investigation into the death of 1,500 passengers on the Titanic» On July 20, 2008, the Senate Commission of Inquiry learned that on the night of the disaster, almost 200 passengers managed to board boats and sail away from the sinking ship. Some of them describe a strange phenomenon. At about one in the morning, passengers saw a large luminous object near the liner. The men thought that these were the lights of another ship. R.M.S. Carpathia", which can save them. About 10 boats sailed to this light, but after half an hour the lights went out. It turned out that there was no ship nearby, and the liner " R.M.S. Carpathia Came only after 1 hour. Many eyewitnesses described strange lights observed near the site. wreck of the titanic. These testimonies were classified.

Anomalous events around sinking of the Titanic have been carefully hidden for a long time. It is known that no one could officially confirm the identity of Winnie Couts.

In the ranking of the largest maritime disasters XX century published by a popular Internet publication Titanic occupies by no means the last place. However, in the column "Cause of death - a collision with an iceberg", it appears in this list only once. The first and last case in the history of navigation when a ship sank due to a collision with an iceberg. Moreover, the consequences of the collision are comparable to the results of a major military operation. What is this?

The official version of the disaster says that Titanic collided with a black iceberg that had recently capsized in the water and was therefore invisible against the night sky. No one has ever wondered why the iceberg was black. The lookout on duty Frederick Fleet, a few seconds before the collision, saw some huge dark mass and heard a strange, very loud rattle coming from under the water, not like the sound of contact with an iceberg.

After 80 years, Russian researchers descended to the Titanic for the first time and confirmed that the ship's hull had indeed been cut. Why did the lookouts not notice anything in advance. This is surprising, but they did not have binoculars, that is, formally they were in the safe, but the key to it mysteriously disappeared. And one more strange detail - Titanic the most perfect of the beginning of the 20th century was not equipped with searchlights. Such carelessness looks, at least, strange, because on Titanic telegrams came in all day warning of icebergs plying in the area.

After weighing all the events and facts, it seems that the Titanic disaster was prepared on purpose, but who benefited from the death Titanic and why hundreds of innocent people were drowned. It was clear to the people behind the largest catastrophe of the century that not everyone would believe in a collision with an iceberg. Until now, we are offered many versions to choose from, whoever likes what.

For example, in order to receive an insurance payment, they flooded not Titanic, and the same type of passenger ship Olympic, which was operated for a long time and by 1912 was pretty dilapidated. But in 1995, Russian scientists refuted this assumption with the help of remote-controlled modules introduced inside the sunken ship. It has been proven that it is not the Olympic that lies at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

Then a version was thrown into print that Titanic sank in pursuit of the prestigious Blue Ribbon of the Atlantic award. Allegedly, the captain wanted to arrive at the port of New York a day ahead of schedule in order to receive the prize. Because of this, the ship was moving in a dangerous area at maximum speed. The authors of this version completely overlooked the fact that Titanic just technically could not reach the speed of 26 knots, at which the previous record was set.

They also talked about the mistake of the helmsman, who misunderstood the captain's order, and being in a stressful situation, put the steering wheel in the wrong direction.

Maybe Titanic was hit by a torpedo from a German submarine and this disaster actually became the first episode of the First World War. Numerous underwater studies subsequently did not find even indirect signs of a possible torpedo hit, so the fire became the most plausible version of the death of the Titanic.

On the eve of departure, a fire broke out in the hold of the liner, where coal was stored. They tried to put it out, but not successfully. The richest people of that time, cinema stars, the press, an orchestra were already gathered on the pier. The flight could not be cancelled. The owner of the ship, Bruce Ismay, decided to go to New York and try to put out the fire along the way. That is why the captain drove at full speed, fearing with all his might that the ship was about to explode and ignored the message about icebergs.

Another oddity is the owner of the company " White Star Line", which belonged Titanic multimillionaire John Pierpont Morgan, Jr., canceled his ticket 24 hours before departure and removed the famous collection of paintings from the flight, which he was going to take to New York. In addition to Morgan, another 55 first-class passengers refused to travel on the Titanic in just one day, mostly partners and acquaintances of the millionaire - John Rockefeller, Henry Frick, US Ambassador to France Alfred Vandelfield. Previously, this fact was not given almost any importance, but only recently scientists compared certain facts and came to the conclusion that the Titanic was the first major disaster aimed at establishing world domination.

Billionaires rule the world, whose goal is unlimited power. accident on Chernobyl nuclear power plant, collapse Soviet Union, attack on the Twin Towers of the World shopping center- links of one chain. The sinking of the Titanic not the first and not the last planned disaster. But why did the world government decide to flood Titanic. The answer is to be found in the events of the early 20th century. It was during these years that the sharp growth of industry began - the gasoline engine, the incredible development of aviation, industrialization, the use of electricity in all industries, the experiments of Nikola Tesla, and so on. World financial leaders understood scientific and technical progress, may soon blow up the world order on planet Earth. John Rockefeller, John Pierpont Morgan, Karl Mayer Rothschild, Henry Ford, who are the world government, understood that following the rapid growth of industry, countries would begin to develop, which in their world concept were assigned the role of only raw material appendages, and then the redistribution of property on the planet would begin, and control over the processes taking place in the world will be lost.

Every year the socialists declared themselves more and more, trade unions gained strength, crowds of protesters demanded freedom and independence. And then it was decided to remind humanity who is the boss in the world.

In the mid-90s, Russian scientists dived to the Titanic and took samples of the metal, which was then analyzed by specialists from the American Institute. The results were truly stunning - by the sulfur content, it was found that it was an ordinary metal. And later studies showed that the metal was not just the same as on other ships, it was of much worse quality, and in icy water it generally turned into a very fragile material. In the autumn of 1993, an event occurred that put an end to the study of the causes of death Titanic. At the New York Conference of American shipbuilding experts, the results of an independent analysis of the causes of the disaster were announced. Experts say they don't understand why such poor quality steel was used for the hull of the world's most expensive ship. IN cold water the hull of the Titanic cracked at the first impact on an insignificant obstacle, while high-quality steel is only deformed.

Experts believed that in this way the owners of the shipbuilding company were trying to save money, but it never occurred to anyone to ask why the billionaire owners of the ship cut costs, endangering their own safety. And everything is quite logical, it was a real diversion. Fragile metal, cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean and a dangerous route. It only remained to wait for the SOS signal from the crashed Titanic. During the investigation of the circumstances of the disaster, the US Judicial Commission proved that the northern route that the Titanic was on was chosen by order of Bruce Ismay. He was on board the ship, but was one of the first to be evacuated and safely waited for the arrival. R.M.S. Carpathia", which also belonged to the company" White Star Line” and was specially located nearby to save wealthy passengers. But " R.M.S. Carpathia"an order was given, is not too close, because the disaster was supposed to be a frightening action for the whole world.

Now we can say with certainty sinking of the titanic it was an elaborate propaganda move. Millions of people around the world were shocked by the fate of third-class passengers buried alive, they remained immured in their cabins.

In the eyes of the world government, third-class passengers are you and me - Russia, China, Ukraine and the Middle East, and in December 2012 they are preparing a new act of intimidation for us, but which one. It remains only to wait, and not for long.

Watch National Geographic's reconstruction of the sinking of the Titanic