How many ships were like the Titanic. The sinking of the Titanic scientific facts video. Number of passengers and crew

Building

Construction and equipment

Specifications

Bulkheads

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

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

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

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

Masts

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

Service premises

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

Second bottom

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

Power point

Propellers of the Titanic before launching the ship

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

Pipes

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

Electrical supply

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

Connection

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

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

Swimming and crash

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

North and South transatlantic routes. ice conditions

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

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

Chronology

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

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

Stages of the sinking of the Titanic

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

clash

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

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

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

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

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

The Titanic is sinking

lifeboats

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

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

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

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

Refusal of assistance by the steamer "Californian"

"Californian"

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

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

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

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

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

The composition of the dead and the survivors

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

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

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

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

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

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

Theories about the causes of the accident

sheathing

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

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

radio operators

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

The radio log from the Titanic did not survive, but according to the surviving records from various ships that had contact with the liner, it was possible to more or less restore the picture of the work of radio operators. Reports of drifting ice and icebergs began to arrive already in the morning of the fatal date - April 14, the exact coordinates of the high-risk zone were indicated. The Titanic continued to sail on, without swerving off course or slowing down. At 19:30, in particular, a telegram came from the Mesaba transport ship: “I report ice from 42 degrees to 41 degrees 25 minutes north latitude and from 49 degrees to 50 degrees 30 minutes west longitude. Saw a large number of icebergs, ice fields. At this time, the Titanic's senior communications officer, Jack Phillips, worked for the benefit of passengers, transmitting an inexhaustible stream of messages to the Ras Cape station, while most important message so the captain didn’t get it, lost in a pile of paper - the Mesaba radio operator forgot to mark the message as “Ice Report” with the prefix MSG, which meant "personally to the captain." This little detail overshadowed Philips' selfless work.

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

Iceberg

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

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

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

Maneuvering

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

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

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

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

Buoyancy

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

Slowing down or avoiding the iceberg field

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

Delayed reaction on the bridge

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

Causes of the tragedy

Subjective reasons

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

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

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

Objective reasons

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

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

Flood depth

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

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

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

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

Conspiracy theory

Reflection of the Titanic in art

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

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

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

see also

• Titanic Belfast (museum)

Notes

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

On April 10, 1912, the huge ship Titanic set off on its first and last voyage, the sad story of which still sounds incredible. A few days later, he suffered a large-scale shipwreck, and on April 15 we will celebrate the 104th anniversary of this tragedy.

Many people know about the Titanic cruise ship only what it showed in its film of the same name directed by James Cameron.

Namely, that it was the largest ship built at that time, that it cost a lot of money to get on it, and that on its very first voyage it was wrecked, colliding with a drifting iceberg.

The Titanic is about the same length as the Empire State Building.

For reference: the New York skyscraper has 103 floors. Think for a moment to realize the scale a cruise ship. Realized?

The total length of the Titanic is 269.1 m, and the roof of the Empire State Building starts at 381. That is, another hundred meters and the ship would be as huge as the largest skyscraper in New York.

Today such liners exist. For example, "Queen Mary 2", "Independence of the Seas" and cruise ships"Oasis" class.

The launch of the Titanic was not accompanied by traditional rituals "for good luck"

That's where the trouble is. When the ship set off on its first and last voyage, a bottle of champagne was not broken on its side.

It was also customary in the early 20th century to have cats on board because they helped keep rodents out. And it was also believed that they bring good luck and protect the ship from trouble.

As you may have guessed, there were no cats on the Titanic. But there were nine dogs, two of which survived the shipwreck.

A novel describing similar events was published 14 years before the tragedy.

The trouble that befell the Titanic on the night of April 14-15, 1912, was described by Morgan Robertson in his novel The Futility, or the Death of the Titan, back in 1898.

There are so many coincidences with a real catastrophe in this literary work that it is hard to believe. Starting with the similar name of the ship (in the novel it was called "Titan") and ending with the details that prevented all passengers and crew members from escaping.

The fictional ship also had a similar design to the real Titanic, and it sank under the same circumstances - colliding with an iceberg on a cold April night. And even the crash area is the same - 740 km from Newfoundland in the northern waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

In addition, both in the novel and in real life, more than half of the people died due to the fact that there were not enough lifeboats on the ship.

Titanic watchmen didn't have binoculars

No wonder the guards couldn't see huge iceberg floating in their direction, advance. They didn't even have binoculars.

And given the size of the ship, they could hardly see anything at least a kilometer beyond its bow or stern.

It is strange that with such a scale of construction and the desire to make the ship unsinkable, they forgot about such a small but very important detail.

So it turned out that after the iceberg was seen, only 37 seconds passed before the collision with it.

Titanic sank for 2 hours and 40 minutes

After a collision with an iceberg, the ship began to go to the bottom of the ocean, at first very slowly, until the water only flooded the decks, and then picking up speed faster and faster.

In total, the whole process lasted almost three hours, but the final stage of the death of this titan took very little time - the ship reached the bottom approximately 15 minutes after the start of the dive.

The Titanic sank to the bottom at a speed of 16 km/h. Now he rests at a depth of 3750 m.

Many Titanic passengers had to sail on other ships

Not everyone boarded the ship of their own free will. The fact is that during the launch of the Titanic, workers staged a strike, which led to interruptions in the supply of coal.

Because of this, transport companies had to cancel flights of other ships in order to transport coal from them for the Titanic so that it could launch.

Along with coal, the passengers of ships whose flights were canceled also went to the liner. Here is the bad luck.

The ship's chief baker survived because he was drunk.

Charles Joughin miraculously escaped from the icy water, the temperature of which was about -2 ° C, because he was damn drunk.

In such cold water, few could survive more than 15 minutes, and one in five deaths from cold shock overtakes in two minutes.

The baker managed the incredible - he drifted in the cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean for about two hours, and, according to him, he managed not to freeze only because he had drunk whiskey before that.

Jowyn said he didn't feel the cold. So the next time you're on a cruise, take a couple of bottles of liquor with you. Just in case.

1. 3 million rivets were used to build the Titanic, most of which were handmade.

2. To launch the ship into the water, it took 23 tons of fat, locomotive oil and liquid soap to lubricate the gangways.

3. The designers considered the liner unsinkable. The double bottom and 16 watertight bulkheads were know-how for that time. However, the designers did not know how penetrating an iceberg could be.

4. On the Titanic there was no such simple thing as binoculars. The captain fired his second mate, Blair, who, in retaliation, stole the keys to the safe, which contained binoculars for lookouts.

5. The shipwreck happened on April 14, 1912. Events are recreated to the smallest detail. From the very morning, ten times the crews of other liners transmitted reports that icebergs were already nearby, but the Titanic ignored these warnings. The last report was received on the Titanic 40 minutes before the collision. But the radio operator of the Titanic did not even listen to the message and cut off the connection.

6. Many celebrities of that time were on the liner. Among them, for example, was the millionaire and feminist Margaret Brown. She was famous for knowing five languages ​​and swearing at them like a shoemaker. After the collision with the iceberg, Margaret helped to seat people on the boats, but she herself was in no hurry to leave the ship. Finally, someone pushed her into a boat by force and sent her out to sea. Having reached another ship, the Carpathia, Margaret immediately began looking for blankets and food for the victims, compiled lists of survivors, and collected money. By the time the Carpathia arrived at the port, she had raised $10,000 for the survivors.

7. Another famous Titanic passenger, businessman Benjamin Guggenheim, put his companion in a lifeboat. He assured her that they would see each other soon, although he knew that the situation was hopeless. Together with the valet, he returned to the cabin and changed into a tailcoat, and then sat down at a table in the central hall and began to drink whiskey. When someone suggested that they still try to escape, Guggenheim replied: "We are dressed in accordance with our position and are ready to die like gentlemen."

8. An outstanding ticket to the Titanic's launching ceremony went under the hammer at a London auction for $56,300. A menu from the ship with a list of 40 dishes was sold in New York for $31,300. Another similar menu in London sold for £76,000. The keys to the ship's quarters, which housed the lifeboat lanterns, also survived and were sold for £59,000.

9. The liner was sinking to the music. The orchestra to the last stood on the deck and played the church hymn "Nearer, Lord, to Thee."

10. Russian deep-sea submersibles "Mir" in 1991 and 1995 sank to the ship, which is now at a depth of 3.8 kilometers. Then the devices shot a video that was included in the notorious film by James Cameron. This year, in honor of the centenary of the sinking of the liner, our submariners again promised to dive to the Titanic.

11. UNESCO waited a hundred years to declare the wreckage of the Titanic a cultural heritage site. They have a special convention for such cases. Now UNESCO will ensure that items from the Titanic do not go to uncultured divers.

12. Released in honor of the centenary, Titanic 3D has already grossed an impressive $17.4 million in the US. "Titanic" by James Cameron in 1997 was a phenomenal success and fees for those times are huge: $ 1.8 billion. It was only 12 years later that the movie "Avatar" managed to break this record.

13. The ill-fated black iceberg, or rather, his photograph, was found 90 years after the death of the Titanic. A few days after the tragedy, a certain Stefan Regorek from Bohemia on another liner sailed past the crash site and photographed the iceberg. After a thorough examination, it was proved that the vessel could well have made dents on the iceberg. So the ice block also suffered.

14. Jack Dawson, the hero of the very film that brought fame and fortune to Cameron, is a real character. True, Cameron later assured that he took the name from the ceiling and that this was a coincidence. However, the real Jack Dawson was a collier on the Titanic. True, he was in love not with the green-eyed Kate Winslet (she had not yet been born then), but with the sister of his friend, who persuaded him to become a sailor. In the end, of course, everyone died.

15. Legends still tell about the Titanic. For example, lovers of mysticism point out that in 1898 the writer Morgan Robertson wrote the novel "Vanity" - about a huge transatlantic liner and its smug passengers. A lot of things coincide in the story: the name of the ship is "Titan" and even a collision with an iceberg on a cold April night.

16. Another legend says that once every six years, radio operators catch the ghost signal SOS from the Titanic on the air. This was first announced by the crew of the battleship Theodore Roosevelt in 1972. The radio operator dug through the archives and found notes from his colleagues that they also received strange radio messages allegedly from the Titanic: in 1924, 1930, 1936 and 1942. In April 1996, the Canadian ship Quebec received an SOS signal from the Titanic.

17. Although the official version is that the Titanic sank an iceberg, not everyone believes it. For example, some have claimed that the Titanic was sunk by a German torpedo fired by employees of the company that built the liner in order to obtain insurance. However, this sounds unconvincing, given how many employees of the company died on April 14, 1912.

18. The Titanic wasn't the only one. large liner White Star Line. The ship "Olympic" began to be built simultaneously with the "Titanic". In 1911, when leaving for the 11th voyage, the Olympic collided with the British cruiser Hawk. At the same time, the latter miraculously remained afloat, while the Olympic escaped with minor damage.

19. The younger brother of the Titanic, the ship Britannic, was supposed to be called the Gigantic, but after the crash of the first liner, the builders decided to moderate their ambitions. The Britannic was the most comfortable of the three ships, with two hairdressers, a children's playroom, and a second-class gymnasium. Unfortunately, passengers did not have time to appreciate the merits of the new liner. After the outbreak of the war, she was converted into a hospital ship and soon hit a mine near Greece. True, most of the people on board were saved.

20. The last passenger on the Titanic died in 2009 at the age of 97. At the time of the shipwreck, she was 2.5 months old.

The 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.

Vessel information

The Titanic was equipped with two four-cylinder steam engines and a steam turbine.

• The entire power plant 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.

The cabins and public areas of the Titanic were divided into three classes.

First class passengers were offered a swimming pool, a squash court, an A la carte restaurant, two cafes, and a gym. All classes had dining and smoking lounges, open and closed promenades. The most luxurious and refined were the first-class interiors, made in various artistic styles using expensive materials such as mahogany, gilding, stained glass, silk and others. Cabins and salons of the third class were decorated as simply as possible: steel walls were painted white or sheathed with wooden panels.

1 On April 0, 1912, the Titanic left Southampton on her first and only voyage. Having made stops in French Cherbourg and Irish Queenstown, the ship entered the Atlantic Ocean with 1,317 passengers and 908 crew members on board. Captain Edward Smith commanded the ship. On April 14, the Titanic radio station received seven ice warnings, but the liner continued to move almost at top speed. To avoid meeting with floating ice, the captain ordered to go a little south of the usual route.

• At 23:39 on April 14, the lookout reported to the captain's bridge about the iceberg directly ahead. Less than a minute later there was a collision. Having received several holes, the ship began to sink. First of all, women and children were put on the boats.
• At 2:20 am on April 15, the Titanic sank, breaking in two, killing 1,496 people. 712 survivors were picked up by the steamer "Carpathia".

The wreckage of the Titanic rests at a depth of 3750 m. They were first discovered by the expedition of Robert Ballard in 1985. Subsequent expeditions recovered thousands of artifacts from the bottom. The bow and stern parts have sunk deep into the bottom silt and are in a deplorable state; it is not possible to bring them to the surface intact.

The wreck of the Titanic

The disaster claimed the lives of, according to various sources, from 1495 to 1635 people. Until December 20, 1987, when the Philippine ferry Dona Paz sank, killing more than 4,000 people, the death of the Titanic remained the largest in terms of the number of deaths at sea in peacetime. Informally, it is the most famous disaster of the 20th century.

Alternative versions of the death of the ship

And now - alternative versions, each of which has its adherents in the world club of mystery lovers.

Fire

A fire in the coal compartment that arose even before sailing and provoked an explosion first, and then a collision with an iceberg. The owners of the ship knew about the fire and tried to hide it from the passengers. This version was put forward by the British journalist Shenan Moloney, writes The Independent. Moloney has been investigating the causes of the sinking of the Titanic for over 30 years.

In particular, he studied photographs taken before the ship left the shipyard in Belfast. The journalist saw black marks along the right side of the ship's hull - just where the iceberg had pierced it. Subsequently, experts confirmed that the traces were probably caused by the fire that had started in the fuel storage. “We looked at exactly where the iceberg got stuck, and it seems that this part of the hull was very vulnerable in this place, and this happened even before it left the shipyard in Belfast,” says Moloney. A team of 12 tried to put out the flames, but they were too big to quickly bring under control. It could reach temperatures up to 1000 degrees Celsius, which made the Titanic's hull very vulnerable in this place. And when he hit the ice, experts say, he immediately broke. The publication also added that the management of the liner forbade passengers to talk about the fire. “This is a perfect match of unusual factors: fire, ice and malpractice. No one has investigated these marks before. It completely changes history,” says Moloney.

CONSPIRACY

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 parts 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.

German attack

1912 The First World War is two years away, and the prospect of an armed conflict between Germany and Great Britain is becoming more and more likely. Germany is the owner of several dozen submarines, which during the war will unleash a ruthless hunt for enemy ships trying to cross the ocean. For example, the reason for America's entry into the war will be that the U-20 submarine will sink the Lusitania in 1915 - the twin of the same Mauritania that set the speed record and won the Blue Ribbon of the Atlantic - remember?

Based on these facts, in the mid-nineties, some Western publications offered their own version of the death of the Titanic: a torpedo attack by a German submarine that secretly accompanied the liner. The purpose of the attack was to discredit the British fleet, famous for its power throughout the world. In accordance with this theory, the Titanic either did not collide with the iceberg at all, or received very minor damage in the collision and would have remained afloat if the Germans had not finished off the ship with a torpedo.

What speaks in favor of this version? Honestly, nothing.

There was a collision with an iceberg - this is beyond doubt. The deck of the ship was even covered with snow and ice chips. Cheerful passengers started playing football with ice cubes - that the ship is doomed, it will become clear later. The collision itself was surprisingly quiet - almost none of the passengers felt it. A torpedo, you see, could hardly have exploded completely silently (especially since some claim that the submarine fired as many as six torpedoes at the ship!).

Supporters of the theory of the German attack claim, however, that people in the boats heard a terrible roar just before the Titanic sank - well, that was two and a half hours later, when only the stern lifted into the sky remained above the water and the death of the ship did not raise any doubts. It is unlikely that the Germans would have fired a torpedo at an almost sunken ship, would they? And the roar that the survivors heard was due to the fact that the stern of the Titanic rose almost vertically and huge steam boilers fell from their places. Also, do not forget that at about the same minutes the Titanic broke in half - the keel could not withstand the weight of the rising stern (although they only find out about this after finding the liner at the bottom: the break occurred below the water level), and this is also unlikely to have happened silently . And why would the Germans suddenly begin to sink a passenger liner two years before the start of the war? This seems, to put it mildly, doubtful. And to put it bluntly, it's absurd.

A curse

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. Known cases speak in favor of this version. 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?

Steering error

One of the latest versions of the death of the Titanic deserves 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.

Chasing 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 award given to ocean liners for record speed crossing 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 vessel in dangerous area 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.

But how was it really?

Regrettably, but, studying the history of the most famous maritime disaster, one has to admit that the Titanic owes its death to a long chain of fatal accidents. If at least one link of the sinister chain had been destroyed, the tragedy could have been avoided.

Perhaps the first link was the successful start of the journey - yes, yes, that's right. On the morning of April 10, during the departure of the Titanic from the quay wall of Southampton port, the superliner passed too close to the American ship New York, and a phenomenon known in navigation as the suction of ships arose: the New York began to be attracted to the moving nearby "Titanic". However, thanks to the skill of Captain Edward Smith, a collision was avoided.

Ironically, if an accident had happened, it would have saved one and a half thousand lives: if the Titanic had lingered in the port, the ill-fated encounter with the iceberg would not have happened.

This time. It should also be mentioned that the radio operators who received the message from the ship "Mesaba" about the ice fields of icebergs did not pass it on to Edward Smith: the telegram was not marked with a special prefix "personally to the captain", and was lost in a pile of papers. This is two.

However, this message was not the only one, and the captain knew about the ice danger. Why didn't he slow down the ship? Chasing the Blue Ribbon is, of course, a matter of honor (and, more importantly, of big business), but why did he risk the lives of passengers? Not that much of a risk, really. In those years, the captains of ocean liners often passed dangerous ice districts without slowing down: it was like crossing the road at a red light: sort of, and you can’t do that, but it always works out. Almost always.

To the credit of Captain Smith, it must be said that he remained true to maritime traditions and remained on the dying ship to the very end.

But why was the bulk of the iceberg not seen? Here everything turned out one to one: a moonless, dark night, windless weather. If there were at least small waves on the water surface, the lookouts could see white lambs at the foot of the iceberg. Calm and moonless night are two more links in the fatal chain.

As it turned out later, the chain was continued by the fact that the iceberg, shortly before the collision with the Titanic, turned its underwater dark part upside down, saturated with water, due to which it was practically invisible from afar at night (an ordinary, white iceberg would be distinguishable for a mile ). The sentinel saw him only 450 meters away, and there was almost no time for maneuver. Perhaps the iceberg would have been seen earlier, but another link in the fatal chain played a role here - there were no binoculars in the "crow's nest". The box where they were stored turned out to be locked, and the second assistant to the captain, taken from the ship just before departure, hastily took the key to it with him.

After the lookout nevertheless saw the danger and reported the iceberg to the captain's bridge, a little more than half a minute remained before the collision. The officer of the watch, Murdoch, who was on watch, gave the helmsman the order to turn left, at the same time transmitting the command "full astern" to the engine room. Thus, he made a gross mistake by adding another link in the chain that led the liner to death: even if the Titanic had crashed into the iceberg head-on, the tragedy would have been less. The bow of the ship would have been crushed, part of the crew and those passengers whose cabins were located in front would have died. But only two watertight compartments would be flooded. With such damage, the liner would have remained afloat and could wait for the help of other ships.

And if Murdoch, turning the ship to the left, ordered to increase, and not decrease the speed, the collision might not have happened at all. However, frankly speaking, the order to change the speed is unlikely to play a significant role here: in thirty seconds it was hardly possible to execute it in the engine room.

So the collision happened. The iceberg damaged the ship's fragile hull along the six starboard compartments.

Looking ahead, we can say that only seven hundred and four managed to escape: the next link in the chain of failures was that some sailors took the captain's order to put women and children into the boats too literally, and did not let men go there, even if there were empty seats. However, at first no one was particularly eager to get into the boats. The passengers did not understand what was the matter, and did not want to leave the huge, comfortably lit, such a reliable liner and it was not clear why they would go down in a small unstable boat down to the icy water. However, pretty soon, anyone could notice that the deck was tilting forward more and more, and panic began.

But why was there such a monstrous discrepancy in the places on the lifeboats? The owners of the Titanic, praising the merits of the new ship, stated that they even overfulfilled the instructions of the code: instead of the prescribed 962 rescue places, there were 1178 on the ship. Unfortunately, they did not attach any importance to the discrepancy between this number and the number of passengers on board.

It is especially bitter that not far from the sinking Titanic, another passenger steamer, the Californian, stood, waiting out the danger of ice. A few hours ago, he notified neighboring ships that he was locked in ice and forced to stop so as not to accidentally run into ice block. The radio operator from the Titanic, who was almost stunned by the Morse code from the Californian (the ships were very close, and the signal of one was too loud in the headphones of the other), impolitely interrupted the warning: “Go to hell, you are preventing me from working!”. What was the radio operator of the Titanic so busy with?

The fact is that in those years, radio communication on a ship was more of a luxury than an urgent need, and this miracle of technology aroused great interest among the wealthy public. From the very beginning of the voyage, radio operators were literally inundated with messages of a private nature - and no one saw anything reprehensible in the fact that the radio operators of the Titanic paid such attention to wealthy passengers who wished to send a telegram to the ground directly from the ship. And at that moment, when colleagues from other courts reported about floating ice, the radio operator was transmitting another message to the continent. Radio communication was more like an expensive toy than a serious tool: the ships of that time did not even have a round-the-clock watch at the radio station.

Exactly ninety-seven years ago, on a cold night from April 14 to 15, the most famous maritime disaster in the history of mankind occurred in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The ship of the company "White Star Line", bearing the proud name "Titanic", having died in the middle of its first voyage and taking with it one thousand five hundred and four human lives, was doomed to become the most famous ship in the world.

Why did the most perfect ship of that era sink - a ship that was considered completely unsinkable? For almost a hundred years, the active human mind has been building versions of the catastrophe, since there is no shortage of riddles here. I have been interested in this story since childhood - now, probably, I don’t even remember how it all began. Today I want to tell you about the most famous versions of the tragedy.

Version one. Conspiracy theory

Few people know that the Titanic had a twin brother - the Olympic ship, an exact copy of it, also owned by the White Star Line. How is it, the reader may wonder, because the Titanic was considered a unique ship, the largest ship of that era, and now it turns out that there was another ship that was not inferior to it in size? No, the Titanic was indeed longer than its twin. By two inches. Just imagine - the length of a matchbox! - but still longer. Another thing is that it was almost impossible to notice these inches with the naked eye (and, perhaps, with the armed one too), so that an outsider, looking at the twins standing side by side, could not tell which of them was who.

The Olympic was a year older than its brother (so it would be more correct to call the Titanic a copy of it), and not much luckier. Probably, it was necessary to write something like “from the very beginning, evil fate hovered over each of the ships,” but more on that later: of course, the greatest maritime disaster could not but acquire mystical rumors. I'll talk about them later, but for now let's not get ahead of ourselves. Gemini: Titanic (right) and Olympic

Well, fate, not rock, but the fate of the "Olympic" was indeed full of trouble. His career began with the fact that during the launching the ship crashed into a dam. After that, minor and major accidents rained down on him one after another, and the ship did not even seem to have been insured. Rumor has it that after a series of accidents, the owners would be happy to insure their ship, but the insurance companies refused to deal with the failed liner. The most serious accident was a collision with the British military cruiser Hawk, which led the White Star Line company to tangible financial problems: expensive repairs were needed, and the company's financial situation was very sad. So the Olympic was put in the Belfast docks to await a decision on its future fate. And now - attention! Take a look at the photo on the left - this is almost the only photo in existence that shows the Titanic and the Olympic, standing side by side. It was made in Belfast. The final rig of the Titanic
at the shipyard in Belfast

Why not assume, some researchers said, that the White Star Line had decided to pull off a grand scheme. To patch up the old "Olympic" in a hurry and ... pass it off as the new "Titanic"! Technically, it would not be difficult at all: to swap the plates with the names of the ships, and even the interior items on which the monogram of the ships is applied - for example, cutlery (Olympic and Titanic, of course, had some design differences - well, yes who knows about them?). Then the Olympic, under the guise of a new, prestigious, widely publicized (and, of course, honor by honor insured) Titanic, will set off on a journey across the Atlantic, where it will collide (quite by accident, of course) with an iceberg (fortunately, the lack of them at that time there was no year). Of course, no one was going to sink the liner - and no one believed that some kind of iceberg could send the most reliable ship in the world to the bottom. It was planned to arrange a small collision, after which the ship will slowly reach New York, and its owners will receive a tidy sum insured, which will come in handy for the company.

In favor of this version speaks strange behavior ship's captain, Edward Smith. Why is such a seasoned, experienced seabass so careless about the safety of his vessel? Why did he stubbornly ignore reports of drifting icebergs coming from other ships, and even seem to steer the liner on a course where it is easiest to meet an icy mountain? What was he doing this for, if not to carry out the White Star plan? Personally, it seems to me that it was for this, that's just ... the plan was completely different. But more on that later. Screw "Titanic". In this photo, however, the numbers can not be seen.

It turned out to be quite difficult to refute the conspiracy theory, especially since White Star went out of its way to save its reputation: it distorted information about the disaster in every possible way, bribed witnesses, and so on. Actually, convincing arguments were found only after the sunken liner itself was discovered (and this happened only seventy-three years later - the remains of the ship were discovered by the expedition of Robert Ballard in September 1985). So, the participants of one of the expeditions, descending to the wrecked ship, took photographs of the propeller, which clearly shows the minted serial number of the Titanic - 401 (his older brother had exactly 400). Conspiracy theorists claim, however, that the Olympic damaged its propeller after colliding with the Hawk, and White Star replaced it with a propeller from the then unfinished Titanic. But the number 401 is also found on other parts of the sunken ship, so the charge of a planned disaster with the White Star Line can be dropped. The following theory looks much more plausible - we will talk about it now.

John Pierpont Morgan And did you know that...

One of the arguments in favor of the conspiracy theory was the fact that the industrialist John Morgan, one of the owners of the Titanic, was supposed to sail aboard his ship, but canceled the ticket a day before the ship left the port.

And they also say (here the mysticism began) that the tycoon was dissuaded from going by Nikola Tesla, endowed with the gift of foresight, the development of which was financed by Morgan.

Second version. Blue Ribbon Chase

It all started a long time ago, when regular sea traffic was established between England and America, and, therefore, competition between ship-owning companies began to flare up. The faster the ship crossed the Atlantic, the more popular it was. In 1840, the Cunard company invented a prize for ships that set a speed record: now the ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean faster than all its predecessors received the Blue Ribbon of the Atlantic as an award.

Actually, there was no material prize. The winner did not receive a cash prize, the captain was not awarded a commemorative cup that can be put in a prominent place in the wardroom. But the ship acquired something more - an invaluable prestige that cannot be obtained by other means. In addition to honor in maritime circles (and, therefore, fame and popularity), the winner of the award received a contract for the transportation of mail (including diplomatic mail) between America and Europe, and this is a very profitable shipping item. And in general - see for yourself: if you are a rich businessman, maybe even a millionaire, on which ship would you prefer to travel? Isn't it on the most prestigious and fastest?

At the time of the Titanic's departure from Southampton, the Blue Ribbon was owned by the Mauritania, a ship owned by White Star's archrival. Naturally, it was impossible to put up with this, and White Star decided to bet on its favorite. The conquest of the Blue Ribbon by the Titanic would be a triumph for this corporation, allowing it to correct its precarious position: the Cavalier of the All-Atlantic Ribbon usually had four times as many passengers as other similar ships.

Due to the threat of collision with floating ice, the prescribed route of the Titanic (and any other vessel, next topic same course) did not run in a straight line, but made a small detour, skirting a dangerous ocean area where most icebergs drift. Of course, this maneuver lengthens the road. That's why it might seem that Captain Smith was sailing his ship right into a bunch of icebergs - he just needed to take a short cut and get the Blue Ribbon by all means. That is why the Titanic went full steam ahead and did not slow down even after receiving several radiograms warning of ice danger from other ships. Let other ships worry - and the Titanic has nothing to fear. In the "crow's nest" - a special observation platform on the front mast - there are two lookouts who, in case of danger, will be able to report it to the captain's bridge in the blink of an eye with the help of telephone connection: "Titanic" is equipped with the latest technology. And if a collision does occur, well, it only means that the record will be set another time. Icebergs do not pose a danger to the ship - after all, it is known that the Titanic is completely unsinkable. Its hold is divided into sixteen watertight compartments, so that if suddenly it gets a hole (which, of course, cannot be), then only one of the compartments will be filled with water, and the ship will calmly continue its journey. That one - the liner will not sink, even if four compartments are filled! And a ship can only receive such damage in a war.

Well, it’s not for nothing that pride is one of the deadly sins. She played a cruel joke with the Titanic: the iceberg damaged five compartments - one more than was permissible. A piece of the Titanic skin lifted from the bottom

But how could the ice break through the steel of the ship's plating? In the mid-nineties, a piece of the Titanic's skin was lifted to the surface and subjected to a fragility test: a sheet of metal, fixed in clamps, had to withstand the impact of a thirty-kilogram pendulum. For comparison, a piece of steel used in shipbuilding today was also tested. Before the experiment, both samples were placed in an alcohol bath with a temperature of just over a degree - this is exactly what the ocean water was on that fateful night. Modern metal came out of the test with honor: under the blow of a hammer, it bent, but remained intact. Raised from the bottom, it split into two parts. Maybe he became so fragile after lying eighty years at the bottom of the ocean? The researchers managed to get at the Belfast shipyard, where the Titanic was built, a steel sample of those years. He endured the strength test no better than his brother. The conclusion of the experts was that the steel used in the construction of the Titanic was of very poor quality, with a large admixture of sulfur, which made it brittle at low temperatures. Alas, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the level of development of metallurgy was far from today. If the lining of the liner were made of high-quality steel, the hull would simply bend inward from the impact, and the tragedy could have been avoided.

American press about the sinking of the Titanic And did you know that...

On the Internet you can find not only Western newspapers of that time (see photo on the right), but also pre-revolutionary Russian publications, which reported on the crash in the Atlantic Ocean. A strange feeling arises when you read these dry lines - for the people of that time, the Titanic had not yet become a legend ...

To the death of the Titanic.

LONDON. The sessions of the commission of inquiry into the circumstances of the death of the Titanic were opened by the representative of the Department of Commerce, Isaacs, who indicated that from the moment of her entry into the sea, the Titanic had been moving at a speed of 21 knots per hour, and this speed was not reduced until the very moment of the collision with ice mountain despite receiving warnings of moving ice. The investigation will pay special attention to the insufficient number of lifeboats on the ship and to the installation of watertight bulkheads.

But the publication of Iskra, as it should be for an "artistic and literary magazine", describes the situation in the best traditions of the yellow press:

The death of the Titanic.

Russian press about the sinking of the Titanic April 1, at 10:25 pm, a real floating city - the greatest in the world, a luxurious nine-story steamer "Titanic" (length ¼ verst (126 sazhens), displacement 66,000 tons, cost at 20,000,000 rubles, with machines of 55,000 horsepower, reaching speeds of up to 38 miles per hour) on the way to New York, having 2,700 people on board, ran into floating ice at full speed. At midnight, from the Titanic, by wireless telegraph, they reported: "We perish."

Stunning scenes played out on the deck of the sinking steamer. Millionaire passengers (there were 7 of them, with a total fortune of 3 billion) offered fabulous sums for seats in lifeboats. Because of these places, people fought, pushed each other into the water, smashed their heads with oars ...

1,410 people died.

William Stead died aboard the Titanic. A convinced journalist, with boundless faith in the power of the printed word, Stead exposed the horrors of the debauchery of aristocratic London, its brothels, the sale of children, vigorously advocated an end to the Anglo-Boer War, for rapprochement with Russia. In 1905, Stead came to Russia with the aim of reconciling Russian society with the government.

Third version. Fire in the hold

On September 20, 1987, French television told the world sensational news: the cause of the death of the Titanic, it turns out, was a fire that broke out in the hold of the ill-fated liner, and not a collision with an iceberg at all. Apparently, the supporters of the new hypothesis assured, spontaneous combustion of coal occurred in one of the ship’s coal storage facilities (well, this is actually possible), the fire spread to the entire hold, reached the steam boilers, which exploded from this, which is why the ship went to the bottom. As for the iceberg, it just happened to be nearby, so it was accused of crashing the liner. One of the watertight bulkheads of the Titanic

Yes, indeed, there was a fire on the Titanic - and this is no longer guesswork, but an established fact. However, could he cause a disaster? Oh, hardly. How do you imagine a fire in a coal bunker? A roaring flame that throws ominous crimson reflections on the metal sheathing of the walls, sailors rushing about with a naked chest, someone pumps a pump, and a stream of water disappears into a raging wall of fire? I must disappoint you - in fact, everything is much more prosaic. In general, a fire in the coal bunker of steamships of that time was a fairly common thing. Coal in such a fire does not burn, does not burn, but quietly and peacefully smolders, sometimes for several days. Fought with such fires most in a simple way- out of turn, they burned smoldering coal in steamship furnaces. So a fire in a coal hold is, of course, an unpleasant phenomenon, but, as a rule, it does not promise any serious troubles to the ship. And certainly not under any circumstances not capable of producing such monstrous destruction, which supporters of the version of the death of the Titanic from the flames attribute to him. Moreover, the fire on the ship was extinguished even before it went on its last voyage. The bunker was emptied and inspected by specialists from the shipyard where the Titanic was docked. It seems that the most serious consequence of the fire was a slight deformation of one of the watertight bulkheads, which could not affect the fate of the liner.

And did you know that...

The Titanic is one of the first, if not the first ship in history to send an SOS signal.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the letters "CQD" were adopted as a distress signal - short for "Come Quick, Danger" ("Hurry here, danger"). But this signal was inconvenient in that it was also used to warn on land of railway wrecks. In 1906, at the International Radiotelegraph Conference, it was proposed to introduce a special signal for maritime disasters. Then the letters known to the whole world today were chosen - SOS. Contrary to popular belief, this is not an acronym for a phrase like "Save Our Souls". Such letters were chosen simply because their combination is very easy to recognize in ethereal Morse code: three dots, three dashes, three dots.

However, habit is second nature, and the CQD signal was still used in water crashes. The radio operator of the Titanic, twenty-five-year-old John Philips, also sent him: “CQD, here are our coordinates: 41.46 north 50.14 west. We require immediate assistance. Tonem. Can't hear anything because of the noise steam pipes". He repeated this message for the next quarter of an hour, until his partner suggested sending a new distress signal over the air, joking cynically: "Dude, try tapping out an SOS signal - we will not have such an opportunity again in our lives." Philips smiled sadly at the joke, and at 00:45 on April 15, 1912, one of the first SOS signals in history was sent from the Titanic.

Fourth version. German torpedo

1912 The First World War is two years away, and the prospect of an armed conflict between Germany and Great Britain is becoming more and more likely. Germany is the owner of several dozen submarines, which during the war will unleash a ruthless hunt for enemy ships trying to cross the ocean. For example, the reason for America's entry into the war will be that the U-20 submarine will sink the Lusitania in 1915 - the twin of the same Mauritania that set the speed record and won the Blue Ribbon of the Atlantic - remember?

Based on these facts, in the mid-nineties, some Western publications offered their own version of the death of the Titanic: a torpedo attack by a German submarine that secretly accompanied the liner. The purpose of the attack was to discredit the British fleet, famous for its power throughout the world. In accordance with this theory, the Titanic either did not collide with the iceberg at all, or received very minor damage in the collision and would have remained afloat if the Germans had not finished off the ship with a torpedo.

What speaks in favor of this version? Honestly, nothing.

First, there was a collision with an iceberg - this is beyond doubt. The deck of the ship was even covered with snow and ice chips. Cheerful passengers started playing football with ice cubes - that the ship is doomed, it will become clear later. The collision itself was surprisingly quiet - almost none of the passengers felt it. A torpedo, you see, could hardly have exploded completely silently (especially since some claim that the submarine fired as many as six torpedoes at the ship!). Supporters of the theory of the German attack claim, however, that people in the boats heard a terrible roar just before the Titanic sank - well, that was two and a half hours later, when only the stern lifted into the sky remained above the water and the death of the ship did not raise any doubts. It is unlikely that the Germans would have fired a torpedo at an almost sunken ship, would they? And the roar that the survivors heard was due to the fact that the stern of the Titanic rose almost vertically and huge steam boilers fell from their places. Also, do not forget that at about the same minutes the Titanic broke in half - the keel could not withstand the weight of the rising stern (although they only find out about this after finding the liner at the bottom: the break occurred below the water level), and this is also unlikely to have happened silently . And why would the Germans suddenly begin to sink a passenger liner two years before the start of the war? This seems, to put it mildly, doubtful. And to put it bluntly, it's absurd.

And did you know that...

Before filming Titanic, director James Cameron worked closely with the crew of the Russian scientific vessel Akademik Mstislav Keldysh and personally made twelve dives with a movie camera to the wreckage of the ship on the submersibles Mir-1 and Mir-2 - they can be seen in documentaries movie fragments. During each dive, Cameron could shoot only fifteen minutes due to the fact that only so much film could fit in the camera.

Five years later, the Mir-1 and Mir-2 submersibles will be used to dive to the sunken submarine Kursk.

Fifth version. Curse of the Egyptian Mummy

Yes, yes, imagine, there is such a version! I purposely saved it for the end.

So, in the eighties of the nineteenth century, a perfectly preserved mummy from the time of Amenhotep IV was discovered near Cairo, named either Amen-Otu, or Amen-Ra, or Amennofis (lovers of mysticism, as you know, do not bother with such trifles. Mummy, and mummy). During her lifetime, the mummy worked as a famous soothsayer, and therefore, after her death, she was awarded a magnificent burial: with jewelry, figurines of gods, and, of course, magical amulets. Among them was the image of Osiris, adorned with the inscription: "Wake up from your swoon, and your look will crush everyone who gets in your way." Others, however, insisted that it was written "Arise from the dust, and only the look of your eyes will triumph over any intrigues against you", but what, in essence, is the difference? That's when the third timidly suggested that nothing of the kind was written on the mummy, then it was certainly clear that this was nonsense.

The mummy was acquired by some collector, then by another, by a third, and all the previous owners, of course, died under the most mysterious and mysterious circumstances. That is, maybe, in fact, each of them lived to be ninety-nine years old and rested in the arms of a young beauty, but who will check this? The owners of mummies, as everyone knows, are supposed to die, and, preferably, a terrible death.

Ticket for the Titanic

Finally, our mummy was acquired in the British Museum by an American millionaire and sent to his American residence aboard a ship. Well, guess which liner was chosen for this purpose?

An ordinary box served as a sarcophagus on the way, either glass or wooden (not tin, at least, for sure), and it was kept just near the captain's bridge. Mystics of all stripes avidly assure that Captain Edward Smith, of course, could not resist the temptation and looked into this box with a mummy: their eyes met and ... no, they did not fall in love with each other; quite the contrary: a monstrous curse came true. Otherwise, judge for yourself, how to explain what went wrong in the captain’s head, and with his own intrepid hand he sent the Titanic straight to certain death?

And, in fact, why is it believed that the captain's head was clouded, and he sent the Titanic to certain death with his own hand? Well, how could he not get confused in his head if he met the eyes of a mummy? As you can see, there is nothing to object.

It's a shame that the mummy died a thousand years before the birth of Aristotle, so she had a hard time with logic. Otherwise, she would have realized that the immediate consequence of the fact that the ship rammed the iceberg would be the death of her, mummy, precious body - in ocean water it would hardly survive more than a few days. And the destruction of the body is the worst thing that can happen to a mummy: her soul will have nowhere to return to. So if the mummy really had magical powers, it would be in her interest to protect the Titanic like the apple of her magical eye. Or maybe she, too, bought into the advertising rhetoric about the unsinkable ship and did not pay attention to the dangerous icebergs?

Be that as it may, but the mummy died in the deep ocean, disappeared without a trace, and cannot stand up for its honest name; this is shamelessly used by the yellow press, which regularly publishes accusations against her under the monotonous headlines: “Sensation! The Titanic was destroyed by the curse of the pharaohs! Let's leave it to the conscience of journalists.

The mummy, by the way, was not the only historical relic that died aboard the Titanic. For art, the death of the original manuscript of Omar Khayyam "Rubaiyat" in the Atlantic Ocean is much more tragic - a relic that truly had no price.

And did you know that...

Immediately after the death of the Titanic, various projects for raising the ship to the surface began to be proposed. One of them was a proposal to fill the hull of the liner with ping-pong balls.

Oh yes, there is another version

She is all in the picture, and there is nothing more to say about her:

Ex-"Giant". What would you name the ship... And did you know that...

The Titanic had not only an older brother (Olympic), but also a younger brother, the Gigantic. At the time of the death of the middle brother in the abyss of the Atlantic, the younger one was still being built on the ropes. To prevent such a tragedy from happening to him, improvements began to be made to his design on the move - for example, the number of lifeboats was increased (you can see them in the photo - on upper deck, one above the other). And the most unexpected of the security measures taken was - what would you think? Change of vessel name. Recalling from ancient Greek myths that the fate of both titans and giants was very deplorable, the owners of the ship decided not to step on the same rake again and abandoned the name "Gigantic". What, in fact, the devil is not joking?

They called the new ship patriotically: "Britannick". Tellingly, this did not help: in World War I, the youngest of the ships was sunk by a German submarine.

But how was it really?

Regrettably, but, studying the history of the most famous maritime disaster, one has to admit that the Titanic owes its death to a long chain of fatal accidents. If at least one link of the sinister chain had been destroyed, the tragedy could have been avoided.

Perhaps the first link was the successful start of the journey - yes, yes, that's right. On the morning of April 10, during the departure of the Titanic from the quay wall of Southampton port, the superliner passed too close to the American ship New York, and a phenomenon known in navigation as the suction of ships arose: the New York began to be attracted to the moving nearby "Titanic". However, thanks to the skill of Captain Edward Smith, a collision was avoided. Ironically, if an accident had happened, it would have saved one and a half thousand lives: if the Titanic had lingered in the port, the ill-fated encounter with the iceberg would not have happened. This time. Captain of the Titanic Edward Smith

It should also be mentioned that the radio operators who received the message from the ship "Mesaba" about the ice fields of icebergs did not pass it on to Edward Smith: the telegram was not marked with a special prefix "personally to the captain", and was lost in a pile of papers. This is two.

However, this message was not the only one, and the captain knew about the ice danger. Why didn't he slow down the ship? Chasing the Blue Ribbon is, of course, a matter of honor (and, more importantly, of big business), but why did he risk the lives of passengers? Not that much of a risk, really. In those years, the captains of ocean liners often passed through areas dangerous by ice without slowing down: it was like crossing the road at a red light: it seems that you can’t do that, but it always works out. Almost always. To the credit of Captain Smith, it must be said that he remained true to maritime traditions and remained on the dying ship to the very end.

But why was the bulk of the iceberg not seen? Here everything turned out one to one: a moonless, dark night, windless weather. If there were at least small waves on the water surface, the lookouts could see white lambs at the foot of the iceberg. Calm and moonless night are two more links in the fatal chain.

As it turned out later, the chain was continued by the fact that the iceberg, shortly before the collision with the Titanic, turned its underwater dark part upside down, saturated with water, due to which it was practically invisible from afar at night (an ordinary, white iceberg would be distinguishable for a mile ). The sentinel saw him only 450 meters away, and there was almost no time for maneuver. Perhaps the iceberg would have been seen earlier, but another link in the fatal chain played a role here - there were no binoculars in the "crow's nest". The box where they were stored turned out to be locked, and the second assistant to the captain, taken from the ship just before departure, hastily took the key to it with him. This photo is believed to be the same iceberg.

After the lookout nevertheless saw the danger and reported the iceberg to the captain's bridge, a little more than half a minute remained before the collision. The officer of the watch, Murdoch, who was on watch, gave the helmsman the order to turn left, at the same time transmitting the command "full astern" to the engine room. Thus, he made a gross mistake by adding another link in the chain that led the liner to death: even if the Titanic had crashed into the iceberg head-on, the tragedy would have been less. The bow of the ship would have been crushed, part of the crew and those passengers whose cabins were located in front would have died. But only two watertight compartments would be flooded. With such damage, the liner would have remained afloat and could wait for the help of other ships.

And if Murdoch, turning the ship to the left, ordered to increase, and not decrease the speed, the collision might not have happened at all. However, frankly speaking, the order to change the speed is unlikely to play a significant role here: in thirty seconds it was hardly possible to execute it in the engine room. Thomas Andrews

So the collision happened. The iceberg damaged the ship's fragile hull along the six starboard compartments.

It should be said that Thomas Andrews himself traveled on the Titanic, a talented designer who built this liner. Of course, after the tragedy, there were people who accused him of the unsuccessful design of the ship. These accusations are groundless - Andrews actually built the most perfect ship of his time. It is to him that the survivors of the crash owe the fact that they had almost three hours to leave the ship and move to a safe distance.

After the accident, Captain Smith woke Mr. Andrews and invited him to inspect the hold in order to obtain an authoritative opinion on the fate of the ship. The designer's verdict was disappointing: it was impossible to save the Titanic. We urgently need to start evacuating passengers.

And here we come to one of the most dramatic circumstances. There were 2,208 people on board the ship (fortunately, not the 3,500 for which it was designed), but there were places in the boats for only 1,178 people. Looking ahead, we can say that only seven hundred and four managed to escape: the next link in the chain of failures was that some sailors took the captain's order to put women and children into the boats too literally, and did not let men go there, even if there were empty seats. However, at first no one was particularly eager to get into the boats. The passengers did not understand what was the matter, and did not want to leave the huge, comfortably lit, such a reliable liner and it was not clear why they would go down in a small unstable boat down to the icy water. However, pretty soon, anyone could notice that the deck was tilting forward more and more, and panic began. Boat deck. Walk to your health.

But why was there such a monstrous discrepancy in the places on the lifeboats? Initially, there were more boats - as many as thirty-five, but it was decided to abandon fifteen of them. Firstly, they “could cause a feeling of insecurity,” but most importantly, they prevented first-class passengers from walking on deck, and this was quickly corrected: the motto of the Titanic was “comfort above all else.” But how could such a poorly equipped rescue equipment ship? It's all about the outdated rules of the British Code of Navigation, adopted back in 1894. In accordance with it, a certain number of boats was assigned to a ship of a certain size. And since the displacement of the largest passenger ships of that time rarely exceeded 10,000 tons, all such giant ships were combined into a single category with an order for them to have on board the number of boats sufficient to save 962 people. In 1894, they could not even imagine a ship like the Titanic - with a tonnage of as much as 52,310 tons!

The owners of the Titanic, praising the merits of the new ship, stated that they even overfulfilled the instructions of the code: instead of the prescribed 962 rescue places, there were 1178 on the ship. Unfortunately, they did not attach any importance to the discrepancy between this number and the number of passengers on board. Photo of the radio operator of the Titanic, taken by a crooked photographer

It is especially bitter that not far from the sinking Titanic, another passenger steamer, the Californian, stood, waiting out the danger of ice. A few hours ago, he notified neighboring ships that he was locked in ice and forced to stop so as not to accidentally run into an ice block. The radio operator from the Titanic, who was almost stunned by the Morse code from the Californian (the ships were very close, and the signal of one was too loud in the headphones of the other), impolitely interrupted the warning: “Go to hell, you are preventing me from working!”. What was the radio operator of the Titanic so busy with? The fact is that in those years, radio communication on a ship was more of a luxury than an urgent need, and this miracle of technology aroused great interest among the wealthy public. From the very beginning of the voyage, radio operators were literally inundated with messages of a private nature - and no one saw anything reprehensible in the fact that the radio operators of the Titanic paid such attention to wealthy passengers who wished to send a telegram to the ground directly from the ship. So at that moment, when colleagues from other ships reported on floating ice, the radio operator transmitted another message to the continent. Radio communication was more like an expensive toy than a serious tool: the ships of that time did not even have a round-the-clock watch at the radio station. So the radio operator from the Californian, having finished his shift, went to bed in the evening and could not receive a desperate distress signal - SOS. If it were possible to inform the Californian about the collision, then he could come to the rescue in less than an hour, and the Titanic sank for two and a half hours! They say that from the Californian they even saw signal flares sent by the sinking liner into the night sky, but did not attach any importance to this. Well, missiles, and missiles. Celebrating, probably, something moneybags from the Titanic. Wow, fireworks have arranged for themselves ...

But, fortunately for the passengers, several ships still responded to the distress call. Among them was the Olympic, the twin of the Titanic, but it was too far away - as much as five hundred miles. Apart from the Californian, the closest ship to the sinking ship was the Carpathia, less than sixty miles away. Having received an SOS signal, he changed his course and rushed to the rescue at maximum speed. About two o'clock in the morning the radio operator of the Carpathia received last message from the liner in distress: "Go as quickly as possible, the engine room is flooded to the boilers." There were no more radio signals from the superliner ... Survivors of the Titanic aboard the Carpathia

There were about seven hundred people in the boats in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The agonizing hours of waiting for help dragged on. Some of the lifeboats searched and picked up drowning people all night, and some, on the contrary, sailed away from the scene of the tragedy, fearing that people overboard, trying to escape, could capsize the boat.

At four in the morning, four and a half hours after the collision of the Titanic with an ice mass, and two hours after the stern disappeared into the depths of the sea, the Carpathia approached the scene of the tragedy and began rescuing the survivors. At eight-thirty, the passengers of the last boat were on board. There were 704 people alive. Searching the water for the rest was useless. At this temperature of the water, a life jacket does not save: a person dies from the cold in a few minutes.

At eight-fifty, the Carpathia, ironically owned by the same Cunard Line steamship company, whose laurels the Titanic wanted to take for itself, having won the Blue Ribbon, heads for New York.

P.S.

And finally: a few photos of the Titanic, the legendary ship. Each of them can be enlarged.

Before:

Titanic at the Harland and Wolf shipyard before being launched (colorized photograph) The Titanic leaves Belfast (colorized photograph) Here you can see the "crow's nest" for the lookout on the mast First class cabin First Class Cabin (colorized photo) Third class cabin (reconstruction) Cafe "Palm Yard" Cafe Parisien with Ocean View (colorized photo) Gym on the Titanic The famous front staircase with a clock (here DiCaprio was waiting for a date with Kate Winslet) Glass dome over the front staircase. Only a first-class passenger was allowed to admire this beauty.

You can find many more colorized photos of the Titanic at titanic-in-color.com

After:

3D model of the Titanic on the ocean floor The remains of the Titanic at the bottom Prow of the ship Fragment of the ship's hull Opened port side window Captain's helm Anchor Davit for launching lifeboats Once upon a time there lay a man Ceramic cup at the bottom The wooden crate is long gone, but the porcelain is still lying Glass in the windows of Captain Smith's cabin Captain Smith bath with hot water, salt or fresh as desired