The Titanic disaster is a classic tale and now has become a modern folk story, but like all folk stories our understanding of what really happened has been clouded by the way the disaster has been recounted over the years following that terrible night in April 1912. As soon as the waves of the North Atlantic closed over her stern the myths began.
It was said that the builders and owners of Titanic claimed she was unsinkable. Actually, the claim made was that she was "practically unsinkable." Close enough, but nevertheless an unfortunate statement and one which would haunt both the builder and owner for years.
Titanic, the largest vessel in the world when she entered service in 1912, was not the finest nor the most technically advanced of her day. Size is seldom an indication that something is better and that was the only record she held… and only for five weeks when a larger liner, Hamburg-America's Imperator was launched on May 23rd.
Titanic and her slightly older sister Olympic were designed to compete with the Cunard liners Lusitania and Mauretania which entered service in 1907. Designed and built as record breakers, both held the coveted "Blue Riband" for the fastest Atlantic crossing. The sisters were built principally from lessons learned from advances in warship construction, but most importantly both were powered by steam turbines driving quadruple screws, each fitted with a large balanced rudder, making them faster than their competition and easier to maneuver -- a giant leap forward in marine engineering that is comparable to the advances made in 1969 with the introduction of the Concorde supersonic aircraft.
Titanic and her sister should best be described as the 747s of their day. Massive people carriers, traveling at moderate speed, with space for large cargos, which meant the new ships posed a great commercial threat to the smaller and more expensive Cunarders to operate.Building ships this large lead to inevitable compromises. Being identical in almost every respect to her sister, constructing Titanic meant adopting tried and true methods for her design and construction. No risks were taken with the choice of engines which actually were enlarged versions of the propulsion system first used experimentally in Laurentic in 1909, another White Star liner. That triple screw vessel proved that two expansion engines feeding exhaust steam into a low pressure turbine was more economical than vessels using expansion engines or turbines alone.
Titanic's hull and upper works were also enlarged versions of designs of previous White Star vessels only they had been refined over several decades. There was nothing custom made that was new or cutting edge. As stated, no risks were taken with the design and inside the ships were traditional Edwardian and conservative. If you take the time to look at photographs of the bridge, crow's nest and superstructure on previous White Star ships, there is a similar look. As with the exterior, the interiors followed a similar theme from public rooms to furnishings.
Her stern, with its high graceful counter and long thin rudder was, in fact, a copy of an 18th century steel sailing ship, a perfect example of the lack of technical development. Compared with the modern rudder design of the Mauretania or Lusitania, Titanic's was a fraction of the size. Apparently no account was made for advances in scale and little thought given to how a ship 852 feet in length, might turn in an emergency or avoid a collision with an iceberg. This was Titanic's Achilles heel.
Naturally these design differences meant that she would never be able to challenge the speed or maneuverability of the Cunarders but this did not matter. White Star had given up all thought of speed records more than a decade before, in 1899, with the introduction of Oceanic, a ship that was given the title "Crowning Glory of the 19th Century." It was justly deserved for it was said that her interiors were the finest ever created by Harland & Wolff. But Oceanic was relatively small compared with Titanic and White Star could not afford to lavish the same scale of expense on their new ship. Titanic, nevertheless, was a first-rate vessel, well built, with large and spacious public rooms and finely appointed suites for those traveling in first class. There also were many other ocean liners built in Britain, France and Germany that were technically superior with interiors best described as magnificent and stunning. Speed plays a major part in the continuing story of Titanic. It is often said she was trying to make a record on her maiden voyage, attempting to arrive ahead of schedule in New York. That is not true. In actuality, she was following the pattern of her sister's first crossing the previous year and, like Olympic, not all of Titanic's boilers had been lit. Also she was sailing on the longer southern route across the Atlantic in order to avoid the very threat which caused her eventual loss. Even if all boilers had been lit, her maximum speed was 21 knots, a far cry from the 26 knots the Cunarders regularly recorded. The most important reasons why Titanic did not attempt a full speed crossing was the risk of potential engine damage. If, as the some speculate, she arrived Tuesday evening, her passengers would have been very much inconvenienced. By arriving a day before their hotel, train bookings, etc., were in effect, there would be a mad scramble to rearrange schedules and likely miss people enroute for pickup at the pier. Not a good way to make your customers happy.
Bruce Ismay, chairman and managing director of the White Star Line, was a passenger onboard. Married with three young children and contrary to perception, this was only his third maiden voyage since becoming the chairman in 1899. At the age of 39 he was also president of the International Mercantile Marine Company, J. Pierpont Morgan's giant American combine that was owner and operator of several transatlantic businesses, at the head of which was White Star. The myths surrounding Ismay are many but almost all center on allegations of cowardice by escaping the sinking ship while fellow passengers, notably women and children, were left to fend for themselves. Claims made at the time and repeated today that he "saved his own skin" while others died is very harsh. The truth was Ismay helped with loading and lowering several lifeboats and acquitted himself better than the behavior of many of the crew and passengers. He only entered a half-filled lifeboat when that boat was actually being lowered and no other passengers were in the vicinity. Witnesses like Mr. A. H. Weikman, Titanic's barber, stated he was ordered into the lifeboat, but whatever happened, Lord Mersey said at the British Inquiry into the loss of Titanic, "Had he not jumped in he would simply have added one more life, namely his own, to the number of those lost."
Ismay's fault was that he survived and, as a consequence laid himself open to the somewhat dubious moral code of the press in the United States, especially through Anglophobe, William Randolph Hearst, whose syndicated newspapers were sold across the country. Hearst was the first man to syndicate so it was his newspapers that were mainly responsible for spreading vicious articles and editorials. The 1912 book "Sinking of the Titanic" consisted mainly of stories from newspapers and was sold door-to-door by the hundreds of thousands. Through these books and newspapers, Hearst's version became "fact" that persists to this day.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/rss.jpg "XML Feed For RSS")