8 am. April 2, 1912. The magisterial ship the
Titanic leaves the Belfast dock for sea trials. Thousands of people have come to watch, waving their handkerchiefs in the
air and shouting “Rule Britannia”. Some of them chase the ship down the
slipway as she slowly moves away. Not one of them could ever expect
that such a behemoth of a vessel would end up at the bottom of the icy-cold ocean,
dragging countless people to the depths with it. April 10, 1912. On a cold morning, Captain
Edward John Smith arrives at the Southampton dock where his crew has been sleeping
on the Titanic through the night. Smith is a confident man, and proud of
British shipbuilding expertise. Prior to his heading the Titanic he’d told a reporter:
“Whatever happens, there will be time enough before the vessel sinks to save the life of
every person on board. I will go a bit further. I will say that I cannot imagine any condition
that would cause the vessel to founder.” Oh, how wrong could he be! We’ll talk
a lot about this guy as things go on. Later in the morning, Fifth Officer Harold
Lowe and Sixth Officer James Moody are there to supervise a lifeboat drill, unfortunately,
the only one that would happen on the Titanic. As midday approaches, the passengers arrive:
rich, poor, and something in between. The ship can take 2,453 passengers: 833 in first class,
614 in second class, and 1,006 in third class, but there will only be about 2,200
passengers on board when the thing goes down. The wealthy board from one entrance and the poor
at another entrance. Those with meager means are the third-class passengers, who on arrival are
checked for an eye disease called trachoma. The USA doesn’t want these folks, but only
one person it seems is turned away. Lucky him! About a third of third-class, dreaming of a new
life in the US, are not native English speakers. Their basic cabins reflect their status,
or class, as the British like to call it. These are people who will suffer the worst,
screaming in their native tongues as they slide down the deck of a ship turning upwards towards
the sky. Some are Bulgarian, Syrian, Italian, Swedish, and Russian; some are even Chinese,
even though the Chinese Exclusion Act in the US means Chinese laborers aren’t
welcome in the country. The first-class passengers enter their
beautiful cabins. These are the bankers, businessmen, military leaders, socialites,
athletes, American millionaires, and the ever-snooty British aristocracy. This is the who’s who of wealthy society, and many have arrived with personal
nurses, valets, chefs, and chauffeurs. On the ship, they’ll enjoy Turkish
baths, a gymnasium, a squash court, a saltwater swimming pool, and even first-class
kennels for their beloved pooches. For their trip, and ultimately their death, some of them have
paid around 90,000 bucks in today’s money. The second-class passengers: professionals,
academics, religious men, and tourists, don’t quite get such luxuries,
but their cabins aren’t too bad. It goes without saying that all three classes
will not dine together. They are separated, and will only really come together when they are
faced with the matter of life or death. Today, these third-class folks will eat rabbit pie,
potatoes, bread and butter, and some rhubarb and ginger jam for dessert. The first-class
passengers will devour a 13-course meal, including foie gras, peaches in chartreuse
jelly, and a helping of Waldorf pudding. It’s early evening on April 10 when
the ship leaves Cherbourg in France and heads to Queenstown, Ireland. Some of the
working-class kids are playing on the baggage cranes while their parents play cards in the
common room. Life isn’t bad at all on this ship, say some of the guys while smoking in
the smoking room - no women allowed! As night falls, the upper classes are
already light-headed on champagne, talking of their business ventures and mansion
renovations as semi-royal Brits whisper together about how vulgar in style and speech one certain
fabulously wealthy American industrialist is. They can at least be assured that none of them
will bump into another class, with grilles all over the ship that separates the rich and poor.
Midday, April 11, and the ship finally arrives in Ireland. Many of the wealthy passengers have
just woken up with sore heads, staring down at Norwegian salmon and poached eggs. The poor
for the most part have been up since sunrise. About 2 pm more passengers board, and the Titanic
is off again. It’s about to get very cold. As the ship heads West over the Atlantic,
the captain looks out into the distance. The weather is good. The passengers are all
safely on board. So far, he hasn’t given much time to the fact that among his crew only about 5
percent are able seamen. Most of the others have regular day jobs such as firemen, and little
do they know about the many perils of sailing. On April 12, while merriment is being
had by many on board, the morning is a wonderful thing to see. The skies are clear,
and the Atlantic is uncharacteristically calm. During the afternoon, two young working-class
kids scream for joy as they play hide and seek, while America’s first multi-millionaire, the real
estate tycoon and opium smuggler John Jacob Astor, talks with the Titanic’s
architect, Thomas Andrews. “Is it sinkable,” asks Astor with a smile
on his face. This man is so rich, richer in relative terms than any person today, he probably
thinks he’s invincible. Andrews returns the smile, answering, “This ship even the great
Poseidon couldn’t sink.” Both men laugh out loud as American silent film actress Dorothy
Gibson walks over to see what’s so amusing. Both of these men will soon be dead. Gibson
will survive. Women and children first, that’s how things will go, although some
men will try their luck. But for now, all is perfect, and for two days, life
aboard the Titanic couldn’t be any better. As the evening of April 13 turns into the night
and the band plays under a blanket of stars, the conditions couldn’t be any better. About
9.30 pm, Captain Smith retires to his cabin, his job done for the day. He’s not
aware that the Titanic is about to sail under an arctic high-pressure system.
In the morning things are not so fine and dandy. Around 9 am, senior wireless operator
Jack Phillips is informed by other vessels that to the West there are icebergs. The liner
named the Carolina tells him to watch out for the hard-to-see Growlers, smaller icebergs
that can still pose a danger to a large ship. At 10 am Captain Smith tells his men they
needn’t bother with the lifeboat drill, even though he’s been told about
those floating fortresses of ice. What this means is his crew, a mostly amateur
crew, does not know much about evacuations. We will never know why Smith does this.
At midday, the steamship Baltic informs the Titanic that larger icebergs wait where
it is heading (42°N, 51° 31′ W). Smith passes on the message to the chairman and managing
director of the White Star Line, Bruce Ismay. It’s this man that is behind the building of the
Titanic and other huge ocean liners. He is also the person that decided such ships needed much
fewer lifeboats than was necessary in times of great danger. When the Titanic goes down, he will
make a quick getaway into a lifeboat, even though many women and children will still be on board.
He’ll be the one who sends a message back to the New York office:
“Deeply regret advise you Titanic sank this morning fifteenth
after collision iceberg, resulting serious loss life further particulars later.”
One day he’ll open a newspaper and read a poem that contains the lines, “To hold your place in
the ghastly face, of death on the sea at night, is a seaman's job, but to flee with
the mob, is an owner's noble right.” He will survive, but a breakdown will ruin
him, with opiates and booze turning him into what his family calls a living “corpse.”
But on that afternoon on the 14th when he is told about the icebergs, he
doesn’t give it too much thought. As the hours pass, though, the passengers,
rich and poor, start putting on extra clothes. It’s freezing out there. About this time, Smith
orders his crew to take a different direction. In the late afternoon, the Titanic gets a
message from the German ship SS Amerika, which is just a bit to the south of the Titanic.
Radio operators on the Amerika tell the radio operators on the Titanic that it has just “passed
two large icebergs.” This is now getting serious, but Smith doesn’t get this particular message.
As the evening falls, the weather is now bitterly cold. The SS Californian tells
the Titanic that it has just seen three large icebergs close to where the Titanic
might be heading. Later, at about 9.30 pm, the steamer Mesaba tells the Titanic’s operators
that it has just seen “much heavy pack ice and great number of large icebergs. Also field ice.”
Jack Philips hears these warnings loud and clear, but he never relays them to Smith and the others
in charge. This is a major mistake, a fatal mistake, but it has to be said that the day before
the radio equipment had been broken and that meant Smith had a deluge of messages from passengers
that he still needed to send. Some of the VIPs on that ship have serious business to attend to.
At 10.30 pm that night Philips receives another message from Cyril Evans of SS Californian.
He is informed that the Californian has had to halt for the night in an ice field. “Say,
old man, we are stopped and surrounded by ice,” says Evens. It is just too dangerous to go on.
Smith replies to the message with the words, “Shut up! Shut up! I'm working Cape Race.”
Newfoundland’s Cape Race is the relay station for the radio messages. About this time there are some
changes on the Titanic’s bridge. First Officer William Murdoch tells Second Officer Charles
Lightoller that he’ll now take over the watch. Lightoller will become the man that makes
sure, for the most part at least, that the order of women and children first is adhered to.
He’ll be the most senior officer to survive the disaster and even become a hero of the evacuation
of Dunkirk in WW2. Just before his shift is over, he tells the lookouts to “keep a sharp look-out
for ice, particularly small ice and growlers.” Once Murdoch is on watch, his nerves
become jangled. Danger is out there in the ocean, but it is a danger
that seems cloaked in invisibility. As he looks into the distance at around 11 pm,
the majority of the passengers have retired to their cabins without an inkling of the
precarious position their lives are in. Two lookouts named Frederick Fleet and Reginald
Lee are now in the Titanic's crow's nest. They struggle to see any icebergs, mainly because of
the fact that the sea is so calm, which means the water isn’t hitting the ice and making a splash.
It doesn’t help matters that they don’t have any binoculars. The guy with the locker key where
they’re kept has them, and that’s no use now. They are alone as the Californian now
turns off its radio. At around 11.30, lookout Fleet rings the bell. He’s just seen an
iceberg and the Titanic is heading right into it. Fleet asks the bridge, “Is there anyone there?”
He then hears the reply, “Yes, what do you see?” To which he responds, “Iceberg, right ahead!”
Murdoch gives the order for the ship to “hard-a-starboard” and reverses the engines,
as well as ordering that all the supposedly air-tight doors to the compartments are locked.
A few minutes later, at 11.40, the Titanic scrapes past the giant iceberg, making a frightening noise
as it does so. This is one great chunk of ice. The Titanic has before been moving at a fairly
fast speed of 22 knots (41 km/h; 25 mph), so despite the order to reverse the engines,
it can’t slow down fast enough to move out of the way of the iceberg. Captain Smith had
promised a swift journey to his passengers, and he wasn’t about to disappoint them. Such haste,
we now know, was one reason for the disaster. That order to hard-a-starboard, which takes
some doing, has caused technical problems that mean the rudder isn’t functioning right.
If Murdoch had instead ordered the ship to maintain its speed and turn, and not reverse the
engines, it may have actually missed the berg. The ship has scraped along that ice for about
seven seconds, and on doing so, chunks of ice have even fallen onto the deck. Its engines have
now stopped and it's facing north while drifting south. There is an eerie silence on board and
among some of the men a feeling of great anxiety. They have every right to feel anxious because
a large rip has been made in the hull. The hole below the water is around 12 square feet (1.1 m2),
although the tear stretches for around 300 feet. Why a hole has been torn through such a tough
ship will be debated for many years to come. Ships just as strong will later
get thorough whackings and survive, but that’s the future and we
are not speculating today. Many of the passengers feel a thud as the ship
makes contact with the iceberg, more so those on the lower decks. The Titanic is taking on lots
of water, something not evident to many just yet. Seven tons a second are flooding the ship,
which is much faster than it can be pumped out. By about 11.50, so much water has entered the ship
that the front part has risen. In a boiler room, all hell is breaking loose. Second engineer J.
H. Hesketh and leading stoker Frederick Barrett are both blasted by icy water and
get out of the room just in time. They are now aware, as are the other engineers
that know what’s going on, that if the freezing cold water hits the hot steam an explosion could
blow them to pieces, although most of them are soon to die anyway. Some of them have been ordered
to vent the steam so as to stop an explosion. All of them are now up to their waists in water.
The main problem is what’s happening on the 16 lower decks, not up top where not many people
have even batted an eyelid over the crash. The third-class passengers are down below, most
of them on F Deck, with some on E Deck, along with the second-class passengers. Deck D contains
a number of rooms, including the first-class dining saloon. Deck C is home to a library and
lounge for second-class folks as well as an all-male smoking room for third-class passengers.
It isn’t until you get to Deck B that you have the first-class cabins and suites as well as the à
la carte restaurant, Café Parisien. Deck A is for the first-class promenade and among other
things, the all-male first-class smoking room. So, it’s the poorer passengers that really
hear that thud, even though they’re already accustomed to the loud noises issuing from the
engines. Even if they are scared and want to go up to a higher deck, they aren’t able to
since they’re locked out of those places. It’s now midnight and Captain Smith is aware that
the compartments are filling with water. He’s also aware that the Titanic is not designed to float
with water-filled compartments, and right now water is seeping into them at an alarming rate.
Once one is filled, the next one starts to fill, with experts later saying the effect was
like that of filling a tray of ice cubes. He orders the lifeboats to be prepared for
an evacuation, but the fact is there are only enough of them for about half the crew and
passengers. You already know why. Meanwhile, the radio operators are busy putting out
CQD calls. The D part stands for distress. The closest ship it seems at first is the
Frankfurt and that’s about 170 nautical miles (315 km) away, to the south of the
Titanic. The Titanic's sister ship the Olympic also gets the message, but it is way off in the
distance. The Titanic is on its own for now. Still not long after midnight, Smith
and the ship’s builder, Thomas Andrews, who we’ve mentioned already, go down
below as the ship starts to list. There they find the holds filled with water, as
is the squash court, and while men are busy trying to pump the water out, they just can’t get ahead.
The first-class women and children are now on the deck waiting for the lifeboats, with many of them
in tears, clutching onto each other. It’s at this point when many of the passengers know this
ship is in trouble, although they don’t know about the lifeboat shortage and many of them
still don’t think there is a major problem. Some are very reluctant to get into a lifeboat.
The Titanic, they assume, just won’t sink. The good news, at least for the operators and
captains, is that at around 12.20 am a ship not too far away gets the distress call and replies.
That ship, the Carpathia, hears the words, “Come at once. We have struck a berg. It's a CQD,
old man.” The coordinates are given as 41°46’ N 50°14’ W. The Carpathia changes course, but it’s
still around 58 nautical miles (107 km) away. It will be a matter of hours until
it can get close to the Titanic. Among the chaos that has now descended on the
ship, the musicians are playing on the deck in an attempt to keep people calm. Before ALL of these
men die, they play mostly popular ragtime tunes, and later may just have time to
fit in a version of the hymn, “Nearer, My God, To Thee.” If this
actually happens is up for debate, but it makes a nice story if it's true.
It is about 12.30 when five compartments are totally filled with water, about 13,700
tons of the stuff, which means the Titanic will not stay afloat much longer. Maybe it’s
got two hours before it is completely submerged. For now, it is only at about a four-degree angle
and for the while at least it won’t get much worse, and this gives the crew and the passengers
a false sense of security. Maybe she won’t totally sink, some of them think, but they’re very wrong.
Pity, because some of them have refused to go on the lifeboats, which is another reason why most
of the boats left with way too few people on them. It’s around this time that some of the crew have
another reason to be hopeful. They see a ship in the distance, so fire off a bunch of rockets.
That ship is very likely a Norwegian fishing vessel doing a spot of illegal hunting. The
Californian does actually see those rockets, but it is still some 20 nautical miles (37 km) away.
It’s 12.45 and Smith is now loading the first lifeboats, the regular ones that can take
65 people on board. Even though the ship already doesn’t have enough boats, Smith keeps
letting them go well under capacity. The first floats away with only 27 people on it.
He is arguably to blame for many deaths, yet for many years he will be a hero. He never
gives an abandon ship order, and he doesn’t even do a proper evacuation, not to mention the fact
that he wasn’t taking those iceberg warnings seriously enough. He even gets the deck wrong when
he first orders people to get into the lifeboats. As the gravity of what is going to
happen hits him, Smith becomes almost paralyzed with shock and fear. He isn’t
in control at all and hasn’t even told the crew the truth about the lifeboat situation.
At 12.55, the second lifeboat hits the water, and as it does, two cowardly men jump down
into it, inuring some of the women. The next one to go has on it the passenger
Molly Brown, a rich American socialite. She will also become famous in time to come,
mainly because she wanted to go back and pick up people in the water. Robert Hichens, who was
steering the Titanic when it hit the iceberg, will also be in that lifeboat and he will
tell Brown that there is no point going back for “stiff” bodies, and anyway, it is too
risky as those left alive might swamp the boat. He’ll deny this later but will admit
that he was concerned that the suction of the sinking Titanic might pull
down the lifeboat. By all accounts, Brown threatened to throw him in the water,
but they never went back to find survivors. At 1 am, a smaller lifeboat, a wooden cutter,
hits the water, filled with some wealthy women and children. Controversially, the rich Scottish
landowner, the 5th Baronet, Cosmo Duff-Gordon, is also in the boat, along with his wife,
Lady Duff Gordon, a famous fashion designer. Other rich men are in that boat, as is a lookout who’s been put in charge
named George Thomas Macdonald Symons. Five other crew are also on the boat.
It can hold 40 people but only takes 12. Later, it will be suggested that Cosmo
Duff-Gordon paid a bribe to get away and not pick up any struggling people in the water,
but whether that happened is also debatable. As that boat floats away, one of the crew
says he wants to go back and help the others, but the women protest. Once they are in the
distance, Lady Duff Gordon surprises one of the crew when she looks at another wealthy woman
and states, “There is your beautiful nightdress gone.” This is going to cause quite the stink
within the British public once it gets out. On the Titanic, there is a major concern
when some of the crew see that on Deck E the Grand Staircase is now covered
in water. It’s just past 1. At around the same time, another waste of
life occurs when a lifeboat is lowered with just 28 people on it. One of them is the
first-class passenger Lucy Noël Martha, countess of Rothes, as well as Ida Straus, the
wife of Macy’s department store owner, Isidor. She lets go of his hand and gets in the
boat, motioning him to go with them. He likely can if he tries, but he tells
her “Women and children first darling”. She looks at him and replies, “We have lived
together for many years. Where you go, I go.” She gets right back out. The two of them will go
down together on the ship in each other’s arms. The last sighting of them is hugging on the deck.
You might be wondering where all the third-class passengers are. It’s true that there are
grills that prevent them from getting to other parts of the ship, but they aren’t locked
in with the sinking ship out of sheer brutality. They are in fact behind bars, but that’s only
because they’ve been that way from the start of the journey due to US immigration laws regarding
immigrants and certain infectious diseases. It’s still brutal, cruel, inhumane, and more
so when you hear that there are no lifeboats on the third-class sections of the ship.
Many of these passengers are now running through the maze of corridors
trying to find a safer place, and fortunately, the staircases lead some of them
to the third and second-class promenade where there are lifeboats. Nonetheless, some of them
are faced with iron grills and locks, at least until the orders are given to open the gates.
One of them is Carl Jansson. He goes back to his room to gather what belongings he has,
only to be hit by the great force of water. He at least gets his watch but returns to
the deck to people stricken with terror. He survives, but many of those people don’t.
Some of them are understandably unwilling to leave all their worldly possessions behind.
Remember they are going to the US to start a new life. But, many of them have also been trapped
by those gates and they will die because of it. Margaret Murphy sees this with her
own eyes. She will later testify: “The Titanic's sailors fastened the doors and
companionways leading up from the third-class section. A crowd of men was trying to get up
to a higher deck and were fighting the sailors; all striking and scuffling and swearing. Women
and some children were there praying and crying. Then the sailors fastened down the hatchways
leading to the third-class section. They said they wanted to keep the air down there
so the vessel could stay up longer. It meant all hope was gone for those still down there.”
Even though there is a women and children first policy for the evacuation, 108
women will die from a possible 412. 56 kids will die from a possible 112. Of 1680 men,
1357 will die. But get this, only four women who have bought first-class tickets will die, and
only one wealthy child will die. First-class men don’t have it so easy, either, with 105 going
to meet Davy Jones' Locker from 171 in that class. On the other hand, of the 179 women in
third-class, 91 will bite the dust. 391 men in third-class from 450 will die, and 55 out of 80
kids with those cheap tickets will also perish. So yes, while investigations later rule that there
hadn’t been any malice against the ship’s poor, the game on the ship had been the same as the
game in life, rigged against them from the start. What’s quite touching is when the orders are first
given to let the women and children go first, most of the third-class men don’t
try to jump on the boats. In fact, reports later stated they stood back and said
goodbye to their families and they took it on the chin. A few didn’t, but we’ll get to them.
At 1.20 am these men are quite aware that they are possibly going to die. It’s at that
time that another lifeboat is lowered, this one containing a special passenger. That’s
a nine-year-old girl named Millvina Dean, who will die in 2009 at the age of
97, the last of the survivors to go. There is a mix of people on this
lifeboat, and with 56 passengers on board, it’s at least one that leaves carrying a
substantial number of people. Another one of them is the mistress of the super-wealthy
American businessman Benjamin Guggenheim. He waves her goodbye and tells his valet to
get dressed in smart clothes. Some of his last words are, “We've dressed up in our best
and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.” At 1.30, not all the men are so cool-headed.
Several of them try and hustle their way into lifeboat 14, which forces Fifth
Officer Harold Lowe to fire his gun a few times in the air and shout, “Get
back or I’ll shoot you all like dogs.” Just after 1.30, lifeboat 13 is lowered, this one
containing a number of third-class passengers. Only as it goes down, lifeboat 15 is
lowered too fast and it drops on 13, causing some amount of distress. Thankfully,
a crew member on 13 manages to cut the ropes and the boat floats away. It’s around this time
that Philips gets on the radio again and says, “Women and children in boats.
Cannot last much longer.” At 1.40, there aren’t many lifeboats left to
go. Number 16 drifts away into the darkness, followed by Collapsible boat C, containing Mr.
Ismay and mostly women. Lifeboat 11 then leaves. The emergency cutter number 2 is ready
to go, but Lightoller is dismayed to find it filled with men who he says are not
“British, nor of the English-speaking race” and he threatens them with his gun. Women and
children take their place, but it’s lowered with just 25 people on it when it can take 40.
You might remember the multi-millionaire, John Astor. He watches his pregnant wife,
Madeleine, get into lifeboat number 4. She pleads with him to follow her, but Lightoller
tells him he won’t be going anywhere. Astor says, “We are safer here than in that little boat.” It
leaves with enough space for another 20 people. It’s 2 in the morning now and the only
way off the Titanic is on one of the three collapsible boats that are left. Things
don’t look good. The ship has tilted so much now that its propeller is out of the water.
The lights go out, and they are swallowed by the darkness. In the distance, the survivors in the
lifeboats begin to cry for those they left behind. Now they can hear screams emanating from the ship,
betwixt the groaning of the floundering ship. Second Class Passenger Father Thomas Byles has
been on the stern of the Titanic listening to people’s final confessions. The band is still
playing. But there’s trouble in the radio room when a man tries to steal a life vest.
Officer Lightoller now knows it’s do or die, so gets on the roof of the officers'
quarters and dives into the freezing water. Maybe lady luck has ideas for him, because
after being sucked into a ventilation shaft he is pushed back out by hot air.
Back on the Titanic, the forward funnel has collapsed. It crushes many people, including
the founder of the Internalization Tennis Federation, Charles Duane Williams. The next collapsible can’t even be launched,
being swept off the deck at 2.12 am and taking a few people with it. When it lands upside
down in the water, about 30 men cling to it, including wireless operator Bride and Officer
Lightoller, who’s had another bit of luck. They eventually get picked up by lifeboats 4 and
12, but hundreds are now freezing in the water. Collapsible Boat A just about
makes it off the deck at 2.15, but is soon swamped with people. First-class
passenger Edith Evans is one of them, but she like the others ends up in the water and
dies. To think, she has just given up her place in another boat. The only female who goes down
with the Titanic and survives is Rhoda Abbott, even though she refuses to leave her
two teenage sons behind. They both die. On the deck, Captain Smith
tells those that are left, “It’s every man for himself.” He’s seen one last
time on the bridge after that. He either goes down with the ship or jumps overboard just before
it goes down. There are differing accounts. The last anyone sees of Thomas Andrews is him
sitting quietly in the first-class smoking room. He makes no attempt at all to escape, although
some accounts have him throwing deckchairs into the ocean for the passengers that have gone
overboard. Either way, he dies. He might even jump overboard with Smith. That’s how hectic
things are. People are seeing different things. It’s almost the end now.
As the ship tilts steeply, people try and cling on to one another, but
a large gush of water pulls them overboard. Others are washed down the deck, their bodies
mangled against various parts of the ship. At 2.18, the ship breaks in two. The bow sinks
into the ocean and at a speed of 30 miles per hour (48 kph), it takes about six minutes to
reach the bottom. The stern levels for a while, but then violently rises, throwing people all
over the place. Those few that manage to cling to something are doing so in vain because the
entire ship is about to plunge into the abyss. It is 2.20 when some of the people in
the lifeboats hear the Titanic finally being swallowed by the water. There
is one last groan, and that’s it. But even worse, because the ship goes down
with so much force that it takes tables, chairs and huge chunks of timber and steel down
with it. A lot of the debris comes right back up, and does so with some speed, killing the swimmers
on impact. It’s likely they’ll die anyway, with −2 °C (28 °F) water being enough to finish most
people off in a few minutes. That’s if the shock of being submerged hasn’t already killed them.
Many swimmers die between 15 and 30 minutes in the water, their bodies going into cardiac arrest.
Only 13 of them are fished out by lifeboats, even though if all the boats go back
500 people can be helped. It’s anyone’s guess how many folks could be saved, but
that some people needlessly died is true. As they float through the water in the
darkness, the survivors hear shouts of anger, cries of distress, screams of pain, sounds they
will never forget. One of the survivors will later sum up what he hears, saying, it was “a
dismal moaning sound which I won't ever forget; it came from those poor people who were
floating around, calling for help. It was horrifying, mysterious, supernatural.”
At times the lifeboats float past a person. Its occupants apologize for not helping
the swimmer, but rather than become upset, the swimmer just says, “I understand”
and “good luck and God bless you.” But as they float on, they hear one man,
perhaps the last man, shout, “My God! My God!” As he freezes his voice loses hope until
all that is left is silence. That’s all there is after a while: stiff bodies and silence.
But one guy who does survive for a long time in the water is the Titanic’s
chief baker, Charles Joughin. Prior to the sinking of the Titanic, he
drinks more whiskey than is humanly possible, having just turned down the offer to get in
lifeboat 10. Right before he heads for his drink, he persuades reluctant women to get in the boats.
When he emerges on the deck, most people have gone, so he throws a bunch of chairs in
the ocean to use as floatation devices, but then he changes his mind. He grabs
hold of something and in his own words, goes down with the ship as if it is an elevator.
He miraculously treads water for about two hours, and maybe because of that booze he just
drank, he doesn’t even feel cold. When there’s some daylight, he spots a boat. It’s Lightoller’s
boat, but Lightoller denies him a place. Joughin holds on to the boat anyway, and then when he
sees another boat, he swims over and gets on that. How he survives is anyone’s guess, but later when
asked later he’ll put it down to the whiskey. Whatever the case was, he will be known as
the last surviving person on the Titanic. He was a tough old boot, that’s for sure.
Nonetheless, don’t go thinking booze will stop you from getting hypothermia. It actually makes things
worse, so we can’t explain how Joughin survived so long when others died in a matter of minutes.
He didn’t panic, which counts for something. The first sound heard by the survivors is that of
the approaching Carpathia at around 3.30 am. By 4, people are being pulled from the boats, most of
them alive, but more than a few already dead. Those with the strength climb onto the ship,
while others are hoisted up with ropes. More than 1,500 have died. 706 live to tell the tale.
At 8.30 am, the Californian scouts the area looking for survivors, but of course there
are none. The others are taken to New York City where they’ll arrive on April 18 to
huge crowds and hordes of journalists. Some of the surviving crew are interviewed, but what really happened on that ship is
something they’re too traumatized to talk about. Many questions are later asked, one,
of course, is why so few lifeboats, but even with the mass grief and global
outrage, no one is ever really held accountable. An act of God is blamed, but we now know
that human error was more to the point. Perhaps one of the best artifacts
from the wreckage is a watch that was pulled out of the water. That’s because
it stopped when its owner drowned: 2.28 am. In 1985, the wreckage was found
12,500 feet (3,800 meters) underwater, around 370 nautical miles (690
kilometers) off the coast of Newfoundland. The two parts are still now separated
by about 2,000 feet (600 meters). It’s the rich and famous whose names we remember,
so we guess the classes on that boat are separated even in death, but we remember you third-class
victims: Mrs. Johanna Persdotter Ahlin, Mr. Karl Ivar Sven Berglund, Mr. Liudevit Cor,
Miss Kate Conolly, Mr. Lee Bing, and Mr. Fang Lang, Mr. Husayn Mahmūd Husayn Ibrāhīm.
Ok, we can’t go through all the poor folks that died, and to be honest, about 100
of them were buried in unmarked graves. But you get the picture. Many of them were
immediately forgotten, while the media and public mourned for just a few known names. At
least the fish understood those dead people were all the same in the bigger scheme of things.
Now you need to watch a video about an equally horrific tragedy, “Creepy Reason Nobody Talks
About The Deadliest Ship Disaster In History.” Or, have a look at “What If The Earth
Stopped Spinning - Minute By Minute.”
Never trust Infographics Show
I can't express with words how much I hate this Youtube channel. The animation is so bad! So lazy an poorly made and so infantile even for very serious topics. The information so basic (at best). And the worst is it works on people.
Ah....the damn channel is back. with the s*itty animation.
what's worse bright side or infographics show?
Shamelessly sloppy version of a Ken Marschall painting
Aw man, I really like this show and to see they got it so wrong is annoying.
Well first of all the degree when titanic split was just so SO inaccurate, like 45 degrees, the lifeboats were lowered from the stern? W H A T? and sure you can excuse that for them not having a upper deck background image, but the style of the videos are so simple they could've draw one in 5 minutes, the Titanic hit the iceberg at Starboard, not Port. Did I mention that there 3 different drawings of the ship, including one that looks more modern, a actually somewhat accurate drawing, and a lusitania drawing. No fr they use a Lusitania drawing for the Titanic sometimes. The Carpathia in the video has a gray funnel, and don't even get me started on how they made the Californian look, overall the video is VERY inaccurate.
The masts are shorter the the funnels