Titanic

I think it is safe to say that Titanic is the most famous ship of all time.  You could pretty much ask anyone in Western civilizations what "Titanic" is and they will at least be able to tell you 1) huge ship, biggest of its time, thought to be unsinkable 2) hit iceberg on maiden voyage, and 3) sunk, more than, the large majority of passengers and crew froze to death

And those are just the basics.  Anyone who's paid the slightest attention at all to Titanic would know the stories of the order of "women and children first", the band that played until the end, the ignored ice warnings, the cowardly escape of J. Bruce Ismay, too few lifeboats launching with two few passengers, the massive stern rising out of the water until it cracked and split the ship in two, and finally sunk at 2:20am on April 15, 1912.

I consider myself a Titanic enthusiast.  I have been fascinated by Titanic since I was a little kid.  I remember reading about Titanic and seeing pictures in books at the reading tables at Hanover Middle School library, and just being in total awe.  The movie, which came out in 1997 when I was 14 years old, only solidified my fascination.

But James Cameron got some things quite wrong and it is hard to shake that when you've seen the movie so many times.  He added some things for dramatic effect, and then new information has been discovered which basically debunks his entire view of the sinking. 

Dramatic effect:
a) there is only one small anecdote that Ismay knew anything about the ice warnings.  There is NO evidence that he told captain Smith to speed up to get to NY faster

b) there is no evidence to say that Titanic was travelling at its top speed through the ice field when it hit the berg.

c) Murdoch was Titanic's first officer.  In the movie, he shoots himself in the head after shooting a passenger trying to get onto a lifeboat.  While there is one or two anecdotes about an officer committing suicide, there isn't evidence it was Murdoch.

These are just a few of the things I could come up with off the top of my head.  New information which was discovered in 2005 has really changed the perspective of the sinking.  Both American and British authorities decided that Titanic sank intact.  There was insufficient evidence to suggest she had broken on the surface.  Then when Titanic was found for the first time in 1985, it was in two very separate pieces, suggesting that it broke up on the surface.  So we come to the theory that Titanic's stern was 50-60 degrees off the waterline before she broke mid-ship and sank.

But the new information doesn't support that theory.  New information has discovered that Titanic was actually a very weak ship.  She was so large (give it to the men in business to try to outdo eachother for the biggest phallic symbol of the time!), that engineers didn't actually know how she would respond to the ocean.  They noticed when they had launched Olympic, Titanic's older sister, that the hull was "panting", which it shouldn't do.  So they added extra steel to Titanic.  But they kept the same expansion joints that were existent in Olympic, a technology that was never very good to begin with.

The new theory considers the fact that Titanic had a fatal flaw in her expansion joints.  There was no way she could've sustained the kind of tension present had the ship been 50-60 degrees when cracking.  It could've been as low as 11 degrees and her steel would've cracked at the expansion joints.  Therefore, the take away is:

1,504 people didn't die just because Titanic hit an iceberg and sunk.  1,504 people died because Titanic hit an iceberg, and had a weak hull, thereby causing it to crack, fill with water, and sink MUCH faster than it should've.  If Titanic hadn't cracked in the middle, it is reasonable to think she would've stayed afloat until Carpathia reached her.

So what does this mean?  Who really cares?  On a personal level, the deaths of the people on Titanic would've been much more horrific than originally thought.  There were accounts that the passengers seemed unconcerned with the danger of the sinking.  The slow and low rise of the stern would've pushed the obviousness of her imminent sinking much closer to when she actually went down.  Therefore, there was little to no warning.  People didn't have enough time to "save themselves".  They assume that had there been more time of "panic" that people would've rigged together rafts and floats from things like the deck chairs to keep them partially out of the water and give them a chance.  It makes the sinking of Titanic much more sad.

Another sad fact that I recently learned.  After collecting the survivors and clearing the boats (all accounted for), Carpathia set the collapsible lifeboats adrift.  A time later, another ship picked up the collapsible boat and it had three bodies in it.  This suggests that there were survivors that were never picked up, yet who found the boat, got in with hopes of rescue, and later died of exposure and starvation.

Titanic will be gone soon.  She's rusting and eroding heavily by the day.  I think we will continue to discover new things about her for some time.  We've been looking at her on the ocean floor now for 25 years...and the fascination has never waned.  I hope it continues...