Alright, so I said I was going to resurrect the blog and then never did. Turns out having two small children and working full time lends itself to very little writing time! I'm really going to try to write more.
Sunday April 15, 2012 marked the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking. It has been 100 years since 1,500 people died on a ship that was claimed to be unsinkable. I consider myself a bit of a Titanic enthusiast. Even before the movie premiered in 1998, I was always fascinated by this event in history - how could this have possibly happened? This was the Gilded Age, a time of immense wealth, prosperity, and innovation. Why, then, was a massive ship that was built to be virtually unsinkable, so easily taken down on her maiden voyage? The irony is unbelieveable.
Between 1912 and 1985, the only information historians had to go on was eyewitness testimony. Seven hundred people survived the disaster, and many of them were grilled about their experiences by congressional hearings in both the US and Britian. Everyone wanted answers, and no one could give good ones. The blame ultimately landed on Captain E.J. Smith (for speeding through an ice field even though there were warnings), dreamer and financier J. Bruce Ismay (for not having enough lifeboats on board and for saving his own life), and Thomas Andrews (the architect of the ship, for not building it strong enough to survive the blow). Captain Smith and Thomas Andrews went down with the ship, but J. Bruce Ismay dealt with the scrutiny and the blow to his impeccable reputation for the rest of his life. I'm sure there were times he wished he died along side Smith and Andrews.
There was also blame laid on others - the White Star Line, Harlan and Wolfe, the lookouts, Murdoch for trying to steer around the iceberg when a head on collision probably would've kept her afloat, and the ship's staff for not filling the lifeboats to capacity. Then there is blame to be laid on the wireless operator, who was so busy keeping up with passenger messages to the mainlands (passengers were charged for this service) that the ice warnings got buried. He also seriously irked the wireless operator on the Californian, who after hearing a trite message from the Titanic operator turned off his headphones and went to bed. The Captain of the Californian can also be to blame - The Californian was only 10 miles away or so, well within distance to see the flares, thought something might be amiss, and yet did not respond.
It truly was a perfect storm of events which led to the deaths of 1,500 people.
The wreck was discovered by Bob Ballard in 1985. Until then, the official accounts concluded that Titanic sank in tact (even though many eye witness said it broke). When she was discovered in two very large pieces almost a mile apart on the ocean floor, it became obvious that she split in two at or close to the surface. This was a huge revelation because it alluded to the fact that perhaps Titanic wasn't as strong as originally thought. Maybe there was something wrong with her design that caused all 45,000 tons of her to sink in under 3 hours.
In the almost 30 years since the discovery of Titanic there have been about 20 expeditions by various researchers and groups. I think I have seen video footage from every one of them. Most noteably, Bob Ballard went back a short time later (funded by the US Navy) to learn more. Then James Cameron (privately funded) shot footage for his movie in 1998 and went back to learn more in 2001. Wreck divers John Chatteron and Richie Kohler made an expedition in 2005, finding previously undiscovered pieces of Titanic's double bottom. Then last night I watched a documentary on the most recent expedition to the site, with several experts in various fields. They used special underwater sonar imagery to capture the first ever full map of the entire 15 miles of wreck site. It is pretty awesome stuff because for the first time they are able to lay out where pieces of Titanic fell and THEN could go back and get detailed images to determine which parts of the ship they were from. They were essentially able to recreate 90% of Titanic's structure from the wreckage pieces on the ocean floor, 2.5 miles below the surface.
There has been so much speculation in the last 100 years about what caused the sinking of Titanic. First, before the wreck discovery, there was negligence - on the part of the Captain, on the part of the builders, on the part of the White Star Line, on the part of the crew.
Then once the ship was discovered, it was due to design flaws. Weak rivets, cheap steel, the wrong type of expansion joint. The ship should not have broken - almost all ships stay in tact even when they sink.
They have discovered that the sinking did not go down as originally planned. The stern certainly did not get to a 90 degree angle before splitting, like James Cameron would've liked us all to believe. It was likely much less dramatic than that, maybe only 19 degress or so - to the point where passengers might not even have known until close to the end that the ship was doomed.
100 years later it seems that we finally have some answers. The latest round of expeditions, which gave us so much more information than we ever had previously, showed exactly the opposite of what was previously thought:
Negligence: What Captain Smith did was not unusual. It was customary at the time to be at cruising speed until ice was actually spotted. They had not spotted any, and so remained at cruising speed. Ismay can't be held accountable for the lifeboats because Titanic actually had 2 more lifeboats than was required by maritime law at the time. The generally held thought was that lifeboats would only be used to transport passengers from a potentially sinking Titanic to another ship that pulled up along side. She simply sunk too fast. There is no evidence that he pushed Smith to go faster, as the theatrical movie claims.
Design: It actually has been found that Titanic was exceptionally strong. They have done tests on the rivets using 100 year old steel and the design specs from the original blue prints. Titanic sustained a blow with an amount of pressure that no structure could withstand. What has been found suggests that with the amount of damage she sustained it is amazing that she stayed afloat for as long as she did. And one MAJOR thing - she stayed upright! In almost every shipwreck, including the latest disaster with the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia (January 2012), the ship capsizes, rendering half of the lifeboats unuseable. All of Titanic's lifeboats were used, they were just not filled to capacity and there were not enough of them.
I believe in my heart that fate was against Titanic on her maiden voyage. There was either nothing anyone could do, or a little something that everyone could've done to prevent the deaths of 1,500 people. I have come to realize that no one is to blame, no matter how much the media would've like to vilify someone. Titanic was a very strong, amazing ship. She didn't leave 1,500 people to die in the icy waters of the Atlantic, she saved 700 people from the exact same fate in an impossible situation.
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