TITANIC

Ship hits iceberg and sinks, not enough lifeboats, etc. etc. Here is the story of the most famous liner of all time.

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HISTORY OF THE OLYMPIC CLASS SHIPS

1898: U.S. writer Thomas Morgan publishes a novel called ‘Futility‘. In this book, the Titan, the largest ship ever built, hits an iceberg on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic in April and sinks. Most of its passengers and crew drown.

1907: White Star Line, a shipping company, plans a new Olympic class ship, named after the Ancient Greek families of gods. These are to be the Olympic, Titanic and Gigantic.

1909: Mrs. Eugene Lynch insures her life for $10,000, after dreaming she will die during her forthcoming voyage to Italy. Later that day (January 23rd) she boards the White Star liner Republic. That night the ship is struck 50 miles from New York side-on by another ship, the Florida. Six people, including Mrs. Lynch and her husband, are killed, but the remaining 1500 are rescued, thanks to the new Marconi radio telegraph, with which the Republic summons help. The Florida survives; the Republic later sinks. Because so many people survived, White Star reduces the number of lifeboats on the Olympic class ships from 1,600 (for up to 3,500 passengers!) to 1,100.

1910: Olympic is launched in Belfast. It will take a nearly a year before she is fully fitted out.

1911: Titanic is launched in Belfast; at 270 metres long by 28 metres wide it supplants Olympic as the largest man-made moving object on the planet. Olympic makes her maiden voyage under Captain Edward Smith (60). White Star announces Titanic’s maiden voyage will be on March 20th, 1912. Soon after, Olympic under Smith's command collides with a warship, HMS Hawke, in the Solent. The liner is badly damaged. Repairs cost a lot - which the White Star Line can barely afford. Titanic’s maiden voyage is put back to April 10th, 1912 whilst Olympic is repaired. Early winter storms followed by an unusually mild winter mean there are many more icebergs than usual in the North Atlantic Ocean.

1912

April 10th: Titanic arrives in Southampton, where Captain Smith joins her. A magazine calls the ship ‘almost unsinkable’ (the term once used for the Republic!). There are 1,863 people on board. A national coal strike means the voyage is nearly cancelled, but White Star, desperate to make the trip, borrows coal from other ships in port. Manoeuvring in Southampton Water, Captain Smith overdoes the power and a small liner called New York gets pulled in by the giant propellers and comes within four feet (1.3m) of a collision. This delays the sailing by one hour to 1:00, when Titanic sails to Cherbourg (France). It reaches there at 6:30; 274 get on whilst 22 get off. The ship leaves at 8:10 for Queenstown (now Cobh) in Southern Ireland.

April 11th: Titanic drops anchor two miles off Queenstown (11:30), where it is too big for the harbour and people have to be transferred on and off via tender (transfer-boat). Seven people get off, whilst 120 get on. There are now 2,228 people on board. The ship departs two hours later. Captain Smith is told by James Bruce Ismay, owner of the White Star Line, to go full speed on a direct course to New York, because the company needs the money that having the fastest ship across the Atlantic would bring. Smith warns of icebergs, but Ismay overrules him. Titanic receives six warnings from other ships about pack ice.

April 12th: Five more ships send Titanic warnings about pack ice.

April 13th: Rappahannock passes Titanic, warning it has taken heavy damage from pack ice, one of three warnings that day.

April 14th: This is the day that lifeboat drills are supposed to be held, but Captain Smith decides to skip them. He doesn't want to upset the passengers. Little does he know....

09.00: Caronia warns Titanic of ice ahead.

11.40: Noordam warns Titanic of a large ice-field ahead.

13.42: Baltic warns Titanic of much ice ahead. This message does reach the bridge - 6 hours later!

13.45: Titanic overhears a transmission from the Amerika, warning of large bergs ahead. Again there is a delay of several hours before the bridge gets this message.

14.00: Titanic's radio fails.

17.50: The temperature is falling fast, and the sea is now very calm. This is bad, because waves help show the locations of icebergs. Captain Smith makes a very slight course change to avoid the worst of the approaching ice. Lookouts are posted - but do not get any binoculars!

18.00: Nightfall. The radio is finally repaired. The radio operators now have to work hard sending messages from first-class passengers to people waiting for them in New York.

19.30: Titanic overhears a transmission from the Californian, warning of three large bergs ahead.

21.40: Mesaba sends a message to Titanic, warning of many large bergs ahead. The message is not passed to the bridge. Titanic accelerates to its maximum speed of about 25 m.p.h.

23.00: Californian sends a message telling Titanic it has stopped, trapped in heavy ice about 30 miles ahead. Titanic’s radio operator, busy trying to send out many calls from passengers to friends and relatives in New York, tells the Californian’s radio operator ‘shut up, I'm busy’!

23.30: Californian’s radio operator switches off his set and goes to bed. If only...

23.40: The lookouts sight a large iceberg dead ahead. The ship starts to turn, but the iceberg makes a set of gashes 100 metres long, flooding the first five compartments. Olympic class ships are designed to float only if the first four compartments are flooded. Titanic is doomed. Ironically if it has hit the iceberg full-on, it would probably have stayed afloat, at least long enough for help to arrive.

April 15th

00.15: Titanic's band start playing ragtime tunes, in an attempt to maintain morale. Thirty-five minutes after the impact, Titanic calls for help. Carpathia (60 miles away) should have had its radios turned off, and only received the call by chance. Carpathia’s captain, Arthur Rostron, runs his engines at 30% above normal, and narrowly misses several icebergs.

00.45: Just 20 miles away, lookouts on the Californian spot flares sent up by the Titanic, but don’t recognize them as distress flares. Californian's crew are afraid to wake their sleeping captain, so do nothing. On the Titanic, there are 1,178 lifeboat places for the 2,228 people on board – 2 emergency clippers (small lifeboats), capacity 40 each; 14 regular lifeboats, capacity 65 each, and four collapsibles, capacity 47 each. Of that total capacity, over 40% - 473 lives - will be lost by the captain's and crew's failings in the coming hours. Starboard (right-side) 7 lifeboat leaves Titanic with 28 people; it has places for 65. The crew misinterpret 'women and children first' as 'women and children only, wasting around 300 lives in so doing.

00:55: Starboard 5 (41) and Port 6 (28) leave.

01:00: Starboard 3 leaves with only 40 on board.

01:10: Port 8 lifeboat leaves carrying 35. Starboard 1, an emergency clipper, fares even worse, leaving with only 12 (30% full).

01:20: Starboard 9 (56) and Port 10 (55) leave almost full. The increasing tilt of the decks is finally alerting the crew to the desperate need to fill the boats.

01:25: Port 12 leaves with 43 on board (though it will later be filled by those rescued from other boats). Starboard 11 is one of two boats to leave with more than its capacity, 70 people on board.

01:30: Port 14 (60). Members of the crew are forced to fire shots to prevent desperate men from jumping into the full boat.

01:35: Port 16 (56) and Starboard 13 (64) leave almost full. Thirteen is certainly unlucky; first this boat nearly gets swamped by a jet of steam from Titanic's side, then an overcrowded Starboard 15 (70) is lowered too quickly, narrowly avoiding crushing it.

01.40: Water is now lapping over the bow (front) of the ship. Ismay ignores the ’women and children first’ rule, and joins the 40 or so who are in Starboard Collapsible C.

01:45: Port 2, the other emergency clipper, leaves with 25 on board. The radio room is now submerged, ending Titanic's calls for help.

01:55: Port 4 (40) leaves. The wealthy John Astor is refused entry, as the crew are still insisting on only allowing women and children onto the boats.

02:05: Port Collapsible D is the last lifeboat actually launched. The crew fire shots into the air, and form a human chain to ensure that only women and children constitute the 44 on board.

02.17: The bow plunges underwater, releasing the trapped unlaunched Port Collapsible B lifeboat. Around fifty people make it into this boat, but only 27 people are alive by the time another boat can return and rescue them.

02.18: Titanic’s lights go out. The bow underwater, the strain on the stern (back) is too much and the back quarter of the ship snaps off and bobs upright. The bow sinks.

02.20: The stern sinks. Starboard Collapsible A is jerked loose; only 12 of the 30 or so who make it to this part-flooded boat will survive to be rescued. The crews in charge of other lifeboats refuse to go back for survivors, for fear they would tip the boats over and drown everybody. Most of the remaining people are thrown into the water and die within minutes of hypothermia (coldness/shock). Some are sucked under by the pull of the sinking ship. Captain Smith goes down with his ship. One lifeboat does go back later and manages to pull four people alive from the water.

03.15: Carpathia arrives - and finds Titanic gave out a wrong position! Fortunately a flare from one of the lifeboats is sighted. It will take five hours to rescue the 705 survivors.

04:10: Port 2 is the first lifeboat reached by Carpathia.

05.30: Californian switches her radio back on, and learns what has happened. She edges through the ice-field to the site of the sinking.

07.45: Californian arrives just as Carpathia has rescued the last lifeboat. Californian searches the site and recovers some bodies and wreckage before following her. Only 328 bodies will be recovered out of 1,523 dead.

April 18th: Carpathia, her engines damaged by her mad rush, limps into New York.

Postscript: Gigantic was launched as Britannic in 1914, but after being transformed into a hospital ship, was sunk by a German U-boat in World War One just two years later. Californian (1914) and Carpathia (1918) were also sunk by U-boats. White Star merged with their rivals Cunard in 1934; Olympic was retired the following year. Bruce Ismay was – fittingly - ruined, and died in disgrace.