A century has sailed by since the luxury steamship RMS Titanic met its
catastrophic end in the North Atlantic, plunging two miles to the ocean
floor after sideswiping an iceberg during its maiden voyage. Rather than
the intended Port of New York, a deep-sea grave became the pride of the
White Star Line’s final destination in the early hours of April 15,
1912. More than 1,500 people lost their lives in the disaster. In the
decades since her demise, Titanic has inspired countless books and
several notable films while continuing to make headlines, particularly
since the 1985 discovery of her resting place off the coast of
Newfoundland. Meanwhile, her story has entered the public consciousness
as a powerful cautionary tale about the perils of human hubris.
The Making of Titanic
The Royal Mail Steamer Titanic was the product of intense competition
among rival shipping lines in the first half of the 20th century. In
particular, the White Star Line found itself in a battle for steamship
primacy with Cunard, a venerable British firm with two standout ships
that ranked among the most sophisticated and luxurious of their time.
Cunard’s Mauretania began service in 1907 and immediately set a speed
record for the fastest transatlantic crossing that it held for 22 years.
Cunard’s other masterpiece,
Lusitania,
launched the same year and was lauded for its spectacular interiors. It
met its tragic end–and entered the annals of world history–on May 7,
1915, when a torpedo fired by a German U-boat sunk the ship, killing
nearly 1,200 of the 1,959 people on board and precipitating the United
States’ entry into
World War I.
Passengers traveling first class on Titanic were roughly 44 percent more likely to survive than other passengers.
The
same year that Cunard unveiled its two magnificent liners, J. Bruce
Ismay, chief executive of White Star, discussed the construction of
three large ships with William J. Pirrie, chairman of the Belfast-based
shipbuilding company Harland and Wolff. Part of a new “Olympic” class of
liners, they would each measure 882 feet in length and 92.5 feet at
their broadest point, making them the largest of their time. In March
1909, work began in the massive Harland and Wolff yard on the second of
these ships, Titanic, and continued nonstop until the spring of 1911.
On May 31, 1911, Titanic’s immense hull–at the time, the largest
movable manmade object in the world–made its way down the slipways and
into the River Lagan in Belfast. More than 100,000 people attended the
launching, which took just over a minute and went off without a hitch.
The hull was immediately towed to a mammoth fitting-out dock where
thousands of workers would spend most of the next year building the
ship’s decks, constructing her lavish interiors and installing the 29
giant boilers that would power her two main steam engines.
Titanic’s Fatal Flaws
According to some hypotheses, Titanic was doomed from the start by
the design so many lauded as state-of-the-art. The Olympic-class ships
featured a double bottom and 15 watertight bulkheads equipped with
electric watertight doors which could be operated individually or
simultaneously by a switch on the bridge. It was these watertight
bulkheads that inspired Shipbuilder magazine, in a special issue devoted
to the Olympic liners, to deem them “practically unsinkable.” But the
watertight compartment design contained a flaw that may have been a
critical factor in Titanic’s sinking: While the individual bulkheads
were indeed watertight, water could spill from one compartment into
another. Several of Titanic’s Cunard-owned contemporaries, by contrast,
already boasted innovative safety features devised to avoid this very
situation. Had White Star taken a cue from its competitor, it might have
saved Titanic from disaster.
The second critical safety lapse that contributed to the loss of so
many lives was the number of lifeboats carried on Titanic. Those 16
boats, along with four Engelhardt “collapsibles,” could accommodate
1,178 people. Titanic when full could carry 2,435 passengers, and a crew
of approximately 900 brought her capacity to more than 3,300 people. As
a result, even if the lifeboats were loaded to full capacity during an
emergency evacuation, there were available seats for only one-third of
those on board. While unthinkably inadequate by today’s standards,
Titanic’s supply of lifeboats actually exceeded the British Board of
Trade’s regulations.
Titanic Sets Sail
The largest passenger steamship ever built, Titanic created quite a
stir when it departed for its maiden voyage from Southampton, England,
on April 10, 1912. After stops in Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown (now
known as Cobh), Ireland, the ship set sail for
New York
with 2,240 passengers and crew—or “souls,” the expression then used in
the shipping industry, usually in connection with a sinking—on board.
As befitting the first transatlantic crossing of the world’s most
celebrated ship, many of these souls were high-ranking officials,
wealthy industrialists, dignitaries and celebrities. First and foremost
was the White Star Line’s managing director, J. Bruce Ismay, accompanied
by Thomas Andrews, the ship’s builder from Harland and Wolff. (Missing
was
J.P. Morgan,
whose International Mercantile Marine shipping trust controlled the
White Star Line and who had selected Ismay as a company officer. The
financier had planned to join his associates on Titanic but canceled at
the last minute when some business matters delayed him.)
The wealthiest passenger was John Jacob Astor IV, who had made waves a
year earlier by marrying 18-year-old Madeleine Talmadge Force, a young
woman 29 years his junior, not long after divorcing his first wife.
Other millionaire passengers included the elderly owner of Macy’s,
Isidor Straus, and his wife Ida; industrialist Benjamin Guggenheim,
accompanied by his mistress, valet and chauffeur; and widow and heiress
Margaret “Molly” Brown, who would earn her “unsinkable” nickname by
helping to maintain calm and order while the lifeboats were being loaded
and boosting the spirits of her fellow survivors.
The employees attending to this collection of First Class notables
were largely traveling Second Class, along with academics, tourists,
journalists and others who would enjoy a level of service equivalent to
First Class on most other ships. But by far the largest group of
passengers was in Third Class: more than 700, exceeding the other two
levels combined. Some had paid less than $20 to make the crossing. It
was Third Class that was the major source of profit for shipping lines
like White Star and Cunard, and Titanic was designed to offer these
passengers accommodations and amenities superior to those found in Third
Class on any ship up to that time.
Titanic’s departure from Southampton on April 10 was not without some
oddities. A small coal fire was discovered in one of her bunkers–an
alarming but not uncommon occurrence on steamships of the day. Stokers
hosed down the smoldering coal and shoveled it aside to reach the base
of the blaze. After assessing the situation, the captain and chief
engineer concluded that it was unlikely it had caused any damage that
could affect the hull structure, and the stokers were ordered to
continue controlling the fire at sea. According to a theory put forth by
a small number of Titanic experts, the fire became uncontrollable after
the ship left Southampton, forcing the crew to attempt a full-speed
crossing; moving at such a fast pace, they were unable to avoid the
fatal collision with the iceberg. Another unsettling event took place
when Titanic left the Southampton dock. As she got underway, she
narrowly escaped a collision with the America Line’s S.S. New York.
Superstitious Titanic buffs often point to this as the worst kind of
omen for a ship departing on her maiden voyage. Ironically, had Titanic
collided with the ship named for her port of destination, the delay
might have spared the ship from being in the precise position for her
encounter with the iceberg.
Disaster Strikes Aboard Titanic
That encounter took place roughly four days out, at about 11:30 p.m.
on April 14. Titanic was equipped with a Marconi wireless, and there had
been sporadic reports of ice from other ships, but she was sailing on
calm seas under a moonless, clear sky. A lookout saw the iceberg dead
ahead coming out of a slight haze, rang the warning bell and telephoned
the bridge. The engines were quickly reversed and the ship was turned
sharply, and instead of making direct impact the berg seemed to graze
along the side of the ship, sprinkling ice fragments on the forward
deck. Sensing no collision, the lookouts were relieved. They had no idea
that the iceberg’s jagged underwater spur had slashed a 300-foot gash
well below the ship’s waterline, and that Titanic was doomed. By the
time the captain toured the damaged area with Harland and Wolff’s Thomas
Andrews, five compartments were already filling with seawater, and the
bow of the ship was alarmingly down. Andrews did a quick calculation and
estimated that Titanic might remain afloat for an hour and a half,
perhaps slightly more. At that point the captain, who had already
instructed his wireless operator to call for help, ordered the lifeboats
to be loaded.
A little more than an hour after contact with the iceberg, a largely
disorganized and haphazard evacuation process began with the lowering of
the first lifeboat. The craft was designed to hold 65 people; it left
with only 28 aboard. Amid the confusion and chaos during the precious
hours before Titanic plunged into the sea, nearly every boat would be
launched woefully under-filled, some with only a handful of passengers.
In compliance with the law of the sea, women and children boarded the
boats first; only when there were no women or children nearby were men
permitted to board. Yet many of the victims were in fact women and
children, the result of disorderly procedures that failed to get them to
the boats in the first place.
Exceeding Andrews’ prediction, Titanic stubbornly managed to stay
afloat for close to three hours. Those hours witnessed acts of craven
cowardice and extraordinary bravery. Hundreds of human dramas unfolded
between the order to load the lifeboats and the ship’s final plunge: Men
saw off wives and children, families were separated in the confusion
and selfless individuals gave up their spots to remain with loved ones
or allow a more vulnerable passenger to escape.
The ship’s most illustrious passengers each responded to the
circumstances with conduct that has become an integral part of the
Titanic legend. Ismay, the White Star managing director, helped load
some of the boats and later stepped onto a collapsible as it was being
lowered. Although no women or children were in the vicinity when he
abandoned ship, he would never live down the ignominy of surviving the
disaster while so many others perished. Thomas Andrews, Titanic’s chief
designer, was last seen in the First Class smoking room, staring blankly
at a painting of a ship on the wall. Astor deposited Madeleine in a
lifeboat and, remarking that she was pregnant, asked if he could
accompany her; refused entry, he managed to kiss her goodbye just before
the boat was lowered away. Although offered a seat on account of his
age, Isidor Straus refused any special consideration, and his wife Ida
would not leave her husband behind. The couple retired to their cabin
and perished together. Benjamin Guggenheim and his valet returned to
their rooms and changed into formal evening dress; emerging onto the
deck, he famously declared, “We are dressed in our best and are prepared
to go down like gentlemen.” Molly Brown helped load the boats and
finally was forced into one of the last to leave. She implored its
crewmen to turn back for survivors, but they refused, fearing they would
be swamped by desperate people trying to escape the freezing ocean.
Titanic, nearly perpendicular and with many of her lights still
aglow, finally dove beneath the icy surface at approximately 2:20 a.m.
on April 15. Throughout the morning, Cunard’s Carpathia, after receiving
Titanic’s distress call at midnight and steaming at full speed while
dodging ice floes all night, rounded up all of the lifeboats. They
contained only 705 survivors.
Analyzing the Titanic Catastrophe
At least five separate boards of inquiry on both sides of the
Atlantic conducted comprehensive hearings on Titanic’s sinking,
interviewing dozens of witnesses and consulting with many maritime
experts. Every conceivable subject was investigated, from the conduct of
the officers and crew to the construction of the ship. While it has
always been assumed that the ship sank as a result of the gash that
caused the compartments to flood, various other theories have emerged
over the decades, including that the ship’s steel plates were too
brittle for the near-freezing Atlantic waters, that the impact caused
rivets to pop and that the expansion joints failed, among others.
The technological aspects of the catastrophe aside, Titanic’s demise
has taken on a deeper, almost mythic, meaning in popular culture. Many
view the tragedy as a morality play about the dangers of human hubris:
Titanic’s creators believed they had built an “unsinkable” ship that
could not be defeated by the laws of nature. This same overconfidence
explains the electrifying impact Titanic’s sinking had on the public
when she was lost. There was widespread disbelief that the ship could
possibly have sunk, and, due to the era’s slow and unreliable means of
communication, misinformation abounded. Newspapers initially reported
that the ship had collided with an iceberg but remained afloat and was
being towed to port with everyone on board. It took many hours for
accurate accounts to become available, and even then people had trouble
accepting that this paradigm of modern technology could sink on her
maiden voyage, taking more than 1,500 souls with her.
The ship historian John Maxtone-Graham has compared Titanic’s story
to the Challenger space shuttle disaster of 1986. In that case, the
world reeled at the notion that some of the most sophisticated
technology ever created could explode into oblivion along with its crew.
Both tragedies triggered a sudden and complete collapse in confidence,
revealing that we are vulnerable despite our modern presumptions of
technological infallibility.
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