The Titanic goes down in about 20 minutes, 100 years ago...

[Larkspur]

Thoughts, comments?

[Larkspur]

1. The story always fascinated me

as well as the story about how Ballard found the wreck site. He learned to follow the debris trail from finding the 2 subs the Navy wanted him to find first.

I saw the Titanic exhibit when it came to Boston, MA a few years ago. It was neat. I've got mixed feelings about the artifacts. I think they should mostly be in a museum so all can see them. I'm not fond of having them sold, especially if they were personal items of the victims or survivors.

I also read that today, the Titanic wreck site is now protected by the U.N., so maybe now someone can protect the site from further damage by sub companies offering wealthy folks joy rides to the wreck site. However, it would be neat if someone could follow Ballard's suggestion about putting cameras at the site and beaming the images to the Internet so we all can see the site and scientists can monitor what goes on down there.

[WillyT]

2. Yeah... "Women And Children First" Had A Different Meaning Then, Than It Does Now...

[The Straight Story]

3. Oh Lord, can you imagine if it was a DU jury deciding which people got onto life boats?

Juror #1 voted to leave you, comment: "I heard them use the word sexy earlier on the cruise, do you really want someone who says such things on your boat?"
Juror #2 voted to leave you, comment: "They are a gun nut, might be packing and will probably shoot everyone on the boat and eat our food."

[Zalatix]

13. Oooooh, that was wrong.

Hilarious, though. And true.

[hlthe2b]

15. Juror # 2 has a point.

[Art_from_Ark]

14. Yeah, basically it meant "Women and Children 1st Class Passengers First"

[Liberal In Texas]

4. The lifeboat regs hadn't been changed since 1894.

At that time the regs were based on a ship of 10,000 tons. The biggest ship in 1894 was half that size. Titanic was over 46,000 tons. The regs were never updated, and there was no provision to increase the number of lifeboats in proportion to increased weight.

Ironically, Alexander Carlisle the ship's original designer had proposed 64 boats (enough for every person on the ship), then cut that to 32 and davits to accommodate them. White Star's Ismay cut that to 16 wooden boats and 4 emergency collapsible lifeboats, which exceeded the Board of Trade law. (Data from: 1912 Facts About Titanic, Revised Edition 2003 by Lee W. Merideth)

The lack of oversight by the Board of Trade, in the words of Sir Alfred Chalmers of the Board he rationalized:

I considered the matter very closely from time to time...I found it was the safest mode of travel in the world, and I thought it was neither right nor the duty of a State Department to impose regulations upon that mode of travel as long as the record was a clean one...as ships grew bigger, there were such improvements made in their construction that they were stronger and better ships...that that was the road along which the shipowners were going to travel, and that they should not be interfered with...the voluntary action of the owners was carrying them beyond the requirements of our scale, and when voluntary action on the part of shipowners is doing that, I think that any State Department should hold its hand before it steps in to make a hard-and-fast scale for that particular type of shipping. http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/item/4865/

This is very much like the arguments we hear today. That regulation should be relaxed or abolished. That private enterprise will regulate itself.

Clearly, with over 1500 people dead, that did not work. Again, this is a classic cautionary tale I like to use in arguments with righties when they bring up the self-regulation meme.


Survivors aboard one of the
collapsible lifeboats.
(Note the canvass sides.)

[Larkspur]

9. I had read that Harland & Wolf wanted enougth lifeboats for everyone because...

while the Titanic was considered unsinkable, she was not fire proof. They would use the lifeboats to evacuate everyone in case of fire, but Ismay nixed that due to costs.

I also have a video that stated that the davits used on Titanic were the first of their kind and that was due to Harland & Wolff subcontracting to Welin Davit & Engineering Co Ltd, which still exists today, who made davits that could lower multiple lifeboats. Prior to this request davits could only lower 1 lifeboat period.

And I agree with you that the same battle about regulations and big businesses cutting costs at the expense of people's lives is an ongoing war.

[Skittles]

5. I think the class situation that existed back then

is making a comeback

[msongs]

6. seems to me it took more than two hours nt

[Sherman A1]

10. I think it was about 3 hours or so

[Loudly]

7. There's this Titanic artifacts expert in the James Cameron special on NatGeo.

He says personal effects brought up from the wreck usually have a musty rotting smell to them.

Makes sense, after a century at the bottom two miles down.

But once, he says, he encountered a satchel which had vials of perfume in it.

And when he opened the satchel, he was greeted with pleasant fragrances of flowers and fruit.

He actually breaks down on camera and begins to weep remembering the experience.

Moved by the moment the ship seemed alive once again.

[Raine]

8. R-I-P nt

[Art_from_Ark]

11. I always thought it was kind of weird that the Titanic hit an iceberg on the night of April 14

and sank in the early morning of April 15, and Abraham Lincoln was shot on the night of April 14, and died in the early morning of April 15.

[dems_rightnow]

17. Might Lincoln have been.......

..... reincarnated as the Titanic??

[KharmaTrain]

12. More Like 2 1/2 Hours...

...and there were passengers up to the last minutes who still didn't believe the ship was going down. NatGeo has had a fascinating series of specials...one with James Cameron going through new evidence on the sinking and correcting details he got wrong in his movie. Also Bob Ballard who found the Titanic wreck in the 80s who is trying to limit the number of "sightseers" who have visited the ship and knocked things around...accelerating the rusting process.

I've always thought of this tragedy as the collision of man's infalibility with his/her never-ending belief that they can tame and master nature.

[One of the 99]

16. The Titanic sank at 2:20AM ship time

Which was 2 hours ahead of Eastern time, so you're about 2 hours too late.

[TuxedoKat]

18. I'm sort of

disappointed I haven't read or seen more about the Titanic this week in the news. With the anniversary approaching this spring I've been looking for books, documentaries, etc., about it. I did find this article:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/14/2748800/titanic-the-moral-of-a-100-year.html

and found out that there is a Titanic Museum in TN:

http://www.titanicpigeonforge.com/

[Tom Rinaldo]

19. I remember, when I was a kid, seeing a photo in a book

It was a picture said to be of the iceberg that sank the Titanic. There was a long streak of paint visible on its side. It gave me chills (pun not intended) to look at. I have always been fascinated by the Titanic - the fact that it was our crown of creation at the time, thought unsinkable, and lost on its maiden journey - is haunting and says so much about the hubris of humans.