after rewatching Titanic a few days ago, I’ve fallen into a wikipedia wormhole and oh my god the entire Titanic tragedy is a textbook lesson on “how to majorly fuck up repeatedly again reloaded 2.0″
* the crew didn’t know how to properly operate the lifeboats (there weren’t enough lifeboats to begin with, but the Titanic had complied with maritime law regulations at the time)
* the crew only went through one drill before sailing out, which involved lowering 2 lifeboats and rowing them around for a bit
* about half of the life boats were loaded waaaaay way under capacity (think 20 people in a boat meant for 65)
* poor information dissemination – there were crew members who didn’t even know the ship was sinking until more than an hour after the iceberg was hit
* Captain Smith effectively shut down emotionally/mentally the second he realised the scope of the disaster and basically left the crew to organise evacuation
* he also failed to properly acknowledge iceberg warnings (Titanic received around 5 or 6 warnings throughout the day before the tragedy happened), which, get this, at the time were taken as “advisory” and not as “fuck shit we need to be careful fam”
* Titanic was speeding at almost her top possible speed (21 knots – her top speed was 24), in spite of, I repeat, big blocks of ice in the ocean that nobody was apparently scared of *smh*
* there was a ship literally 5 miles away that saw Titanic’s deck lights and distress rockets, but her captain didn’t do shit because he wasn’t sure what the rockers meant(wtf boy wtfffff); he didn’t even wake up the wireless radio operator so they could at least radio the ship and see if they were okay
* only one or two of the 20 lifeboats launched came back to search for survivors; there were 1500 people in the water and only a couple of boats returned
* because of the way the ship was constructed, a lot of 3rd class passengers couldn’t make it on the decks were lifeboats were loaded (very non-coincidentally, first class passengers had no issues getting there)sure, there was a fair amount of bad luck involved (coldest April in 50 years, that caused a lot of ice to form in that area – Titanic was literally passing through what is now known as Iceberg Alley; the night was clear, the ocean was calm, which made spotting icebergs a lot harder because there were no waves to crash into them; the lookouts had no binoculars???) but shit son, human error played a huge part in this. I know it was a different time, changes were made towards a lot more safety for passengers and it’s very easy for us to judge something that we weren’t a part of, but it’s still shocking to see so many things go wrong at once.
this is what i do instead of reading smh
Yes Mary, share your history knowledge I LOVE THIS! This is so interesting. I’ve been to museums about the Titanic and I never knew that there was a ship so close, or that the crew was so clueless and they had so many warnings.
❤ About the ship that was close, SS Californian – there’s a bit of controversy. Her captain maintained throughout both U.S. and British inquiries that his ship was about 20-30 miles (his testimony changed several times, from what I’ve read) away and that the Titanic itself wasn’t visible from their position, they just saw the distress rockets and they didn’t know what they meant (back then, apparently, ships would use different coloured rockets to greet/signal ships from the same line, so they didn’t know Titanic was signaling that there was trouble). What he failed to do was wake up the guy in charge of the wirelesa radio, so they could signal the Titanic and see what happened. His testimony was contested by crew members.
Now, what I’ve read today is that the captain maintained his innocence up to and including on his deathbed (he died in 1962). A few months after his death, though, the nephew of a different dude, the captain of an industrial ship called Samsun, found his uncle’s journal from 1912, where his uncle claimed that his ship was the one that was 5 miles away from the Titanic, but they were smuggling seals and had a loooot of dead animals onboard. They thought Titanic’s distress rockets were actually signals from a patrol of the U.S. Coast Guard, so they switched off the lights on the entire ship, to hide. They didn’t have a radio, so they couldn’t hear the distress messages and only found out about the tragedy en route to Iceland. Idk if this is really true, but if it is…
ALSO
The captain of the Carpathia, the only ship that answered Titanic’s distress calls was a bad ass motherfucker oh my god
So, the dude in charge of manning their wireless radio was about to turn in for the night (there wasn’t 24 hour radio support back then), but decided to listen for a bit more before bed because why not and heard Titanic’s message. He rushed to the captain, woke him up and told him about the disaster. Captain Rostron ordered the ship to stop its course and turn toward the Titanic. Only after doing that did he confirm with the radio guy that the emergency was real.
He pushed the ship to more than its rated speed and rushed as much as he could, talking to the chief engineer and asking for more stokers. He put out more lookers to spot ice and navigate through it as fast as possible. He stopped the heating and warm water so that more steam power could go into the engines. He ordered his crew to prepare hot drinks, soup, clothes and rooms for the survivors. He had nurses ready to treat injuries. Dude pulled all the stops, I’m in awe. This is how you handle shit.
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Marshmellowmilktea 