That Faithful night

            On April14th 1912 six warning calls were given to the Titanic during the Evening hours, only one call was acknowledged by Captain Edward Smith, after which he orders a new course to be set, to take the ship further south. At this time the Titanic was still steaming through the water at an unnecessary speed for traveling through an ice field. Five other warning were recorded but never communicated to another crew member expected the Operator, Jack Phillips. The final warning call was received at 10:30PM by the Californian before Phillips turned off all incoming calls because of an increased demand to relay passenger message's out from the boat. Both Captain and crew of the Titanic knew of ice in the area but an order to reduce speed was never given. The Titanic was still steaming at 22 knots only two knots from her maximum speed.

The Ice berg thought to have striked the Titanic, photographed the morning of April 15th 1912 near the area the Titanic went under.

My Thoughts:

            This is what I don't understand, how can the captain 
be so negligent? If I was the captain and I knew I was sailing through an area with icebergs that can easily rip apart my ship's hull. I would slow down or stop for the night, in which other ships did. But not the Titanic whose captain believed that arriving a few days early to its destination of New York was more important than passenger safety. If the Titanic arrived in New York early that would give the Titanic the title of being the fastest and largest ship on the sea, a huge accomplishment for the White Star Line and for the ships itself.

     Continuing on with the unfaithful night, at 11:40 pm the Crows nest alerted the officer of an ice berg dead ahead. The officer gave the order to steer the ship a hard starboard or a hard right to dodge the iceberg. But that iceberg was too close and a few seconds after giving the order the Titanic collided in which ship's hull sliced open was making a 300 foot long gaping hole. Simultaneously all water tight doors were ordered shut as the ship. Men who were working in the broiler rooms tendering the furnaces to keep the ships speed so high we the first to die in the disaster. Some died due to the pressure of the sea water coming in, some drowned and other faced a gruesome death by getting caught under the Water tight doors. There was really no warning for them. The control panel was on the bridge and hit once the ice berg struck. Shouldn't the Captain have given warning to them?

Let's look at how one became a captain in 1912:  

Captain Edward James Smith

            With further research I found out that there really weren't requirements to become a Captain. Captain Smith started out at 17 years of age on Senator Weber, a cargo ship that traveled to and from Australia. After gaining experience he joined the White Star Line at 30 and then he worked his way up through the ships chain of command and at 37 years of age he was given his Master's Certificate a license to be Captain. White Star had Captain Smith captain several of their ships on their maiden voyages. After no incident he was rewarded with captaining larger ships, such as The Titanic's sister The Olympic. All you would need to become a captain would be experience and a good word put in. However now a days it's much more rigorous. If a person would want to become a captain today, they would need to go through a school where they will need to get a Bachelor's degree, finding an internship, exams in which they need to pass, have a master's degree of maritime engineering, pass a physical, mental and eye sight exam and drug test, take another exam, work as a captain on a smaller vessels before gaining access to the larger ships. All these requirements are overseen by the Coast Guard and are highly competitive.  Now that we've seen that there's been growth for a Captain nowadays. I'm now curious how that captain was treated after the disaster?

     In fact the fate of the Captain has been uncertain for some time, James McGann, a Trimmer accounts for his final words before the final point of sinking. McGann recalls Captain Smith saying to his crew "'Well boys, you've done your duty and done it well. I ask no more of you. I release you. You know the rule of the sea. It's every man for himself now, and God bless you." From there on other witness recall him jumping over board into a life boat while others believe they found captain smith floating in the water died. However one thing's for certain a body's remains were found within the wheel house of the Titanic during its rediscover in 1981, I can only believe that was Smiths body staying with the ship.

"Untergang der Titanic", conception by Willy Stöwer, 1912 

James Cameron's flim version of the final song on the ship. Nearer My God to Thee. In which the band did play on the ship at it's last moments in 1912. The band leader Wallace Hartley was found floating died in the Atlantic two weeks after the Titanic went down, he was in full dress and had his violin starpped to him.

 "Captain Edward John Smith." Encyclopedia Titanica. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Oct. 2013. Hyslop, Donald, Alastair Forsyth, and Sheila Jemima. Titanic Voices. Southampton: Southampton City Council, 2006. Print. 
McCaughan, Michael. The Birth of the Titanic. Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, in Association with The National Museum and Galleries of Northern Ireland, Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, 1999. Print. 

She was Truly a Titan

     Let's travel back in time to 1912 New England, Arizona was just becoming the 48th state of America and women of each class unless married worked as domestic servants, cooking, cleaning and caring for children of different families. Transatlantic travel was blossoming and several families of high society took place on them, shuttling from England to the Untied States. While families of lower class or English immigrants used these ships to begin a new life away from England's monarchy. For the largest ship on the water of 1912, she was a titan as her name intended. She was the RMS (Royal Mail Service) Titanic a ship deemed unsinkable. Why on that horrific night did over 1,500 passengers fall death to the Atlantic sea? Was each death due a lack of passenger safety?

Built in Belfast, Ireland by Harland and Wolff under the watchful eye of the White Star Line company, she had the height of 104 feet, length of 882.4 feet and weighed in at 46,328 tons.  The pure man power needed was austonishing, Her interior was handcrafted from the mind of Thomas Andrews, a naval architecture. In which he gave Titanic her most distinctive features, a Grand Stair case that descended through seven decks, full sized gymnasiums for each class, rooms in which the passenger was swaddled in lavishness.

     Of course Upper and second class cabins were of luxury but what shocked most passengers was that even in third class, beds weren't made out of straw but real mattresses. Even privacy, a privilege we don't often think about was given to several immigrants and lower class families. Third class sleeping cabins were quite smaller then the first class bathroom, families and passengers felt as if they weren't on a ship but a hotel of royalty. The Titanic and her older sister ship, Olympic, set new standards of transatlantic travel. In which every Passenger liner competed for.

       

    Her maiden voyage carried a total of 3,327 men, women, children, and crew. However she only had lifeboats to save 1,178 people at full capacity. So why were 1,500 lost? Those lifeboats were intended to ferry passengers to a rescuing ship, not keep them afloat while the ship sank. The amount of lifeboats the Titanic carried was more than legally allowed on any White Star ship. But the rescuing ship, Carpathia arrived too late to ferry the passengers and successfully rescue all the passengers in the frigid water but 705. In fact The RMS Carpathia wasn't the closest ship to the Titanic when it's distress calls were given, the SS Californian was about 14.4-16.7 miles away. A report from the Californian look out tells of them watching the Titanic's Distress flares in the sky. The Californian crew also attempted to single the Titanic by Morse lamp, but never wireless. As the lookouts unknowingly watched the Titanic sink they reported having a conversation 

"A ship is not going to fire rockets at sea for nothing" stated Second Officer Herbert 
Stone. 

"Have a look at her now. She looks very queer out of the water — her lights look queer." observed apprentice officer James Gibson. 

At about 1:15am on April 15th Gibson called down to the sleeping captain asking what they should do after seeing more  flares. Captain Stanley Lord gave no orders of rescue but  to just watch the ship. Again at 2:00 am Gibson asked the captain what orders should be sent after seeing eight distress flares. Still no orders were given, twenty minutes later the Titanic sank, dumping passengers into the sea. Later lookout reports from Gibson state that at 3:30am he saw a ship firing rockets into the air around the area where he saw the previous ship. Gibson believed it was the Titanic not the Carpathia. Finally at 4:30am Captain Stanley Lord awoke wondering how to navigate out of the icebergs. At 5:30am April 15th Lord turned the wireless back on to discover the news of the Titanic, passenger safety wasn't at fault but of captain negligence. 

My next question am going to follow will be of each of the captains of the ships, Titanic,  and Carpathia. 

Work citied:

 McCaughan, Michael. The Birth of the Titanic. Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, in Association with The National Museum and Galleries of Northern Ireland, Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, 1999. Print.
RMS Titanic." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 11 July 2013. Web. 18 Oct. 2013.