building

Construction and equipment

Specifications

Bulkheads

The Titanic was built to stay afloat if any 2 of its 16 watertight compartments, any 3 of the first 5 compartments, or all of the first 4 compartments were flooded.

The first 2 bulkheads in the bow and the last in the stern were solid, all the rest had sealed doors that allowed the crew and passengers to move between compartments. On the flooring of the second bottom, in the bulkhead "K", there were the only doors that led to the cooling chamber. On decks "F" and "E" in almost all bulkheads there were airtight doors connecting the rooms used by passengers, all of them could be battened down both remotely and manually, using a device located directly on the door and from the deck to which it reached bulkhead. To batten down such doors on the passenger decks, a special key was required, which only the senior stewards had. But on deck "G" there were no doors in the bulkheads.

In the bulkheads "D" - "O", directly above the second bottom in the compartments where the machines and boilers were located, there were 12 vertically closed doors, they were controlled from the navigation bridge with the help of an electric drive. In case of danger or accident, or when the captain or the watch officer deemed it necessary, the electromagnets, on a signal from the bridge, released the latches, and all 12 doors fell under the influence of their own gravity and the space behind them turned out to be hermetically closed. If the doors were closed by an electric signal from the bridge, then it was possible to open them only after removing the voltage from the electric drive.

Deck "G" captured only the bow and stern, between which the boiler rooms were located. The forward part of the deck, 58 m long, was 2 m above the waterline, gradually lowered towards the center of the liner and at the opposite end was already at the level of the waterline. There were 26 cabins for 106 third class passengers, the rest of the area was occupied by the luggage compartment for first class passengers, the ship's mail and the ball room. Behind the bow of the deck there were coal bunkers, which occupied 6 watertight compartments around the chimneys, followed by 2 compartments with steam pipes for reciprocating steam engines and a turbine compartment. This was followed by the aft part of the deck 64 m long with warehouses, pantries and 60 cabins for 186 third-class passengers, which was already below the waterline.

Masts

One was aft, the other was on the forecastle, each was steel with a teak top. On the front, at a height of 29 m from the waterline, there was a mars platform (“crow's nest”), which could be reached by an internal metal ladder.

Service premises

In front of the boat deck there was a navigation bridge, 58 m away from the bow. On the bridge there was a wheelhouse with a steering wheel and a compass, immediately behind it was a room where navigation charts were stored. To the right of the wheelhouse were the navigational cabin, the captain's cabin and part of the officers' cabins, to the left - the rest of the officers' cabins. Behind them, behind the front funnel, was the cabin of the radiotelegraph and the cabin of the radio operator. In front of deck "D" there were living quarters for 108 stokers, a special spiral ladder connected this deck directly to the boiler rooms, so that the stokers could leave for work and return without passing by the cabins or saloons for passengers. In front of deck "E" there were living quarters for 72 loaders and 44 sailors. In the first part of the "F" deck there were quarters of 53 stokers of the third shift. Deck G contained quarters for 45 stokers and oilers. RMS in the name stands for Royal Mail Vessel. The ship had a post office and a warehouse on decks "F" and "G", where 5 postal workers worked.

Second bottom

The second bottom was located about one and a half meters above the keel and occupied 9/10 of the ship's length, not capturing only small areas in the bow and stern. On the second day, boilers, reciprocating steam engines, a steam turbine and electric generators were installed, all firmly fixed on steel plates, the remaining space was used for cargo, coal and drinking water tanks. In the engine room section, the second bottom rose 2.1 m above the keel, which increased the protection of the liner in case of damage to the outer skin.

Power point

Propellers of the Titanic before launching the ship

The registered power of steam engines and turbines was 50 thousand liters. from. (actually 55 thousand hp). The turbine was located in the fifth watertight compartment in the stern of the liner, in the next compartment, closer to the bow, steam engines were located, the other 6 compartments were occupied by twenty-four double-flow and five single-flow boilers that produced steam for the main machines, turbines, generators and auxiliary mechanisms. The diameter of each boiler was 4.79 m, the length of the double-flow boiler was 6.08 m, the single-flow boiler was 3.57 m. Each double-flow boiler had 6 fireboxes, and the single-flow boiler had 3. In addition, the Titanic was equipped with four auxiliary machines with generators, each with a capacity of 400 kilowatts, generating electricity at a voltage of 100 volts. Next to them were two more 30-kilowatt generators. High-pressure steam from the boilers went to 2 triple expansion steam engines, which rotated the side propellers. From the machines, the steam then entered the low-pressure turbine, which drove the middle propeller. From the turbine, the exhaust steam entered the condensers, from where fresh water went back to the boilers in a closed cycle. The Titanic developed a decent speed for its time, although it was inferior to the competitor's turbo ships - Cunard Line.

Pipes

The liner had 4 pipes, each of which had a diameter of 7.3 m, a height of 18.5 m. The first three removed smoke from the boiler furnaces, the fourth, located above the turbine compartment, served as an exhaust fan, a chimney for ship kitchens was connected to it . A longitudinal section of the vessel is presented on its model exhibited at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, where it is clearly seen that the last pipe was not connected to the fireboxes. The fourth chimney was purely cosmetic to make the ship look more powerful.

Electrical supply

10,000 light bulbs, 562 electric heaters, mainly in first-class cabins, 153 electric motors, including electric drives for eight cranes with a total capacity of 18 tons, 4 cargo winches with a capacity of 750 kg, 4 elevators, each for 12 people, were connected to the distribution network. In addition, electricity was consumed by a telephone exchange and radio communications, fans in the boiler room and engine rooms, apparatus in the gym, dozens of machines and appliances in the kitchens, including refrigerators.

Connection

The telephone exchange serviced 50 lines. The radio equipment on the liner was the most modern, the power of the main transmitter was 5 kilowatts, the power came from an electric generator. The second, an emergency transmitter, was powered by batteries. 4 antennas were strung between the two masts, some up to 75 m long. The guaranteed range of the radio signal was 250 miles. During the day, under favorable conditions, communication was possible at a distance of up to 400 miles, and at night - up to 2000.

The radio equipment came on board on April 2 from the Marconi company, which by this time had monopolized the radio industry in Italy and England. Two young radio officers assembled and installed the station all day, for verification, a test connection was immediately made with the coast station at Malin Head ( English), on the north coast of Ireland, and with Liverpool. On April 3, the radio equipment worked like clockwork, on this day a connection was established with the island of Tenerife at a distance of 2000 miles and with Port Said in Egypt (3000 miles). In January 1912, the Titanic was given the radio call sign " MUC', then they were replaced by ' MGY", previously owned by the American ship Yale. As the dominant radio company, Marconi introduced its own radio call signs, most of which began with the letter "M", regardless of its location and the country of home of the vessel on which it was installed.

Swimming and crash

Many celebrities of that time took part in the first trip of the liner, including the millionaire and major industrialist John Jacob Astor IV and his wife Madeleine Astor, businessman Benjamin Guggenheim, the owner of Macy's department store Isidor Strauss and his wife Ida, the eccentric millionaire Margaret Molly Brown, who received the nickname "Unsinkable" after the death of the ship, Sir Cosmas Duff Gordon and his wife, fashion designer Lady Lucy Duff Gordon, popular at the beginning of the century, businessman and cricketer John Thayer, British journalist William Thomas Steed, Countess of Rotskaya, military assistant to US President Archibald Butt , film actress Dorothy Gibson and many others.

North and South transatlantic routes. ice conditions

The threat to shipping in the North Atlantic is icebergs breaking off from glaciers in western Greenland and drifting under the influence of currents. Danger is also borne by ice fields originating in the Arctic Basin, as well as off the coast of Labrador, Newfoundland and in the Strait of St. Lawrence, and drifting under the influence of winds and currents.

The shortest route from northern Europe to the United States runs along the coast of Newfoundland, directly through the zone of fog and icebergs. In order to streamline navigation in the North Atlantic, in 1898, shipping companies entered into an agreement establishing 2 transatlantic routes, passing much to the south. For each of the routes, separate routes were determined for steamers moving west and east, separated from each other at a distance of up to 50 miles. From mid-January to mid-August, during the season of the greatest ice danger, steamers moved along the South Route. The rest of the year, the Northern route was used. This order usually made it possible to minimize the likelihood of encountering drifting ice. But 1912 turned out to be unusual. From the South Highway, along the western route of which the Titanic also moved, reports of icebergs came one after another. In this regard, the US Hydrological Service raised the issue of moving the route to the south, but the corresponding decisions were made belatedly, after the disaster.

Chronology

• Wednesday, April 10, 1912
  • 12:00 p.m. - The Titanic leaves the Southampton harbor and narrowly avoids colliding with the American liner New York. There are 922 passengers on board the Titanic.
  • 19:00 - stop in Cherbourg (France) to take on board 274 passengers and mail.
  • 21:00 - The Titanic left Cherbourg and headed for Queenstown (Ireland).

• Sunday, April 14, 1912
  • 09:00 - "Caronia" reports ice in the region of 42 ° north latitude, 49-51 ° west longitude.
  • 13:42 - "Baltik" reports the presence of ice in the area of ​​41°51'N, 49°52'W.
  • 13:45 - America reports ice at 41°27'N, 50°8'W.
  • 19:00 - air temperature 43 ° Fahrenheit (6 ° C).
  • 19:30 - air temperature 39 ° Fahrenheit (3.9 ° C).
  • 19:30 - The Californian reports ice at 42°3'N, 49°9'W.
  • 21:00 - air temperature 33 ° Fahrenheit (0.6 ° C).
  • 21:30 - Second Officer Lightoller warns the ship's carpenter and watchmen in the engine room that it is necessary to monitor the fresh water system - water in the pipelines may freeze; he tells the lookout to watch the appearance of ice.
  • 21:40 - Mesaba reports ice at 42°-41°25'N, 49°-50°30'W.
  • 22:00 - air temperature 32 ° Fahrenheit (0 ° C).
  • 22:30 - Sea water temperature dropped to 31° Fahrenheit (-0.56°C).
  • 11:00 p.m. — The Californian warns of ice, but the Titanic's radio operator cuts off the radio before the Californian can give the area's coordinates.
  • 23:39 - At a point with coordinates 41 ° 46' north latitude, 50 ° 14' west longitude (later it turned out that these coordinates were calculated incorrectly), an iceberg was sighted at a distance of about 650 meters straight ahead.
  • 23:40 - Despite the maneuver, after 39 seconds, the underwater part of the vessel touched, the hull received numerous small holes for a length of about 100 meters. Of the 16 watertight compartments of the vessel, 6 were cut through (in the sixth, the leak was extremely insignificant).

Stages of the sinking of the Titanic

• Monday, April 15, 1912
  • 00:05 - The trim on the nose became noticeable. An order was given to uncover the lifeboats and convene the crew and passengers to the assembly points.
  • 00:15 - the first radiotelegraph signal for help was transmitted from the Titanic.
  • 00:45 - The first flare is fired and the first lifeboat (No. 7) is launched. The bow deck goes under water.
  • 01:15 - Class 3 passengers are allowed on deck.
  • 01:40 - The last flare is fired.
  • 02:05 - the last lifeboat is launched (collapsible boat D). The bow of the boat deck goes under water.
  • 02:08 - The Titanic jerks violently and moves forward. A wave rolls over the deck and floods the bridge, washing passengers and crew members into the water.
  • 02:10 - the last radiotelegraph signals were transmitted.
  • 02:15 - The Titanic lifts the stern high, exposing the rudder and propellers.
  • 02:17 - Electric lighting goes out.
  • 02:18 - The Titanic breaks in two as it sinks rapidly.
  • 02:20 - The Titanic sank.
  • 02:29 - At about 13 miles per hour, the bow of the Titanic crashes into the ocean floor at a depth of 3,750 meters, burrowing into the bottom sediments.
  • 03:30 - flares fired from the Carpathia are noticed from the lifeboats.
  • 04:10 - Carpathia picked up the first lifeboat from the Titanic (boat No. 2).
  • 08:30 - Carpathia picked up the last (No. 12) lifeboat from the Titanic.
  • 08:50 - Carpathia, taking on board 710 people who escaped from the Titanic, heads for New York.
• Thursday, April 18, 1912
  • The Carpathia Arrives in New York

clash

Photo of an iceberg taken by the chief steward of a German ship Prince Adalbert on the morning of April 16, 1912. The steward was unaware of the disaster at the time, but the iceberg caught his attention because it had a brown streak at its base, indicating that the iceberg had hit something less than 12 hours earlier. It is assumed that the Titanic collided with him.

Recognizing an iceberg in a light haze, the forward looking Fleet warned “there is ice in front of us” and struck the bell three times, which meant an obstacle straight ahead, after which he rushed to the telephone connecting the “crow’s nest” with the bridge. Moody's sixth mate, who was on the bridge, responded almost instantly and heard a cry of "ice right on the nose!!!" (“ice right ahead!!!”). With a polite thank you, Moody turned to the officer of the watch, Murdoch, and repeated the warning. He rushed to the telegraph, put his handle on “stop” and shouted “right to board”, while simultaneously transmitting the order “full back” to the engine room, pressed the lever, which turned on the closing of the watertight doors in the bulkheads of the boiler rooms and the engine room.

Photo of an iceberg taken from the cable-laying ship Mine”, which was one of the first ships to discover the corpses of passengers and the wreckage of the ship. Presumably, the Titanic could have collided with this particular iceberg, since, according to the crew, “ Mines", it was the only iceberg near the crash site.

According to the terminology of 1912, the command "right on board" meant turning the stern of the ship to the right, and the bow to the left (since 1909, Russian ships have already used the natural giving of commands, for example: "left rudder"). Coxswain Robert Hitchens ( English) leaned on the handle of the steering wheel and quickly turned it counterclockwise until it stops, after which Murdoch was told “Right rudder, sir!”. At that moment, the helmsman Alfred Oliver and Boxhall, who was in the chart house, ran to the bridge when the bells rang out in the "crow's nest". A. Oliver, in his testimony in the US Senate, however, definitely stated that at the entrance to the bridge he heard the command "rudder left" (corresponding to a turn to the right), and this command was carried out. According to Boxhall (British Inquiry Question 15355), Murdoch reported to Captain Smith: "I turned to port and reversed, and was about to turn to starboard to get around him, but he was too close."

It is known that lookout binoculars were not used on the Titanic because the key to the binocular safe was missing. He was taken in by Captain Blair's second mate when the captain kicked him off the team, taking on board a team member from the Olympic. It is possible that the lack of binoculars was one of the reasons for the crash of the liner. However, the existence of binoculars became known only 95 years after the shipwreck, when one of them was exhibited at the Henry Eldridge and Sons auction house in Devizes, Wiltshire. The second mate of the Titanic was to be David Blair, for which he arrived on April 3, 1912 from Belfast to Southampton. However, the management of the White Star Line replaced him at the last moment with Henry Wilde, the first officer from the similar vessel Olympic, as he had experience in operating such large liners, as a result of which Blair in a hurry forgot to hand over the key to the person who came to his a place . However, many historians agree that the presence of binoculars would not have helped to prevent a catastrophe. This is also confirmed by the fact that the lookouts in the "crow's nest" noticed the iceberg before those on the bridge who had binoculars with them.

The Titanic is sinking

lifeboats

There were 2,224 people on board the Titanic, but the total capacity of the lifeboats was only 1,178 people. The reason was that, according to the rules then in force, the total capacity of lifeboats depended on the tonnage of the ship, and not on the number of passengers and crew members. The rules were drawn up in 1894, when the largest ships had a displacement of about 10,000 tons. The displacement of the Titanic was 46,328 tons.

But even these boats were only partially filled. Captain Smith gave the order or instruction "women and children first". The officers interpreted this order in different ways. Second mate Lightoller, who commanded the launching of the boats on the port side, allowed men to take places in the boats only if rowers were needed and under no other circumstances. First Officer Murdoch, who commanded the launching of the boats on the starboard side, allowed the men to go down if there were no women and children. So, in boat number 1, only 12 seats out of 65 were occupied. In addition, at first, many passengers did not want to take seats in boats, because the Titanic, which had no external damage, seemed safer to them. The last boats filled better, because it was already obvious to the passengers that the Titanic would sink. In the very last boat, 44 seats out of 65 were occupied. But in the sixteenth boat that left the side there were many empty seats, passengers of the 1st class were saved in it.

The crew did not even have time to lower all the boats that were on board. The twentieth lifeboat was washed overboard when the front of the steamer went under water and she floated upside down.

The report of the British commission on the results of the investigation into the circumstances of the sinking of the Titanic states that "if the boats had been delayed a little longer before launching, or if the doors of the passage had been opened for passengers, more of them could have got on the boats." The reason for the low survival rate of class 3 passengers with a high degree of probability can be considered the obstacles placed by the crew for the passage of passengers to the deck, the closing of the passage doors. People in boats, as a rule, did not save those who were in the water. On the contrary, they tried to sail as far as possible from the wreck, fearing that those in the water would capsize their boats or be sucked into the funnel from a sinking ship. Only 6 people were picked up alive from the water.

Refusal of assistance by the steamer "Californian"

"Californian"

Serious criticism fell upon the SS Californian team and personally on the captain of the ship, Stanley Lord. The ship was only a few miles from the Titanic but did not respond to its distress calls and missile signals. The Californian warned the Titanic by radio of ice buildup, which caused the Californian to stop for the night, but the warnings were condemned by the Titanic's senior wireless operator, Jack Phillips.

British investigation evidence showed that at 10:10 p.m., the Californian observed the ship's lights to the south. Captain Stanley Lord and third officer S. W. Groves (who was released by Lord at 11:10 p.m.) later decided that it was a passenger liner. At 11:50 p.m., the officer saw that the ship's lights were flickering, as if they had been turned off or turned sharply, and that the port lights appeared. By order of the Lord, Morse light signals were sent to the ship between 11:30 p.m. and 1:00 a.m., but they were not received.

Captain Lord retired to his cabin at 11:00 p.m. to spend the night, however, Second Officer Herbert Stone, while on duty, notified Lord at 1:10 a.m. that the ship had fired 5 missiles. Lord wanted to know if these were company signals, that is, colored flashes used for identification. Stone replied that he did not know and that the rockets were white. Captain Lord instructed the crew to continue signaling the ship with a Morse lamp, and went to bed. Three more rockets were seen at 1:50 am and Stone noted that the ship looked strange in the water, as if it was tilted. At 2:15 am, Lord was notified that the ship was no longer in sight. The Lord asked again if the lights had any color and was informed that they were all white.

The Californian eventually answered. At about 5:30 am, Chief Officer George Stewart woke wireless operator Cyril Farmstone Evans and informed him that missiles had been seen during the night and asked him to contact the ship. He received news of the sinking of the Titanic, Captain Lord was notified, and the ship went to assist. It arrived much later than the Carpathia, which had already picked up the survivors.

The investigation revealed that the ship the Californian had seen was actually the Titanic, and that the Californian could have come to its rescue, so Captain Lord acted inappropriately by not doing so. However, Lord maintained his innocence for the rest of his life, and many researchers argue that the famous positions of the Titanic and the Californian make it impossible for the former to be the infamous "Mystery Ship," a topic that "evoked ... millions of words." and … hours of heated debate”, and continues to do so [ non-authoritative source?] .

The composition of the dead and the survivors

Almost all the women and children from cabins 1 and 2 were saved. More than half of the women and children in Class 3 cabins died as they had difficulty finding their way up through the maze of narrow corridors. Nearly all of the men also died. The tragedy of the Paulson family claimed the lives of Alma's mother and all her four young children, whom Father Nils was waiting in vain for in New York.

338 men (20% of all adult men) and 316 women (74% of all adult women) survived, including Violette Jessop, Dorothy Gibson, Molly Brown, Lucy Duff Gordon, Countess of Roth and others. Of the children, 56 survived (slightly more than half of all children).

The last of the Titanic's passengers, Millvina Dean, who was two and a half months old at the time of the sinking of the liner, died on May 31, 2009 at the age of 97. Her ashes were scattered to the wind on October 24, 2009 in the port of Southampton, from where the Titanic began its only voyage.

A peculiar record belongs to Jessop's maid, Violette, who survived accidents on all 3 Olympic-class ships. She worked on the Olympic when it collided with the cruiser Hawk; escaped from the Titanic, and subsequently survived when the Britannic sank by hitting a mine during the First World War.

The sinking of the Titanic is one of the largest maritime disasters

Vessel	The country	Tonnage	Year	Number of victims	Cause of death
Goya		5230	, April, 4	7000 ~ 7000	Attack submarine L-3
Junyo-maru	Japan	5065	, September 18	5620 5620	Attack submarine HMS Tradewind
Toyama-maru ( English Toyama Maru)	Japan	7089	, June 29	5600 5600	Attack submarine USS Sturgeon
Cap Arkona		27561	, May 3	5594 5594	Air attack
Wilhelm Gustloff		25484	, January 30	9343	Attack submarine S-13
Armenia	the USSR	5770		5000 ~ 5000	Air attack
Ryusei-maru ( English SS Ryusei Maru)	Japan	4861	, 25 February	4998 4998	Attack submarine USS Rasher
Doña Paz	Philippines	2602		4375 ~ 4375	Tanker collision and fire
Lancastria		16243		4000 ~4000	Air attack
General Steuben		14660		3608 3608	Attack submarine S-13
Tilbek		2815	, May 3	2800 ~ 2800	Air attack
Salzburg		1759		2000 ~ 2000	Attack submarine M-118
Titanic		52310		1514 1514	Iceberg collision
Bismarck		50900	, May 27	1995	battle with British ships
Hood, battlecruiser		41125	, May 24	1415 1415	battle with German ships
Lusitania		31550		1198 1198	Attack submarine U-20

Among the disasters that occurred outside of hostilities, the Titanic ranks third in terms of the number of victims. The sad leadership is behind the Doña Paz ferry, which collided with an oil tanker in 1987. More than 4,000 people died in the collision and subsequent fire. The second place is held by the wooden paddle steamer Sultana, which sank on April 27, 1865 on the Mississippi River near Memphis due to the explosion of a steam boiler and fire. The total death toll on the steamer exceeded 1,700, the largest disaster on a riverboat.

Theories about the causes of the accident

sheathing

On the other hand, this test only proves that modern steel is much better than the one used at the beginning of the 20th century. It does not prove that the steel used to build the Titanic was of poor quality (or not the best) for its time.

In the early years of the 21st century, in a number of mass media, with reference to the latest studies of the ship's hull by deep-sea submersibles, the opinion was expressed that in a collision with an iceberg, the ship did not receive a hole, and its skin withstood the blow. The cause of death was that the hull rivets could not prevent the divergence of its sheets, and outboard water began to flow into the resulting long gap.

radio operators

The internal communication system of the liner was extremely unsatisfactory, there was no direct communication with the captain - he had to report all messages orally. The reason was that the radiotelegraph station was considered a luxury, and the main task of telegraph operators was to serve especially wealthy passengers - it is known that in just 36 hours of operation, radio operators transmitted more than 250 telegrams. Payment for telegraph services was made on the spot, in the radio room, and at that time was very expensive, tips were received in large quantities.

The radio log from the Titanic did not survive, but according to the surviving records from various ships that had contact with the liner, it was possible to more or less restore the picture of the work of radio operators. Reports of drifting ice and icebergs began to arrive already in the morning of the fatal date - April 14, the exact coordinates of the high-risk zone were indicated. The Titanic continued to sail on, without swerving off course or slowing down. At 19:30, in particular, a telegram came from the Mesaba transport ship: “I report ice from 42 degrees to 41 degrees 25 minutes north latitude and from 49 degrees to 50 degrees 30 minutes west longitude. I saw a large number of icebergs, ice fields. At this time, the senior communications officer of the Titanic, Jack Phillips, worked for the benefit of the passengers, transmitting an inexhaustible stream of messages to the Cape Ras station, while the most important message never reached the captain, lost in a pile of paper - the Mesaba radio operator forgot to mark the message as "Ice Report" with prefix MSG, which meant "personally to the captain." This little detail overshadowed Philips' selfless work.

On the other hand, on April 14, in addition to this message, several more iceberg warnings were received from other ships. The captain took certain measures, in particular, the officers were warned of the danger verbally and in writing, and those looking ahead were ordered to look for the presence of icebergs. Therefore, it cannot be said that Captain Smith did not know about them.

Iceberg

The news about the absence of binoculars from the lookout was accepted with criticism (according to many testimonies, the binoculars were only on the Belfast-Southampton segment, after this stop Hogg, by order of the captain, for some reason folded them in his cockpit). There is an opinion that having binoculars looking forward, despite a moonless night, would notice an iceberg not a quarter of a mile (450 m), but 2 or 3 miles (4-6 km). On the other hand, binoculars narrow the field of view, so they are only used after when the lookout noticed something. Lookouts without binoculars spotted the iceberg before the watch officer with binoculars.

If there was even a slight wave or swell in the ocean, he would see white lambs at the “waterline” of the iceberg. As it later became known, the Titanic collided with a “black” iceberg, that is, with one that had recently turned over in the water. The side facing the liner had a dark blue color, because of this there was no reflection (an ordinary white iceberg under such a condition could be seen from a mile away).

The question of what prevented the first assistant W. Murdoch from discovering the iceberg himself in a timely manner remains open. The captain of the Carpathia, Rostron, said that 75% of the objects in the sea are detected from the bridge earlier than from the "crow's nest". When his steamer sailed at night to the site of the accident of the Titanic, all the icebergs on their way were seen from the bridge before they were discovered by lookouts (British Inquiry, questions 25431-25449).

Maneuvering

There is an opinion that if Murdoch had not given the order to reverse immediately after the command "left rudder", the Titanic would certainly have avoided a collision, since the reverse negatively affects the effectiveness of the rudder. In this case, however, the time required to execute the command is overlooked. This takes at least 30 seconds and the command was probably received with a delay; - commands for the engine room along the route of the liner are rarely given (the last one was given three days before), so no one is standing at the engine telegraph. The team simply did not have time to execute, otherwise the Titanic would have experienced a strong vibration, but no one mentions it. According to the testimonies of the survivors, the cars stopped and reversed after the collision, so this command had no practical significance.

There is also an opinion that the most correct decision would be to start only the left car in reverse. Working the propellers apart would help speed up the turn and slow down the speed. The middle propeller was driven by a steam turbine, which worked on the residual steam from the onboard machines; this turbine had no reverse gear. Thus, the stopped screw, behind which there was a single rudder of a very small area, created a turbulent flow in which the already inefficient rudder almost completely lost its effectiveness. Perhaps even in order to avoid a collision, it would be necessary, on the contrary, to increase the speed of the middle propeller to increase the efficiency of the steering wheel. Moreover, the reverse takes a significant amount of time, and, therefore, there were practically no chances to quickly reduce the speed.

Attention should be paid to the fact that the accident occurred on the first flight. The navigators had no experience in operating this vessel, which explains the untimely and inefficient maneuvering attempts. At the same time, Captain Smith, First Officer Wild, and First Officer Murdoch, who was on duty at the time of the accident, had experience working on the Olympic built according to a similar project. In 1903, in a critical situation, Murdoch, with his timely and decisive actions, canceling the command of his superiors, saved the steamer "Arabic" from a collision.

There are also suggestions that the Titanic would have remained afloat if the rudder had not been shifted and the ship would have "rammed" the iceberg, taking a hit on the stem. The device of partitions was just aimed at the "survival" of the ship in a head-on collision, while the sides of the ship were not protected. “Wilding, a shipbuilder from Belfast, calculated that the bow of the ship would be indented by 25-30 meters, but the ship would not die. It would be instant death for those who were at the bow of the vessel at that time, but the reversal of inertia would be rather slow, comparable to a car traveling at this speed, which had its brakes instantly pressed to the stop,” says Barnaby. However, Murdoch is justified by the fact that he did not have the ability to measure the distance to the iceberg and could not know that the maneuver he had taken would not succeed. Therefore, he can hardly be reproached for the fact that he did not give a command that would obviously kill people.

Buoyancy

The liner was not designed to flood all the first five compartments. Such a design, although possible, is extremely expensive - the only ship built this way, Great Eastern, was unprofitable. The unprofitability of this giant ship is confirmed by the fact that it was not found possible to use it for its intended purpose, and it went down in history as a cable ship used in laying the transatlantic telegraph cable. It is also impossible not to take into account the likelihood of risk. After all, apart from the Titanic, in peacetime, not a single ship suffered such damage.

Slowing down or avoiding the iceberg field

Despite warnings about icebergs, the captain of the Titanic did not slow down or change route. But that was standard practice at the time. So, during the investigation into the death of the Titanic, Captain Gerhard C. Affeld, who commanded 5 transatlantic ships, showed that, having received warnings about icebergs, he never changed the route and reduced speed only in case of fog or bad weather. He studied the logbooks of the ships entrusted to him. According to these logs, other captains, having received warnings about icebergs, also did not change the route and, as a rule, did not slow down. On the other hand, not everyone followed this practice: the Californian ship closest to the Titanic, having reached the iceberg field, stopped at its border (and gave the Titanic a warning that was ignored).

Delayed reaction on the bridge

Lookout Reginald Lee testified that he spotted the iceberg from a distance of "half a mile (926 m) maybe more, maybe less." The Titanic would cover half a mile in 80 seconds. Helmsman Hichens testified that by the time of the collision the ship had managed to turn 2 points. Since the windows of the wheelhouse were darkened so that the light did not interfere with the observation from the bridge, Hichens could not see the iceberg. An experiment on the twin steamer Olympic showed that a turn of 2 points would take 37 seconds, counting from the moment the command was given. The authors of the book Report into the Loss of the SS Titanic: A Centennial Reappraisal, published on the occasion of the centenary of the shipwreck, restore the timing of the accident, and put forward a version of “missed 30 seconds” after the signal of the lookouts, who left Murdoch for something to visually detect an iceberg, assess the situation and make a decision.

Causes of the tragedy

Subjective reasons

The main subjective cause of death was the outdated rules of the British Merchant Shipping Code, which made the number of lifeboats dependent on the tonnage of the ship, and not on the number of passengers. The rules were established in 1894 when the tonnage of passenger ships did not exceed 12,952 tons, and all ships of 10,000 tons and above fell into one category. For such vessels, regulations required that the lifeboats had enough space for 962 people. The tonnage of the Titanic was 46,328 tons.

The owners of the Titanic, formally fulfilling the instructions (and even slightly overfulfilling them, since the Titanic's boats had 1,178 seats, not 962), provided the ship with an insufficient number of boats. Despite the fact that there were enough lifeboats to board 1178 people, only 704 were saved. There were certain subjective reasons for this. For example, second mate Charles Lightoller, who commanded the launch of the boats on the port side, followed Captain Smith's order "women and children first" literally: he allowed men to take places in the boats only if rowers were needed and under no other circumstances.

Based on the stories of Charles Lightoller, his granddaughter Lady Patten put forward a new version of the sinking of the transatlantic liner. According to the writer, the Titanic did not sink because it was sailing too fast, because of which it simply did not have time to avoid a collision with an iceberg. There was plenty of time to dodge the ice block, but the helmsman, Robert Hitchens, panicked and turned the helm in the wrong direction. The ship received a hole, due to which it eventually sank. However, passengers and crew could have been saved if the Titanic had stopped immediately after the collision. In addition, the nearest ship was only a few miles from the liner. The manager of the company that owned the huge ship, Joseph Bruce Ismay, convinced the captain to continue sailing, fearing that the incident could cause him considerable material damage. He wanted to save the Titanic, but he thought only about the financial side of the matter. The rate of water entering the holds of the liner has increased exponentially. Water entered the hull at a rate of approximately 400 tons per minute. As a result, the ship sank in a matter of hours. About why the liner went down, Lightoller told only his relatives. According to Patten, her relatives feared for their reputation and therefore did not want to disclose the true causes of the 1912 disaster. “My relatives died a long time ago, and I realized that I was the only one in the world who knew about the true cause of the sinking of the Titanic,” the writer said.

Objective reasons

The cause of the collision and loss of the vessel was a combination of adverse factors:

• The iceberg belonged to a rare type of so-called. "black icebergs" (turned over so that their dark underwater part hits the surface), because of which it was noticed too late.
• The night was windless and moonless, otherwise the lookout would have noticed the "lambs" around the iceberg.
• The speed of the steamer was too high, due to which the impact of the iceberg on the hull was of maximum force. If the captain had ordered in advance, when entering the iceberg belt, to reduce the speed of the ship, then perhaps the impact force on the iceberg would not have been enough to break through the Titanic's hull.
• The non-transmission of several telegrams from neighboring ships by members of the radio room, busy sending private telegrams from wealthy passengers for money, about the dangerous proximity of icebergs to Captain Smith, which lowered his vigilance.
• The best steel of the time, from which the Titanic was made, became brittle at low temperatures. The water temperature that night was +2…+4 °C, which made the ship's hull very vulnerable.
• The poor quality of the rivets that connected the plating sheets of the side of the ship, when an iceberg hit, the heads of forged iron rivets, which replaced the originally provided steel rivets, crumbled due to their “porosity” due to the inclusion of foreign impurities in them.
• The arrangement of partitions between the compartments was made based on a frontal impact, and the doors between the partitions simply could not withstand the pressure of water and broke under its pressure.

Flood depth

On September 1, 1985, an expedition led by the director of the Institute of Oceanology in Woods Hall, Massachusetts, Dr. Robert D. Ballard, discovered the Titanic's place of occurrence at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean at a depth of 3750 meters.

The distance between the remains of the bow and stern of the Titanic is about 600 meters.

The remains of the ship were discovered 13 miles west of the coordinates that the Titanic transmitted in its SOS signal.

In April 2012, one hundred years after the shipwreck, the wreck acquired the protection of the 2001 UNESCO Convention for the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage. From now on, the states parties to the Convention have the right to prevent the destruction, looting, sale and unauthorized distribution of objects found at the shipwreck. They can take all necessary measures to protect the wreckage of a sunken ship, as well as to ensure that the human remains resting in them are properly treated.

Conspiracy theory

Reflection of the Titanic in art

The crash of the liner has become one of the most famous disasters in the history of mankind. To some extent, the image of the Titanic has become a symbol of the death of something that seemed powerful and unsinkable, a symbol of the weakness of human technogenic civilization before the forces of nature. The catastrophe was widely reflected in art, especially mass art. The first film dedicated to the disaster - " Escaped from the Titanic" - appeared already in May 1912, a month after the crash. In the same year, 1912, but before the catastrophe occurred, Morgan Robertson's book "Futility, or the death of the Titan" ("Futility, or the death of the Titan") was published, the action of which took place on board a passenger ship " Titan, similar in description and displacement to the Titanic. In this book, the Titan dies after colliding with an iceberg in the fog while sailing from New York to the UK. As a result, a legend appeared about the “prediction” of the Titanic disaster by Morgan Robertson. This fact is reinforced by the fact that despite the publication of the book in 1912, it was written in 1898.

The film " Titanic", Released in 1997, was the leader in box office receipts in the world film distribution for 13 years ($ 1,845,034,188, of which $ 600,788,188 - in the USA), but in 2010 the record "Titanic" was broken by the film "Avatar", released by the same director; In April 2012, on the centenary of the disaster, Cameron releases his old film in 3D.

The death of the ship was dedicated to many songs of performers and groups playing in different genres. In particular, in the song of the same name by the Austrian artist Falco (1992), the Titanic is seen as a symbol of decadence, the end of an era, in the song of the Russian group Nautilus Pompilius from the album of the same name Titanic (1994), the floating ship appears as a symbol of death and doom.

see also

• Titanic Belfast (museum)

Notes

1. About the fate of the superliners of the company "White Star Line" (Retrieved April 8, 2012)

Catastrophes always excite the minds of people, even after a hundred years. Interest in any event can now be fueled by cinema, just one successful film and society will never forget about any problem or event. This is how the owners and crew of the Titanic went down in history, though not in the best light. But before talking about the shipwreck, it would be useful to know where and where the Titanic was sailing from?

Travel between continents

Today, to overcome the distance between Europe and America, it is enough to buy a plane ticket. Already on the same day with this cherished ticket, you can be on the other side of the globe, spending 7-8 hours and not such a big amount. But jet liners in civil aviation appeared not so long ago, before that the situation was a little different. It’s quite sad, in the opinion of the modern layman, it was about the invention of aircraft:

• The only possible travel option is by ship. The journey could take weeks.
• At the end of the 19th century, steamships were designed that made it possible to cross the ocean in 5 days.
• But even in this short period of time, anything could happen, shipwrecks are not uncommon today.
• But the main troubles that tormented the first pilgrims, in the form of scurvy and infectious diseases, faded into the background.

At the time of the commissioning of the Titanic, there were two main companies, one of them emphasized travel speed , another on comfort and luxury . Looking at the interior of the Titanic, you can immediately understand which of the two offices it belonged to.

Protecting the Unsinkable Titanic

Everyone heard something about the unsinkability of the Titanic and some unique system installed on the ship. She was all reduced to three points:

Bulkheads	Second bottom	Pumps
There were 16 watertight bulkheads in total.	It was at a height of 160 cm and protected from any damage.	They worked on electricity generated by engines.
Cast-iron doors were installed between each of them, for the team.	It had a cellular structure, which was supposed to prevent flooding.	They pumped out water entering the bulkheads and compartments.
Damage to even a few compartments would not lead to the flooding of the vessel.	It was considered an ingenious engineering solution that would avoid the crash of the ship.	They could only handle a certain amount of water.

Theoretically, any minor accident should not have led to the rapid sinking of the ship. Although it is difficult to talk about insignificance when it comes to a collision with an iceberg. Coping with the consequences of such a contact turned out to be beyond even most modern system, which only existed at that time.

The route of the Titanic and its passengers

As already mentioned, the ship's route ran from Europe to America. But this is not the most accurate route:

• The liner departed from Southampton. If today this English town is not familiar to anyone, then a hundred years ago it was the largest port in all of Britain.
• The ship made its first stop in France, visiting the port of Cherbourg.
• After that, the Titanic entered the port of Queenstown, Ireland.
• This was the last stop of the ship, then it was supposed to follow to the final point, to the port of New York.

Such an unusual route within Europe made it possible to gather everyone. Both from the islands and from the mainland of the continent. Sending to Ireland helped to get to the right latitude and lay the best route.

At that time, the United States was a country of hope and new opportunities, but despite this, not only adventurers and thrill-seekers sailed to America. The aristocracy, businessmen and industrialists traveled first class. They all departed from different intentions:

• Someone was looking for new sensations and entertainment.
• Others sought to conclude the most profitable contracts in new markets.
• Some explored the New World in search of profits and opportunities for growth.

But regardless of the initial motives and desires, the same inglorious outcome awaited all of them.

Cause of the sinking and death of the passengers of the Titanic

So what was the problem of the most unsinkable ship? Yes, that the hole from the iceberg was in length over 90 m. It is easy to understand that more than one bulkhead, not two, or even three, was pierced. In an attempt to evade the Frost Giant, the ship attempted to veer sharply off course and pass by, but instead received a tangential blow. It was such a blow that tore the plating to shreds for 5 bulkheads. The engineering system was not designed for such a level of damage.

But why did almost 70% of the passengers and crew members die? And here the whole a series of errors and criminal negligence:

1. The ship was sailing at full speed, despite warnings about the presence of icebergs in these waters.
2. It is the high speed of the vessel that explains such massive damage.
3. The capacity of the boats was designed for only a thousand people, despite the fact that the number of passengers exceeded two thousand.
4. The defense system played a cruel joke, keeping the ship afloat without visible changes for the first time. For a couple of hours, no one could even understand that the ship was sinking. In this regard, it was difficult to convince passengers to go from comfortable decks to boats.
5. Nearby ships were either too far away or did not come to the rescue.

The first and last flight of the liner

The Titanic made its only voyage along an uncomplicated route. It contained only 4 points:

1. Southampton.
2. Cherbourg.
3. Queenstown.
4. New York.

England. France. Ireland. USA. Exactly in that order. But the ship never made it to its final destination. As did most of the passengers and crew.

A project has already been launched to build a similar ship, which will pass along the same route from where and where the Titanic sailed. Historic voyage for lovers " tickle your nerves”, but it all sounds too tragic.

Video: where was the Titanic going?

Below is the documentary "Titanic's Destination", in which historian Anton Makarov will talk about the departure point of the legendary ship and where it sailed. The moment of the sinking of the Titanic will also be shown:

You have already read and heard about the Titanic many times. The history of the creation and crash of the liner is overgrown with rumors and myths. For more than 100 years, the British steamship has been haunting the minds of people trying to find the answer - why did the Titanic sink?

The history of the legendary liner is interesting for three reasons:

Departure day

• it was the largest ship for 1912;
• the number of victims turned the catastrophe into a global failure;
• finally, James Cameron, with his film, singled out the history of the liner from the general list of maritime disasters, as well.

We will tell you everything about the Titanic, as it was in reality. About how long the Titanic is in meters, how much the Titanic sank, and who was really behind the massive disaster.

Where did the Titanic sail from and to?

We know from Cameron's film that the liner was bound for New York. The American up-and-coming city was to be the final stop. But far from everyone knows for sure where the Titanic sailed from, considering that London was the starting point. The capital of Great Britain was not in the ranks of seaports, and therefore the steamer could not leave from there.

The fateful flight began from Southampton, a major English port, from where transatlantic flights ran. The path of the Titanic on the map clearly shows the movement. Southampton is both a port and a city located in the southern part of England (Hampshire).

See how the route of the Titanic ran on the map:

Dimensions of the Titanic in meters

To understand more about the Titanic, the causes of the disaster must be disclosed, starting with the dimensions of the ship.

How many meters is the Titanic in length and in other dimensions:

• exact length - 299.1 m;
• width - 28.19 m;
• height from the keel - 53.3 m.

There is also such a question - how many decks did the Titanic have? Only 8. Boats were located on the top, therefore the upper deck was called the boat deck. The rest were distributed according to the letter designation.

• A - deck I class. Its peculiarity is limited in size - it did not lie down the entire length of the vessel;
• B - anchors were located in the front of the deck and its dimensions were also shorter - by 37 meters of deck C;
• C - deck with a galley, a mess for the crew and a promenade for class III.
• D - walking area;
• E - cabins I, II classes;
• F - cabins II and III classes;
• G - deck with boiler rooms in the middle.

Finally, how much does the Titanic weigh? The displacement of the largest ship of the early 20th century is 52,310 tons.

Titanic: the story of the crash

What year did the Titanic sink? The famous disaster occurred on the night of April 14, 1912. It was the fifth day of the trip. Chronicles indicate that at 23:40 the liner survived a collision with an iceberg and after 2 hours 40 minutes (2:20 a.m.) it went under water.

Further investigations showed that the crew received 7 weather warnings, but this did not prevent the ship from reducing its speed limit. The iceberg was sighted directly ahead of us too late to take precautions. As a result - holes in the starboard side. Ice damaged 90 m of hull and 5 bow compartments. This was enough to sink the liner.

Tickets for the new liner were more expensive than for other ships. If a person was used to traveling in first class, then on the Titanic he would have to transfer to second class.

Edward Smith, the captain of the ship, began the evacuation after midnight: a distress call was sent, the attention of other ships was attracted by flares, lifeboats went to the water. But the rescue was slow and uncoordinated - there was an empty place in the boats while the Titanic was sinking, the water temperature did not rise above two degrees below zero, and the first steamer arrived in time only half an hour after the disaster.

Titanic: how many people died and survived

How many people survived on the Titanic? No one will say the exact data, as they could not say this on the fateful night. The list of Titanic passengers initially changed in practice, but not on paper: some canceled the trip at the time of departure and were not crossed out, others traveled anonymously under assumed names, and others were listed as dead on the Titanic several times.

It is only approximately possible to say how many people drowned on the Titanic - about 1500 (minimum 1490 - maximum 1635). Among them was Edward Smith with some assistants, 8 musicians from the famous orchestra, large investors and businessmen.

Classiness was felt even after death - the bodies of the dead from the first class were embalmed and placed in coffins, the second and third classes were given bags and boxes. When the embalming agents ran out, the bodies of unknown third-class passengers were simply thrown into the water (according to the rules, unembalmed corpses could not be brought to the port).

The bodies were found within a radius of 80 km from the crash site, and due to the current of the Gulf Stream, many were dispersed even further.

Photos of dead people

Initially, it was known how many passengers were on the Titanic, although not completely:

• crew of 900 people;
• 195 first class;
• 255 second class;
• 493 people of the third class.

Some passengers left at intermediate ports, some called. It is believed that the liner went to the fatal route with a staff of 1317 people, of which 124 are children.

Titanic: scuttling depth - 3750 m

The English steamer could accommodate 2,566 people, of which 1,034 seats were for first-class passengers. The half-load of the liner is due to the fact that transatlantic flights were not popular in April. At that time, a coal strike broke out, this disrupted coal supplies, schedules and changes in plans.

The question of how many people escaped from the Titanic was difficult to answer because the rescue operations took place from different ships, and the slow connection did not provide fast data.

After the crash, only 2/3 of the delivered bodies were identified. Some were buried locally, the rest were sent home. In the disaster area, bodies in white vests were found for a long time. Of the 1,500 people who died, only 333 bodies were found.

How deep is the Titanic

When answering the question about the depth at which the Titanic sank, one must remember about the pieces carried by the currents (by the way, they learned about this only in the 80s, before that it was believed that the liner sank to the bottom entirely). The wreckage of the liner on the night of the crash went at a depth of 3750 m. The bow was thrown 600 m from the stern.

The place where the Titanic sank, on the map:

In which ocean did the Titanic sink? - in the Atlantic.

Titanic lifted from the bottom of the ocean

They wanted to raise the ship from the moment of the crash. Initiative plans were put forward by relatives of the dead from the first class. But 1912 did not yet know the necessary technologies. The war, lack of knowledge and funds delayed the search for the sunken ship for a hundred years. Since 1985, 17 expeditions have been carried out, during which 5,000 items and large plating have been raised to the surface, but the ship itself has remained at the bottom of the ocean.

Titanic underwater. A photo

What does the Titanic look like now?

In the time since the crash, the ship has become covered in marine life. Rust, painstaking work of invertebrates and natural decomposition processes have changed the structures beyond recognition. By this time, the bodies had already completely decomposed, and by the 22nd century, only anchors and boilers would remain from the Titanic - the most massive metal structures.

Photo of the sunken Titanic

Even now the interiors of the decks have been destroyed, the cabins and halls have collapsed.

Titanic, Britannic and Olympic

All three ships were manufactured by the Harland and Wolf shipbuilding company. Before the Titanic, the Olympic saw the world. It is easy to see a fatal predisposition in the fate of the three ships. The first liner was wrecked as a result of a collision with a cruiser. Not such a large-scale disaster, but still an impressive failure.

Then the story of the Titanic, which received a wide response in the world, and, finally, the Gigantic. They tried to make this ship especially durable, given the mistakes of previous liners. He was even launched into the water, but the First World War disrupted the plans. The giant became a hospital ship called the Britannic.

Titanic: photo underwater now

He then just managed to carry out 5 quiet flights, and on the sixth there was a disaster. Having been blown up by a German mine, the Britannic rapidly sank. The mistakes of the past and the preparedness of the captain made it possible to save the maximum number of people - 1036 out of 1066.

Comparison of the Titanic with modern liners: photos

Is it possible to talk about evil fate, remembering the Titanic? The history of the creation and crash of the liner were studied in detail, the facts were revealed, even through time. And yet the truth is only now being revealed. The reason the Titanic is attracting attention is to hide its true motive - to create a currency system and destroy opponents. Doubt? Then read on.

The Titanic (RMS Titanic) is a British steamer of the White Star Line company, the second of three twin steamships of the Olympic type, the largest passenger liner in the world at the time of construction. During its maiden voyage, on the night of April 14, 1912, the Titanic collided with an iceberg and sank after 2 hours and 40 minutes. There were 1316 passengers and 908 crew members on board, a total of 2224 people, of which 711 people were saved, 1513 died. This disaster was one of the largest disasters of the last century that occurred in peacetime. April 15, 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.

01. The Titanic was laid down on March 31, 1909 at the shipyards of the Harland and Wolf shipbuilding company in Queens Island (Belfast, Northern Ireland)

02. The customer of the vessel was the company "White Star Line". The shipyard was not cheap, but it performed almost the entire amount of work on its own and was famous for its excellent quality.

03. Screw shafts.

04. A fragment of steam engines. The Titanic was powered by two four-cylinder steam engines driving the outboard propellers and a steam turbine driving the middle propeller. The rated power of this power plant was 50,000 liters. s., but the power of 55,000 liters could also be developed. from. At full speed, the Titanic could go at a speed of 24-25 knots.

05. The dimensions of the parts are impressive.

07. Steam engines.

09. The main screw (in the center) is five meters high!

11. The liner had 4 pipes, each of which was 7.3 m in diameter and 18.5 m high. The first three removed smoke from the boiler furnaces, the fourth, located above the turbine compartment, served as an exhaust fan, a chimney was connected to it for ship kitchens. The fourth chimney was purely cosmetic to make the ship look more powerful.

12. Boilers of the Titanic. The engine room had 29 boilers and 159 coal fireboxes.

13. In formal accordance with the current requirements of the British Merchant Shipping Code, the steamer had 20 lifeboats, which were enough to board 1178 people, that is, for 50% of people. There were 65 people in one boat.

14. Characteristics: length - 268.98 m; width - 28.2 m; distance from the waterline to the boat deck - 18.4 m;
the distance from the keel to the tops of the pipes is 53.3 m.

15. The liner had a second bottom, which was located about one and a half meters above the keel and occupied 9/10 of the length of the vessel, not capturing only small areas in the bow and stern. On the second day, boilers, reciprocating steam engines, a steam turbine and electric generators were installed, all firmly fixed on steel plates, the remaining space was used for cargo, coal and drinking water tanks. In the engine room section, the second bottom rose 2.1 m above the keel, which increased the protection of the liner in case of damage to the outer skin.

17. In Belfast.

18. Workers go to work at the Harland and Wolf shipyard in Belfast, where the Titanic was built between 1909 and 1911.

"Titanic" shocked contemporaries with its technical novelty and luxury and became, as it were, the materialized embodiment of a person's dream of dominating the ocean. Let's see what he looked like.

20. Upper deck.

21. Deck with boats.

22. Captain's cabin.

23. Room for second class passengers.

24. Cabin B-64 first class.

25. Cabin B-38 first class.

26. Cabin B-59 First Class.

27. Cafe on deck "B" for first class passengers.

28. Dining room.

29. Smoking room 1st class.

30. Main staircase in the first class lobby.

31. The ceiling above the stairs is a glass dome.

33. Reading room.

35. Cafe.

37. Rest room 1st class.

38. Gym.

39. Common room 3rd class.

41. Tugs Hector and Neptune rest against the bow of the Titanic 1912.

44. Deck for passengers of the second class.

45. On the Titanic there were 8 steel decks located one above the other at a distance of 2.5-3.2 m. The uppermost one was a boat deck, under it there were seven others, indicated from top to bottom with letters from “A” to “G”. Only decks "C", "D", "E" and "F" ran the entire length of the vessel. The boat deck and the "A" deck did not reach either the bow or the stern, and the "G" deck was located only in the front of the liner - from the boiler rooms to the bow and in the aft - from the engine room to the stern cut.

46. ​​Perhaps the most interesting design feature of the liner was its watertight bulkheads. The Titanic had a double bottom and was divided into 16 watertight compartments by fifteen watertight bulkheads. The unsinkability of the liner was ensured when any four compartments were flooded, and since the designers could not imagine misfortunes worse than a hole in the junction of two compartments, the Titanic was declared "unsinkable".

47. The Titanic sets off on its first and last voyage from Southampton.

48. Departs Queenstown, Ireland, for New York, April 12, 1912. The first voyage of the Titanic was conceived as an event comparable in scale to the main super show of the century. A first-class ticket cost about $ 50,000 in today's money. Hundreds of rich people paid money not because they needed to go to New York. They bought tickets for the show.

A few words about the people on the Titanic. Many celebrities of that time took part in the first trip of the liner, including the millionaire and large industrialist John Jacob Astor IV and his wife Madeleine Astor, businessman Benjamin Guggenheim, the owner of Macy's department store Isidor Strauss and his wife Ida, the eccentric millionaire Margaret Molly Brown, who received the nickname “Unsinkable” after the death of the ship, Sir Cosm Duff Gordon and his wife, fashion designer Lady Lucy Duff Gordon, popular at the beginning of the century, businessman and cricketer John Thayer, British journalist William Thomas Steed, Countess of Rotskaya, military assistant to US President Archibald Butt , film actress Dorothy Gibson and many others.

49. Officers of the ship, including Captain Smith (second from right in the front row)

50. Captain Edward John Smith (R) (1850-1912) and Treasurer Hugh Walter McElroy. Due to his extensive experience, the captain enjoyed high popularity among crew members and passengers. After this voyage, Smith planned to retire. According to one version, the captain, 10 minutes before the final immersion of the ship under water, returned to the captain's bridge, where he met death. Body not found.

51. William McMaster Murdoch (1873-1912), first mate Survivors testified that Murdoch made a lot of efforts to save passengers, but he himself died. In his hometown of Dumfries and Galloway (Scotland), a memorial to the heroism of William Murdoch was erected and a charitable award named after him was founded.

52. Thomas Andrews (1873-1912), chief designer of the Titanic superliner The Titanic was the first ship for which Andrews was responsible as a designer from start to finish. Thomas Andrews participated in the sea trials of the Titanic, when the serviceability of all the equipment on the ship was checked, made a 600-mile voyage from Belfast to Southampton. A week later he went to New York. During the evacuation, Thomas helped passengers into the boats, he himself died, the body was not found. All newspaper articles about the disaster mentioned Thomas Andrews only as a hero. In Thomas' hometown of Comber, the Thomas Andrews Jr. Memorial Hall was opened in January 1914. This memorial was one of the earliest and most significant memorials in the world, dedicated to just one victim of the Titanic. Today the memorial is used as the Andrews Memorial Primary School.

53. Margaret Molly Brown (1867-1932) American socialite, philanthropist and activist. After the disaster, sitting in a lifeboat in the company of 24 women and two men, she fiercely argued with the boat's senior Robert Hitchens, demanding to return to the crash site and pick up the drowning. When one of the passengers became cold, Margaret gave her fur coat to her. And when the cold "finished" even her, she ordered the women to sit down at the oars and row to keep warm. They managed to swim to another ship - the Carpathia, and there Margaret did what she knew how to do best: organization. She knew several languages ​​and could speak with passengers from different countries. She looked for blankets and food for them, compiled lists of survivors, collected money for those who lost everything along with the Titanic: both family and savings. By the time the Carpathia arrived at the port, she had raised $10,000 for the survivors. After her death, she became known as the "unsinkable Molly Brown".

54. Photo of the musicians who played on board the Titanic until the last moment, until he disappeared under the water. The last tune they played was "Nearer, My God, to Thee"

55. Wallace Hartley with his violin. When the body of the 33-year-old musician was removed from the water, the violin was tied to his chest.

56. John Jacob IV (1864-1912) and Madeleine Astor American millionaire, businessman, writer, member of the famous Astor family and lieutenant colonel, participant in the Spanish-American War. Died in a crash.

57. Dorothy Gibson (1889-1946) - American silent film actress, fashion model and singer. She starred in the film Survivors of the Titanic in 1912.

58. Jacques Fautrell is an American author of the popular detective stories Thinking Machine, he took on board many unpublished stories that were lost forever. Having celebrated his 37th birthday the day before sailing, he died in a crash.

59. Bruce Ismay (1862-1937) CEO of the White Star Line. Survived, but was branded with disgrace.

60. Radio operators - on the left - Jack Phillips (1887-1912). He did not stop broadcasting for a minute, until about 2 a.m. the de-energized transmitter of the Titanic fell silent forever. The image of Jack Philipps - a radio operator who tensely and selflessly knocks the "SOS" signal, calling to go to the aid of those in distress when the radio room is already flooded with water - is displayed in all films dedicated to the Titanic tragedy without exception

61. William Thomas Stead (1849 - 1912) was perhaps one of the most famous people on the Titanic. British journalist (he can be considered the founder of the “investigative journalism” genre), defender of women’s rights and civil liberties, pacifist. In 1885, Stead joined the “crusade” against child prostitution, publishing a series of articles entitled “Tribute to the Maiden of Modern Babylon”. "Titanic" William Thomas Stead was on his way to America to participate in the pacifist congress, which was convened at New York's Carnegie Hall at the initiative of US President Taft. Stead repeatedly claimed that in the end he would either be lynched or he would drown. In 1886, he published an article entitled "How a steamship liner went down in the middle of the Atlantic. Survivor's Tale". During the Titanic disaster, the 63-year-old journalist behaved heroically, helping women and children take places in the boats. He died, the body was not found.

62. Isidor Strauss (1865-1912) with his wife Ida. Isidor Strauss is a German-American entrepreneur, co-owner of Macy's, the largest American department store chain. On the Titanic, one of the officers offered the Strauss couple to get on the boat together, but Isidore refused, deciding to share the fate of the other men of the sinking ship. He tried to seat I go to the boat, but she said: "I will not leave my husband. We have always been together, together and we will die. " Instead, the Strauss put their maid in the boat. Isidor Strauss died on the night of April 15, 1912, along with his wife.

64. Photo of a coal bunker with workers.

66. Seven-year-old Eva Hart with her father Benjamin and mother Esther, 1912. Eva and her mother escaped, her father drowned.

67. Priest and photographer Francis Brown got off the Titanic before leaving for New York. After Brown's death, Pastor Eddie O'Donnell released a book titled Reverend Francis Brown's Titanic Album, which included hundreds of photographs of Francis Brown.

68. On April 14, 1912, at 23:40, an iceberg was sighted at a distance of about 450 meters straight ahead. Despite the maneuver, after 39 seconds, the underwater part of the vessel touched the iceberg, the hull received numerous small holes for a length of about 100 meters. Of the 16 watertight compartments of the vessel, 6 were cut through (in the sixth, the leak was extremely insignificant).

A bit of chronology:
Monday, April 15, 1912
00:05 - The trim on the nose became noticeable. An order was given to uncover the lifeboats and convene the crew and passengers to the assembly points.
00:15 - the first radiotelegraph signal for help was transmitted from the Titanic.
00:45 - The first flare is fired and the first lifeboat (No. 7) is launched. The bow deck goes under water.
01:15 - Class 3 passengers are allowed on deck.
01:40 - The last flare is fired.
02:05 - the last lifeboat is launched (collapsible boat D). The bow of the boat deck goes under water.
02:08 - The Titanic jerks violently and moves forward. A wave rolls over the deck and floods the bridge, washing passengers and crew members into the water.
02:10 - the last radiotelegraph signals were transmitted.
02:15 - The Titanic lifts the stern high, exposing the rudder and propellers.
02:17 - Electric lighting goes out.
02:18 - The Titanic breaks in two as it sinks rapidly.
02:20 - The Titanic sank.

69. Drawing depicting a catastrophe.

70. Frame from the film.

The small, low-powered vessel, the Carpathia, was 58 miles southeast of the crash site when the ship's radio operator, Francis Cottam, heard the hysterical "S.O.S." from the sinking Titanic. He later recalled that he caught the signal at the very last moment, already removing his headphones from his head and about to sleep. Cottam did not have a replacement. Had he fallen asleep five minutes earlier, the captain of the Carpathia would never have known that the Titanic was already sinking. The captain's name was Arthur Rostron. He never drank, didn't smoke, and didn't swear. Even in the age of steam and electricity, in the era of the most ambitious dreams of mankind, he did not forget how to pray.

Carpathia, with its only pipe, developed a speed of only 14 knots - therefore, Rostron ordered all additional resources of steam, hot water and electricity to be transferred to the boilers. The owners of the Titanic were going to bring the liner to New York a day ahead of schedule to set a new record. The record was set by "Carpathia" - she arrived at the crash site almost an hour earlier than she could and than everyone expected.

Salt water does not freeze at minus one degree Celsius. In the boat "A" people were sitting waist-deep in icy water, and after half an hour the corpses of two women had to be thrown overboard - they froze right in the boat. Rescue boat number 12 was twice covered by a wave - it did not sink only by a miracle. As the doctors later calculated, any of the 711 surviving passengers had no chance of living more than 12 hours ...

71. Carpathia approaches the first boats.

72. 04:10 - "Carpathia" picked up the first lifeboat from the "Titanic" (boat number 2).
08:30 - Carpathia picked up the last (No. 12) lifeboat from the Titanic.
08:50 - Carpathia, taking on board 704 people who escaped from the Titanic, heads for New York.

73. The ship "Carpathia".

74. The headlines of all the newspapers spoke of the collapse of the Titanic.

75. People read reports outside the offices of The Sun newspaper in New York after the crash.

76. A huge crowd of people gathered outside the office of the steamship company "White Star Line" on Broadway in New York to get the latest news about the crash.

77. Reporters are interviewing the passengers of the sunken Titanic.

78. Margaret Molly Brown presents the Cup of Love to the captain of the Carpathia, Arthur Rostron, on behalf of the surviving passengers of the Titanic. In honor of Arthur Rostron, a special congressional medal was issued. He was knighted by British royal decree. After some time, Sir Arthur led the entire passenger fleet of the Cunard company. In many cities in England, USA, France and Ireland, monuments have been erected to him. On one of them - in the vicinity of Southampton - the inscription is embossed: “To Sir Arthur Rostron. Who turned the "age of steam" into the "age of the spirit."

79. Now the wreckage of the Titanic rests at a depth of 3750 meters. Over the past 25 years, many deep-sea expeditions have descended to the Titanic. In the photo, the bathyscaphe "Mir-1" illuminates the railing on the Titanic.

81. The bow of the ship.

82. Two huge engines.

83. At the bottom of the ocean.

84. One of the three screws.

85. In some places, the windows have been preserved intact.

86. The first full picture of the legendary wreckage. The photo mosaic consists of 1,500 high-resolution sonar images.

87. With two propellers sticking out of the mud and sand, the Titanic's stern rests on the ocean floor 600 meters south of the ship's bow.

88. About 5,000 items lifted from the Titanic. Some of them are sold at auctions.

89. Gold pocket watch "Waltham American" - a personal item of Karl Asplund - against the backdrop of a painting of the Titanic, painted by CJ Ashford. The clock was found on Karl's body.

90. A 17-ton fragment of the Titanic passenger liner, which was raised from the bottom of the ocean during an expedition to the shipwreck, July 22, 2009.

91. The largest museum dedicated to the Titanic was built at the shipyards of Irish Belfast.

93. The path of the Titanic.

94. Elizabeth Gladys Milvina Dean - Englishwoman who was the last of the surviving passengers of the Titanic (1912-2009). On the day of the shipwreck, she was only 2 months and 13 days old. Milvina Dean died on May 31, 2009 at the age of 97 at a nursing home in Ashurst, Hampshire, on the 98th anniversary of the Titanic's launch. On October 27, 2009, her ashes were scattered in the port of Southampton, from where the Titanic began its only voyage.

Newsreel archival footage about construction

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One of the largest shipwrecks in the history of mankind, even after 100 years, haunts many people. How could an ultra-modern, equipped with all the necessary innovations of that time, a ship with the big name "Titanic" sink due to a collision with some kind of iceberg?

It turns out that there are several factors besides a huge block of ice, which ultimately could lead to disaster. Here are some of them.

A fire broke out in the fuel compartment of the Titanic

Titanic moored in the port of Southampton. April 1912

British journalist Senan Molony, who has been researching the history of the Titanic for 30 years, studied photographs taken before the liner was sent on a flight, and came to the conclusion that a fire in the ship's fuel compartment could have caused the crash.

The fire broke out even before the liner set sail, and they unsuccessfully tried to put it out for several weeks. The journalist found out that the owners of the ship knew about the fire and tried to hide it from passengers: for this, in Southampton, the ship was turned to the shore on the other side so that passengers would not notice traces of soot.

The ship's hull in this place heated up to a temperature of about 1,000 ° C, and when the Titanic collided with an iceberg, the steel could not stand it - a huge hole was formed. Experts confirmed that with such heating, the steel becomes brittle and loses up to 75% of its hardness.

The binoculars were locked and the key was left on land

One of the Titanic's binoculars, which was found many years later at the bottom of the ocean

At the last moment before departure, the management of the White Star Line company decided to change the first mate on the ship, appointing Henry Wilde, who had experience in managing huge liners, to this place. But the previous first mate, David Blair, forgot to give Wild the keys to the safe that held the binoculars.

Of course, there were also lookouts on board the Titanic, but without binoculars, they had to rely only on their own eyes. They spotted the iceberg when it was already too late.

The locked binoculars became known only 95 years after the tragedy, when the key to the safe was put up for auction.

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