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On April 15, 1912, while sailing at full-speed through the frigid North Atlantic waters, the Titanic, then the largest ship in the world, struck an iceberg. In all but 160 minutes, she sank, taking with her more than 1,500 people (or two-thirds) of the ship's population with her. Only 705 of those people were reported to have been saved. The cause of the shipwreck was declared to be a result of the negligence of the crew in sailing her recklessly through an ice field to break a trans-Atlantic record, at the expense of the passengers, particularly the steerage passengers, who were all entrapped while the wealthy made their getaway in the lifeboats......Or so the story goes.The truth, in regards to the foundering of one of the most infamous shipwrecks in history, is as much clouded with unintentional myths as it is with deliberate factual errors, some of which are shockingly easy to discredit, but which few people have actually looked into. This article intends to bring insight into the sinking, so that people watching this article, can have a true understanding, as to what happened a 105 years ago, just 600 KM away from the shores of Cape Race, New Found Land.The article will also discuss why it is that the Titanic, a ship which is not the largest shipwreck in the world, nor did it have unique notoriety at the time, become so iconic in the modern ages, while other shipwrecks, many of which were far deadlier, with some killing far more people than the Titanic, become lost into the abyss of history.The greatest myths need the greatest time in dispelling once and for all. These myths, which will be the main focus of this presentation, will include, but not necessarily be limited to:Was the Titanic negligently built?Was the Titanic the deadliest shipwreck in history?Did the Titanic's crew act negligently by sailing a ship through an ice field?Did Bruce Ismay ever tell Captain Smith to 'Damn the Icebergs'?Could the Californian have saved those on board?Are modern maritime laws really the direct result of the Titanic?Did the wealthy really survive at a greater rate than the steerage passengers?Were people really left to die in the water?Could a direct collision with the iceberg have prevented a sinking?Were the final moments the same as has been depicted in films?These ten points are both the greatest, and possibly, even the deadliest myths about the Titanic. They are the greatest myths, because these ten myths are the ones which have been the most consistent in the 107 years since the 270 metre-long hulk of steel made its way into the pages of history; and to top it off, these myths often times ended up with the marred reputations of those involved in the sinking, whether directly or indirectly, and have and could still prove to become quite misleading and fatal for those trying to understand how to survive a shipwreck, as well as trying to prevent one from happening in the first place.CHAPTER 1Was the Titanic Negligently Built?SAFETY FEATURESThe Titanic's birth dates back to 1909 after a plan from Harland & Wolff, as well as J. P. Morgan, came to an agreement on building a trio of three sister ships. They were to be called the Olympic, the Titanic, as well as the Gigantic, later changed to the Britannic.The Olympic was to be the first of the three sister ships to be completed, with her sister ship, the Titanic, to follow one year later. The Titanic was to be about an inch longer than the Olympic by having the beam of the Titanic stick out just a little more. Both ships were to be approximately ten percent larger than the Lusitania and Mauretania, the two fastest ships in the world at the time, the latter even keeping that title until she was outpaced by the Bremen in 1929, nearly twenty years after first obtaining the trans-Atlantic ribbon.The Cunard ships, named after the company's founder, Samuel Cunard, a man born in Nova Scotia, were the two greatest ships in the world at the time for travelling. During Cunard's earlier days, she had some competitors, such as Collins Line, which even came close to driving Cunard into bankruptcy altogether; that is, until Collins Line suffered a series of disasters within a short time frame, notably the loss of the S.S. Arctic, on September 27, 1854.Even the White Star Line had already had a history of losses prior to the foundering of the Titanic, such as the loss of the Tayleur in January 1854, less than nine months before the loss of the Collins Line ship, S.S. Arctic. Nearly four-hundred people died during the foundering. The clipper ship has been referred to by some as being the “first” Titanic, due to the ship being owned by White Star Line, and the Tayleur, like the Titanic, was on its maiden voyage at the time it met with disaster.On April 1, 1873, an even bigger disaster overtook the White Star Line company, when the ship, R.M.S. Atlantic was sunk off Mars Head in Nova Scotia with the loss of nearly six hundred lives, alongside all the women and children, save twelve year old John Hindley, believed to have survived by having his hair pulled through a porthole just as the ship was going down.In January 1909, another disaster occurred yet again under the White Star Line, when the R.M.S. Republic was struck by the S.S. Florida. Three people were killed on the Republic, and three more were killed inside the S.S. Florida. Fortunately, however, this event was mostly redeemed from becoming yet another shipwreck with a high loss of life, when the Marconi operators, for the first time in history, used the service as a way to send out distress calls to receive help from other ships.Marconi wireless operators, having only recently been employed on passenger ships, were there to send out personal telegrams to shore in order for recipients on the other side to relay messages in writing before a physical letter would arrive. Due to Marconi wireless operators being primarily employed to deliver personal letters, ice warnings were not seen as being a priority, which ultimately ended up being one of the many factors leading up to the collision.The wireless operators, while responsive to urgent messages, were not directly employed by shipping companies, including White Star Line. However, and this became especially true after the 1909 loss of the White Star Line, Republic, wireless operators started to become seen as a safe investment for most ships in the event that they needed to relay a message for help, but their use was primarily intended for when a disaster began to unfold, not to avoid one in the first place.Prior to the introduction of the wireless operating systems, a ship had several less efficient means to call for help. Making loud noises, such as firing rifles or even cannons (which the S.S. Arctic was known to have used during her foundering), shooting off flares, or putting a letter in a bottle, were the common means of contact with people on shore or from other ships. Some ships, notably military ships, sometimes hoisted a flag as a means of communication, though such an approach had mostly faded by the early twentieth century, and this form of communication was never widely used, if at all, on passenger ships.As per the laws of maritime law at the time, the number of lifeboats on board a ship were measured by the gross tonnage of the ship itself. Quite ironically, the loss of the White Star Line ship, Republic, just three years earlier, if anything, made lifeboat regulations even more lenient than they otherwise would have been.The Titanic only required sixteen lifeboats in accordance to her size. This policy at the time existed, because it was assumed that a bigger ship would take longer to sink, thus giving the sailors manning the lifeboats enough time to drop off passengers on their boat to a safety destination before returning to the ship and picking up more people still on board. Smaller ships tended to have enough for all on board, as smaller ships were expected to sink much faster. The Titanic, alongside some of the bigger ships in existence at the time, received immunity from those laws as they were considered big enough that it was widely assumed that they would take hours or days to sink; in much the same way as the Florida had taken two days to sink, herself.In addition to the sixteen lifeboats which the White Star Line installed in accordance with maritime law of the time, four Collapsibles, known as A, B, C and D, were all placed on the poop deck as extra precaution. The number of lifeboats present on the ship at the time has become the subject of much speculation and controversy for over a century, now, due to the loss of life which some insist was a result of the Titanic lacking sufficient lifeboats. Many believe that having the originally capacity of sixty-four lifeboats, as the Titanic was originally intended to have, or even the thirty-two lifeboats it was later reduced to, before being lowered yet again down to sixteen, would have saved everyone on board.The revised plans by the ship's main designer, Thomas Andrews, and the chairman of the White Star Line, Bruce Ismay, are believed by many to have been the main cause for the 1,517 people killed. While this theory is a popular one, and one which has been brought up time and time again in every Titanic movie to date, popularity and emotions do not equate to reality. And this very popular myth, like the literally hundreds of myths surrounding the Titanic, will be among those which this article will be primarily focused on.CHAPTER 2Was the Titanic the Deadliest Shipwreck in History?While it is expected that most people would come up with this assumption, being both the largest shipwreck (at least for its time) as well as being the most infamous shipwreck to date, would also make people believe that it must have also been the deadliest. However, the reality is that both are, quite surprisingly, false, despite these facts being almost taken for granted in contemporary times.For starters, the Titanic was not even the deadliest shipwreck in the world for its time. That honour goes to the Sultana, which sank in April 1865 with the loss of approximately 1,800 or more lives at the closing of the American Civil War, nearly half a century before the Titanic would herself make it into the history books.While other shipwrecks preceding the Titanic did not meet the same scale of deadliness; shipwrecks, such as the Arctic, Atlantic, Elbe and Bourgogne, were all known for their high loss of women and children. On the Arctic, no women or children survived, while the Atlantic had only one child survivor, with the latter two having one female survivor. All three survivors were only able to survive by being retrieved from the water. The captains of both the Arctic and Atlantic survived. Captains on many other passenger liners have also survived shipwrecks in which few of their passengers did. This is because captains, contrary to popular myth, are not legally obligated to go down with their ship, nor be the last ones off, nor are women and children expected to be the first to board a lifeboat, either.Both of these myths, of the captain going down with the ship, and women and children being saved first; while quite strong during the Titanic sinking, have been mostly unheard of in other shipwrecks before or since the Titanic. And yet, the popularity of the Titanic, in contrast to other shipwrecks, may also explain why the nature of the Titanic, which was quite unusual in how a shipwreck ordeal played out, is now taken as the standard norm for how a shipwreck at the time played out, as the Titanic's popularity is unmatched by any other shipwreck, and thus, people are likely to ever know about the Titanic story. Even if many of these 'facts' are, to say it bluntly, falsehoods. The irony of the Titanic, on top of not being the deadliest shipwreck in history by far, was that the Titanic also fairly tame compared to most other shipwrecks in its natural aspects, even when compared to other shipwrecks which had far fewer losses of life, but were also notable at the time for the brutality that took place on some of these shipwrecks among the crew and passengers alike.The foundering of the Bourgogne at the time was especially noteworthy for its violent depictions, which largely took place on the boat deck on the morning of July 4, 1898 after having been rammed in a head on collision by the British ship, Cromartyshire. The passengers, including a group of German steerage passengers who were returning home after surviving a previous shipwreck days earlier, began to up rise against the officers and sailors on the boat deck.Survivors reported people being shot, stabbed, bludgeoned and even being thrown overboard by some of the more mutinous occupants. At least one sailor was reportedly killed where he stood when he was bludgeoned to death with oars, sledgehammers, shovels and even an axe by some of the lethal mob members, when he tried to prevent them from storming and threatening their way into a lifeboat.The captain of the Bourgogne, Captain Deloncle, who had a high reputation before the sinking, tried in vain to prevent the violence from spiralling out of control, but to no avail. He reportedly threatened to shoot some of those he witnessed using violence, but it proved not to be a deterrent. Firing some shots in the air, he was last seen blowing the ship's whistle angrily, while also looking with his head back towards the boat deck, where the chaos was ensuing, with a reddened face and glaring teeth before going down with the ship, less than an hour after the collision.Stragglers in the water were killed by those already on overturned lifeboats, including at least one survivor who watched his mother get beaten to death in the waters with oars by stricken occupants preventing people from getting on their lifeboat out of fear of capsizing.While such events did not play out the same way on the Titanic as it did for the Bourgogne, less than fourteen years earlier, the Bourgogne remained far from exceptional in regards to the destruction, which often times unfold when hundreds if not thousands of people are simultaneously fighting a life or death situation.Even in the years and decades after the Titanic, many shipwrecks, both far more violent and deadlier in terms of sheer numbers, would make their way into history, but as a mere footnote in comparison to the legacy which the Titanic has been appreciating since at least the 1950's, after the movie Titanic (1953) came out on top of the 1958 film based on the novel, A Night to Remember.Before the end of the shipwreck legacy, claimed by some to be the loss of the Andrea Doria in 1956, the Titanic was far from being known over other shipwrecks. In fact, in many ways, the Titanic's mysteriousness in later years may have been what brought it fame. But during the first few decades after the loss of the Titanic, other shipwrecks would have been talked about more in general than the Titanic, due to many people, including those not necessarily on the ship when it sank, having fond memories of travelling back and forth on such ships.The Olympic, Titanic's sister ship, would carry over 500,000 people on her throughout the course of her career. She would also be known for transporting many thousands of additional soldiers, on top of her ocean liner career,, including returning Canadian soldiers returning from Europe at the closing of the First World War; known at the time simply as the “Great War” or the “War to End All Wars.” Even those who never sailed the Olympic themselves, would, like other ships of the era, whether they became shipwrecks or not, spent years, possibly decades, seeing the Olympic and other passenger ships going back and forth.The Olympic went across the North Atlantic hundreds of times throughout her career. Even ships such as the Lusitania and Mauretania had far lengthier careers than the Titanic, despite the Lusitania meeting disaster on May 7, 1915 when it was struck by U-Boat 98 off the coast of Queenstown, known today as Cobh, Ireland with the loss of 1,206 out of 1,959 on board.Even the loss of the Empress of Ireland, which actually killed more passengers than the Titanic, with 840 passengers lost on the Empress compared to 832 on the Titanic, and still being regarded as the worst peacetime passenger disaster ever, transported over 100,000 people, including many to Canada, throughout her eight year career. An estimated one in every six Canadians today are believed to have had a direct descendant immigrate to Canada either from the Empress of Ireland, or her older and slightly smaller sister ship, the Empress of Britain.In sharp contrast, the Titanic would only ever carry approximately 2,200 people on board into the North Atlantic, out of which only 705 lived to talk about her experiences. Other people associated with the Titanic, such as Father Francis Browne, a priest noted for obtaining both the majority of Titanic photographs, as well as the only photographs taken on deck during the voyage, debarked at Queenstown prior to the Titanic setting sail for open waters.Even the last known photograph of Captain Smith himself was taken by Francis Browne, as was the iconic photograph of Robert Spedden, the boy spinning the top on the boat deck, who would survive the Titanic, but die three years later in a car accident in the State of Maine while his family was on vacation. He would become one of the first people to ever die in that state from a vehicle accident.He was one of fifty-three children to survive the sinking. Like many other children who initially survived the Titanic, neither he nor they lived into adulthood. The first known survivor of the Titanic to die, was a Lebanese child named Maria Nakid, who died from an illness in July 1912, just three months after the sinking, on July 30, 1912. Her death would soon be followed with the death of Eugenie Baclini exactly one month later on August 30, 1912. Many other younger survivors, such as Hudson Allison, a child less than a year old at the time, and who would have scarcely remembered the sinking anyway, if at all, died at the age of eighteen. Other child survivors, such as Millvina Dean, the last known Titanic survivor to die back in 2009, was not even aware she had even been on board until her mother told her when she was eight years old.Some notable adult survivors, such as Archibald Gracie, would be dead by the end of the year, as he succumbed to advanced diabetes on December 4, 1912, which may have been caused as a direct result of his experiences on the Titanic, as attested by his daughter after his death was announced. Survivor Daniel Buckley, alleged to have dressed as a woman and being caught by Fifth Officer Harold Lowe, and being ordered to return to the scene of the sinking alongside him as 'retribution,' was himself killed on October 15, 1918, less than a month before the end of the Great War by a sniper. Buckley had been busy trying to retrieve some of the wounded during the fighting in the Argonne Forest at the time of his death.The Olympic was a ship that was far better received and covered by the press than the Titanic. Prior to her maiden voyage, the Olympic was even given a certain painting that was specifically intended to make it easier to take some elegant photos of her. Something which the Titanic did not receive. In fact, there are so few known images of the Titanic, that some of the photos, claiming to be the Titanic, are actually her sister ship, the Olympic.Francis Browne, arguably one of the most important characters to the Titanic story, and who would have gone across the North Atlantic had he not been ordered off the ship, would never see the Titanic again after she departed Queenstown on the afternoon of April 11, 1912; contrary to other ships of the time which he most certainly would have seen repeatedly throughout his life, even if he would never embark on them. And yet, him leaving the ship with his camera and photographs still in touch are the only reason we have as many pictures of the Titanic as we do, including some of the now more iconic photographs of the Titanic, including the last known photograph of her ever taken. Had he not had a camera to take such photographs, or if he had chosen to go across the North Atlantic rather than getting off as instructed by his employer, where his camera would almost certainly have been lost, we would barely have any footage of the Titanic in existence.The Titanic would only ever leave Southampton, Cherbourg and Queenstown once. She would never come along the Maritime Coast of Canada, nor would she ever reach New York City just as other ships of her era had repeatedly done, and would continue doing for years or decades after the event. Her sister, the Olympic, known by many as 'Old Reliable' remained in service until 1935, twenty-three years after her sister ship Titanic, and even nineteen years after her other sister ship Britannic, had disappeared from the registry.The Titanic, Empress of Ireland and Lusitania were considered to be the 'trio' disaster of passenger ships in that they all took a similar loss of life, were regarded as being fairly big, on top of sinking in such a close time proximity to one another. The Titanic sinking on April 15, 1912 killing 1,517 people on board, would be similarly matched with the 1,012 killed on the Empress of Ireland on May 29, 1914 two years after the Titanic, followed with the loss of the Lusitania less than a year later on May 7, 1915.Both the Empress of Ireland and Lusitania had sank during the First World War timeline, with the Empress of Ireland sinking just weeks before the first fatal shots would be fired. The Titanic sank during a more peaceful time period when there was a lot less political and military turmoil going on. Despite the unusually high loss of life, especially for a shipwreck of her time period, added by the fame which she received in later years, few people were personally touched by the sinking. The relatively tame way in which she foundered, as compared to other shipwrecks, also made her demise seem far less significant.William Clark, a stoker who had survived both the Titanic and the Empress of Ireland, compared the Titanic sinking as going down “gently as a baby goes to sleep” in comparison to the Empress of Ireland, which he compared to as “rolling like a hog in a ditch.” According to Clark, the only part that made the Titanic worse than the Empress of Ireland was “the waiting part.”In a twisted fate of irony, the lack of people that had ever seen or experienced life on the Titanic, let alone actually surviving it, may have done more than anything to make it easier for myths and legends to be born of the Titanic; something which could not have been possible for other shipwrecks at the time, as many survivors, as well as those who had personally spent time observing or even sailing on other would-be shipwrecks, were still alive and well at the time of the Titanic and they would have debunked the myths far more easily than the Titanic shipwreck could have.Many unusual myths, spurred by the Titanic, which have made their way into the modern media, remained largely unchallenged, due to the few people who had ever experienced the Titanic, either directly or indirectly. Many of these myths, however, such as the claim that the Titanic was unsinkable, did not come about until years later. The White Star Line never once claimed that the Titanic was unsinkable, nor was this claim something which was talked about widely, even among the passengers on the ship. The closest known claims to her being unsinkable, were some press reports which had made the claim. Though the claim was never endorsed or acknowledged by the White Star Line, nor any of her owners or investors, and there is no evidence that the headlines were even taken all that seriously by the public at large.Let's look at ships later in the twentieth century, closer to our era for one moment. During the Second World War, several notable shipwrecks with a heavy loss of life were recorded. The loss of the Bismarck, for example, killed far more people than the Titanic; as did the Cap Arcona, which, ironically had once played the role of the Titanic in the 1943 German propaganda film of the same name. It was, and still is, the Wilhelm Gustloff, which was lost on January 30, 1945, which killed the largest number of people ever.The death toll has been the subject of wide controversy, with the numbers ranging from a more conservative estimate of just under 10,000 to well over 15,000. Even with 10,000 people killed, this shipwreck still killed nearly seven times as many people as the Titanic, as well as over three times the number of people killed on 9/11.How the Wilhelm Gustloff or another exceptionally deadly shipwreck did not achieve the level of fame that the Titanic did, is about as mysterious as the events surrounding the sinking itself. Is the Titanic's fame due to the high number of celebrities on board? Was it due to the ship's aesthetic features? Was it because the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage? Was her fame due to being the largest shipwreck in the world at the time?These are not questions which can ever be conclusively answered. It does, however, give one more question to ask, not just for the Titanic, but for history in general. Why are some historical events so well-recorded and remembered, while other far deadlier events are all but forgotten?The Hindenburg is still widely remembered among airships. Far more than the USS Akron, which killed a total of seventy-three people, in comparison to the thirty-six lives lost on the Hindenburg. Perhaps the legacy and conspiracies of the Hindenburg, with the claims of her being the result of a terrorist attack, combined with the iconic film capturing her burning up over New Jersey sticks out like a sore thumb for historians and buffs alike; in much the same way as the scandals involving the wealthy fleeing in lifeboats on the Titanic, and the romantic depictions of the band playing until the end, make the Titanic a far better candidate for a ship to be remembered through the ages.CHAPTER 3Did the Titanic's Crew Act Negligently by Sailing a Ship Through an Ice Field?While it has always remained a sweet piece of gossip to repeatedly bring up the claim that the Titanic's crew deliberately sped the ship at full-speed into an ice field, whether it be as an attempt to break the trans-Atlantic record, prove its claim as an unsinkable ship, or simply as pure incompetence on the part of those responsible for maintaining the safety of the ship itself and those on board, the truth is far from what most people have been led to believe.For starters, sailing a ship through an ice field was as common then as it is today for several practical reasons. While international ice patrols were not officially established until 1914, thanks in large part to the foundering of the Titanic, ice patrols in the simplest terms had already existed for several years before the Titanic. Ships had traffic lanes in which anywhere between several to dozens of ships would pass by on a daily basis, leaving ships within relatively close range of one another, should one ship find themselves in distress.Ships were more or less responsible for providing the coordinates of where obstacles of concern, such as large pieces of ice, have been found and where, to the other ships who were expected to bypass the same area. The Titanic received several different reports of ice throughout the afternoon. And then the captain, quite arrogantly, chose to not only ignore the warnings, but even decided to light up the ship at full-speed while going through the ice field......Except for the part where this is fiction. In reality, despite the Titanic being the only confirmed shipwreck to ever sink from an iceberg alone, Captain Smith decided to take a Southern Route with the specific intention of avoiding the ice field altogether. According to researchers who have studied both the Titanic as well as the conditions in the North Atlantic, this would have proved a safe bet in terms of avoiding a collision on nearly any other occasion. In a twist of irony, taking this route actually added time to the Titanic's voyage by as much as 200 kilometres, which is quite contrary to the later claim that the Titanic was attempting to break a trans-Atlantic crossing.An iceberg is estimated to travel at roughly eight hundred metres an hour. This is about three times the distance of the ship's length. Many icebergs, including the one which sank the Titanic, were in all likelihood much bigger than the ship itself, especially when the bottom of the iceberg, estimated to be ten times what we see on the surface, is taken into account. While ships sinking from an iceberg were, and are still relatively unheard of, ships sustaining heavy damage and being forced to ground or have their ships towed to shore from impact with an iceberg were all too common.A ship remaining idle in an ice field was only welcoming other later problems. Such as being rammed from a giant, moving block of ice, and suffering untold damages. A ship such as the Titanic would have even more difficulty keeping a ship from making contact with an iceberg than a smaller ship would, due to the length of the ship giving more opportunities to be struck with a blow than a shorter ship such as the Californian, who were, at the time, seen as being the most likely sorts of ships to be sunk from collision with an iceberg.The other issue to put into consideration as well, was that the Titanic itself was a business, and not just for the White Star Line company, but for the passengers, who had business meetings to attend, or people who were on their way to purchase property to start a new life in North America. Even Charles Hays, who would die in the sinking, was on his way to Ottawa, the Capital of Canada, to open what would become Chateau Laurier. He had even gone to England, and bought furniture intended to be used for the hotel when it was to be opened in June of that year, with the name 'Laurier' being named in honour of Wilfrid Laurier, who was Prime Minister of Canada for fifteen years between 1896-1911.People simply could not afford to have their business meetings spoiled in the unlikely event that something like what unfolded on the Titanic, were to become a stark reality. This same way of thinking is the same for people who drive through undesirable weather conditions today and risk collision. Only in hindsight would someone caught in an automobile accident regret their decision to get out of bed that morning. In the present situation, however, people take risks and accept the very small chance of something happening, versus the more likely scenario that you will reach your destination without incident.The White Star Line knew the unlikely odds themselves, and they also knew that putting their ship behind schedule, even for an entire day, would only risk the possibility of causing a delay for those waiting for the return voyage as much as for those trying to presently complete the voyage. Like any other practical person looking at the odds, and knowing how unlikely that something was to happen, especially in the context that no other ship has ever been confirmed to have sunk from an iceberg besides the Titanic, both before and since. Those on board, such as the Captain, Edward John Smith, the White Star Line Chairman, Bruce Ismay, and the ship's designer, Thomas Andrews, would not have seen any reason to make an exception when ships had already been going by ice fields for decades, and rarely without an incident.Having taken the Southern Route, it would have been very unusual for an iceberg to make its way down this far south, as icebergs tend to melt or dissolve into an insignificant piece of ice before reaching the destination where the Titanic would meet her fate. The myth of the Titanic's crew carelessly sailing their ship through an ice field may have been more justified had the original route, which would have actually been shorter than the one the Titanic ultimately took, starting on the afternoon of April 14, 1912, remained unchanged. This was not to be the case, however, and the fact that White Star Line was now effectively paying more money on coal, which was in relatively short-supply at the time, on top of adding time to Titanic's maiden voyage, would indicate that Smith, more likely than not, took the idea of a ship collision quite seriously; even though his main concern would probably have been more focused on the idea of the ship being inflicted with a heavy glancing blow and being forced to have the ship towed to New Found Land, at the inconvenience of the passengers, and receiving negative headlines in the newspaper, rather than the headlines of the ship foundering in the Atlantic alongside himself and over 1,500 others.The water on the night of April 14-15, 1912, was described as a 'sea of glass' which made it very unfavourable for spotting an iceberg, as the water splashing on the iceberg would not be able to create foam or any breakage in the water for a ship to be warned in advance of a significant object in the waters ahead of them. On the other hand, there was another way for an iceberg to be detected, and that was the shining white lights from the sun, earlier in the day, which could also be used as an early warning sign of an iceberg up ahead.Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee, the two lookouts in the crow's nest at the time of the collision, never reported seeing any such white on the iceberg, which have led many to believe that what the Titanic had encountered was a very rare iceberg known as a blue iceberg. Unlike regular icebergs, blue icebergs have little to no visibility, especially if the blue iceberg was created after sunset, when no lighting could have exposed its surface, and illuminated its surroundings, like most icebergs of the size which the Titanic encountered would have done.A blue iceberg is created when the iceberg rolls upside down, leaving what was the bottom tip of the iceberg to suddenly be the only part of the iceberg that is visible, while leaving what was the upper tip as the new bottom tip. This means that the parts of the iceberg, which would have been touched by the rays of the sun on the morning and afternoon of the sinking were underwater, giving no benefit to those looking out for icebergs. To make matters worse, the, until recently, former bottom tip of the iceberg, would now have a colour similar to the ocean around it at nighttime, as this part of the iceberg would still have been accustomed to being in the dark, as it likely had been for three years from the time it would have broken off somewhere in the Arctic region or Greenland, floating its way towards the South-Eastern tip of New Found Land in the process.Blue icebergs generally happen near the end of an iceberg's life cycle, when the melting glacier no longer has the stability to remain in a stable position, and begins to literally roll around in the water, often times winding up upside down just as the iceberg which was struck by the Titanic may have done only hours earlier.In a twist of irony, had the Titanic reached the point of collision even a few moments earlier, the Titanic could well have avoided collision altogether, as the iceberg, which would still have been moving at approximately one metre every four to five seconds, would have been just out of reach of hitting the Titanic. Even if the Titanic had showed up several moments later than it did, the Titanic could have also missed the iceberg with a turn to port, as the iceberg would have been going moving south, giving the Titanic enough space to sail around the iceberg unscathed.In the hours before the Titanic's collision, the waters had far more ripples than they did during the late evening and early morning hours, which proved crucial to the Titanic's ultimate fate. The ripples, would have given the lookout plenty of opportunity to spot the iceberg and notify those at the bridge before the iceberg would have become a cause for concern. By 3:30 AM, ripples were being reported returning to the scene of the wreck, indicating that arriving several hours later would also have given the lookout better clarity to avoid collision than they had at 11:40 PM.It most certainly would have proven more useful than Frederick Fleet's defence that the ship's binoculars, which were reportedly left locked in the ship's safe by former Second Officer David Blair, could have saved the ship from impending disaster. This defence has come under speculation in recent years, as the conditions that night, added by the very real possibility that the iceberg was a blue iceberg, and not a typical white iceberg as is commonly believed, would not have aided Fleet nor Lee in gaining any more visibility than they would with their own eyes.Prior to the collision, the Titanic, although quite unlikely, was more likely to meet with tragedy had she resumed her original course than had she chosen the southern route, which the ship's captain ultimately decided to make. In hindsight, however, we now know what the outcome for taking the southern route for the Titanic was. What the outcome would have been had the Titanic continued her original course can never be determined with certainty, but knowing the odds of a ship collision, let alone, a ship sinking in the first place; added by the fact that the Titanic encountered a blue iceberg, which is even believed to have had rocks inside of it, which would have made it even easier to tear the ship's hull, added by the weather conditions, which the Titanic encountered upon taking the southern route, gives one irony that is above all other ironies in the Titanic story. And that irony, is that had the Titanic's crew decided to 'damn the icebergs' and sail right through the ice field as what has been vividly depicted in modern-day media, the Titanic would almost conclusively have made it to her destination without any incident; and then the debate surrounding what the Titanic should or should not have done would be a topic set in a different timeline, and not our own.CHAPTER 4Did Bruce Ismay Ever Tell Captain Smith to 'Damn the Icebergs'?Speaking of the last chapter, another infamous story comes up in regards to the Titanic, which has been more or less brought up in every Titanic movie to date. The claim of Bruce Ismay telling Captain Smith to 'Damn the Icebergs' and sailing the ship into eternal oblivion, is a story, and a myth, which is as old and entrenched as any other myth surrounding the loss of the Titanic.However, the question we must ask ourselves is this: Is the story true, and if so, what evidence do we have to prove it? And on the contrary, what is the evidence that we have which point to this story being one of many other rumours and falsehoods which were created, either wilfully or not, by people who either had a political agenda, such as Randolph Hearst, a former business partner and friend of Ismay, or those who were just greatly misinformed on the facts?First, let's take a look at the speed of the Titanic. The Titanic, with a maximum speed of 21 knots, or a maximum emergency speed of 24 knots, was actually fairly slow for a ship of her size at the time. The Lusitania and Mauretania could both go much faster, despite having been built several years earlier. Express Ocean Liners, intended to get people from one side of the Atlantic to the other in comparably little time, was where Cunard ships dominated the high seas, and the White Star Line was no close competitor in that category. Even the Wilhelm der GroBe, a ship built by the Germans in 1897, despite long being outdone in speed by other ships, was still slightly faster than the Titanic's regular speed, even though she had been built fifteen years earlier.J.P. Morgan, the original commissioner for the ship, had wanted the trio-Olympic ships, (Olympic, Titanic and Gigantic, later renamed Britannic) to outclass all ships of the time in both luxury and speed. The White Star Line had a reputation for building ships intended for comfort, but building a ship intended to rival or even surpass the best shipping companies of the time, such as Cunard, was not a forte that the White Star Line delved in. In fact, when looking at J.P. Morgan's budget, Bruce Ismay, during a meeting in 1909, just before the ships were due to be built, convinced J.P. Morgan to sacrifice the speeding upgrades on the ships, and instead use the budget to spend on ways to provide comfort for people travelling.Travelling across the ocean made many people wary of seasickness. Some passengers also preferred to travel on smaller ships, as the commotion of bigger ships and the publicity surrounding them at the time often scared people away from going on ships the size of the Titanic. This was seen as a great selling point, to have a ship become something closer to a modern-day holiday ship.The food, especially for third class, would be even better than what they would receive on land. Third class passengers would even have automatic running toilets and two bathtubs to share. The latter fact may seem inconvenient for many people today, but keep in mind that back then, people on average showered far less than they do now. They were also at sea, where keeping hygiene was not going to be seen as being as much of a priority as it would be on dry land. Many third class passengers at the time were still living in homes on land with no plumbing, meaning that bathtubs and showers were not a luxury that they were usually accustomed to.Most lower-class citizens still used latrines for going to the washroom, as plumbed toilets did not start to reach the lower-classes of society until decades later. It is also the reason why White Star Line installed automatic flushing toilets for third class passengers in the first place, rather than the manual flushing toilets which first class passengers had, because they feared they would not know how to flush the toilets, and they would either cause an unpleasant sight for the next person that came in, or they would cause the custodial servant a headache when he would be stuck trying to unclog a non-flushed toilet.One of the few things which passengers had to pay for, was alcoholic beverages. Fruits, vegetables, water, milk, juice, coffee, tea were available all day for all classes, and these were included in the ticket price. Desserts, such as biscuits were provided during the evening for third class passengers, while passengers in higher classes, particularly first class, could sometimes receive cake, pies and ice cream after their main meal.While higher standards of food had been long provided to upper-class passengers since the beginning of ocean liner travel in the early 1800's, the same standard was not provided to lower-class passengers until much later. The Elbe and Bourgogne, two ships which themselves would founder in 1895 and 1898 respectively, were regarded as being among the more advanced ships for their time period, especially in regards to accommodations for passengers, particularly third class passengers.The Elbe, having been launched in 1881, was, in 1883, given electric bulbs to replace the candle lights and lamps which had been the standard for illuminating a ship in earlier years. The Bourgogne was one of the first ships to be built from the start with lighting already installed, having been built and launched in 1886. While the diet for passengers of all classes was significantly improving by the 1880's, the Olympic-trio were expected to provide a whole new level of standards which would not be matched until many years later when the age of cruise liners came about.The Titanic, like her two sisters, were intended to be treated as something closer to a ship in which passengers from all classes could enjoy their time on the ship, as though it were a holiday, rather than just another ocean liner ferrying people across one end of the ocean to another, as was the standard for other ocean liners at the time. Most people going on the Titanic were still there for immigration, family visits, or business meetings, but the voyage itself would provide greater entertainment and pleasure than other ships of the time could; and this would be especially true for steerage passengers, who, only a few decades earlier, often times did not even have access to the boat deck during a voyage.The speeding budget, which could have made Titanic truly the fastest ship in the world, had the original plans gone ahead, ended up being slower than several other ships of her time. This was done at the request of Bruce Ismay, who was commissioned to make the Olympic ships, as Bruce Ismay, seeing the budget, and knowing the potential market for those preferring security and comfort over speed, convinced J.P. Morgan to sacrifice some speeding upgrades to focus instead on the lifestyle of would-be passengers.The Titanic, like her sisters, were given four smokestacks, not because they were trying to give her aesthetics or to make her look grander than she was, but because upgrading the Titanic to the speed she was initially intended to be would have required her to use all four of her smokestacks, just as the Lusitania and Mauretania were when they also sailed at full-speed.Sacrificing the speeding budget meant that putting the fourth smokestack to use was no longer necessary, but the smokestack was also not a dummy, contrary to popular belief. The smokestack still had ventilators, and stokers could still climb through her. In fact, it was easier to climb through the fourth smokestack than the other smokestacks, as the intended boilers that would have been needed with the original design plans were never installed, so the amount of smoke coming out of that fourth smokestack remained very limited, keeping the temperature cool enough for stokers to climb out of during an emergency with relative ease.The extra smokestack also provided other escape routes for the smoke inside the boiler rooms, as boiler rooms could often times explode, such as during the foundering of the Maine in 1896, if the boilers either overheated, or if they suddenly got hit by cold impact, such as rushing seawater. Keeping the rooms as cool as reasonably possible was also done for the stokers in the boiler rooms, as it was not unusual in earlier ships for stokers to drop dead from exhaustion, dehydration and/or overheating. Such conditions had even resulted in several strikes from stokers demanding better working conditions.The Southern RouteDuring the last chapter, we also talked about which course the captain chose to take on the afternoon of the sinking. Taking a Southern route, and adding 200 KM to the journey would seem quite contradictory to the belief that Ismay pressured Captain Smith to race across the Atlantic to break a trans-Atlantic record. Because if this is true, Smith would have ignored the ice warnings and stayed his original course, which, quite ironically, probably would have allowed the Titanic to reach New York City without an incident and at a much faster time than what the Titanic was destined by taking the longer route.The Mauretania, which at the time had already held the trans-Atlantic record for three years by the time the Titanic allegedly tried breaking the record, completed her voyage in just a little over four days. At the time of the collision with the iceberg, Titanic's voyage across the Atlantic had already been going on for almost as long as it took the Mauretania and Lusitania to cross. And the Titanic was still over 1,600 KM away from her destination, and would still have needed at least a day and a half to complete that distance, keeping her long out of reach from the Blue Ribbon.So why has Bruce Ismay taken so much fire from the media since the time of the sinking? One likely explanation, was that Randolph Hearst, a man reputed for making up stories against his enemies, took an opportunity to not only take advantage of a rumour circulating in the hours and days after the Titanic, but he also expounded on the claims; which ranged from Bruce Ismay dressing as a woman to escape, to Ismay ordering crew members to take off with him in the lifeboat, which resulted in the shame and demonisation which Ismay suffered.A few years before the event, Randolph Hearst and Bruce Ismay had been friends and business trading partners. But after an undisclosed business dispute between the two men, the New York Times publisher vowed revenge on Bruce Ismay. And his godsend came on the morning of April 15, 1912 when news of the disaster reached the city.Attempting to make a point out of Bruce Ismay being among the survivors, Randolph Hearst listed the most prominent first class men who had died, intentionally omitting the thirty-seven percent of other first class men who had also survived. Beside these men, he put only one person among those who had been saved, and that man, was none other than Bruce Ismay.For twenty-five years afterwards, until his death in 1937, Bruce Ismay was shunned by everyone. He eventually barricaded himself into his house, despite often times taking part in charity events in the years following the sinking. He continued raising money for the lost White Star Line employees, and even some of the families of passengers, who were having trouble recovering from the disaster.Throughout the remainder of his life, children reportedly went by his house on a regular basis, treating the residence as something resembling a haunted house, with children trying hard to look through the windows to see the 'Cowardly Bruce Ismay.'Mentioning the Titanic around Bruce Ismay, except for when a charity event was specifically about raising money for Titanic victims, was strictly forbidden in his presence. Bruce Ismay became reclusive, and while he had always been reputed for being a quiet man who hated being made the subject of the press, whether for good reasons or not (hence debunking the claim of fame-seeking with the Titanic) became even more so in the years after the event. He resigned from the White Star Line, a company which had been founded by his father, one year after the Titanic incident. Most of his social life was reduced to speaking to his wife, children, occasionally to his former business partners and neighbours, and to the families of Titanic victims, when taking part in fundraising or when being approached.Bruce Ismay would not become the only victim of negative publicity after the Titanic. William Sloper, who had gotten on Lifeboat 7, at the request of Dorothy Gibson (who would go on to star in a movie depiction of the Titanic two months after the sinking), was allowed on by Officer Murdoch, whose policies on letting men on a lifeboat was not as strict as that of Second Officer Lightoller, who remained on the port side of the ship.Despite having been let on, William Sloper would be mostly condemned by the press and become ostracised for the rest of his life by many in his community for the charge that he had dressed as a woman to escape the ship while leaving those still on board to their demise. Daniel Buckley received a similar backlash from the media, despite the fact that he was only given a female coat by a female passenger, because they saw an officer, probably Second Officer Lightoller, forcing men at gunpoint back out of the lifeboat, which he had taken refuge in.Masabumi Hosono, the only Japanese citizen aboard the Titanic, received most of his shame when returning to Japan. The Japanese media, and later, public, condemned him for having survived the sinking rather than going down with the ship. The attacks received on him by the Japanese, upon his return to Japan, were probably even harsher than what even Bruce Ismay had been dealt with in the west, as even Archibald Gracie, in his memoirs, was far more critical of Hosono's survival than he was of Ismay's.The surviving officers on the Titanic, Lightoller, Pitman, Boxhall and Lowe, all had marred careers. With the arguable exception of Lightoller, who was given command of smaller vessels during the First World War, not one of them ever got to become a captain, despite having long careers in the shipping industry, and most having seen action in the naval reserves in World War One, and even during the Russian Civil War, in Fifth Officer Lowe's case.The burden of being a survivor of something along the lines of a shipwreck is not something which is unique to the people on the Titanic, but has been a trend which has occurred in other similar shipwrecks and even disasters not related to shipwrecks throughout history. It will also continue on indefinitely this way, because there are a lot of people out there who would rather judge people based on what they think they would have done, rather than on what actually transpired.CHAPTER 5Could the Californian Have Saved Those On Board?While we might find this a very comforting (or distressful, depending on your take) idea, to believe that help was just around the corner if only wireless operator Cyril Evans had heard and responded to Jack Phillips' call for help; the truth of the matter is that not even the Californian could have done much to save those on board, other than watching the ship sink from a much closer distance, and being able to come to the aid of those already in lifeboats sooner than the Carpathia did.Ship collisions with other ships remain a very common cause for ship fatalities. In fact, with the possible exceptions of warfare, and unusually violent storms, ship collisions have always been the most common cause of sinking. It also explains why most shipwrecks are within eyesight of land, as shipping traffic is far more dense near shore than it would be several hundred kilometres deep inside the North Atlantic as the Titanic was situated.When the Bourgogne shipwreck sank in 1898, for example, the Cromartyshire, despite not having fled as recently passed maritime law would have forbidden it from doing, remained mostly idle. She only sent two lifeboats to help retrieve those in the water. The decision for this could possibly have been as a result of the damaged bow, which made Captain Henderson believe that the Cromartyshire, and not the Bourgogne, would founder. The reason would also be due to the fact that the Bourgogne, while no longer being among the biggest ships in the world at the time she sank, despite still being regarded as the fastest, would put ships getting near to her in danger of being shipwrecked themselves.Ultimately, the only reasonable approach for the crew members on the British ship attempting to save those on the doomed French liner, was to simply provide lifeboats. In order to avoid risking their own lives without gain, the crew in these two lifeboats chose to wait for the liner to sink, before arriving on the scene.By the time they reached their destination, few people were still alive to be picked up, as they had either all been rescued by some of the overturned lifeboats on the Bourgogne, or they had all been killed, many from stabbings, beatings, shootings and bludgeoning, either on deck or in the water.Sixteen years later, two years after the Titanic, an even more cataclysmic repeat of the Bourgogne foundering would take place in the St. Lawrence river, when the Empress of Ireland, a ship which was launched in 1906, was heading to Southampton from Quebec City on her ninety-sixth voyage, when she was fatally struck by the Norwegian Collider Storstad in front of St. Luce-au-Mer, not far away from Rimouski.The ship sank in fourteen minutes, and 1,012 of the 1,477 people on board the Empress of Ireland at the time were killed. Speculations are, though, that the numbers could be even higher, as many of the passengers came from foreign countries as far away as Russia, and many were travelling undocumented at the time of the incident.Despite the quick arrival of two rescue ships, the Eureka and Lady Evelyn, the Empress of Ireland sank before anything could be done, and few survivors were left alive to be retrieved from the water. In the end, despite the Empress of Ireland having more than enough lifeboats for all on board, more passengers died on the Empress of Ireland than the Titanic.The Titanic did have a full 160 minutes, a time nearly eleven times longer than what those on the Empress of Ireland were given, but the circumstances also had some crucial differences. For instance, crew members were, on average, far better trained by 1914 than they had been in 1912. Until around the time of the Titanic, experienced crew members were mostly found among the ranks of senior officers and veteran sailors, who made up a small minority of crew members, as most sailors at the time were teenagers or people in their early twenties. Many sailors in the years before and leading up to the Titanic were working on a ship as a summer or temporary job until they could find proper employment elsewhere, or even pay for tuition for their college if they chose to take that route.Requirements for a sailor in 1912 were relatively low, especially compared to what they would later become. This also meant that many lower-ranking sailors had little to no experience in rowing. Some could not even swim. So when the Titanic sinking occurred, officers and other senior sailors were forced to teach their younger and less experienced sailors how to conduct a proper evacuation while the ship itself was sinking.This spoiled many precious minutes which would have been better used for evacuating. But the timing does not just fall on the experience or lack thereof from the typical young sailors who had no idea what they were supposed to do, but also on the reluctance of the officers on the Titanic of wanting to call an official evacuation.Lightoller, who was busy instructing the sailors near the lifeboats, while Thomas Andrews' reports were being relaid on the bridge, believed, until near the end, that only two, maybe three compartments of the ship had been breached. Lightoller therefore saw the evacuation as more of a safety precaution rather than a life or death situation. He did not believe the ship was sinking until around 2:00 AM when the bow started to go under. Prior to witnessing the disappearance of the bow, he expected the bow of the ship to only become partially submerged, but otherwise remain afloat.This sentiment, was even felt by Boxhall and Pitman, who both watched the sinking of the Titanic from their respective lifeboats. Neither believed that the Titanic was sinking until around 2:00 AM when the bow began to disappear underwater, which was around the same time that Lightoller started to become concerned.Thomas Andrews also did not declare that the ship was sinking until some time after 12:20 AM. By this point, the ship had less than two hours to live. Jack Phillips and Harold Bride had already been assigned to start calling out to other ships, but even an extra twenty minutes would not have made much of a difference when the situation at hand would require the evacuation of 2,200 passengers and crew, 600 KM from land, and no nearby ships to provide immediate assistance.The Republic, sinking three years earlier, and later on, the Andrea Doria, which coincidentally sank only a few kilometres from the Republic in 1956 in Nantucket, were both struck by another ship. However, in both cases, the ships took far longer to sink than the Titanic. The Republic took just under two days, at approximately twenty-two hours to sink, while the Andrea Doria took over eleven hours. Both were also fairly close to shore, so help from other nearby ships was far swifter than the Titanic.The Republic also had the Florida, the ship which had struck the Republic, to immediately begin the process of evacuation, which was carried out over a period of twenty-four hours. On the Andrea Doria, despite having nearby ships to help out, it still took the Andrea Doria over seven hours to evacuate the survivors off the ship, and this was in more recent times, when ships were much faster, and regulations and training far stronger than on the Titanic; and the population on both the Republic and Andrea Doria was far smaller than it was on the Titanic.The Californian was, in all likelihood, at least 14 kilometres from the Titanic at the time of the sinking. The maximum speed of the Californian would have required at least forty-five minutes of travelling at maximum speed to reach the Titanic, with the presumption in mind that the Californian was only 14 kilometres distant, and not further, as some of the Californian crew, such as Captain Lord, insisted. We also need to look at the fact that the Californian would have needed time to get her crew in position, as the Californian had mostly shutdown for the night, and was mostly idle at the time of the sinking. Attaining maximum speed would also have taken at least several minutes from the time the ship started to become activated, as the boilers need to be started, on top of having the ship move faster while also not over-straining its engines.Even when the Californian would have hypothetically reached the Titanic, the Californian would still not have gone near the Titanic. For one, the Californian was several times smaller than the Titanic, and second of all, going near a foundering shipwreck the size of the Titanic is a recipe for disaster. The best accommodations the Californian crew could have given, was to aid those already safely in their lifeboats. By this time, it would be at least 1:00 AM. Too late to do much for those still on board. Not to mention the fact that at 1:00 AM, only a handful of lifeboats on the Titanic had even been launched.The ship would have been in such a dangerous angle by the time of the Californian's arrival, that going back to the ship would have been impossible without a high-probability of being killed. The only thing that the crew members of both the Californian alongside the surviving Titanic crew members could have done at this point, was to do what other ships before and after them in similar situations would have done – wait.On a further note, there is also the belief that several other ships, some possibly closer than the Californian, were also present on the night of the sinking, yet have avoided the same amount of scrutiny. One of these ships was the Sampson, a small fishing vessel which was allegedly scared off by the flares coming from the Titanic. The fishermen, who had apparently been illegally fishing in the area, thought that the Titanic's flare was the ship warning authorities of their presence. As a result, rather than approaching the Titanic, the fishing boat darted off into the night.The story of the Sampson, while plausible, has been put into doubt by some who believe the Sampson may have been going through repairs hundreds of kilometres away at the time of the incident. Those that believe that more than one ship was present that night, will need to make their own educated much like the other myths and stories surrounding the Titanic.CHAPTER 6Are Modern Maritime Laws Really the Result of the Titanic?While there is no doubt that the Titanic did indeed influence many modern laws, the amount of regulations, which are claimed to have evolved from the Titanic, is simply a myth. And many laws, such as 'Captain Goes Down With His Ship' and 'Women and Children First' aren't and have never been a maritime law, but have instead been a law created in the minds of those wishing to see a more romantic depiction of a shipwreck, particularly the 'noble' captain, or the men wilfully sacrificing their lives for the women and children on board. These two myths will be among those being debunked in this chapter.Before we get to that point, let's talk about one other myth which has become quite ingrained. Security Gates. Security Gates, while being conveniently used as a way to separate unwanted passengers from certain parts of the ship for safety reasons, were not created specifically with that intention in mind, but were instead created in the event of a shipwreck. It was not done as a way to deny third class passengers the right to live. This myth will actually be debunked in the next chapter which we will be going to very shortly, where I will be discussing the survival rates of steerage to upper-class passengers.The security gates, while intended to prevent people from the lower decks from getting to the top decks, was done for two very practical reasons. The first being that it prevented hundreds, possibly thousands, of stricken passengers and even crew members alike from storming through the entirety of the ship and causing pandemonium. Inevitably, this would result in extreme violence breaking out on deck, as occurred on shipwrecks, such as the Arctic, Atlantic and Bourgogne.Keeping the security gates closed during an emergency helped the crew members assigned with the evacuation to not have to worry about losing control of the ship, and effectively dealing with a mutiny, where higher loss of life would become anticipated. Having fewer crew members assigned to control the hostility, also meant more crew members could be left on deck to help with the launching of lifeboats. During the sinking of the Bourgogne, a lifeboat consisting of some forty passengers, was never launched, because the pandemonium and confusion throughout the ship was so bad that the sailors, who were initially expected to launch the lifeboat, were prevented from doing so from an unruly mob standing before them on deck. Some sailors died while attempting to prevent the hordes of rioters from storming their way into a lifeboat.The second practical reason, being quite complementary to the first, was that the security gates also meant that the crew could control how many people went on deck at a time. Having too many passengers running amok on deck would only prove a distraction for the crew members. As a result, it was seen as more efficient to only allow those on the upper decks, mainly the first and second class passengers, to be the first into the lifeboats, as they were nearer the boat deck to begin with, and they were far fewer in number than the steerage passengers.Once the first and second class passengers had been evacuated in reasonable numbers, the crew would then work their way down to those still in the lower decks. By which time, the boat deck would have been mostly cleared of the first and second class passengers, particularly the women and children, as they would have already been evacuated in some of the earlier lifeboats.This tactic worked quite effectively for the Republic, a White Star Line ship which had sunk in 1909, because the crew on that ship had twenty-two hours to transfer their lifeboats back and forth. So even though they did not have enough lifeboats for everyone on the Republic, the timing gave them enough opportunity to evacuate those on board, hours before the ship sank.The Titanic, in sharp contrast, was given less than three hours to pull off the same miracle. And the Titanic was also miles away from the nearest ship. The Titanic had enough room for the vast majority of those on board. Common estimates were that 1,178 men could have been safely placed into Titanic's lifeboat. But when the population of women and children, who were far less heavier and would have taken up less room in the lifeboats than a full-grown man would have, means that the possibility of lives saved would have far exceeded the 1,178 that the Board of Trades had determined.While heavily disputed, least none the reason that humans have different weight sizes; some have even gone so far as to claim that, with enough time and preparation, every single person on the Titanic could have potentially been saved, as the Titanic consisted of several hundred women, plus children. The children could have sat on the laps of other passengers, while the women would, on average, have taken significantly less room than the male passengers, who were the ones that would have been measured on when the lifeboats went for testing in Belfast just before the voyage.In the end, this scenario can only remain plausible at best. We would need to go back in time and actually fit every Titanic crew member and passenger and see the result. And even then, this scenario would be an unfair comparison, since testing a lifeboat's weight capacity during a regular occasion, such as when it is not sinking due to an iceberg, is much different than testing it during a catastrophic event in which the lives of over 2,200 people were at stake.Maritime laws did not initially mandate enough lifeboats for everyone on a ship the size of Titanic. Initially, these regulations came as an indirect result of many crew members refusing to board a ship which did not have enough lifeboats for everybody. While this may have seemed justifiable had the lifeboats on the Titanic left long before the ship sank; in reality, the Titanic sank so quickly, in regards to the training of the average crew member on board, that Collapsible A and B both floated away before they even had a chance to be properly launched.Collapsible A was forcibly launched on the boat deck and was later partially submerged, while Collapsible B was knocked upside down in the water, leaving thirty people still on the ship the opportunity to try and scramble onto the lifeboat while in the water, which would then be followed with spending the rest of the night trying not to succumb to the hypothermia, injuries and/or shock which survivors on CollapsibleA and B had sustained. At least seven of the initial survivors did not live through the night on Collapsible B, and they were hurled into the water in order to make room for other survivors literally holding on for dear life on the side of the boat, including Charles Joughin, who spent two hours in the ocean after the Titanic had sunk.While it is common sense from a modern perspective to have enough lifeboats for all on board, the Titanic is not and should never have been treated as a prime example for why that argument should be made. Ironically, it is also just as possible that more people would have died on the Titanic had more lifeboats been added, because having one lifeboat inside another means it takes even more time for a crew member to be able to launch even one lifeboat, which is what would have been needed if sixty-four lifeboats were indeed to be installed. Today ships at least have inflatable boats which make such a process easier, however, inflatable lifeboats did not yet exist at the time of the Titanic.On the Empress of Ireland and Lusitania, a fair number of people did survive, despite the timing in which both of these ships sunk; but the Lusitania also sank during the day time, and people were anticipating a torpedo attack. Furthermore, passengers were becoming far more durable at surviving in the water than they would have been on the Titanic or other earlier shipwrecks.Dresses, which were quite common on women during the late 1800's and first years of the 1900's, were fast fading, even among the wealthier passengers, by the 1910's, making it far easier to swim to a point of safety. Dresses in earlier shipwrecks also made it more likely that something would snag onto them and drown them.Passengers were typically weak swimmers in those days. Some claims are that the Titanic incident inspired more people to learn how to swim, which made them far more capable of surviving a calamity than their predecessors. Aside from seventeen year old Jack Thayer, no juveniles or children survived in the water on the Titanic. No women were rescued, either, which is in sharp contrast to the Empress of Ireland and Lusitania, where a fair number of women and children were rescued from the water.The increase in passengers, particularly women and children, was due to their better knowledge on surviving such events in the first place, which played a major role in the saving of lives. However, another more important, and often ignored aspect, is that even average sailors were becoming far better trained to respond to such a situation, so they were, in turn, better at launching lifeboats in a more timely manner, and they were also more effective at rowing, which came to good use when retrieving survivors still stranded in the water.IS WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST A REQUIREMENT?Simple answer: No. While the myth of the women and children first policy, even on the Titanic, was seen as a great example of how people behaved in a shipwreck during the 'old days', the truth is that not only was such a rule quite unheard of, but the extent to which this played out on the Titanic has been greatly embellished.The Birkenhead, a ship which sunk sixty years before the Titanic in modern-day South Africa is probably the closest to such a rule ever being played out. However, it must be noted that the Birkenhead at the time was comprised mainly of soldiers. The passengers, which were mostly women and children, only had one known male passenger on board at the time.As a matter of courtesy, it was agreed to let the passengers go first, in which the soldiers would then follow. The Birkenhead was only a short distance from land. The biggest concern for those still on board was the treacherous sea that night, added by the sharks, which were looking for prey.Captain Salmond had tried to encourage those on board, including the military personnel, to try and save their lives if they could. Many accepted this offer and jumped into the water after the lifeboats. Some soldiers swam over to the lifeboats and successfully got on, while others swam the three kilometres to shore, for a period of up to fourteen hours, battling against sharks and other sea predators.All the horses, save one who allegedly had its legs broken upon impact with the water after being tossed overboard, managed to swim their way to shore. While all women and children survived the foundering of the Birkenhead, and while most males still died during the sinking, the number of males who survived was still far greater than the number of women and children who survived.The same applied to the Titanic as well, as sailors survived at a greater rate than anybody else on board, save the women and children from first and second class; as most sailors were assigned into a lifeboat prior to the Titanic sinking and were therefore never in any imminent danger themselves. Overall, however, the survival rate of crew members was lower than passengers, with only 267 of the 885 crew members on board surviving.Women and children were given priority on the Titanic by the majority of the ship's officers; most notably Second Officer Lightoller, who disallowed every male passenger, save Arthur Peuchen, from getting into a lifeboat, and only then, he reluctantly allowed Peuchen to climb a role into Lifeboat 6. This was only done, because Lifeboat 6 had a shortage of sailors, as Frederick Fleet, one of the two lookouts at the time of the collision, was the only sailor on Lifeboat 6 who was assigned to man the boat, with Robert Hichens playing as the lookout and rudder.Such a strict interpretation of the women and children first policy, which was especially enforced on the port side, in regards to women and children being placed into lifeboats first, also ignores the fact that, ultimately, most of the survivors on the Titanic were still males in their late teens or adult years, and that nearly half of the children on board, alongside a significant number of women, particularly from third class, were also killed.When Lightoller was asked at the inquiry whether this 'Women and Children' first policy that he introduced was a legally binding law, Lightoller simply responded that it was the 'Law of Nature.' That this policy, which many have since taken for granted as being a maritime law, being brought into question at the inquiry in the first place, is also indicative that this view was not as universal as people in the present have come to believe. A brief history of other ocean liner shipwrecks, which I will be talking about later in this presentation, will also answer the question of whether or not a captain is obligated to go down with his ship.In the case of women and children, examples will be listed from some of the following shipwrecks, which were regarded as being among the most violent shipwrecks in history. Many of them were quite infamous themselves, until later shipwrecks, such as the Titanic, Empress of Ireland and Lusitania reduced them to nothing more than a relic of the past, remembered only by maritime historians or those who were there.Two years after the loss of the Birkenhead, the S.S. Arctic was sunk in 1854 during a collision with a small French vessel named, the Vesta. The captain, Captain James Luce, believing the smaller French vessel to be in greater danger than the Arctic, went so far as to give two of his lifeboats to the other ship and even added several crew members to the French vessel in order for them to assist in the evacuation, should the Vesta need it.Both ships were sailing in opposite directions, so they had to make part with each other after the exchange. Ironically, the Vesta, which everybody on both sides had assumed was likely to sink, made it safely to port. The S.S. Arctic, on the other hand, continued to take on water for another four hours before the ship began to fill to the point where even the captain realised that grounding the ship in New Found Land would be futile.The ship went down quickly from that point on. Most of the survivors were crew members. No women or children survived, and that includes the wife and children of Edward Knight Collins himself, Founder of Collins Line and the owner of the S.S. Arctic. Captain Luce's young and physically disabled son, who was also on the S.S. Arctic at the time of the sinking, was instantly killed as soon as the ship went down, due to being smacked in the face by a buoy.Captain Luce and several others held on to the buoy. For two days, he managed to keep himself alive in the water, alongside two others he had started off with, before they were all rescued and brought back to the USA, where he was depicted as a heroic figure for having gone down with his ship.While the S.S. Arctic is not a prime example of a captain who survived by any other means than by luck, it does have two other points that are quite clear during the sinking:All the women and children died, despite sixty-two people surviving, nearly all crew membersA captain does not have to die with his shipHad the captain been rescued earlier, he and the other two survivors who held on to a buoy for dear life, alongside some of the others who succumbed over the two day period, would not have been condemned for their survival.While many of the crew members, particularly those that survived in a lifeboat, were later condemned by society in general, with many accusing them of cowardice for saving themselves before their passengers; legally speaking, the crew members had done nothing wrong, as maritime law does not give any particular preference as to who should or should not be saved first.That being said, just months before the loss of the S.S. Arctic, another ship, a White Star Line clipper called the Tayleur, which was on its maiden voyage, was also sunk with a high loss of life. Captain Noble, a young, twenty-nine year old, was among those who survived. Knowing that few of the passengers could make it to shore, and that staying behind with them would be futile, Captain Noble made the decision to jump into the water, surviving alongside some 290 others, mostly adult males, as only five children and eight women, out of over 200 women and children on board are believed to have survived the sinking.The overall fatalities on the Tayleur, male and female alike, cannot be conclusively determined, but estimates range anywhere from 400 to well over 600. Captain Noble was acquitted of all charges later brought against him, as it was declared that he broke no maritime law, either before, during or even after the sinking when rescue operations were underway.The White Star Line, on the other hand, did take some repercussions for the loss, as they were accused of not having enough safety navigation to prevent a collision from occurring in the first place. However, in regards to the details of what happened during the sinking of the Tayleur, no charges were ever seriously laid out, as the crew on the ship were acting perfectly within their legal rights. It was shown that had Captain Noble remained on board, he would simply have put himself in unnecessary danger. And, knowing that it was unlikely he could save himself with other passengers holding on to him, especially during the violent weather conditions the Tayleur was suffering from at the time; left him with the choice of saving himself by swimming to shore while leaving the rest of those still stranded on board to perish.Nineteen years later, White Star Line would suffer another disaster when the R.M.S. Atlantic, considered by some to be the first true Ocean Liner, due to the ship also once being known as the 'Millionaires' Ship' was sunk in Nova Scotia on April 1, 1873. The death toll has ranged anywhere from a low of 500 to a high of 600. Only 371 people, out of nearly 1,000 on board, survived, but they were all males.Captain Williams was among the 371 survivors. In fact, out of the crew members on board, only ten were reportedly killed. The rest were passengers, most of them being women and children. One of the ten crew members that died, was a sailor which some crew members had come to known as 'Bob,' as she had dressed up and pretended to be a male, so that she could assume the role of a sailor without anybody knowing of her true gender, which was only discovered posthumously by commercial divers retrieving bodies in the days and weeks following the wreck, who were able to identify her true gender.John Hindley, a twelve year old boy who was sailing with his family to Europe, was the only child to have survived. He allegedly survived by being pulled out through his hair by a sailor, just as the ship was rolling over and beginning to go under. The ship sank in approximately ten minutes, leaving only pieces of debris left over for some of the stranded survivors. Others were able to stand on the ship's side, as the water was shallow, due to the ship sinking only a few metres from shore. However, no women survived the sinking, either.Most of those who survived, did so by either swimming to shore, or by climbing the ropes from the ship to Mars Rock and taking refuge on there, as the winds that night were as violent as a hurricane, rather than the unusually calm night which the Titanic would experience thirty-nine years later. Captain Williams was reprimanded and had a two-year suspended license, but not because he saved himself, but because an inquiry decided that he had enough coal to have made it to a safer destination which they believe would have averted the disaster altogether.In 1886, nearly thirteen years after the loss of the R.M.S. Atlantic, the Cimbria, a Hamburg ship, was lost on the night of January 19, after a collision with the ship, Sultan. Out of over 400 on board the Cimbria at the time of the incident, only fifty-six survived. While some women did survive, estimates are that three out of the fifty-six were females, while the rest were males, mostly crew members.Crew members, especially officers and specialists, were often times assigned to lifeboats first, because their experience would be seen as more valuable to other survivors if they were alive than if they were dead.Just nine years after the Cimbria, an incident which played out almost alike occurred not far away from the site of the Cimbria's loss. Just like the Cimbria, the Elbe, another German ship, was rammed by another British ship named the Crathie. Like the Sultan, the crew members on the Crathie took off after the collision, as both the Sultan and Crathie had taken heavy damages upon impact from their respective collisions.Both of them suffered severe damage to the bow, prompting them to believe that they were in even more danger than the ships they collided with. The crew on the Crathie later justified their reasoning by saying that they even believed they saw the Elbe sailing away from them, which they took to mean that the captain of the Elbe, Captain Von Goss, was off to ground his ship.However, this proved not to be the case, for within twenty minutes, the Elbe was gone. The first lifeboat to be lowered, broke during the launching phase. One survivor, Anne Boecker, was reportedly stranded in the water in the middle of the North Sea in January for over ten minutes before she was retrieved from the water by a second lifeboat, which picked her up just as the bow of the Elbe lifted out of the water and went into the North Sea with 332 out of 352 still on board. Had Anne Boecker not been picked up, every survivor would have been a male, as no other women survived. No children survived the sinking of the Elbe, either, and out of the twenty survivors, including herself, fifteen of them were crew members, including the third officer, the two pilots, including an English pilot, the chief fireman, the chief engineer and other senior crew members.Several hours after the Elbe had sunk, survivors were picked up by the Mayflower, who happened to come across the lifeboat by pure chance. The crew on the Mayflower later praised the surviving crew members for their experience in keeping people alive, as the rescuers of the Mayflower later said that those in the lifeboats could not have survived another hour, due to the subzero temperatures which the North Sea was experiencing during the sinking, regardless of the skills which the surviving crew members demonstrated.The Drummond Castle, while not being a prime example of the captain surviving, nor is it a prime example of women and children dying, should still be noted for the fact that out of 256 people on board, only three survived. Two of the survivors were crew members, while another was a first class male passenger.All three were found alive in the water, as the Drummond Castle sank in just four minutes upon breaching its hull against a reef. The sinking, as well as the many other shipwrecks that have so far been presented, however, do show that males have a higher survival rate. A ship called the Bourgogne, another French Ocean Liner just like the Drummond Castle, was shipwrecked two years later on July 4, 1898, about 120 KM off the coast of Sable Island in Nova Scotia, Canada.The Bourgogne was struck in a head on collision by the British ship Cromartyshire. Not a single child survived the sinking. Victoire Lacasse, who was helped into an overturned lifeboat in the water by her husband, was the only female to survive the sinking. There were 168 survivors out of 714 or so people on board. Out of the 168 that survived, roughly 100 of them were members of the crew. Nearly half the crew survived, particularly among stokers and lower-ranking sailors.Unlike most other shipwrecks, including the Titanic, officers on the Bourgogne were the most likely crew members to be killed by far. Despite nearly half the crew surviving the wreck of the Bourgogne, out of eighteen officers, only the Chief Purser, who reportedly survived in the water by resurfacing and being rescued after the ship went down, alongside two junior officers were saved. Captain Deloncle himself went down with the ship, alongside his remaining officers.Despite the crew of the Cromartyshire initially believing that they were the ones sinking, the crew of the Cromartyshire followed through the new maritime laws, which had been largely introduced in response to the loss of the Cimbria and Elbe, and waited to assist the survivors from the Bourgogne. Despite their efforts, the crew on the Cromartyshire were mostly helpless to aid those left on board. The only thing they could do was send two lifeboats to go out and find any survivors in the water, while assisting those already on lifeboats, most of which were overturned.The panic on the Bourgogne, alongside the fact that most did not even know how to put a life jacket on, meant that many people, who may have survived long enough to be rescued later on, simply sank and disappeared beneath the surface, some mere inches away from a lifeboat, filled with panicking passengers and even crew members threatening those that got too close to them.Many of the crew members, particularly the sailors, were later condemned by the press and the media. Some reportedly lived out their lives banished from their community, including many of the sailors, as it was considered to be an omen to allow a shipwreck survivor into your crew.The Norge, a ship which sank a few years later in 1904, killed all but 170 on board, with dozens of those initial survivors later dying from their injuries. The death toll on the Norge has been estimated by some to be as high as 650. Captain Gundal, however, ended up being among the survivors, having been rescued in a lifeboat and being taken on board a German rescue ship.Days earlier, on June 15, 1904, the General Slocum, carrying some 1,342 people on board, was also shipwrecked in New York City when the ship engulfed in flames. Of the 1,021 who died, a great portion were children. Most of the crew members, including the Captain himself, William Van Schaik, were able to leap safely into the water and swim to shore.William Van Schaik was largely blamed for the incident, and he went to prison for several years as a result until being pardoned. His imprisonment was due to accusations of not having enforced safety regulations on the ship, which some believe would have averted the sinking.Even in the years after the Titanic, the captains of many ships, notably Henry Kendall of the Empress of Ireland, and Captain William Turner of the Lusitania, both survived, despite the majority of those under their command being less fortunate. Contrary to film depictions, there is no evidence from survivors that Captain Smith effectively committed suicide by locking himself up in the bridge and going down with the ship, nor is there any evidence that he shot himself, as has been rumoured by some.While his actual fate is unclear, the most likely explanation comes from the survivors on the overturned Collapsible B, including Jack Thayer, Harold Bride and Charles Lightoller, who all saw Captain Smith swimming over to them just as the bridge on the Titanic was about to go under. Some of the survivors even later testified this belief at the American and British inquiries, that it was Captain Smith who bade them farewell when he realised he was not going to be able to get into a lifeboat and swam off into the night, never to be seen again.The survival rate of captains have, on average, been the highest among those on a ship. Followed by the officers, then the sailors, then the rest of the crew and male passengers, and only then, women and children.However, even that should not totally disregard the fact that, depending on which class you fell into, the survival rates among genders did not stay consistent. And the survival rates for those in different classes would probably surprise those who believe the claim that the 'poor were locked away, and the rich rowed to safety.'...CHAPTER 7Did the Wealthy Really Survive at a Greater Rate than the Steerage Passengers?Many would nod their heads with an emphatic yes. After all, it has been repeated everywhere, has it not? We even see Jack Dawson in James Cameron's Titanic being forced to break down the gates just so he can escape from the sinking vessel.While the security gates, as was discussed earlier, did in fact exist, and they were used actively during the sinking, the gates themselves had far less of an effect on your survival rate than has been widely believed. This is particularly true if you were a male in steerage class.As an example, let's look at the survival rate for women and children among all classes. While women and children did survive at a higher rate than women and children in third class, women and children in steerage were still more likely to survive than males in all classes, particularly in second class.The reason for this comparison, is that second class males, being regarded as the middle class of society, and being far better off than the steerage class, only had an 8% survival rate. Even steerage males survived at twice the rate at 16%, despite being portrayed as having been locked away and left to die in film depictions.Males in first class, while surviving at a greater rate than males from either class, still had a mere 37% survival rate. And like males from other classes, several of them, such as seventeen year old Jack Thayer, Edward Norris, Archibald Gracie and Charles Woolner, only survived in the water by a stroke of luck. Males in first and second class had a better chance of survival than steerage males, due to their lifestyle, which made them physically stronger, added by the fact that wealthier people at the time were more likely to know how to swim. If not for this crucial fact alone, the rate of surviving first class passengers would have been far less than 37%, and the number of males from second class that survived would have been even lower than the 8% that ultimately survived.Most of the gates on the Titanic had been opened by 1:00 AM, as passengers had been steadily allowed to go through the gates in small numbers. Less than an hour earlier, several stokers with sledgehammers, shovels and axes had been spotted moving up the first class staircase which caused a commotion among the passengers, believing that a riot, or worse, a mutiny, was underway. Keeping the passengers and crew below decks on lock down until they were given permission to leave was therefore seen as the best course of action to take to avoid what could likely have turned into a bloodbath on the boat deck.Many of the decisions made on the night of the Titanic were influenced by the gradual change in maritime law, as well as the events of other earlier shipwrecks. While it was seen as being more efficient to keep people calm on a shipwreck in order to make evacuation easier by 1912; on earlier shipwrecks, notably the Bourgogne, which existed at a time when getting people to the boat deck as quickly as possible was seen as the better route, naturally responded far differently by treating the shipwreck like a fire drill. Crew members were ordered to rush through the cabins and wake the passengers and crew, alerting everybody on board about the imminent danger. This caused a ruckus, and people fled to the top of the decks, many of them using aggressive force, some lethally.Hundreds of people died on the Bourgogne under a standard policy of the time which indirectly favoured scaring people to the decks, as opposed to later regulations which would order more discipline and order. While most present shipping companies have taken an approach similar to what the crew on the Titanic had done as their standard for evacuation, keeping people calm and orderly has its downsides.The negative aspects of having a calming approach to a shipwreck situation, is that many passengers, particularly those on the upper decks, may become oblivious to what is going on below deck. They may not take the situation seriously enough, to a false sense of security that the calming method is supposed to create, which could in itself prove just as fatal as the fire drill approach that older ships in a shipwreck relied on.Some surviving crew members, such as Second Officer Charles Lightoller, still vigorously defended this fairly new regulation, believing that it prevented a deadly riot from breaking out across the ship. He referenced one particular moment during the sinking, when he was trying to launch Lifeboat 2. Several men jumped in, and he had to order them back out at gunpoint. After that, he was forced to draw his pistol and threaten to shoot anyone who tried to get in again.According to his testimony, he also claimed he had no bullets in his revolver, and was forced to bluff his way throughout the sinking. The calm demeanour which the crew had chosen to follow, according to him and other surviving crew members, also made the launching of the lifeboats far easier than it otherwise would have been, which has been credited for potentially saving hundreds of additional lives.Regardless of what maritime policies are today, or a hundred years ago, first class passengers survived at a far greater rate than the average steerage passenger. Additional lifeboats, better trained crew or even which direction to approach a shipwreck situation have not done much to even out the losses between classes. Let's put some things into context, first, however.In the case of the Titanic, just over half of the children on board survived. On the Empress of Ireland, only 4 of the 138 children on board survived, while only 35 of the 129 children on the Lusitania survived. These unusually high mortality statistics occurred, despite there being more than enough lifeboats for all on board. Children were far less likely to survive either the Empress of Ireland or Lusitania, while in contrast the survival rates for male passengers and crew increased in both incidents, as 248 out of 420 crew members on the Empress of Ireland survived.The higher survival rate among male passengers and crew members was due to them being far stronger swimmers on average than children. Despite so few children surviving either the Empress of Ireland or Lusitania, both shipwrecks had multiple children survive in the water, whereas no children survived in the water on the Titanic. This can be easily explained, as the Titanic's passengers were far weaker swimmers than what those on more recent shipwrecks have proven to be. Had the passengers and crew who went down with the Titanic been stronger, far more stragglers would have been rescued in the water, as it has become far more common for people to survive for several hours or even days at a time in the North Atlantic, compared to mere minutes for nearly all the victims on the Titanic.Roughly 60% of the crew on the Empress of Ireland survived. In comparison, only 20% of passengers, mostly adult male passengers, were able to hold out until being rescued in the water, including some of the women and children who were not able to get into a lifeboat in time. The majority of passengers that survived, were either on the upper decks at the time, or they survived by being pulled out one of the smaller portholes when the Empress rolled on her side just before sinking.When a ship is sinking, it makes far more sense to evacuate those near the lifeboats first to prevent cluttering on deck, rather than allowing the boat deck to be overrun with panic-stricken individuals trying to save themselves. The security gates would once again play a vital role in keeping order in a ship, by making it easier to evacuate those near the top first. This was not seen as a way to allow one class to survive over another, but was seen as being more practical.During the sinking of the Titanic, lifeboats played a role closer to a ferry rather than a literal lifeboat. Due to lifeboat regulations in 1912 being decided based on the gross tonnage of the vessel, the Titanic's size was seen as being so great for its time, that it was believed that should anything happen to the Titanic, she would have more than enough time to call for help and have her lifeboats transfer the occupants to a rescue ship, much like the other White Star Line vessel, the Republic, had succeeded in doing three years earlier.There was also the issue that the Titanic only had so much space to place the lifeboats on deck to begin with. Keeping them stacked on top of each other, would, as discussed earlier, only have hampered the crew's evacuation procedure. Having the additional four collapsible lifeboats on the poop deck, was actually more than the regulations of the time required. As the Titanic only legally required sixteen lifeboats to give her more than enough time to evacuate those on board. The maximum capacity could have exceeded over 3,500 people, as opposed to the 2,200 that were on board. The additional four collapsible lifeboats were treated as an assurance to the ship's safety, rather than a requirement.The misfortune of the Titanic's fate not playing out like the Republic ultimately sealed the fate for the 1,517 who never got into a lifeboat. Being poor, was not in itself the reason for those losses anymore than it is for the hundreds of others on board from first and second class that did not make it off the ship, either, alongside over six hundred members of the crew; including Captain Smith, known by some as the 'Millionaires' Captain, due to his high regards among wealthier classes of the time for his great reputation and navigational skills. And as fate would turn out, Captain Smith would not survive, despite being so close to retirement. Nor would Benjamin Guggenheim, also a wealthy man, nor would John Jacob Astor, the wealthiest man in the world at the time, who went to his watery grave, while 705 people with less money than him, including 75 male steerage passengers, didn't meet the same fate.CHAPTER 8Were People Really Left to Die in the Water?According to Rose 'Dawson' from James Cameron's 1997 Blockbuster, only six people, out of 1,500, survived in the water. She also goes on to exclaim that only ONE out of twenty lifeboats present ever bothered to return to the scene.However, this is one erroneous, albeit common 'fact' which is shockingly easy to discredit. Some estimates are that as many as 81 people actually survived in the water. They ranged from seventeen year old Jack Thayer, to wireless operator Harold Bride, the baker, Charles Joughin, the tennis champion, Edward Norris, Second Officer Charles Lightoller, and even Archibald Gracie, who stayed on the ship until the very end trying to save those on board before being washed away himself and being later found and retrieved from the water.Two other notable survivors, Frank Prentice, then only twenty-three years of age, and Sid Daniels, only eighteen, were also able to survive in the water. In the case of Frank Prentice, he jumped off the side of the ship alongside two of his friends. One of them instantly disappeared, while his second friend was struck by debris from the ship.Prentice stayed with him until his friend died a few minutes later, after which he was able to find his way to a nearby lifeboat which let him on. Prentice lived a remarkably long life and he became the second to last crew member of the Titanic to die. The last surviving crew member of the Titanic, was none other than Sid Daniels, who himself barely survived the sinking.Sid Daniels had been busy trying to launch Collapsible Lifeboat A from the deck, when, to his realisation, the deck quickly began to go under where he was standing. According to him, he merely had to push his way into the water, as the water had risen to his chest quite suddenly, where he tried to get away from the sinking ship.After spending several minutes in the water, he was found and pulled in by Collapsible Lifeboat B, which was itself overturned and badly damaged, with nearly thirty others standing on or around the Collapsible. According to his survivor testimony, his first ever experience of drinking coffee was when he was taken onto the Carpathia the next morning and was given coffee as a way to warm himself up.Edward Norris would go on to have a reputable career in tennis. Despite doctors initially recommending that his legs be surgically removed, due to the serious injuries sustained from being in the water for prolonged periods of time, Edward Norris refused the operation. After some months, his legs were eventually able to recover back to their old form which is when most of the highlights of his tennis career took place.Jack Thayer, probably the youngest survivor to be pulled out of the water, as well as one of the most valuable in terms of testimony, due to his firsthand accounts of seeing individuals such as Chief Officer Henry Wilde clinging to the side of Collapsible B after the sinking, had survived by jumping off the stern of the ship just before it went down. His friend, who he encouraged to jump in with him, was killed, as his friend was not the talented swimmer that Jack Thayer was.While most of the 81 reported survivors in the water were able to survive by swimming Collapsible Lifeboats A or B, others found alternative ways to survive, as Frank Prentice, along with a handful of other survivors, managed to find their way to group of nearby lifeboats and were let in.While it is common knowledge among Titanic buffs that Lifeboat 4 found some people alive in the water, what many may not know, is that Lifeboat 4 was NOT the only lifeboat to return. Lifeboat 14 was confirmed to have returned and even picked up some survivors, as was Lifeboat 6, which briefly returned after leaving Lifeboat 16 overcrowded with the women and transferring a fireman from Lifeboat 16 into their lifeboat and returning to the scene. Disputes on whether Lifeboat 6 successfully found anybody have been debated but unfounded from both sides.Lifeboat 6, which had been commanded by Robert Hichens, who also had Frederick Fleet aiding him, is depicted in James Cameron's film as being callous and cruel, possibly for artistic reasons, or perhaps just for cinematic effects to give the impression that those left in the water were being left to their demise. Either way, it was not Robert Hichens who threatened to throw Molly Brown overboard, but was, in fact, the exact opposite, as the press even recounted this incident soon afterwards.While the passengers, particularly the women, were critical of him throughout their time with him on the lifeboat, most of his criticism was derived from Robert Hichens moaning about how they were all going to starve to death out in the middle of the ocean, which was draining on the morale of the others in the lifeboat, and not because he refused to return to the scene.The claim that passengers were left to die, almost within arm's reach of other lifeboats, has also created an even more recent, though surprisingly quite popular myth. That third class passengers were dumped into the ocean upon being retrieved and only the wealthy being brought back home.While there is a kernel of truth to this story, the context and facts surrounding it are woefully inaccurate. For starters, let's just get down to how many bodies were actually found. Out of 1,517 confirmed Titanic deaths, only 333 bodies (yes, I know, that is a conveniently easy number to remember) were ever found. And out of those, several dozen of them, including Purser McElroy, were dumped back into the ocean.And why was that? Why was Purser McElroy, a senior officer whose family surely had the money to be retrieved and brought back home, be left for all eternity in the ocean? Because McElroy's body, when found a week later, was so badly decomposed, that taking his body back to shore was seen as being effectively pointless, as his body was not only falling apart from the decay, but exposure to his body could result in crew members on rescue ships, such as the Mackay-Benneth, getting disease.Out of those brought back to shore, a quarter of them could not be identified and are left in unmarked graves. Would it make sense to bring back unidentified bodies, effectively for free, when in all likelihood, the unidentified bodies were more likely than not to have been from lower-class members of society? Probably not.The bodies of those who were recovered were not brought back to Europe or elsewhere, unless relatives could pay for their return. That part is, in fact, quite true. What is not true, however, is where the bodies were brought to, which was in the Halifax Cemetery in Nova Scotia, Canada, provided that they were in good enough shape to be buried on land.One of the most infamous grave stones in Halifax, is that of the deceased J. Dawson, whose fame came to great prominence after James Cameron released a movie based on the event in which he himself died.J. Dawson, the man who drew naked pictures of a seventeen year old girl, cheated with her on her millionaire fiancee, and then died during the sinking due to lack of room and board seems to have the same name as this poor fellow. Could this be him? Nope. The man is Joseph Dawson, a trimmer, who, like Jack Dawson, did die in the sinking. While Jack Dawson, a third class passenger, much like what Joseph Dawson would have been regarded as, due to his crew rank, went to the bottom of the ocean; Joseph Dawson, a man of similar status as Jack, the one who had been living under a bridge just days earlier, is on dry land in the Halifax Cemetery and has been ever since his recovery.CHAPTER 9Could a Direct Collision With the Iceberg Have Prevented the Sinking?This theory was especially espoused during the 1996 Titanic movie, where Captain Smith, playing George C. Scott, is depicted on screen making just that argument.Could a direct impact with an iceberg have saved the ship by reducing the damaged compartments? Let's look back earlier on Chapter 3 in regards to Titanic's collision path. The iceberg, is ten times bigger underneath the surface than it is above the surface.According to surviving crew members, even the part of the iceberg sticking out of the water was estimated at over 100 feet tall. Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall, who had come to the bridge right at the moment of collision, gave the lowest estimate at only 35 feet tall. Irregardless of the size, even a 35 foot iceberg sticking out of the water, would, mathematically speaking, have up to 350 feet of ice beneath the water. The ice underneath would also have been far more solid than the ice which the Titanic would have seen above, due to less sun exposure as well as being coated with subzero water temperatures for a long period of time.The Bourgogne, which had sunk in 1898, collided its bow against the Cromartyshire. The damage which the Bourgogne sustained was similar to the damage the Titanic would have taken with the iceberg, had she gone into a head on collision as has been proposed by some proponents of the head on theory.The density of the iceberg, even on the surface, would have been strong enough to have crippled the Titanic's bow no differently than what the Cromartyshire had done with the Bourgogne less than fourteen years earlier. And unlike the Cromartyshire, who could at least be seen in its entirety on the surface, the Titanic would have had metres of thick ice beneath the surface which would have avoided impact altogether, giving the ice the opportunity to scrape the bottom of the Titanic's hull as it sailed by.At this point, the Titanic would have had a crumpled bow, possible gashes along BOTH the port and starboard sides of the ship, added with ripped holes along the bottom hull of the ship would have cut all the way from bow to stern, rather than only a third of the way throughout as the glancing bow that the Titanic ultimately took sustained.If anything, having the Titanic take the punishment of a direct collision, would, if anything, have killed far more people, both in the long-term as well as in the short-term. If the iceberg was as high as what some claim it was, the iceberg would easily have had a big part of itself fall right onto the ship itself, killing scores of people and possibly furthering the damages to the ship.I do not think such a scenario is one that I would recommend. And if anyone has common sense, they would realise that having a ship, no matter how big or reputable, go up against what may as well be a glacier mountain, capable of striking from both beneath and above the surface simultaneously, is not a good idea. And we can be grateful that those who were in command of making the decisions that night did not see things that way. Otherwise, the debate about 'what would have happened if the Titanic had done a starboard turn' could end up being the academic debate surrounding the Titanic's final moments rather than the disastrous head on collision which could have occurred, had the wrong people been in command at the time.CHAPTER 10Were the Final Moments the Same as has Been Depicted in Movies?We now get to where we speak of the final moments of the ship's life. Did Nearer My God To Thee really play as the ship went down? Did William Murdoch really shoot himself? Did Thomas Andrews really die staring away into oblivion in the smoking room? Did a mass panic really break out as the ship went down? And did the ship break its half on the surface, or did it break apart during its descent to its eternal grave?No song, with the possible exception of Cameron Diaz's, My Heart Will Go On has been associated more with the Titanic than Nearer My God To Thee. Wallace Hartley, along with the rest of his band, were washed away and perished doing what they love, performing music.While the overwhelming evidence seems quite clear that the band did in fact play music as has been depicted in all the Titanic movies to date, to one extent or the other; what has become less clear, is which songs were played, particularly the last song, which has caused great debate among survivors.According to several survivors, Nearer My God To Thee was the last song to be played. While this song has been adapted into nearly every Titanic movie, A Night to Remember being a notable exception, the song has another serious rival for being the last song to be played, and one which was reported by those actually on board at the time the song would have been played.Song D'Automne, while unclear which version survivors claiming this song were referring to, as several very noticeably different versions of this song exist, was especially promoted by Harold Bride, the junior wireless operator who would have been standing only a few feet away from the band while aiding senior wireless operator Jack Phillipps.Archibald Gracie, one of dozens of those who survived after being washed off the ship, claimed that he is unsure what the last song was, but says he knows it was not Nearer My God To Thee, as he claimed the song would indicate a 'resignation to fate' which he said he would have personally chastised the band for, had he heard them playing it.Archibald Gracie spent most of the night escorting passengers, particularly women and children, to the lifeboats while also trying to help unload the Collapsible lifeboats later into the night. Being in the vicinity of where the band would have played the final song, if Archibald Gracie was really on the lookout for hearing that particular song, or anything else which he believed could cause a panic, he mostly assuredly would have known about the song's existence.Archibald Gracie, while being more actively present around the bridge and boat deck late into the night when all the other sixteen lifeboats were gone, with only four Collapsible lifeboats remaining, would have been on other parts of the ship earlier into the night and may not have heard them play Nearer My God To Thee.This theory could be possible, in that those who claimed to have heard the song playing left before 1:40 AM. Which was a full forty minutes before the ship went down. The bridge on the Titanic did not start to go down until 2:13 AM, over half an hour later and with less than seven minutes before the Titanic would go down.While Harold Bride has never denied that the song might have been played at some point, he never confirmed it, either. The only thing which Harold Bride attests to, was that it was not the last song to be played.There have been those trying to defend the Nearer My God To Thee story as being true, by stating that Wallace Hartley had wanted to die playing this song. While this may make a poetic ending to his life, to play the song he wanted to play before his demise, reality does not change just because somebody had wanted a certain song played.When Wallace Hartley would have made this statement, he would not have been looking death right in the face as an 52,310 tonne hulk of steel plummeted below his feet to a depth of over four kilometres below surface level. Wallace Hartley was probably also never told about the damage reports.He therefore could not have known precisely when the ship would go down, or, for that matter, when it would become unsafe to continue playing, due to a declining deck which would have risked throwing them overboard.On the plausible basis that the song was played at all, it is more probable that the song would have been played earlier into the evening, when panicking on the ship had not yet escalated. Playing the song earlier on would also have guaranteed him his last opportunity to play his song before he would lose that opportunity to do so, forever.WILLIAM MURDOCHAnother figure from the Titanic story, is that of First Officer Murdoch, who, while being seen as fairly cranky and aggressive in James Cameron's movie, and even seeming to be subjective to bribes, was actually reported as being quite humourous and jolly throughout the whole sinking.The last seconds of Murdoch's life have never been conclusively determined, largely because his body was never recovered. So determining whether or not he shot himself would be impossible, as no firm autopsy reports exist.Most of the other officers who died, including Moodie, Wilde, McElroy and even Captain Smith himself have been accused of committing suicide just as the ship was about to go down. While the debate on whether or not an officer shot himself is unknown and will never be proven either way, the most likely officer to have shot himself, if we are to entertain that theory, was twenty-four year old James Moodie, who some say may have been too overwhelmed by the sinking, especially as a junior officer who had little training in dealing with such a chaotic situation on the Titanic scale, shot himself to relieve himself of this ordeal.This has been further solidified by a non-official account of Harold Bride, recounted years after the incident, where he saw James Moodie bleeding from the head. While the possibility of iron wires or debris striking James Moodie in the head have not been ruled out as a possibility, others believe that the head wound which Harold Bride saw, was in fact the back of his head where the bullet would have gone through.While a possible indication of James Moodie's suicide being described by survivors cannot be ignored entirely, no similar description exists with First Officer Murdoch, who was actually seen being washed away by a wave, and possibly dragged inside the ship right before the final plunge by survivors such as Archibald Gracie, while Murdoch was busy trying to launch Collapsible Lifeboat A into the water.According to Second Officer Lightoller, he did in fact witness a 'friend' of his commit suicide on the Titanic. However, the name of his 'friend' has never been made public, supposing he ever even revealed the name even in private. His 'friend,' could potentially have been any one of the officers, crew members or passengers, as his relation with the other people on board cannot be known.While the scenario that at least one person, probably a crew member, did very much kill themselves during the sinking, that individual is not necessarily Murdoch, nor was it even an officer. However, on the assumption that an officer really did shoot themselves during the sinking, the most likely person to have done this would have been James Moodie, for several different reasons.The first, Chief Officer Henry Wilde and Captain Smith were both seen clinging onto Collapsible B by survivors, long after the alleged suicide took place. Both Captain Smith and Henry Wilde were determined to return to their families. Wilde would have especially been unlikely to kill himself, as his wife had recently died and he still had children back at home to take care of. It is therefore very doubtful that Wilde would have deliberately have killed himself, given the circumstances of his family at the time. Even the Chief Engineer, Joseph Bell, was reportedly there, according to Jack Thayer. Purser Hugh McElroy's body was found, and no indications of suicide were ever found during his autopsy before being thrown back into the water.Second Officer Lightoller, the only other officer to go down on the ship, aside from those already mentioned, survived, so he therefore could not have been the officer who shot himself. That would leave only Murdoch and Moodie. Not much evidence suggests that Murdoch committed suicide, outside of later film adaptions, as no survivors who witnessed his alleged death ever reported suicide. The survivors who watched Murdoch die, even said they saw him being washed off the deck, moments before the bridge went under.James Moodie's whereabouts, however, became less clear as the night went on. While Harold Bride's recounting of seeing Moodie bleeding from the head were never mentioned in the inquiry, nor was this brought up until years after the fact; a head wound by a bleeding officer, identified as James Moodie by junior wireless operator Harold Bride, make the suicide of James Moodie the most likely officer candidate to have killed himself. But like the deaths of the other 1,517 people on board, the true nature of his demise is left to our imagination.Thomas AndrewsThe Titanic's chief designer, Thomas Andrews, who was also a friend of Chairman Bruce Ismay, has been reported by the likes of crew member John Stewart of going down with the ship in the smoking room. According to Stewart, he had even asked if Thomas Andrews would even 'make a try for it.'Not answering, John Stewart is said to have left him to his fate. While it is likely that Thomas Andrews did spend time in the dining room, possibly pausing to reflect on the situation, there is also evidence that is just as strong that Thomas Andrews was far less resigned to his fate than has been depicted.For instance, by 2:00 AM, over fifteen minutes after John Stewart had left the ship in a lifeboat, junior wireless operator Harold Bride saw Thomas Andrews briefing with the officers and crew members and even throwing deck chairs over board for those in the water, or for those who were about to be in a few minutes time.At around 2:10 AM, just minutes before the bridge went under, Harold Bride claimed to have been approached by Thomas Andrews in person, asking him if he knew where the captain was.Not knowing, Thomas Andrews ran to the bridge, possibly looking in vain, as the captain, according to those on Collapsible B, may have already jumped into the water by this point. Not being able to find him, and the bridge starting to go underwater at this point, Thomas Andrews may have become trapped inside the bridge, and it is he, and not Captain Smith, who may have died inside the bridge room, though it is doubtful that it would have been a deliberate choice if that were the case.Along with the other eight selected engineers, whom Thomas Andrews had selected for the maiden voyage, his body was never recovered. Therefore, like the death of William Murdoch, his death has also been made the subject of controversy, despite the cause of death in both of these cases being unconfirmed.MASS PANICBy 2:13 AM, the bridge was starting to go down. Over two-thirds of the ship's population was still on board. Many others were already leaping into the water, finding any means to save themselves. The ship had less than seven minutes to live by this point. It was every person for themselves. A great mass panic now becomes inevitable, as people now begin bludgeoning each other to death, as has been seen in other shipwrecks.But alas, according to survivors, notably Archibald Gracie, no mass panic ever occurred, at least not on the scale we have seen depicted on screen. According to Gracie, the passengers and crew alike “walked in neat rows” away from the water as it continued to rise behind them.For him, this scene made the situation even more dreadful than if they had panicked, because the quietness which he described as the ship went down, either meant that the passengers and crew were too shocked to do anything other than walking towards the stern of the ship, or they were oblivious to the imminent danger which was literally stalking them from behind.In the James Cameron film, the final plunge, lasting from when Captain Smith notices the water rising on the boat deck, to the time it takes for the stern to go down, is a whopping fifteen minutes. In reality, however, the real time estimate for the final plunge was no more than seven minutes, if even, which is a period of less than half the time as depicted in the movie.While there were people who jumped off the ship, as several of the survivors reportedly did jump off the ship, the commotion on the ship as it went down may have been far less dramatic than in the movies, which is to be expected, as even watching a historical disaster from more modern times tend to portray people as behaving far more irrationally and panicking far more than they may have in real life, often times with historical footage of the actual event to compare to.Edith Russell, a survivor who watched the Titanic sink from one of the lifeboats, recalls the occupants in her lifeboat, including herself, cheering as the ship went down. This was because they mistook the screaming passengers and crew still on board as being cheers, notifying those already in the lifeboats that everybody had been saved just in time.ONE PIECE, or TWO PIECES?While there is no doubt that the Titanic is currently in two pieces, the timing and circumstances of that breakage are still debatable. Did the Titanic break in half on the surface, or did the Titanic just simply break apart while descending towards the ocean floor?Robert Ballard, who led the expedition to the Titanic in 1985, would later discover the Bismarck, a famous German World War Two battleship, which also sank in the North Atlantic. The depth of the Bismarck's wreck, (the bow, anyway) is slightly deeper than the Titanic, at over four kilometres.When Ballard found the Bismarck, he found the ship in two pieces, despite having clearly gone down in one piece by witnesses on both sides of the battle, after rolling over right before sinking, in the middle of broad daylight.To this day, the bow, along with the first half of the ship, is the only part of the Bismarck to be found. The stern is unlikely to ever be found for one simple reason; the stern likely fell into a volcano when the ship sunk. The bow of the Bismarck is still on the side of this very mountain, having even left a trail over the years as the ship steadily continues to slide down the slope of the mountain.The cause of this breakage, according to observers of the Bismarck shipwreck, occurred when the ship went too deep in depth at too fast a rate. If the Bismarck, a World War Two battleship, was capable of breaking apart underwater, then the Titanic would be capable of doing the same thing, right?While only a minority of survivors have insisted that the Titanic went down in one piece, namely Hugh Woolner, Charles Lightoller and Herbert Pitman; the survivors who confirmed the ship breaking in two pieces are also a minority. Most survivors were never asked about the breakage at the inquiry, and the vast majority that were asked, gave no definitive answer to that question. Out of the eight survivors that claimed the ship broke in half, some confessed later on that they only assumed that it did, but acknowledge that they did not see it break.Arthur Peuchen, the only male passenger to be allowed into a lifeboat by Lightoller, claims the ship did break in half. However, he also admits he did not see the breakage himself, but merely heard loud noises, which he took to mean that the ship broke apart while still on the surface.There have been noises confirmed by nearly all survivors, coming from the Titanic both before and even after the ship had gone down. Just minutes before sinking, four back to back loud noises were heard erupting alongside of the ship in quick succession at around the moment the power outage occurred.Seconds after the Titanic sank, another series of loud noises were also heard by those still alive. Such noises, especially at the deafening level they were reported to be at, would not have been able to create such a noise, unless a violent explosion was occurring beneath the water. The possibility, is that of a large explosion, possibly from the pressure of descending into the ocean, which caused the ship's air to be released in a violent manner back to surface.The Titanic sank on a moonless night. Hardly any stars were present, and survivors who were swimming in the water, and would have been nearest to the ship, such as Hugh Woolner, reported the last moments of the ship as merely a hulk of steel descending. The only indication he had, as to where the Titanic was, was the feint line which could be seen from up close, but probably not from where the other lifeboats would have been, some of which were over a kilometre away at the time of the sinking.Archibald Gracie reportedly did not even see the ship sink, despite having been near the bridge at the time he got washed off. According to his account, the Titanic went down so fast after he got knocked off the boat deck near the bridge, that by the time he resurfaced moments later, there was nothing left indicating where the Titanic had been.If the speed of the ship's sinking was as swift as Gracie has described it as being, it is unlikely that the Titanic would have had enough time to break up and then steadily go down without Gracie at least being able to notice it first.The angle at which the ship would have broken, supposing the breakup is true, is also widely disputed. James Cameron no longer believes the Titanic broke at the angle depicted in his 1997 movie, while Robert Ballard believes that if the breakup did occur, it would have happened below the waterline, where viewing the breakup would not have been possible.CONCLUSIONWhat has this article taught us about the Titanic, or even history in general? For one, I personally believe, and you may feel free to disagree if you want, that the Titanic, like any other historical event, has been polluted with many historical myths; some far more damaging than others, but myths, nonetheless.There is also the popular belief that Titanic sank because she was poorly designed, despite the Titanic being one of the strongest ships ever built. In fact, according to the findings of James R. Chiles, who personally visited the wreck site in 2012 for the 100th anniversary to assess the strength of the ship, he concluded that even the strongest ships of today, including a battleship, would not have survived the damage which the Titanic sustained. A conspiracy that the White Star Line officers, primarily Lightoller and Pitman were expected to cover up for the ship's poor designs by lying about the ship breaking up. There is no evidence that this was the case, and this theory is far more recent, being largely founded on the ship's discovery and investigation starting in 1985 and reaching the height of its popularity in the 1990's when multiple Titanic movies and documentaries were being made.While the story of many of the ship's three million rivets being poorly manufactured has been brought up to explain why the Titanic sank, the reality is that the rivets used on the Titanic, including the lower-quality ones, were still legally durable enough for ships to use. Whether the Titanic would have survived if the higher-quality rivets had been used is debatable, particularly due to an even newer theory that rocks were inside the iceberg which sank the Titanic, which would have made the rivets incapable of deterring the scale of the collision.While there are many unknown speculations which still exist surrounding the most infamous shipwreck in history, one question must be asked: Can an accurate assessment of what happened on the Titanic ever be concluded, especially now that all those involved with the Titanic, such as builders, passengers and crew members alike are long deceased? The answer to that question is no different than any other historical event, both before and after the early twentieth century, and it will continue to be that way even into the twenty-first century and beyond.Some day, we will also be gone. And all the historical memories, which people today take for granted, including things which are happening today and are fresh in our minds, will also become just as lost and sought after by future generations of academics and students alike, as events from the now seemingly distant past have become.The only thing which separates events from our time period to those from a hundred, thousand or even a million years ago to today, is that we are still here.FURTHER READING:David Frigault's answer to Who was the highest ranking senior officer to survive the sinking of the Titanic?David Frigault's answer to What conspiracy theories are there about the sinking of the Titanic?David Frigault's answer to Why wasn't the RMS Olympic as hyped as the RMS Titanic?David Frigault's answer to Was the sinking of the Lusitania justified?David Frigault's answer to Why didn't Rose take Jack's body along with her towards the end of Titanic?David Frigault's answer to Did Titanic go fast?David Frigault's answer to Why was the Titanic steaming so quickly through waters that had icebergs?David Frigault's answer to Why did the loss of Empress of Ireland did not attract the same level of attention as that of the sinking of Titanic two years earlier?David Frigault's answer to How was the Titanic’s hull technology supposed to make it unsinkable? The rooms in the hull wasn’t even closed but is interconnected at the top, so why were people surprised that they filled up one after another when the water entered?David Frigault's answer to Did any passengers survive trapped inside the Titanic as it descended to the ocean floor?David Frigault's answer to What are some lesser-known facts about the Titanic?David Frigault's answer to When the Titanic sank, women (and children) were given priority in the lifeboats. Is that fair?David Frigault's answer to What would have happened if the Titanic had instead slammed head on into the iceberg? Would it have survived? Would it have been worse? Or what?David Frigault's answer to What’s the greatest shipwreck moment in history?David Frigault's answer to How would a great lakes ship (for example, a ship like the Edmund Fitzgerald) fare on the ocean?David Frigault's answer to Has there ever been a case of a ship launching where the ship immediately sank?