The Titanic - History of a Disaster

The Titanic - History of a Disaster

On April 14,1912 a great ship called theTitanic sank on its maiden voyage. That night therewere many warnings of icebergs from other ships.There seems to be a conflict on whether or not the

warnings reached the bridge. We may never know the answer to this question. The greatest tragedy of all

may be that there were not enough lifeboats for everyone on board. According to

Walter Lord, author of The Night Lives On, the Titanic

could have been saved in the very beginning of the

crisis when the iceberg was first reported to the

bridge. If First Officer Murdoch had steamed right at

the iceberg instead of trying to avoid it, he might

have saved the ship. The author feels there would have

been a loud crash and anyone within the first one

hundred feet would have been killed, but the ship

would have remained afloat (82). This view was

entirely speculation and we will never really know if

this would have happened. In contrast, Geoffrey

Marcus, author of The Maiden Voyage, suggests that the

bridge did not

receive warning of the ice from the very beginning.

One of the messages received was from the Masaba

warning the Titanic of a mass of ice lying straight

ahead. According to Marcus, the message never reached

the bridge, but instead was shoved under a paperweight

(126). At 10:30 p.m. that evening, a ship going the

opposite direction of the

Titanic was sighted. This ship, the Rappahannock, had

emerged from an ice field and had sustained damage to

its rudder. The vessel signaled the Titanic about the

ice and the Titanic replied that the message was

received (Marcus 127). At 11 p.m. another ice report

was received. This one was from the Californian. This

liner had passed through the same ice field that the

Rappahannock had reported to the Titanic. Like all the

other warnings, this warning never reached the bridge

though it was known to both of the Titanic's wireless

operators (Marcus 128). By the time the bridge

realized the ship was about to hit an iceberg, it was

too late. Quartermaster Hitchens tried to turn the

wheel hard to the starboard. Twenty seconds later, he

had an order for full speed astern but the iceberg was

too close. The starboard side hit the iceberg,

bringing a block of ice onto the deck (Pellegrino 21).

After the collision occurred, there was only one thing

open for Captain Smith to do. It was almost midnight

and he gave the order to take to

the lifeboats (Lord, Lives On 82). This decision

brought Captain Smith face-to-face with the fact that

there were 2,201 people on board and enough

Lifeboats for only 1,178 people (Lord, Lives On 83).

The

Captain was going to have to make a choice as to who

would be the

first allowed on the lifeboats. Around 12:30 a.m. the

bridge informed

the crew that only women and children would be loaded

on the lifeboats

(Eaton,Haas,152). By 1:30 a.m., there was panic among

some of the

passengers. One example was on the port side of the

boat. A group of

passengers threatened to jump into a boat full of

passengers. To scare

them, one of the officers fired three shots on the

ship's side. The

warning proved to be successful. Nobody was injured

and the passengers

calmed down (Eaton and Haas 154). At the last moments

with only forty

seven available spaces on the last lifeboat, the crew

instructed

everyone to form a circle around the boat. Women and

children were the

only people permitted to pass through the circle. A

little while after

the last lifeboat left, the stern lifted clear out of

the water with

more than 1500 people still on board (Eaton and Haas

157-161). The

climatic moment came at 2:20 a.m. The Titanic stood

perpendicular to

the water. As people in the lifeboats looked on, they

noticed the ship

stayed perpendicular for a minute and then disappeared

to the bottom

of the ocean (Lord, Lives on 137). Captain Rostron of

the