Titanic

I’m not a big buff of the whole Titanic disaster. I know the basic details, seen a couple of documentaries over the years, saw the two very good black-and-white 50s flicks of the ill-fated ship. I also suffered through that fifteen-hour James Cameron-Leonardo DiCaprio film on an early date with my now-wife. When killing some time in a library while the Little One was in a Daisy scout meeting, I browsed through one of those big picture books on the discovery of the vessel.

Couple of points.

First, the thing that always gets me – always – whenever watching or reading about the Titanic disaster, is the lifeboat issue. There were over 2,200 passengers on board the vessel. The lifeboat capacity was only 1,178. Can you believe that? Who in their right mind and with good conscience could ever be satisfied with that (I’m referring to the ship’s owners, designers, and builders). How much time in Purgatory can satisfy such a decision? And the book informed me that, according to British Board of Trade regulations of the day, the Titanic only needed lifeboat space for 962, a calculation arrived at per her tonnage. It boggles the mind, doesn’t it?

I’m also always struck by the stoic courage and heroism of many of the men, most accepting their fate as the lifeboats filled with “women and children first.” Among these men are the captain of the vessel, Edward J. Smith, as well as financier John Jacob Astor and Macy’s founder Isidor Straus. Not so notable may have been the behavior of J. Bruce Ismay, Chairman of the Board of the White Star Line. After helping some women and children into lifeboats, he suddenly found himself at their side in relative safety.

But who of us can ever be sure how we will react in such extreme circumstances?

A third item about the tragedy never fails to sadden me. Many of the lifeboats were cast off partially full. The first boat lowered left with only 28 aboard, despite having a capacity of 65. One with a capacity of 40 left with only 12 aboard, 7 of which were crew. Most of these partially-full lifeboats also failed to return to pick up the dying in the icy, 31-degree water.

A pair of dates to memorize, if only to amaze friends during Trivial Pursuit:

Date of the disaster: April 14-15, 1912. The ship struck the iceberg at 11:40 at night on the 14th; by 2:20 am of the 15th, 2 hours and 40 minutes later, she sinks beneath the waves.

Date of the discovery of the wreckage: September 1, 1985. The Titanic spent 73 years hidden at the bottom of the cold Atlantic waters, 13,000 feet below the surface.

Should you ever be near one of those average, run-of-the-mill paper clips and a tape measure (happens to me all the time), you can envision this. The paperclip represents the length of the Titanic. Place it on a table, then pull out 21 and a half inches from the tape measure, straight up over the paperclip. That’s the approximate to-scale depth where the vessel lies, though in fact it split into two major sections.

In this scale, the debris field is approximately triangular with the bow at its apex. The height of this triangle is about five to five-and-a-half ship lengths with a base width of about two ship lengths.