2: What was the Titanic?


Beneath the Waves by Karis Youngman

The Titanic was built in Belfast at the Harland & Wolff shipyard. It was the second ship of its kind developed for the White Star Line. The other ships were the Olympic and the Britannia. The original name for the Britannia was the Gigantic – but this was hastily changed after the Titanic disaster. Belfast nicknamed the trio of ships: Olympic The Loved, Titanic The Damned and Britannia The Forgotten.

Costing £1.5m, the Titanic was the most technologically advanced ship of its time and took three years to build. Launched in 1911, it then went onto Belfast’s dry dock for fitting out with furnishings and décor.

The Titanic was described as the Queen of the Ocean. It was definitely one of the most luxurious ships of its kind. The designers aimed to give passengers a lifestyle similar – or better - to that experienced on land.

First class passengers had a small swimming pool, gym, Turkish bath, lounge, smoking rooms, Palm Court and a library. They could promenade along the boat deck, and slept in opulent cabins. There was even a café Parisian staffed by French cooks and waiters. Musicians entertained first class passengers during meals and for dancing afterwards. The White Star Line provided them with a required list of music that had to be played. These tunes included waltzs, jazz tunes, hymns, operas.

Second Class passengers were provided with a lounge, smoking rooms, library, lounge and promenade areas. Third class (also known as steerage) passengers had public rooms for dining and a promenade area at the stern of the ship. Even the cheapest accommodation had facilities that the passengers would not have known before such as flush toilets, running water, electricity and porcelain sinks. There were two baths for the use of third class passengers.

There was a cabin for every first class passenger. In second class there were two to four passengers sharing each cabin sleeping in single beds or bunks. In third class, there were 220 cabins for designed for family use. Single men and single women were separated – women shared cabins, while men had beds in a large dormitory.

Dining facilities were of a very high standard. The Titanic kitchens were regarded as the best available on any ocean liner. All the restaurants – first, second and third class – offered a choice of courses within a set menu.

Fares were high. A first class Parlour suite with its own private deck cost £870, and the cheapest first class ticket cost £30. Second class tickets ranged from £12 to £50; and Third Class from £3 to £8. In modern currency an £8 ticket would cost around £450. Third class passengers were mainly emigrants seeking a new life in America. Many were families. Ultimately, the cost of the ticket was to determine a passenger’s chance of survival. The more they paid, the greater their chance of surviving.

The ship was built to carry a maximum of:

905 first class passengers

564 second class passengers

1,134 third class passengers

944 crew.

The ship completed its sea trials on 2 April 1912, and set sail immediately for Southampton to collect its first passengers. Many of the passengers used a special Titanic boat train to travel from Waterloo Station, London to Southampton. Third class passengers embarked first; first and second class passengers joined the ship later. Each group of passengers used different entrances.

Passengers included J Bruce Ismay (Chairman of the White Star Line),Thomas Andrews, (managing director of Harland & Wolff), Sir Cosmo and Lady Duff Cooper, the Countess of Rothes, Mr and Mrs Astor, Major Archibald Butt (military aide to the American President). Also on board was Isidor Straus and his wife Ida. He was the owner of Macy’s department store in New York.

The combined wealth of these first class passengers was enormous. There were several millionaires such as the Guggenheims. John Jacob Astor was said to be the richest man in the world with wealth estimated at £18m.

The owner of the White Star Line, J Pierrepont Morgan, had intended to sail on the Titanic but had to cancel his booking at the last moment.

The ship was not full to capacity. By the time it had collected its final passengers in Cherbourg and Queenstown there were only 317 first class passengers, 258 second class and 709 third class passengers. There were 892 members of the crew.

There are many variations of the number of people on board.

The senior officers on the voyage were:

Of these only Lightoller, Boxhall and Lowe survived the journey. The remainder of the 892 crew included stewards, stewardesses, musicians, boiler men, firemen, chefs, pursers, luggage loaders, bakers, butchers, barbers, mail staff and other support personnel. The only women among the staff were 18 stewardesses.

The amount of food provided for passengers was enormous. When the ship set sail from Southampton, supplies on board included :

75,000 lb of fresh meat

11,000 lb of fresh fish

40,000 fresh eggs

40 tonnes of potatoes

6,000 lb of fresh butter

1,500 gallons of milk

1,000 lb of grapes

36,000 apples

800 lb of tea

7,000 heads of lettuce

800 bundles of asparagus

250 barrels of flour.

The Titanic also carried cargo. This included over 300 bags of mail, 700+ parcels, a Renault car, oil paintings, five grand pianos, four cases of opium, a jewelled copy of the Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam, eight dozen tennis balls, a marmalade machine, thirty cases of golf clubs and tennis rackets plus china destined for Tiffany’s in New York.

Passengers were amazed by the sheer size of the ship. There were five miles of decks while the ship itself was a sixth of a mile long. The funnels were enormous. It was said that a tram could drive through each funnel.

Journalist Edith Louise Rosenbaum travelled first class and wrote on arrival “I feel as it I were in a big hotel instead of on a cosy ship. Everyone is so stiff and formal. There are hundreds of help, bell boys, stewards and stewardesses.’

The ship was a maze of passageways, doors and promenade areas. One passenger wrote ‘the ship is so big that I have not yet found my way about. I hope I shan’t get lost on board before I arrive in New York.’

Gates marked the end of the areas to be used by each class of passengers.

In theory, first class passengers could go anywhere on board. Second class passengers could visit the third class areas. Such visits were not encouraged. Third class had to stay in third class. This posed a problem on the night of the disaster – most people did not know how to reach the lifeboats, which were situated within the first class area.

The Titanic left Southampton to begin its maiden voyage on 10 April. Even before it had left harbour, problems were occurring. There was a near collision with another vessel. The amount of water that was displaced as the massive ship moved away from the quay caused the SS New York to break free from her moorings and move towards the Titanic. A tug quickly took swift action and prevented an accident. Seeing the near miss, many passengers and crew were apprehensive as to the rest of the voyage, regarding it as a bad omen.

The Titanic reached Cherbourg, France at 6.30pm. As the ship was so large, it could not be accommodated at the quays and so passengers had to be ferried out to it by small ships called tenders.

By 11.30 am on 11 April, the Titanic had reached its next port of call. This was Queenstown (now renamed Cobh) in Ireland. Again, passengers had to be ferried out to the vessel which was moored just off an island on the outskirts of the port.

It then set sail for the trip across the Atlantic with an expected arrival date in New York of Wednesday 17 April. During the trip, as much speed as possible was put on. Bruce Ismay and the engineers were keen to see how fast it could go. Steadily the ship worked up to 22 knots, a speed which would have brought the ship into harbour ahead of time.

The Titanic aimed for Newfoundland, before turning south to New York. This route was the quickest and shortest route. It also meant that the there was a risk of encountering icebergs floating south from Greenland.

April 14 was just another day on board for the passengers. They relaxed in the lounges, walked on the promenade decks and socialized. Meals were always the highlight of each day’s activity. Captain Smith was not at his usual table in the First Class Dining area as he had been invited to a meal by the Widener family in the A La Carte Restaurant.

The last meal for many on the Titanic was served in the First Class Dining room. They had a choice of dishes. The menu read:

Hors D’oeuvre varies

Oysters

Consomme Olga


Cream of Barley


Salmon, Mousseline, Cucumber

Filet Mignons Lili


Saute of Chicken, Lyonnaise

Vegetable Marrow Farcie

Lamb, Mint Sauce

Roast Duckling, Apple Sauce

Sirloin of Beef, Chateau Potatoes

Green Peas – Creamed Carrots

Boiled Rice

Parmentier and boiled new potatoes


Punch Romaine


Roast Squab and cress

Cold Asparagus Vinaigrette

Pate de Foie Gras

Celery


Waldorf Pudding

Peaches in Chartreuse Jelly

Chocolate and Vanilla Eclairs

French Ice cream.

Second class passengers enjoyed a four-course menu, followed by nuts, fruit, cheese, biscuits and coffee.

The third class menu was much simpler. There was one menu covering the entire full day at sea. It read:

Breakfast:

Oatmeal, porridge and milk, smoked herrings, jacket potatoes, ham and eggs, fresh bread and butter, marmalade, Swedish bread, tea, coffee


Dinner:

Rice soup, fresh bread, cabin biscuits, roast beef, brown gravy, sweetcorn, boiled potatoes, plum pudding, sweet sauce, fruit


Tea:

Cold meat, cheese, pickles, fresh bread and butter, stewed figs, rice, tea


Supper:

Gruel, cabin biscuits, cheese.

The menus doubled as postcards which could be mailed home or kept as souvenirs.

Passengers did not have 24 hour access around the ship. Lights out was strictly enforced – but with different times for different categories of passengers.

The first class dining room closed at 11.00 pm. The reading and writing room stayed open until 11.30 pm, while the smoking room closed at 12.00 pm.

The library and smoking room within second class closed at 11.30pm.

Third class female passengers had to leave the decks by 9.30 pm, and all third class passengers were required to be in their cabins by 10.30 pm.

Passengers were not aware that they were steaming into danger. The Titanic had received 7 iceberg warnings throughout the day. Only the officers on the Bridge and the look outs knew that icebergs had been sighted in the area.

At 11.40 pm, the Titanic was 380 miles south east of Newfoundland. Up in the crows nest, Look out Frederick Fleet was watching out for icebergs – without binoculars he was dependent on his own eyesight. Then he saw an iceberg looming just 500 yards away. He immediately rang the bell to alert the Bridge and called ‘Iceberg dead ahead’.

The Captain was not on the Bridge. The officer of the Watch ordered an emergency turn to port (left). The wheel was turned, and it is possible that if the rudder had been bigger, the ship might have turned more quickly and avoided the problem.

Instead, as the ship turned it collided with the iceberg on the starboard (right) of the bow. It is believed that the iceberg gashed a 300 foot hole in the hull. The impact was just a shudder. Ice was scattered on the deck. When officers went to look at the iceberg, they had great difficulty in seeing it as it was dark grey in colour. It was described as ‘lying low in the water and about as high as the lower rail, or about thirty feet out of the water’.

The officer of the watch immediately pushed the switch to close the watertight doors. Other officers went to check the situation below decks. Down in the hold, water was pouring in and staff were seeking to save the mail. By 11.50 pm, water levels had risen 14 feet inside the front of the ship. Due to the bulkhead design fault, there was nothing to stop the water overflowing into other compartments. It was clear that the ship would inevitably sink.

At midnight, Captain Smith was told that the ship could only survive two more hours. He ordered that the wireless operators should immediately call for help. Philips and Bride used the traditional CQD signal. At 12.45 pm it was decided to try the new SOS signal. Their message was answered by several ships – the Olympic, Carpathia, Baltic and Virginia. The Carpathia was the nearest. Both Philips and Bride continued transmitting as long as they had power.

At 12.05 on April 15, the lifeboats were uncovered. Passengers and crew were called on deck. As there was no public announcement system, the stewards went from cabin to cabin rousing the passengers. Many passengers were reluctant to move. There was no attempt to hurry them up. Many passengers did not know where their lifejackets were within their cabins. To make matters worse, the stewards did not know the correct emergency procedure and frequently gave contrary advice.

In third class, passengers did not know where to go to reach lifeboats. Many left their cabins without their life jackets, and had to return for them. Sometimes one member of a family would try and find out what was happening with the intention of returning to tell the others.

The first lifeboat was loaded at 12.25 am – it contained 28 people rather than the 65 it could have done. The order was ‘women and children first’. It was intended that life boats should be lowered half filled, then passengers had to climb down rope ladders to join a boat. If the boat was still not full by this point, then it had to go to a gangway to fill up. This plan was never followed.

Women and children did receive priority. Apart from crew members necessary for manning the lifeboats, there were very few men saved. The majority of male passengers died.

There were many incredible stories. Ida Straus was placed in a lifeboat. She asked if her husband – also in his eighties – could join her. Permission was granted, but he refused saying he would stay with the men. Ida Straus got out of the lifeboat, saying that she and her husband had been together for 50 years and would not part now. They were last seen sitting on the promenade deck holding hands.

Benjamin Guggenheim and his valet were both in their night clothes when they reached the lifeboats. On discovering that they would not get a space – they decided to go back and get dressed so that ‘they could go down like gentlemen.’

William Stead, a journalist and social reformer, helped women and children to get into the lifeboats. He was last seen calmly reading a book in the first class smoking room. Ironically, he had actually written a story in 1892 about a ship – RMS Majestic – which rescued the survivors of a ship that had crashed into an iceberg.

Bruce Ismay took a place in a lifeboat and escaped.

Father Thomas Byles, a Roman Catholic priest heard confessions and led prayers as the ship sank. He died that night.

Over the next hour and a half, the rest of the lifeboats were launched. Distress rockets were fired, and the engineers kept the lights on as long as possible with the aim of making the ship more noticeable in the darkness to any passing ships. Instructions were given that all the deckchairs should be tossed into the sea – they could provide assistance for swimmers in due course.

The musicians played in the lounge before moving onto the decks. It was hoped that it would help reduce the risk of panic. They made no attempt to escape and played to the remaining 1,500 people on board as the ship sank. It is uncertain as to what their last song was. Survivors reported hearing different songs – Songe d’Automne and Nearer My God to Thee.

The last life boat was lowered at 2.05 am. Robert Daniels later remembered that ‘not until the last five minutes did the awful realization come that the end was at hand. The lights became dim and went out but we could see – slowly, ever so slowly, the surface of the water seemed to come up towards us.’

The last radio message was sent at 2.17 am and then the Captain made an announcement that it was ‘every man for himself’. The tilt of the deck grew steeper.

Attempts were being made to launch the collapsible lifeboats even as the ship sank.

At 2.18 am the lights finally went out.

At 2.20 am, the ship tilted almost upright and then broke between the funnels. The stern section broke free and briefly rested evenly on the sea before tilting again then sinking below the waves.

People in the lifeboats had to listen to the cries of people drowning. Unless swimmers could reach a lifeboat or something to hang onto, they had little chance of survival. The cork lifejackets might keep them afloat, but the icy water was too cold. Swimmers simply froze to death. Most of the victims died from exposure and hypothermia. Captain Smith and Thomas Andrews went down with the ship. Some reports indicated that Smith saved a child then swam away from the lifeboats.

Officer Lowe managed to round up several lifeboats and tie them together so that they could be seen more easily. He arranged to distribute passengers from one lifeboat among the others. This enabled him to take a lifeboat back to rescue survivors among the swimmers. This was the only lifeboat that took this action. There was a fear that if they went back, they might be swamped by swimmers trying to get on board.

The Countess of Rothes overruled what she regarded as incompetent crew members and took charge of a lifeboat. Likewise in lifeboat number 6, Molly Brown (who later became known as the Unsinkable Molly Brown) took action. Officially in charge of the lifeboat was Quartermaster Hichens who refused to allow women to row and adopted a defeatist attitude. Molly Brown threatened to throw him overboard, and organised the 26 women on board to do spells of rowing.

During this time, the Carpathia was heading for the disaster area as quickly as it could. It was a much smaller ship than the Titanic. When it received the distress call, the Carpathia was sailing from New York to Rijeka in Croatia. Captain Rostrum cut off all the hot water and heating to the vessel, in order to put on as much steam as possible.

It finally reached the area at 3.30am. The lifeboats had to row to meet it. It was not until 4.10 am that people from the first lifeboat reached safety on board the Carpathia. By 8.50 am, the Carpathia had taken on board all the survivors and began the journey back to New York. The exact numbers are uncertain – some say 705 people, others say 713. Some survivors are believed to have given false names, or disappeared before checks could be made.

What is clear is that chances of survival varied according to class of accommodation. Among first class passengers 60% survived; 42% second class but only 25% third class passengers. 24% of the crew survived. The majority of survivors were women and children.

The youngest survivor was Millvina Dean. She was just a baby of 9 weeks old and had been the youngest passenger on the ship. She had travelled in third class with her parents and brother, all of whom were emigrating to Kansas. After the rescue, her mother, brother and Millvina returned to England on the Adriatic. First and second class passengers queued up to hold the baby and have their photo taken with her. Millvina died in 2009. She was the last survivor of the Titanic.

As other ships reached the site, they began to search for bodies and salvage. More ships were sent out over the next few weeks. 328 bodies were found, including that of the bandmaster, Wallace Hartley. Most of the bodies were buried in cemeteries at Halifax, Newfoundland. Many could not be identified. Bodies which were identifiable or in a good condition were kept. First class passengers were stored in coffins, second and third class passengers were sewn into canvas bags and stored in ice filled holds. The remainder of the bodies were buried at sea.

All kinds of items were salvaged including steamer chairs and 5,000 crates of lettuce.

Relief appeals were set up to cater for the needs of the survivors and families of those who died in the tragedy.

The exact number of those who perished is uncertain. The British Inquiry stated that 1,490 died; the American Inquiry referred to 1,517.

An inquiry was held immediately in the United States. All surviving crew and Bruce Ismay were ordered to attend, and statements were taken from the surviving passengers. It decided that the disaster was caused by:

A further inquiry was held in London. Lasting 36 days, it took details from over 100 witnesses and asked 25,000 questions before reaching similar conclusions.

It was 73 years before anyone saw the ship again. On 1st September 1985, Dr Robert Ballard of Woods Hole Institute, USA was exploring the area using remotely controlled vehicles. He had been hunting for two missing nuclear submarines as well as the Titanic. The vessel was found two miles under the sea, and slowly decaying. It was clear that the Titanic had split in two.

The first manned dive happened on July 13th 1986. Ballard was on board Alvin, a submersible. It took two and a half hours to descend to the vessel. He commented “Suddenly the bottom began to look strange as it began to slope steeply upward. There was this wall of steel….We came in and I just looked out of my window – I had to look up because the Titanic shot up a hundred and some feet above me…. and I just went ‘My God’”.

Further descents resulted in tours of the Titanic’s bow and landings on the deck. Ballard stated “The Titanic now lies in 13,000 feet of water on a gently sloping Alpine looking countryside overlooking a small canyon below. Its bow faces north and the ship sits upright on its bottom with its mighty stacks pointed upward. There is no light at this great depth and little life can be found. It is a quiet and peaceful place – and a fitting place for the remains of this greatest of sea tragedies to rest.’

The story has not ended there. There have been numerous visits to the wreck ever since. Scientists are charting the way in which the ship is decaying due to rust eating bacteria. It has been suggested that the ship might be destroyed in as little as two decades.

In 1987 there was a joint US/French expedition by salvage operators which recovered thousands of artefacts. This resulted in a complex court case over ownership, but eventually the RMS Titanic Inc gained salvage rights and was allowed to put the artefacts on display.

An international agreement has been signed by Britain and the US designating the Titanic as a memorial that should be protected from unauthorised divers.

There has been talk of raising the Titanic ever since the disaster. Soon after the event, an American engineer suggested that it might be possible to raise the ship using powerful magnets let down from a fleet of vessels.

Eva Hart who was a 7 year old child in a life boat with her mother stated ‘nobody should ever attempt to raise that ship. It’s like robbing a grave. We watched that magnificent ship going down. I didn’t sleep all night. To hear people drowning is a dreadful sound. I think the people died unnecessarily. They wouldn’t have if there had been enough lifeboats. It was a tragedy of tragedies’.