Always curious about the design of Titanic

An interesting point if it was in fact able to be climbed upon, and was within distance.

 

It wasn't even close to the iceberg when it stopped and lowered boats. Maybe a few miles distant at least. The boat also was moved forward, then stopped again, before boats were lowered.

 

Well, that was a mistake.

 

As with all "incidents", there's a series of mistakes and decisions that capture the folks involved, into an ever decreasing spiral of destiny, toward their fate. With most, if one of the mistakes or decisions could have been avoided, the "event" wouldn't have happened, but unfortunately, this is easy enough to "see" in hindsight.

With Titanic, there were about a dozen mitigating factors, contributing to it's demise. Had the radio operator not pissed off the the radio operator on Californian, they'd had a chance to get help that was only 20 miles off. They could have been on site before the boat sank. Had the skipper ordered a lower course at the "turn", followed by a correction to re-intersect the polar route, they'd have missed the ice. There's a seemingly endless number of scenarios that can be played, but really a fruitless endeavor in the big picture of reality.

 

I think there are two different themes here:
1.- Why the Titanic could not avoid the iceberg?.
2 .- Why the ship did not stand the damage and sank?.

 

All questions are intertwined in the "event spiral". One doesn't occur, without the other taking place. All accidents can have the event spiral picked apart, but this arbitrary specualtion isn't an accurate examination of the incident (or any incident). The whole picture must be examined and accepted, which it has, with the exception of a few conspiracy theorists, that also think aliens abducted Elvis and JFK is alive and on an unchartered south Pacific island, in total seclusion, possibly guarded by rebel Cubans.

 

IIRC Elvis, Hoffa and Bigfoot ... maybe Amelia Airhart ... were playing poker in that one Animaniacs episode where Yakko, Wacko, and Dot were kidnapped by aliens.

(I like being silly ... but then you probably already noticed....)

 

The Titanic story has always been of major interest to me. I made maiden voyage with my home made wooden boat on April 15 2012 the one hundredth anniversary of the Titanic sinking. The Titanic sank because it hit the iceberg. I doubt that steel rivets or slightly heavier steel plating would have made a whole lot of difference. While the sinking was caused by one cause the tragedy was caused by a combination of several bad decisions. First of all as everyone knows there were not enough life boats. The Titanic carried 20 life boats with a safe capacity of 65 people each which means had the crew been better trained on loading and launching them at least 1300 people could have been saved instead of about 700 and I'm sure with woman and children they could have been overloaded slightly. The next thing is I would have thought that when they found out that when one of the officers left the ship with the key to the locker that contained the binoculars for the lookouts in the crows nest they would have either broke open the locker or borrowed a pair from one of the passengers especially when they had already had ice warnings. Apparently according to one of the last documentaries I watched one of the lookouts survived and when asked if he had binoculars would he have seen the iceberg in time his answer was yes. Also captain Smith was also captain of the Olympic about a year before when it rammed the HMS Hawke

 

More interesting stories about the Titanic

Another interesting story was about a lady named Violet Jessop. She was an employee of the White Star line and she was on the Olympic when it rammed the HMS Hawke doing extensive damage but it didn't sink even with the hull ruptured below the water line which probably added to the myth that these ships were unsinkable. She was then a stewardess on the Titanic and even though most of the employees didn't survive she was ordered into one of the lifeboats to show the woman passengers it was safe. Then in 1914 she was a nurse aboard the Britantic the other sister ship to the Titanic that was commissioned as a hospital ship during WW1 and then struck a mine and also sank. This time she didn't have time to get in a lifeboat so she jumped into the water and hit her head on the underside of ship but she was rescued and survived it was later found that she had suffered a skull fracture she went on to serve on several ships until she retired and later died at 84 years old. Only 30 people died when the Britanic sunk because of lessons learned from the Titanic, there were enough life boats for all aboard and the crew were much better trained on how to load and launch them.