Titanic: THE FINAL WORD

[Johann]

I watched a program on the National Geographic channel the other day.
It was "THE FINAL WORD" on the sinking of the Titanic, with a panel of Titanic experts (headed by filmmaker James Cameron) discussing the ship and it's demise.

Some great points and questions were raised.
One was "If you were the Captain of the ship, what would you have done in that situation?"

It was suggested that maybe the Captain could've decisively went full steam ahead, and jam the ship into the massive ice flow that was ahead of them. Capt. Smith would've had to act immediately for that to possibly work. It was also suggested that passengers could climb onto the iceberg for safety-but it was pointed out that if there was total chaos with getting into the lifeboats, then climbing onto an iceberg in the dark was inconceivable.
Passengers were told to row their rowboats toward the Californian, a ship that was sixteen kilometers away.
It was mentioned that if the Titanic's crew made rapid decisions to turn the ship toward the Californian, they might've had a chance to save more people.
An idea that no one on board thought of was to make rafts out of mattresses or tying all of the life preservers together. Again, time was of the essence. The situation required quick thinking, and the enormity of the situation probably stunned a few people into a state of inaction.

James Cameron asked experts if he got the sinking of the ship correct in his movie.
For the most part he was.
Obviously, the stern rising out of the water at such a high angle wasn't accurate- that was movie drama.
But the ship breaking on the surface was correct, and so was the way in which the bow dipped into the ocean.
One thing that's cool to learn is that the ship had almost no list: it sank straight down- almost all shipwrecks have huge lists before they sink (the Costa-Concordia disaster is the most recent example)- some turn right over on their sides. Titanic was so fuckin' big that it just sat there and went down almost straight when the bulkheads overflowed.
We saw a digital reconstruction (an animated film) that the experts say was the DEFINITVE account of how the ship sank.
James Cameron watches it and comments on it as it's shown- he agrees 100% with the findings.


If anybody wants to talk Titanic, I'm all ears.

[Johann]

It's Titanic Week on the National Geographic channel, (for obvious reasons) and I've been watching some informative programs.

I just watched Rebuilding the Titanic, a show that was chock full of cool facts and ended with the restoration and unveiling of the beautiful Titanic Engineers memorial in Southampton England.

A man makes an exact replica of one of the lifejackets from the Titanic. He visits the museum in Liverpool and gets access to an actual lifejacket from the ship that is on display. He takes measurements, photos and inspects it thoroughly in order to make sure he makes his replica exactly. Those lifejackets were primitive engineering: 6 blocks of cork wood on the front (chest) and six cork wood blocks on the back (2 deep). Sewn up in cloth that was used for sails. No styrofoam in those days...
These jackets were only to be used as a last resort, and not designed with safety features, like we have today.
I forget the man's name who makes the lifejacket but he also restores the bronze engineers memorial later in the program.
He did a phenomenal job.
He goes to a testing pool to test the lifejacket's ability to keep one afloat. He's told not to jump straight into the water because the rigidity of the cork in the vest might catch him in the jaw and cause some cuts or damage. He enters the water and the vest works well to provide bouyancy.
He says it felt like a clunky wooden pipe he was in- not very comfortable but still it would keep you on the surface.

The steel in that ship's construction wasn't in vast supply, so they used other metals as well. The millions of rivets also were of a lower quality, and we're told that these imperfections in the construction helped that iceberg do more damage than it should have. The cold temperature of the Atlantic waters that night may have also weakened all metals- made them prone to brittleness or outright breakage.

A sad part of this horrific tragedy was the 35 engineers who stayed at their posts in the bowels of the ship until the bitter end.
They pumped out the water, they kept the lights on, the boilers tempered and the wireless marconi operating until that ship went down.
True heroes and true models for engineering mariners. The memorial to their bravery is impressive in Southampton: a huge bronze statue of the Goddess Nike, with reliefs of engineers working in the ship's bowels. The 700+ who survived owed their lives to those men. The lights stayed on so everyone who could get onto a lifeboat could.

We also learn of Bride and Philips, the wireless marconi operators who also were brave to the end- sending out distress messages right up until 2:17 am- minutes before the ship went down. Jack Philips had some man try to take his lifejacket off his back while he was transmitting CQD's!
Harold Bride saw a man do it (a stoker), and he pulled him off Jack, saying that he left the man for dead, he was so disgusted at what he was trying to do to his partner. Bride recounted his harrowing stories to the New York Times- the first newspaper in America to report on the disaster.
Jack Philips didn't survive. Bride did, but he had severe frostbite on his feet- he was trapped on an overturned lifeboat until he was rescued.


One thing that really irks me is people who treat the Titanic like it's a romance- I can forgive James Cameron because Cameron has mammoth respect for that horrific event. He's not doing anything to sully the memory of those who perished. If I had died on that ship and saw Cameron's movie, I would be incredibly moved. Yes, he romanticized it, and maybe a tad too much, but overall the tone he struck with that HUGE movie was right. And when I saw Cameron's Ghosts of the Abyss in IMAX years ago, I remember being blown away at how large the Titanic's bow was- it was like a skyscraper! That one scene where the submersible is slowly coming up the ship's bow- HOLY FUCK thank James Cameron for being there to film that. He gave us a monumental gift there- In your Life will you ever be down there to see it in person? Fuck no. That's as close as you will ever get, paco. Respect to James Cameron.
The taking of artifacts from the wreck site also bugs the shit out of me.
It is a living grave, and nothing should be touched. Sure, we have a gazillion artifacts that have already been taken and sent on tour, they're here. But why was such looting necessary? Some expert on the ship's deterioration say that humans have "LOVED THE SHIP TO DEATH" and that sickens me. The ship will be practically gone in 40 years- because humans just can't stop fucking shit up!!!
I heard that even the memorial plaques that have been laid on the ship from explorers have been looted too.
1514 people perished!
It's a mass grave. Period. What makes you think you're so swanky that you can take items from the wreck? Did you pay for them?
Grave robber?
If I was related to anyone who was on that ship I'd be furious that grubby fucks are looting the wreck and have been ever since it was fucking found. That boils my blood.
Yeah, you're fascinated by the ship. So am I. That doesn't mean I'm gonna rape it so I can get closer to it's legend. Psychopaths do that.
Ignorant fucks do that. Respect is not in your vernacular if you do that. Look but don't touch is too much to understand?

It was fascinating to see photos and footage of the Carpathia and the survivors arrive in New York.
I think we need a comprehensive Titanic documentary- one that gives us ALL images from the arrival and subsequent inquiry into the disaster.

[Johann]

I saw another good Titanic program last night on National Geographic, this one was on the events leading up the disaster and trying to find the true cause of what happened.

I learned that no one man is responisble for what happened.

You could point to Jack Philips and say he told the Californian's wireless operator (Evans) to get off the frequency and not bother him when he was relaying messages from passengers when Evans was trying to send him an ice warning- one that wasn't properly coded- the signal pierced Jack's ears and pissed him off, because the Californian was only 16 km away. That ice warning never made it to the bridge.
The maiden voyage allowed (first-class) passengers to send wireless messages, at $50 a pop, and the 2 operators were doing that for the entire trip. They received ice warnings from other ships prior to the night of April 15th, so Captain Smith knew there was an ice danger.

His role is scrutinized, as it's his ship. He's the Captain. Ultimately he was responsible.
Captain Smith was the Captain of the Olympic on her maiden voyage too, so he knew how to handle a ship of this size. He went on a course further south than usual in order to avoid the icebergs that were reported to him previously. But he did not slow down. He was under pressure from the White Star Line offices to make New York as fast as possible (the press would be great). But he was also "breaking the ship in"- 2 boilers weren't even lit, and the ship could have gone even faster than it was (at 21 knots).
His "attitude" towards the ice warnings was actually normal for those days- he avoided the ice on his charted course, but it was a warm year, we're told, and there was way more icebergs than usual. They felt they had enough knowledge about bergs and their own ship that it wouldn't be a problem.

The 2 Lookouts in the crow's nest were also scrutinized- should they have been able to see the berg way sooner?
Two things:

1. They had no binoculars. Due to a mishap, the binos were locked in a cabinet by an officer who left the ship at another port- and he forgot to give the keys to anyone else.

2. Visibility was hard- a man re-created the scenario with his own boat- exact same conditions as that night. He shows us that the cold wind at 21 knots made his eyes water and made it hard to see. The lookouts can be excused for not seeing the berg until it was right on top of them. The ship could not begin to turn away from the berg for another 800 meters once manouevers were made.
It raked along that berg hard- it ripped the hull for 19 meters.
That iceberg was approximately 18 meters high and weighed 6 times what the ship did (270,000 tons). Not much give...
We're told that in such low light, our eyes primarily see in black and white before color.



Man, how crippling would it have been to learn that the ship is going to sink and that there are not enough lifeboats?
I can only imagine what Captain Smith was thinking. He knows he is expected to go down with his ship.
He knows there aren't enough lifeboats. (only 20- wow)
How empty and hopeless would that feeling be?
And how hopeless is it to know you fired distress rockets that the Californian could see yet they don't acknowledge?
Evans (the wireless marconi operator on the Californian) went to bed after Jack Philips told him to not jam the frequency.
No one anticipated the Titanic hitting an iceberg or needing help. The Californian could have been to the scene within a half hour.
The Carpathia was 4 hours away and they acknowledged the distress calls and steamed toward the survivors.


One aspect of this disaster that makes me think is the 8 men who died when the ship was being built in Belfast Ireland- was the ship haunted and cursed from the start by the 8 men who died while building her?

It's possible.

[Johann]

I watched Titanic programs all weekend and learned all kinds of things.

The man who found the ship on the bottom in 1985, Dr. Robert Ballard, says that the wreck is a museum with no one guarding the door- anyone can come and take artifacts if they have a submersible sub. (And some very wealthy people have their own).
The ship is at the mercy of grave robbers and rich douchebags.
The damage submersibles have done to the ship is horrific too- many of them landed right on the decks, damaging the ship everytime they did so.

A fire was burning large and dangerous for the entire trip in a coal hold. No passengers were alerted of the danger. They felt they could contain the fire and put it out by the time they got to New York. It was still burning when the ship sank- a bulkhead collapsed on the coal hold just before she went down- if Titanic never hit the iceberg that fire might have caused serious damage or even got out of control to the point where it weakens the ship- maybe even sink it if they couldn't get it under control.

I watched more episodes of Rebuilding the Titanic- a fantastic British program where teams re-create parts of the ship or items related to the ship. They re-built the smoking room on the Titanic and it was amazing. They made the chairs exactly as they were, with red leather and horsehair (many man-hours to make just one!), they made a linoleum floor that was the exact color and tile print, the marble fireplace (minus the marble- they had a movie scenic designer paint it or "marble it") and the stained glass that was used for the faux-stained glass windows. Awesome to see the glassblowers do their thing- what a specialized job. All of the carved wood too- amazing recreations from the original plans. Because the photos were black and white, they had to guestimate what the colors were based on. For the chairs they had to guess the design that was stamped onto the leather- they made the best guess possible based on the photos.

They unveiled the "room" in a Belfast art gallery with people dressed up in period costumes, the makers of the replicas serving cognac and other spirits as hosts, wearing the jackets just like they wore on the ship. The room was put together in pieces, as it was made in different parts of England- they go to a tannery (one of the few genuine tanneries left in the U.K.), they consult movie set designers to see how they can do it on the cheap and the glass blowing artisans were especially fascinating to me- a very specialized art that is. In hot, noisy conditions too- it is WORK!

They go back to the place in England where the ship's truly Titanic anchor was built- nothing remains of what was once a massive industrial complex that had huge smokestacks and smelting plants that built almost all large anchors for all ships of the world at the time- it was stunning to see photos of how they made those gigantic fuckin' anchors and gigantic chain links. That's some heavy fuckin' metal Man...

The size of that ship cannot be understated. It was State-of-the-Art for it's day. Nothing could touch it for craftsmanship- Harland & Wolf had an Army of people working to fit that ship out for two whole years, with everything from plumbing to deck chairs.
That compounds the immensity of the disaster- thousands and thousands of people put millions of man-hours into building that Leviathan, and it went down on it's maiden voyage. The paint was still fresh for fucks sakes.

James Cameron says that the hubris that contributed to/caused the tragedy is staring us in the face today, because he says the next Titanic disaster for the human race is climate change, and just like the Titanic, we have three classes of people who will be forced to deal with the reality of it.

Rich fucks will always be able to survive so they can wipe their asses with silk.
The middle class will be on their own- a few might be able to survive.
The poor will suffer the most. They will die off in vast quantities.

So get ready. We will see some serious class warfare during our lifetime.
I'm ready.
I know exactly what I'll do to make my way.
*wink*

[Johann]

Is everybody Titanic'd out?

I hear ya.
It's been done to death.