Where did the Titanic come from and where did it sail? The starting point, destination and route of the legendary ship. "Titanic". Dead and survivors When the Titanic sank, how many people were saved?

Incredible facts

The sinking of the Titanic is one of the main tragedies of the 20th century.

This is a terrible event armed many myths, speculations and rumors.

But few people know what happened to the passengers of the fateful flight, who managed to survive the worst maritime disaster of the century.

The following selection of documentary photos will give a complete picture of what happened next to those who managed to escape from the sinking ship.

Titanic passengers photo

Frederick Fleet

This photo shows 24-year-old British sailor Frederick Fleet a few days after the sinking of the Titanic. The guy was the first to notice the iceberg.

He took part in two world wars. In 1965, after a prolonged depression, Fleet took his own life.

As for the events on the Titanic, events developed approximately as follows:

On April 10, 1912, the ship set out on its first and last voyage. The huge liner was racing at full speed from Southampton to New York.

On April 14, 1912, at 23.39 pm, Friedrich Fleet noticed an iceberg right ahead, which ultimately destroyed the Titanic.

Two hours and 40 minutes later, colliding with a huge boulder, he sank.

Of the 2,224 people on board the “unsinkable” ship, only about 700 people fit into the lifeboats, thanks to which they remained alive.

The remaining 1,500 people died stranded on the sinking ship or died within minutes of hitting the frigid waters of the North Atlantic Ocean.

Shortly before dawn on April 15, the flotilla of survivors was spotted by the steamship Carpathia, which arrived at the site of the sinking of the Titanic. By 9 am, all surviving passengers were aboard the Carpathia.

Titanic iceberg photo

Iceberg that sank the Titanic.

Surviving passengers of the Titanic in lifeboats approach the ship Carpathia, April 15, 1912.

All the same surviving passengers in boats after a shipwreck.

Sketch of the sinking Titanic.

Sketch of a sinking ship by surviving passenger John B. Thayer. After some time, the drawings were supplemented by Mr. P.L. Skidmore (P.L. Skidmore) is already on board the ship "Carpathia" April 1912.

The surviving passengers of the Titanic try to stay warm on board the Carpathia.

When Carpathia headed to New York, it was decided to send radio messages. So the news about the tragedy spread quite quickly.

People were shocked, relatives of the passengers were in panic. In search of information about their loved ones, they attacked the offices of the White Star Line shipping company in New York, as well as in Southampton.

Some of the rich and famous surviving passengers and victims were identified before the Carpathia arrived at port.

But relatives and friends of lower-class passengers, as well as the families of crew members, continued to remain in the dark about the fate of their relatives.

The lack of connections prevented them from knowing the news immediately and they had to wait in painful uncertainty.

Carpathia arrived in New York Harbor on the rainy evening of April 18th. The ship was surrounded by more than 50 tugboats carrying journalists. They shouted and called out to survivors, offering money for first-hand interviews.

A reporter from one of the major American publications, who was on board the Carpathia at that time, had already managed to interview the survivors. He placed his notes in a floating cigar box and threw them into the water so that the publication's editor could catch the message and get the scoop first.

After all the lifeboats were launched at Pier 59, owned by the White Star Line. The ship itself docked at Pier 54. In pouring rain, the ship was greeted by an anxious crowd of 40,000 people.

People wait outside the offices of the White Star Line shipping company in New York for news.

Lifeboats, thanks to which several hundred people survived.

Lifeboats berthed at the White Star Line in New York City, April 1912.

People await the arrival of Carpathia in New York.

Huge crowds of family and friends stand in the rain, awaiting the arrival of the steamship Carpathia in New York, April 18, 1912.

About 40 thousand people are waiting for Carpathia.

Those who managed to survive the fateful voyage on the Titanic were met at the port in New York by family and friends, as well as numerous media representatives.

Some mourned the dead, some wanted autographs, and some tried to interview survivors.

The next day, the US Senate convened a special hearing on the disaster at the old Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

The Titanic's entire crew numbered 885, of whom 724 were from Southampton. At least 549 people did not return home from the fatal flight.

Surviving crew members.

Surviving crew from left to right, first row: Ernest Archer, Friedrich Fleet, Walter Perkis, George Symons and Frederick Clachen.

Second row: Arthur Bright, George Hogg, John Moore, Frank Osman and Henry Etsch.

People surrounded the Titanic survivor.

A crowd of people in the port of Devonport surrounded a man who survived the Titanic to hear first-hand how it really happened.

Payment of compensation to victims.

April 1912

J. Hanson, seated on the right, is District Secretary of the National Seamen's and Firemen's Union. The people around him are the surviving passengers of the Titanic, who receive compensation as victims of the disaster.

Relatives await the surviving passengers of the Titanic.

People wait on the Southampton railway platform for their loved ones who survived the sinking of the Titanic.

Relatives in Southampton greet their loved ones.

Relatives are waiting for the surviving crew members.

Relatives are waiting for the surviving Titanic crew to disembark in Southampton.

People are returning to their homes in England. The disaster claimed the lives of 549 crew members. There were 724 people from Southampton who worked on the ship, ranging from seaman to cook or postman.

Relatives a few minutes before meeting with surviving relatives.

Survivors of the Titanic

Relatives greet shipwreck survivors as they arrive in Southampton.

A surviving crew member kisses his wife, who was waiting for him on land at Plymouth, April 29, 1912.

Stewards testifying after the shipwreck.

The surviving stewards stand outside the courthouse. They are invited to testify to the commission investigating the Titanic disaster.

A surviving passenger of the Titanic signs autographs for passers-by.

Titanic survivors

25. The Pascoe brothers, members of the crew of the ill-fated ship, were lucky, all four of them survived.

Orphans of the Titanic

April 1912

At first, the two children who miraculously escaped could not be identified.

The children were later identified as Michelle (4 years old) and Edmond (2 years old) Navratil. To get on the ship, their father took the name Louis Hoffman and used the fictitious names Lolo and Mamon for the children.

The father, with whom the children sailed to New York, died, as a result of which difficulties arose with the real names of the brothers.

However, later they were still able to be identified and the babies were safely reunited with their mother.

In this photo, Edmond and Michelle Navratil, now grown up, and their mother.

Cameraman Harold Thomas Coffin is questioned by a Senate committee at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, May 29, 1912.

29. Baby Titanic

A nurse holds newborn Lucien P. Smith. His mother Eloise was pregnant with him when she and her husband returned from their honeymoon aboard the Titanic.

The baby's father died in the accident.

Eloise subsequently married another survivor of the terrible flight, Robert P. Daniel.

And finally, a photograph of the Titanic itself on the day when it set out on its first and last fateful voyage...

105 years ago, on the night of April 14-15, 1912, the legendary Titanic sank. This disaster is described in hundreds of articles, books, films... Why exactly does the sinking of the Titanic attract so much attention?
I agree that the sinking of the Titanic is one of the largest maritime disasters. But not the largest at all. In terms of the number of victims, many more people died in .
If we talk about disasters that occurred outside of hostilities, then the Titanic ranks third in terms of the number of victims. The sad leader is the Dona Paz ferry, which collided with an oil tanker in 1987. More than 4 thousand people died in the collision and subsequent fire. Second place is held by the wooden paddle steamer Sultana, which sank on April 27, 1865 on the Mississippi River near Memphis due to a steam boiler explosion and fire. The total number of deaths on the ship exceeded 1,700 people.
So why exactly does the Titanic attract so much attention?

« Titanic» ( RMS Titanic)- a British steamship of the White Star Line, the second of three twin ships of the Olympic class. The largest passenger airliner in the world at the time of its construction.

Laid down on March 31, 1909 at the shipyards of the Harland and Wolff shipbuilding company in Queens Island (Belfast, Northern Ireland), launched on May 31, 1911, and underwent sea trials on April 2, 1912.
To mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the ship, the Titanic Museum was opened at the Harland and Wolf shipyard.

The workers pictured here are just a small number of the 15,000 people who built the Titanic.

Specifications:
Gross tonnage 46,328 register tons, displacement 66 thousand tons.
Length 268.98 m, width 28.2 m, distance from waterline to boat deck 18.4 m.
Height from the keel to the tops of the pipes - 52.4 m;
Engine room - 29 boilers, 159 coal fireboxes;
The ship's unsinkability was ensured by 15 watertight bulkheads in the hold, creating 16 conditionally watertight compartments; the space between the bottom and the second bottom flooring was divided by transverse and longitudinal partitions into 46 waterproof compartments.
Maximum speed 24-25 knots.

During its maiden voyage on April 14, 1912, it collided with an iceberg and sank 2 hours and 40 minutes later. There were 1,316 passengers and 908 crew members on board, for a total of 2,224 people. Of these, 711 people were saved, 1513 died.
The Titanic disaster has become legendary; several feature films have been made based on its plot. But why did the sinking of the Titanic become legendary?
The Titanic was one of the largest ships of that time, the personification of the success of technological progress. To some extent, it symbolized the very idea of man's victory over nature. "Man - that sounds proud!" - as the classic said.

And on the night of April 14-15, proud humanity received a deafening slap in the face from nature. A huge piece of melting ice easily and quickly sent the result of the work of thousands of people who designed and built the “floating palace” to the bottom.
Historians still argue about the reasons for the death of the Titanic. Proponents of the “conspiracy theory” put forward versions that the Titanic was deliberately sunk to obtain insurance, that it was torpedoed...
All this is, of course, nonsense. But it still couldn’t happen without the human factor. More precisely, a combination of errors, miscalculations, and negligence.
So, already at the construction stage, design miscalculations surfaced. It was believed that the Titanic could theoretically remain afloat if any two of its 16 watertight compartments, any three of the first five compartments, or all of the first four compartments were flooded. Watertight bulkheads, designated from stem to stern by the letters "A" to "P", rose from the second bottom and passed through 4 or 5 decks: the first two and last five reached the "D" deck, eight bulkheads in the center of the liner reached only the deck "E". All bulkheads were so strong that they had to withstand significant pressure if they were breached.

The first two bulkheads in the bow and the last one in the stern were solid; all the rest had sealed doors that allowed the crew and passengers to move between compartments. On the flooring of the second bottom, in bulkhead “K,” there were only doors that led to the refrigerator compartment. On decks “F” and “E”, almost all bulkheads had hermetic doors connecting the rooms used by passengers; all of them could be sealed either remotely or manually, using a device located directly on the door and from the deck to which it reached bulkhead. To bolt such doors on passenger decks, a special key was required, which was available only to the chief stewards. But on G deck there were no doors in the bulkheads.

In the bulkheads “D” - “O”, directly above the second bottom in the compartments where the machines and boilers were located, there were 12 vertically closing doors; they were controlled using an electric drive from the navigation bridge. In case of danger or accident, or when the captain or watch officer considered it necessary, electromagnets, upon a signal from the bridge, released the latches and all 12 doors were lowered under the influence of their own gravity and the space behind them was hermetically sealed. If the doors were closed by an electric signal from the bridge, then they could only be opened after removing the voltage from the electric drive.
In the ceiling of each compartment there was an emergency hatch, usually leading to the boat deck. Those who did not manage to leave the premises before the doors closed could climb up its iron ladder. This is such a seemingly wonderful design, designed to ensure the complete safety of the ship.
But in July - October 1909, while on a business trip in England, Russian engineer V.P. Kostenko, a student of the famous shipbuilder A.N. Krylov, drew the attention of the Titanic designer Thomas Andrews to the potential danger that the watertight bulkheads of the ship’s compartments did not reach the main deck: “Understand, one small hole and the Titanic will be gone.”
However, the proud Briton ignored V.P. Kostenko’s advice, which later became one of the reasons for the death of the ship.

In addition, the steel used to cover the Titanic's hull was of low quality, with a large admixture of phosphorus, which made it very brittle at low temperatures. If the casing were made of high-quality, tough steel with a low phosphorus content, it would significantly soften the impact force. The metal sheets would simply bend inward and the damage to the body would not be so serious. Perhaps then the Titanic would have been saved, or at least would have remained afloat for a long time, sufficient to evacuate most of the passengers.
Also, according to the research, it was revealed that the hull steel was susceptible to brittle rupture in cold waters, which also accelerated the sinking of the ship.

It is now also known that the rivets on the Titanic were of poor quality. Conducted research and tests, analysis of procurement documents showed that forged iron rivets were used as rivets, and not steel, as was originally planned. Moreover, these rivets were of low quality, they contained many foreign impurities, in particular coke; during forging, this coke collected in the heads, further increasing fragility. During an iceberg strike, the heads of cheap rivets simply broke, and sheets of 2.5-centimeter steel separated under the pressure of the ice.

In addition, the number of lifeboats was insufficient due to outdated Admiralty instructions. But even those boats that were there were not completely filled. And this is due to miscalculations in the training of the Titanic crew.

But they didn’t skimp on luxury. There were legends about the pomp and splendor of the Titanic's interiors. The ship had 762 cabins, which were divided into 3 classes. There was room for 2,566 passengers, with unprecedented amenities available to passengers in all classes.
The difference between the luxurious first class cabins and the cheapest accommodation in third class was great: the differences were in everything - in size, decoration and number of rooms. Some third-class cabins had no washbasins or closets, things had to be stored in bags and used as a pillow, and all the furniture consisted of an iron bed with a straw mattress.
In terms of comfort, luxury and service, the Titanic was comparable to the best hotels of that time and was rightfully considered a luxury “floating hotel”.

1st class cabin:

1st Class Restaurant on Deck:

Smoking lounge 1st class:

Library:

Gym

What strange sports equipment there were back then...

There was even a swimming pool.

Smoking lounge 2nd class.

3rd class premises

A bunch of miscalculations led to errors in maneuvering, to a collision with an iceberg, to the fact that the ship quickly sank, and many passengers were unable to use the boats... All this is quite well known and has been described many times.

By the way, an interesting detail. Almost all the women and children from the 1st and 2nd class cabins were saved. More than half of the women and children from the 3rd class cabins died because they had difficulty finding their way up through the labyrinth of narrow corridors. Almost all the men also died. 323 men (20% of all adult men) and 331 women (75% of all adult women) survived.
On the one hand, this speaks of class privileges and prejudices of the society of that time. On the other hand, the fact that there are many men among the dead, and fewer women, tells us that the advanced ideas of feminism had not yet captured the masses. And it was still customary for women to be allowed to go ahead. As historians, aristocrats and millionaires say. those traveling 1st class could have been saved, but ladies and children were allowed to go ahead. 3rd class passengers were not always so gallant, and some rushed to the boats, pushing aside those who were weaker.

Yes, the representatives of the elite of that time had not matured enough to understand that “those who don’t have a billion can go to hell.” (c) And they believed that there is something more important in life than life itself. They could have saved their skins, but their upbringing and breed did not allow them to put their own lives above all else. And I involuntarily remember the words of Fr. Vsevolod Chaplin that earthly human life is not at all the highest value for a Christian. These words caused a terrible butthurt among the burning hamsters. Unlike the reactionary priest, the handshake representatives of a progressive society consider their precious lives to be the highest value. Like those passengers of the Titanic who furiously rushed to the lifeboats, pushing aside women and children...

The fate of the passengers and crew of the Titanic has become the topic of numerous articles. Some of them are not really surprising. For example,
In May 2006, the last American eyewitness to survive the sinking of the Titanic died at the age of 99. Swedish by birth Lillian Gertrud Asplund (Swedish. Lillian Gertrud Asplund), who was 5 years old at the time of the disaster, lost her father and three brothers. Her mother and brother, who was three years old at the time, survived. They were third class passengers and escaped in lifeboat No. 15. Asplund was the last person to remember how the tragedy occurred, but she avoided publicity and rarely spoke about the event.
who was two and a half months old at the time of the death of the liner, died on May 31, 2009 at the age of 97 years. Her ashes were scattered to the wind on October 24, 2009 in the port of Southampton, where the Titanic began its first and last voyage...

The crash of the airliner became one of the most famous disasters in human history. In essence, the tragedy of the Titanic became a symbol of the death of what seemed powerful and unsinkable, a symbol of the weakness of human technogenic civilization in front of the forces of nature. And ahead of humanity awaited revolutions, bloody world and local wars...
Therefore, the disaster was widely reflected in art, for example in the film Titanic.

The futility of human pride, power and glory - all this was absorbed by the Titanic disaster. A century ago, the “floating palace” rests at the bottom, becoming the grave for many people.
R.I.P.

On the night of April 14, 1912, the largest and most luxurious liner in the history of mankind was rushing at full speed towards the shores of North America. Nothing foreshadowed the sinking of the Titanic. An orchestra was playing on the upper deck in a gourmet restaurant. The richest and most successful people drank champagne and enjoyed the beautiful weather.

There were no signs of trouble

A few minutes later the lookout spotted an iceberg. And a little later, the Titanic, a gigantic ship, will collide with a drifting iceberg, and after some time it will all be over. Thus begins the great mystery of the big ship. The next day, the sinking of the Titanic would become a legend, and its story would be the greatest mystery of the 20th century.

International sensation

The very next morning, the office of the Titanic owner's company was stormed by dozens of newspaper reporters. They wanted to know where the Titanic sank and demanded clarification. Relatives of passengers on the ocean liner were outraged. A short telegram from Cape Race reported: “At 11 p.m. local time, the largest ship, the Titanic, transmitted a distress signal.” Company President Luster Whites reassured reporters: “The liner is unsinkable!” But the very next day, all the world's newspapers were full of sensational messages: “The safest Titanic (ship) in the world sank in the icy depths of the Atlantic Ocean. On the fifth day of its tragic voyage, the liner claimed 1,513 human lives.”

Disaster investigation

The sinking of the Titanic shocked both sides of the Atlantic. The question of why the Titanic ended up at the bottom haunts us to this day. From the very beginning, people wanted to know in detail what the cause of the sinking of the Titanic was. But the court’s decision read: “The liner hit an iceberg and sank.”

The Titanic (the size of the ship, by the way, was very impressive) died from a banal collision with an ice floating block. It seemed incredible.

Alleged versions of the tragic death

The end to the history of this disaster has not yet been set. Fresh versions of the death of the Titanic arise even today, a century later. There are several plausible assumptions. Each of them deserves close attention. The first version says that another sunken liner lies on the Atlantic bottom. It sounds like science fiction, but this version of the death of the Titanic has real grounds.

Some researchers argue that it is not the sunken ship Titanic that lies on the ocean floor at all, but its double, the Olympic liner. The version seems fantastic, but it is not without evidence.

Ocean Monster of Great Britain

On December 16, 1908, the firstborn was laid down in Belfast - the steamship "Olympic", later - the "Titanic" (the size of the ship reached almost 270 meters in length) with a displacement of 66 thousand tons.

Until now, representatives of the shipyard consider it the most perfect project that has ever been implemented. The ship was as tall as an eleven-story building and spanned four small city blocks. This ocean monster was equipped with two 4-cylinder steam engines and a steam turbine.

Its power was 50,000 horsepower, 10,000 light bulbs, 153 electric motors, four elevators, each designed for 12 people, and a large number of telephones were connected to the liner’s electrical network. The ship was truly innovative for its time. Silent elevators, steam heating, a winter garden, several photo laboratories and even a hospital with an operating room.

Comfort and respectability

The interior was more reminiscent of a fashionable palace than a ship. Passengers dined in a luxurious Louis XVI-style restaurant and drank coffee on a sun-drenched veranda with climbing plants. Bridge games were played in spacious hallways, and high-end cigars were smoked in soft smoking rooms.

The Titanic had a rich library, a gym and even a swimming pool. These days, a business class ticket on the Titanic would cost $55,000. The liner became the flagship of the White Star Line company.

The Olympic liner, which was almost the same in terms of comfort and technical characteristics, lost its championship without a fight. It was he who was to become the star of transatlantic flights. But frequent accidents made him an outsider, and endless fines, lawsuits and repair costs only added to the managers' headaches.

Unsolved version

The decision was obvious: to send instead of the battered Olympic, which did not have an insurance policy, a new insured Titanic. The history of the ship "Olympic" was very unrepresentable. However, just by changing the signs on the liners, which were as similar as two peas in a pod, several problems could be solved at once. The main thing is the payment of insurance in the amount of one million pounds, which could improve the financial affairs of the company.

Small accident, big money, job done. People shouldn't have been hurt, because the liner is unsinkable. In the event of an accident, the ship will drift, and ships passing by on the busy ocean route will pick up all the passengers.

Strange behavior of passengers

The main real evidence of this unprecedented scam is considered to be the refusal of travel by 55 first class passengers. Among those who remained ashore were:

John Morgan, owner of the liner.
Henry Frick, steel magnate and partner.
Robert Breccon, US Ambassador to France.
Famous rich man George Vanderbilt.

The mystery of the death of the Titanic has indirect confirmation of the insurance scam version, namely the strange behavior of Captain Edward Smith, who, by the way, was the captain of the Olympic during its first voyages.

The Last Captain

Edward Smith was considered one of the best commanders of his time. Working for the White Star Line, he earned around £1,200 a year. Other captains did not earn even half of this money. However, Smith's career was far from rosy. Many times the ships he managed got into all sorts of accidents, ran aground or burned.

It was Edward Smith who commanded the Olympic in 1911, when the uninsured ocean liner suffered several serious accidents. But Smith managed not only to avoid punishment, but even get a promotion.

He became the captain of the Titanic. Could the company's management, knowing about the captain's previous mistakes, assign him to the Titanic, and even just for one voyage? Could she use incriminating evidence on the captain in order to fire a man who brought huge losses to the company in case of disobedience with a scandal?

Perhaps the captain was choosing between a shameful write-off just before retirement and participation in a scam invented by his superiors. This was the last flight for Edward Smith.

What was the first mate thinking?

Another inexplicable mystery about the sinking of the Titanic is the strange behavior of William Murdoch, the first mate. Murdock was on watch the night of the accident. When he received a message about an approaching iceberg, he gave the order to steer the ship to the left and engage reverse, which is strictly prohibited.

Is it possible that the first mate made a mistake and this is the reason for the death of the Titanic? But Murdoch had already encountered a similar situation and always did the right thing, pointing the ship's nose at the obstacle. In all navigation textbooks, this maneuver is described as the only correct one in this situation.

On that last voyage for the Titanic, the chief mate acted differently. As a result, the main blow fell not on the bow, where the strongest part of the ship was, but on its side. Almost a hundred meters of the starboard side opened up like a tin can.

The Titanic, whose sinking story is told in less than ten seconds, was practically dead. This is exactly how long it took to pronounce the death sentence on the largest and most beautiful ship in the world. Why did Murdoch make a fatal mistake? If we assume that he, too, was in collusion, then the answer to the death of the Titanic is found by itself.

What were the ship's owners hiding?

Today it is impossible to prove the version of the insurance scam, the White Star Line company was closed, the Olympic ship was scrapped, and all documentation was destroyed. But even if we assume that the sinking of the Titanic was not rigged, then there was probably some human error involved.

Key to the Mystery Box

Many years have passed since the Titanic sank. The ship's story, however, continued in 1997, when the key was sold at a London auction for one hundred thousand pounds sterling. He opened only one box on the Titanic, but it was this key that was not on board the liner that fateful night. A chain of strange circumstances, a series of fatal coincidences and simply human negligence accompanied the superliner from the very beginning to the end of its first and last voyage.

Well, the item sold for fabulous money at a London auction was an ordinary key to an ordinary box. It contained the only equipment with which it was possible to recognize the danger threatening the ship - binoculars.

Forgetful first mate

The thing is that locators appeared only in the 30s of the last century. And at that time its functions were performed by the human eye. From the highest point on the ship, the sailor continuously looked forward as the ship progressed. An airliner weighing 66 thousand tons, traveling at a speed of 45 km/h, has very low controllability, and the sooner the lookout notices the danger, the greater the chances of avoiding it. Ordinary binoculars were the only help.

For unknown reasons, Chief Mate Blair was removed from the ship at the last moment. Frustrated, he simply forgot to give his replacement the key to the box where the binoculars were kept.

Meeting with an unusual iceberg

Those looking ahead had to rely only on their own vigilance. They noticed the iceberg too late, when it was almost impossible to change the situation. In addition, this iceberg was different from the others; it was black.

During the drift, a huge block of ice melted and turned over. The iceberg, which had absorbed tons of water, became dark. It was incredibly difficult to notice him. If that fatal iceberg for the Titanic had been white, perhaps the watchmen would have seen it much earlier. Especially if they had binoculars.

"Titanic": the story of the sinking, the beginning of events

But the strangest thing is that the ship’s command could have learned about the possibility of a collision with an iceberg much earlier than the lookouts reported it.

Radio operators, the voice and ear of the Titanic, repeatedly received messages about ice floes drifting in the area. An hour before the lookout noticed the iceberg, the radio operator of the steamer California warned of possible danger. But on the Titanic the connection was rudely cut off.

Even earlier, a few hours before the collision, Captain Edward Smith personally read three telegrams warning about ice floes. But they were all ignored.

The chain of human miscalculations could be broken by Officer Murdock, who gave the fatal order: “Full back! Left hand drive." In the event of a head-on collision of the Titanic with an iceberg, there would have been much more time to evacuate passengers. Perhaps the ship could have stayed afloat.

Human negligence

Then the mistakes followed one after another. The evacuation order was given only 45 minutes after the collision. Passengers were asked to put on life belts and gather on the upper deck near the lifeboats. And then it suddenly became clear that the Titanic had only twenty lifeboats that could accommodate no more than 1,300 people, 48 lifebuoys and cork vests for each passenger and crew members.

However, the vests were useless for the northern regions of the Atlantic. A person who fell into cold water died from hypothermia within half an hour.

Prophetic predictions of a science fiction writer

Immediately after the disaster, the whole world was shocked by an incredible coincidence. The date of sinking of the Titanic is April 15, 1912. And fourteen years before the tragedy, the unknown London journalist Morgan Robertson finished his new novel. The science fiction writer spoke about the voyage and death of the huge transatlantic liner Titan: “On a cold April night, at full speed, the ship ran into an iceberg and sank.” Moreover, the science fiction writer pinpointed the exact location of the sinking of the Titanic.

The novel turned out to be prophetic, and the science fiction writer was dubbed the Nostradamus of the 20th century. There really were a lot of coincidences in the book: the displacement of the ship, its maximum speed, and even the number of propellers and lifeboats.

Moreover, a few years later, the writer published his new novel, in which he predicted war in the USA and Japan.

Another coincidence: a copy of the book about the ship “Titan” was on the ship with one of the firemen. The sailor read it during the first days of the voyage, and he was so impressed by the plot that in one of the ports he simply ran away. And this was not the only crew member to escape from the Titanic.

It remains a mystery: either everyone who escaped had read the book before, or they had more compelling reasons.

Testimonies of eyewitnesses to the tragedy

Immediately after the sinking of the Titanic, special commissions were created in England and the United States to investigate its causes. Surviving passengers spoke of a loud bang that they heard after the collision with the iceberg. It was like an explosion. According to one version, a fire was raging in the liner's coal bunker.

Some researchers believe that it started even before the Titanic left port, while others are confident that the fire broke out during the voyage.

A little bit of history

Britain was being transformed by the technological revolution. Beginning in the 30s of the 19th century, steam-powered merchant ships began to cross the Atlantic. The technology proved promising, and the kingdom's admiralty concluded that steam would make the sailing fleet obsolete.

When reports appeared in London that tests of a steam engine were already underway in France, which had also entered the struggle for naval supremacy, the British had no choice but to accept the challenge. At first, large paddle wheels were used, which were installed on opposite sides of the sides.

The first replacement for the paddle wheel appeared about ten years later, in the 40s of the 19th century. Shipbuilders have come to the conclusion that a propeller is much more efficient than a wheel. It was only after its invention and placement under the bottom of the ship that steam propulsion became a decisive advantage.

But in most cases it remained experimental developments; sometimes the innovation was used on warships. Steam engines became widespread only in the 20th century, and coal was the only fuel for a long time. In the future, the transition from coal to fuel oil will be a step to the next level of development.

But in the days of the Olympic class superliners, ships with an internal combustion engine were as rare as a steam engine in the first half of the 19th century. Be that as it may, the fire on board should not have affected the life of the ship and its passengers. There could be no emergency incidents on the liner, this is the Titanic.

Further developments

Captain Smith ordered the bunker in which the fire was raging to be localized. Due to the lack of oxygen, the fire should have died out, the problem would have resolved itself. A fire on board is a good enough reason to drive the liner with all your might to the nearest port. But when the Titanic hit an iceberg, it ripped open the ship's hull, and oxygen entered the bunker. There was a powerful explosion.

Many years later, after an underwater study of the remains of the ship, this version gained additional arguments. A huge fault runs exactly where the coal compartments were located.

For the first time, a version of the fire appeared on the pages of American newspapers even before the surviving passengers and crew members of the Titanic were delivered to New York. Without factual material, but using only rumors, newspapermen invented the most incredible stories about the tragedy.

In any case, when the stokers were interrogated, they denied that there was a fire, although it would seem that after the disaster they had nothing to hide. On the other hand, according to some accounts, Captain Smith went down to the boiler room and ordered everyone to remain silent about the burning coal.

We don’t yet know what actually happened to the giant liner. The Titanic, the story of whose sinking has become the subject of documentaries and feature films, will always be of interest to future generations.

New version about the death of the liner

The nature of the Titanic's fault not only fuels the theory of a fire in the hold, but also allows some researchers to make an unexpected assumption.

The liner sank another ship. At the beginning of the 20th century, a new secret weapon was tested in the seas. Perhaps the Titanic was hit by a torpedo.

The version seems unusual, but the facts of the fracture and torn edges, which could have resulted from a torpedo attack, force us to take it seriously. If the Titanic was nevertheless torpedoed, one can only hope that someday researchers will get to that part of the ship, the study of which will help shed light on this version.

The date of sinking of the Titanic is April 15, 1912. On this day, but in different years, the following disasters occurred:

1989 - stampede at the English Hillsborough stadium.
2000 - a plane crash in the Philippines, killing 129 people.
2002 - a plane crash in Korea that claimed 129 lives.

What tragic events will life bring us next?

"Titanic" (eng. Titanic) is a British transatlantic steamer, the second liner of the Olympic class. Built in Belfast at the Harland and Wolfe shipyard from 1909 to 1912 for the White Star Line shipping company.

At the time of commissioning it was the largest ship in the world.

On the night of April 14-15, 1912, during her maiden voyage, she crashed in the North Atlantic, colliding with an iceberg.

Vessel information

The Titanic was equipped with two four-cylinder steam engines and a steam turbine.

The entire power plant had a capacity of 55,000 hp. With.
The ship could reach speeds of up to 23 knots (42 km/h).
Its displacement, which exceeded the twin ship Olympic by 243 tons, was 52,310 tons.
The ship's hull was made of steel.
The hold and lower decks were divided into 16 compartments by bulkheads with sealed doors.
If the bottom was damaged, the double bottom prevented water from entering the compartments.

Shipbuilder magazine called the Titanic virtually unsinkable, a statement that was widely circulated in the press and among the public.

In accordance with outdated rules, the Titanic was equipped with 20 lifeboats, with a total capacity of 1,178 people, which was only a third of the ship's maximum load.

The cabins and public areas of the Titanic were divided into three classes.

First class passengers were provided with a swimming pool, a squash court, an A la carte restaurant, two cafes, and a gym. All classes had dining and smoking lounges, open and closed promenades. The most luxurious and sophisticated were the first class interiors, made in various artistic styles using expensive materials such as mahogany, gilding, stained glass, silk and others. The third class cabins and salons were decorated as simply as possible: steel walls were painted white or covered with wooden panels.

1 On April 0, 1912, the Titanic set sail from Southampton on its first and only voyage. After stopping in Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown, Ireland, the ship sailed into the Atlantic Ocean with 1,317 passengers and 908 crew members on board. The ship was commanded by Captain Edward Smith. On April 14, the Titanic's radio station received seven ice warnings, but the liner continued to move almost at top speed.

To avoid encountering floating ice, the captain ordered to go slightly south of the usual route.
At 23:39 on April 14, the lookout reported to the captain's bridge about an iceberg directly ahead. Less than a minute later there was a collision. Having received several holes, the ship began to sink. Women and children were put on the boats first.

At 2:20 on April 15, the Titanic sank, breaking into two parts, killing 1,496 people. 712 survivors were picked up by the steamship Carpathia.

The wreck of the Titanic

The disaster claimed the lives, according to various sources, from 1,495 to 1,635 people. Until December 20, 1987, when the Philippine ferry Dona Paz sank, killing more than 4,000 people, the sinking of the Titanic remained the deadliest peacetime maritime disaster. Informally, it is the most famous disaster of the 20th century.

Alternative versions of the ship's death

And now - alternative versions, each of which has its adherents in the worldwide club of mystery lovers.

Fire

A fire in the coal compartment that broke out before sailing and provoked first an explosion and then a collision with an iceberg. The ship's owners knew about the fire and tried to hide it from passengers. This version was put forward by British journalist Shanan Moloney, writes The Independent. Moloney has been researching the causes of the Titanic's sinking for more than 30 years.

In particular, he studied photographs taken before the ship left the Belfast shipyard. The journalist saw black marks along the right side of the ship's hull - exactly where the iceberg hit it. Experts subsequently confirmed that the marks were likely caused by a fire that started in a fuel storage facility. “We looked at the exact location where the iceberg was stuck and it appears that part of the hull was very vulnerable at that location, and that was before it even left the Belfast shipyard,” Moloney says. A team of 12 tried to put out the flames, but they were too big to bring under control quickly. It could reach temperatures of up to 1000 degrees Celsius, making the Titanic's hull very vulnerable in this area. And when it hit the ice, experts say, it immediately broke. The publication also added that the liner's management forbade passengers from talking about the fire. “This is a perfect confluence of unusual factors: fire, ice and criminal negligence. No one had investigated these marks before. It changes the story completely,” says Moloney.

CONSPIRACY

Conspiracy theory: this is not the Titanic at all! This version was put forward by experts who studied the causes of the death of the ship, Robin Gardiner and Dan Van Der Watt, published in the book “The Mystery of the Titanic.” According to this theory, the sunken ship is not the Titanic at all, but its twin brother, the Olympic. These ships looked practically no different from each other. On September 20, 1911, the Olympic collided with the British Navy cruiser Hawk, causing both ships to be seriously damaged. The owners of "Olympic" suffered heavy losses, since the damage that was caused to "Olympic" was not enough for an insurance payment.

The theory is based on the assumption of possible fraud in order for the owners of the Titanic to receive insurance payments. According to this version, the owners of the Titanic intentionally sent the Olympic to an area of possible ice formation and at the same time convinced the captain not to slow down so that the ship would suffer serious damage when colliding with a block of ice. This version was initially supported by the fact that a fairly large number of objects were raised from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, where the Titanic lies, but nothing was found that bore the name “Titanic.” This theory was refuted after parts were brought to the surface, on which the Titanic’s side (construction) number was stamped - 401. The Olympic had a side number of 400. In addition, the minted side number of the Titanic was discovered and on the propeller of a sunken ship. And even despite this, the conspiracy theory still has a number of followers.

German attack

1912 With the First World War two years away, the prospect of armed conflict between Germany and Great Britain is becoming increasingly likely. Germany owns several dozen submarines, which during the war will launch a merciless hunt for enemy ships trying to cross the ocean. For example, the reason for America’s entry into the war would be that the U-20 submarine would sink the Lusitania in 1915, a twin of the same Mauritania that set the speed record and won the Atlantic Blue Riband - remember?

Based on these facts, some Western publications proposed their own version of the death of the Titanic in the mid-nineties: a torpedo attack by a German submarine secretly accompanying the liner. The purpose of the attack was to discredit the British fleet, famous for its power throughout the world. In accordance with this theory, the Titanic either did not collide with the iceberg at all, or received very minor damage in the collision and would have remained afloat if the Germans had not finished off the ship with a torpedo.

What speaks in favor of this version? Honestly, nothing.

There was a collision with an iceberg - this is beyond doubt. The deck of the ship was even covered with snow and ice chips. The cheerful passengers started playing football with ice cubes - it would become clear later that the ship was doomed. The collision itself was surprisingly quiet - almost none of the passengers felt it. The torpedo, you must admit, could hardly have exploded completely silently (especially since some claim that the submarine fired as many as six torpedoes at the ship!).

Proponents of the theory of the German attack claim, however, that people in the boats heard a terrible roar just before the Titanic sank - well, this was two and a half hours later, when only the stern raised into the sky remained above the water and the death of the ship did not raise any doubts. It’s unlikely that the Germans would have fired a torpedo at an almost sunken ship, would it? And the roar that the survivors heard was explained by the fact that the stern of the Titanic rose almost vertically and huge steam boilers fell from their places. Also, do not forget that at about the same minutes the Titanic broke in half - the keel could not withstand the weight of the rising stern (however, they will learn about this only after the liner is discovered at the bottom: the break occurred below the water level), and this, too, is unlikely to have happened silently . And why would the Germans suddenly start sinking a passenger liner two years before the start of the war? This seems dubious, to put it mildly. And to put it bluntly, it’s absurd.

A curse

Mystical version: curse of the pharaohs. It is known for certain that one of the historians, Lord Canterville, transported on the Titanic in a wooden box a perfectly preserved Egyptian mummy of a priestess - a soothsayer. Since the mummy had a fairly high historical and cultural value, it was not placed in the hold, but placed directly next to the captain's bridge. The essence of the theory is that the mummy influenced the mind of Captain Smith, who, despite numerous warnings about ice in the area where the Titanic was sailing, did not slow down and thereby doomed the ship to certain death. This version is supported by well-known cases of mysterious deaths of people who disturbed the peace of ancient burials, especially mummified Egyptian rulers. Moreover, the deaths were associated precisely with clouding of mind, as a result of which people committed inappropriate actions, and cases of suicide often occurred. Did the pharaohs have a hand in the sinking of the Titanic?

Steering error

One of the latest versions of the sinking of the Titanic deserves special attention. She appeared after the novel by the granddaughter of the second mate of the Titanic, Charles Lightoller, Lady Patten, “Worth Its Weight in Gold,” was published. According to Patten's book, the ship had enough time to avoid the obstacle, but helmsman Robert Hitchens panicked and turned the wheel the wrong way.

A catastrophic mistake led to the iceberg causing fatal damage to the ship. The truth about what really happened that fateful night was kept secret by the family of Lightoller, the oldest surviving officer of the Titanic and the only survivor who knew exactly what caused the ship's sinking. Lightoller hid this information out of fear that the White Star Line, which owned the ship, would go bankrupt and his colleagues would lose their jobs. The only person to whom Lightoller told the truth was his wife Sylvia, who conveyed her husband’s words to her granddaughter. In addition, according to Patten, such a large and reliable liner as the Titanic sank so quickly because after colliding with an ice block it was not immediately stopped, and the rate of water entering the holds increased hundreds of times. The liner was not immediately stopped because White Star Line manager Bruce Ismay convinced the captain to continue sailing. He feared that the incident could cause considerable material damage to the company he headed.

Chasing the Atlantic Blue Riband

There were and still are many supporters of this theory, especially among writers, since it appeared precisely in literary circles. The Atlantic Blue Ribbon is a prestigious shipping prize awarded to ocean liners for achieving record speeds across the North Atlantic.

At the time of the Titanic, this prize was awarded to the ship Mauritania of the Cunard company, which, by the way, was the founder of this award, as well as the main competitor of the White Star Line. In defense of this theory, it is argued that the president of the company that owned the Titanic, Ismay, encouraged the captain of the Titanic, Smith, to arrive in New York a day ahead of schedule and receive an honorary prize. This supposedly explains the ship's high speed in a dangerous area of the Atlantic. But this theory can easily be refuted, because the Titanic simply physically could not have reached the speed of 26 knots at which the Cunard Mauritania set a record that, by the way, lasted for more than 10 years after the disaster in the Atlantic.

But what was it really like?

Sadly, when studying the history of the most famous maritime disaster, we have to admit that the Titanic owes its death to a long chain of fatal accidents. If at least one link of the ominous chain had been destroyed, the tragedy could have been avoided.

Perhaps the first link was the successful start of the journey - yes, that’s right. On the morning of April 10, during the departure of the Titanic from the quay wall of the port of Southampton, the superliner passed too close to the American ship New York, and a phenomenon known in navigation as ship suction arose: the New York began to be attracted to the one moving nearby. "Titanic". However, thanks to the skill of Captain Edward Smith, a collision was avoided.

Ironically, if the accident had happened, it would have saved one and a half thousand lives: if the Titanic had been delayed in port, the ill-fated encounter with the iceberg would not have happened.

This time. It should also be mentioned that the radio operators who received the message from the Mesaba ship about the ice fields of icebergs did not transmit it to Edward Smith: the telegram was not marked with a special prefix “personally to the captain”, and was lost in a heap of papers. That's two.

However, this message was not the only one, and the captain knew about the ice danger. Why didn't he slow down the ship? Chasing the Blue Ribbon is, of course, a matter of honor (and, more importantly, big business), but why did he risk the lives of passengers? It wasn't that much of a risk, really. In those years, captains of ocean liners often passed through areas dangerous with ice without slowing down: it was like crossing the road at a red light: it seems like you shouldn’t do that, but it always works out. Almost always.

To the credit of Captain Smith, it must be said that he remained faithful to maritime traditions and remained on the dying ship until the very end.

But why was the bulk of the iceberg not noticed? Here everything came together: a moonless, dark night, windless weather. If there were even small waves on the water surface, those looking ahead could see whitecaps at the foot of the iceberg. Calm and moonless night are two more links in the fatal chain.

As it turned out later, the chain was continued by the fact that the iceberg, shortly before the collision with the Titanic, turned over with its underwater, water-saturated, dark part upward, which is why it was practically invisible at night from afar (an ordinary, white iceberg would have been visible a mile away ). The watchman saw him only 450 meters away, and there was almost no time left for maneuver. Perhaps the iceberg would have been noticed earlier, but here another link in the fatal chain played a role - there were no binoculars in the “crow’s nest”. The box where they were kept was locked, and the key to it was hastily taken with him by the second mate, who had been removed from the ship just before departure.

After the lookout nevertheless saw the danger and reported the iceberg to the captain's bridge, there was a little more than half a minute left before the collision. Officer of the watch Murdoch, who was on watch, gave the order to the helmsman to turn left, while simultaneously transmitting the command “full astern” to the engine room. Thus, he made a grave mistake, adding another link in the chain that led the liner to death: even if the Titanic had crashed into an iceberg head-on, the tragedy would have been less. The bow of the ship would have been crushed, part of the crew and those passengers whose cabins were located in front would have died. But only two watertight compartments would have been flooded. With such damage, the liner would have remained afloat and could have waited for help from other ships.

And if Murdoch, having turned the ship to the left, had ordered an increase rather than a decrease in speed, the collision might not have happened at all. However, frankly speaking, the order to change the speed hardly plays a significant role here: in thirty seconds it was hardly executed in the engine room.

So, the collision happened. The iceberg damaged the ship's fragile hull along six compartments on the starboard side.

Looking ahead, let's say that only seven hundred and four managed to escape: the next link in the chain of failures was that some sailors took too literally the captain's order to put women and children in the boats, and did not allow men there, even if there were empty seats. However, at first no one was particularly eager to get into the boats. The passengers did not understand what was happening and did not want to leave the huge, comfortably lit, such a reliable liner and it was unclear why they would go down in a small unstable boat down to the icy water. However, pretty soon anyone could notice that the deck was tilting forward more and more, and panic began.

But why was there such a monstrous discrepancy between the places on the lifeboats? The owners of the Titanic, praising the merits of the new ship, stated that they even exceeded the instructions of the code: instead of the required 962 life-saving seats on the ship, there were 1178. Unfortunately, they did not attach any importance to the discrepancy between this number and the number of passengers on board.

It is especially sad that another passenger steamer, the Californian, stood very close to the sinking Titanic, waiting out the ice danger. A few hours ago, he notified neighboring ships that he was locked in ice and was forced to stop so as not to accidentally run into an ice block. The radio operator from the Titanic, who was almost deafened by the Morse code from the Californian (the ships were very close, and the signal of one echoed too loudly in the headphones of the other), impolitely interrupted the warning: “Go to hell, you are interfering with my work!” What was the radio operator of the Titanic so busy with?

The fact is that in those years, radio communication on a ship was more of a luxury than an urgent necessity, and this miracle of technology aroused great interest among the wealthy public. From the very beginning of the voyage, the radio operators were literally inundated with private messages - and no one saw anything reprehensible in the fact that the Titanic’s radio operators paid such attention to wealthy passengers who wished to send a telegram to the ground directly from the liner. So at that moment, when colleagues from other ships reported about floating ice, the radio operator transmitted another message to the continent. Radio communication was more like an expensive toy than a serious tool: ships of that time did not even have a 24-hour watch at the radio station.

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