What Went Wrong?

At the time the Titanic was built it was the largest ship in the world and one of the first ships to have a swimming pool. It was one of the first floating five star hotels, luring aboard high society passengers – ironicaly – as the world’s safest and most luxurious ocean liner of its time. Although, the Titanic actually provided more 2nd and 3rd class accommodations than 1st class, so the majority of the passengers traveled 3rd class (mostly emigrants in search for a brighter future in the brave new world).Built in Ireland, the Titanic left Belfast on April 2nd 1912 to collect “the privileged ones” who could afford to get on board in Southampton (England), Cherbourg (France) and Queenstown (Ireland). The doomed journey started at noon on April 10th 1912 when the Titanic left Southampton for New York. Just a few days later, 20 minutes before midnight, The Titanic hit the fatal iceberg on April 14th and sank in less than 3 hours.

The sea was calm, the sky was clear and filled with bright stars, the other ships in the area warned the Titanic of ice and icebergs on it’s route and there were two sailors in the crow’s nest on the lookout duty. So, what went wrong? Well, pretty much everything. There was no moon, the sailors in the crow’s nest had no binoculars and the captain refrained from slowing down. So, the liner is traveling at speed of more than 22 knots despite the low visibility, extremely low sea temperatures and several reports of icy obstacles on it’s way. Naturaly, when the two sailors spotted the mountain of ice only 500 yards straight ahead it was too late to stop or steer away the 46,328 tonns of steel rushing through the dark night.

The impact was so strong that nothing was to be done to prevent the inevitable. The freezing water was flooding all over and the crew realized they had 2 hours before the great Titanic goes under. “As the lifeboat pulled away we heard cries from people left on the Titanic and in the water and explosions in the ship. There were lots of bodies floating %u2026 We were in the lifeboat nine hours”. A statement of one of the 700 people who survived the shipwreck out of 2200 who boarded the ship probably describes best what was going on in the last two hours before the ocean finaly devoured what was left of the “unsinkable” titan. The analyses showed that there were not enough lifeboats aboard so even if everybody was to survive the impact and flooding itself only half of the people aboard would have had the opportunity to get away from the sinking ship. Nevertheless, the number of lifeboats was in accordance with the regulations of that time. What the authorities learned from the Titanic disaster was that the required number of lifeboats is better to be calculated on the number of persons aboard and not on the size of the vessel itself. Also, a year after the Titanic sunk the International Ice Partol was established for the purpose of eliminating the risk of iceberg collisions; it is managed by the United States Coast Guard.

In 1998 a part of the Titanic’s hull was raised to the surface. The opinions on the matter differ – some find it importaint to recover the remains of the cursed titan as they believe it would contribute to the historical debate, others say it is nothing but grave robbing. Nevertheless, it is not likely that many will try to explore the treasures hidden in the wreck of the Titanic on their own, after all it is resting 13,000 ft bellow the sea level. There will always be a scent of mistery and a mist of romance surrounding the great Titanic, this year even more – many memorial events will take place in Ireland and New York, the brave ones can even book a memorial cruise to honour the heart of the Titanic (however, we tend to believe it is inevitably jinxed).