Hello everyone! Today I am with you again, Vladimir Raichev, and today I would like to discuss with you some interesting and mystical facts associated with the transatlantic liner Titanic, which sank in 1912.
Titanic was positioned as the most reliable liner of its time, it had the following characteristics:
Owner - British shipping company "White Star Line"
Date of construction - 1911
Construction cost - 3 million pounds sterling
Number of decks - 8
Length - 269 m
Width - 30 m
Displacement - 52310 tons
Maximum speed - 42 km / h
Capacity - 3547 passengers + crew
Design features - double bottom, hull material - steel, the hold and lower decks were divided into 16 compartments by bulkheads with sealed doors.
These are just some of the characteristics of the ship, among other things, there were 20 boats on board with a total capacity of 1178 people. The Titanic was the standard of reliability, wealth, and nothing foreshadowed its collapse. On April 12, 1912, the Titanic set out on its maiden voyage from Southampton.
History of the disaster
On April 14, the captain and his crew received 7 reports from other ships that floating ice was encountered on the way. For some reason, the team completely ignored these warnings and at full speed led their liner in the direction of New York.
Close to midnight, the forward looking forward reported approaching the iceberg, this message was transmitted to the first officer, who was on duty on the bridge that night. William Murdoch, contrary to all instructions, tried to go around the iceberg.
Any inexperienced captain knows that under no circumstances should the ship be turned and reversed. As a result of a collision with an iceberg, the Titanic received a large hole on the starboard side below the waterline.
Captain Edward Smith climbed to the bridge a little later, he felt the collision while in his cabin. After assessing the damage to the liner, he consulted with the chief designer of the ship and decided to prepare for the evacuation of people.
The radio operators were instructed to transmit distress signals. The sailors knew very little the procedure for their actions in an emergency, although the plan of these actions was posted in several places, but the sailors did not bother to study this plan.
The fact is that each boat was assigned its own sailor. And it cost the officers a lot of work to organize the preparation of rescue equipment. No one could even imagine the death of the Titanic, so there is nothing strange in the fact that such self-confidence reigned around.
The passengers who were sent to the lifeboats were in no hurry at all, as they did not assume that a catastrophe had occurred: the people on the upper deck did not even feel the collision.
Untrained sailors lowered the first boats incompletely filled. And if you remember, then at the very beginning of the article I called the capacity of the ship and the number of seats in life-saving equipment. There were 3 times fewer seats in boats than passengers.
The ensuing panic also made it difficult to evacuate passengers. Everything was on the Titanic: the manifestation of cowardice and cowardice, and the courage and stamina, the inept actions of the crew bordered on the help of women in boats, who told some men how to handle the oars.
Contrary to engineering calculations, the liner stayed on the water for more than 3 hours. Desperate people who did not have enough space on the boats jumped into the icy water. The water temperature reached -2 degrees - the boundary freezing temperature.
In the end, only 705 passengers managed to escape, and over 1,500 died in this disaster. This catastrophe has become one of the largest in the last century.
Causes of the disaster
Collision with an iceberg is the main cause of the death of the liner. But why did this happen? Why were the captain and his crew so neglectful of reports of drifting ice? Why was the first mate acting so unprofessional? Why was the forward looking so late in reporting the approach to the iceberg? Why was the evacuation so disorganized?
There are far more questions about this incident than there are answers to them. After a long time, a lot of alternative versions of the crash began to appear. For example, one of them says that the White Star Line instead of the Titanic sent another ship, the Olympic, on a voyage, as if the plan was simple: initiate a disaster, sink the ships and receive insurance compensation for a cheaper ship.
Captain Edward Smith, before he was appointed captain of the Titanic, managed to take part in some disasters with his other ships, for example, the Republic and the Adriatic ran aground, the Majestic and the Baltic had a fire, and the liner " Olympic collided with the British war cruiser Hawk in 1911.
However, some of the crew members were also faulty, such as first officer Murdoch, who was unable to avoid a collision with an ice block, or chief radio operator Jack Phillips, who responded very sharply to warnings of drifting ice.
It is noteworthy that just before going on a flight, Smith's team replaced the one looking forward. And the sailor taken off the ship forgot to give his colleague only one key, which opened the doors of the box where the binoculars were located.
The mystical consequences of the tragedy
But it is interesting that now other explanations of the catastrophe have begun to appear - mystical ones. For a whole century, this story managed to acquire details and conjectures. More than once feature films and documentaries were shed from different sides light on this story.
In 1994, just at the site of the wreck, fishermen caught a 10-month-old live baby tied to a life buoy with the inscription "Titanic". Also, information has repeatedly surfaced about a girl who appeared in our time, and claimed that she was a passenger of this ship.
Surprisingly, both the baby and the girl were documented at the beginning of the century, and the girl was recognized by psychiatrists as sane. There is nothing left but to connect the ongoing mysterious events with the emergence of a kind of "time portal" at the site of the death of the Titanic.
Suggest thoughts and eyewitness accounts of luminous circles under water, shortly before the disaster.
The appearance of the captain
There was another interesting case. On August 9, 1991, off Iceland, a Norwegian research vessel picked up a man who was drifting on a lifeboat. What was the surprise of the crew when it turned out that this was the captain of the Titanic, Edward John Smith.
This man was somewhat dazed, but generally healthy, and most strikingly, he looked as if the calendar was still 1912. For 80 years he was considered dead, and he looked great, smoked a pipe and was dressed in a clean uniform of the White Star steamship company.
Of course, they didn't take the man's word for it. He was taken to Sweden, and there, in the city of Oslo, he was sent to a psychiatric clinic. They took his fingerprints there. The results of the fingerprint examination shocked the researchers. The lifeboat man has been confirmed to be Captain Edward John Smith.
Of course, both the girl who “rescued” from the Titanic and the captain of the ship remained within the walls of specialized institutions, isolated from the world.
It is amazing that all these people at the time of discovery looked at the age they were at the time of the disaster, as if these 80 years did not exist for them. Scientists explain the phenomena occurring in the Atlantic by education in this anomalous zone space-time holes.
There is documented evidence from a Norwegian ship that on the day of the disaster, a giant funnel, in other words, a whirlpool, was seen in the Atlantic. A few hours later, the Titanic crashed in this area. Perhaps the funnel and the crash are somehow related.
Scientists are working on studying the mechanisms of the appearance of "spatio-temporal portals", and in the meantime, we can only guess what other mysteries the Atlantic Ocean holds, and how many secrets the famous superliner Titanic took with it.
On this I want to end my article today. Share this with your friends interesting history, subscribe to updates, we still have a lot of interesting things ahead. See you soon, take care of yourself.
"Titanic" (eng. Titanic) - British transatlantic steamship, the second liner of the Olympic class. Built in Belfast at the shipyard "Harland and Wolf" from 1909 to 1912 by order of the shipping company "White Star Line".
At the time of commissioning, it was the largest ship in the world.
On the night of April 14-15, 1912, during the first flight, it 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.
- All power point had a capacity of 55,000 liters. With.
- The ship could reach speeds of up to 23 knots (42 km/h).
- Its displacement, which exceeded the twin steamer 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 widely circulated in the press and among the public.
In accordance with outdated regulations, 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 offered 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 refined were the interiors of the first class, made in various artistic styles using expensive materials such as mahogany, gilding, stained glass, silk and others. Cabins and salons of the third class were designed as simply as possible: steel walls were painted in White color or sheathed with wooden panels.
1 On April 0, 1912, the Titanic left Southampton on her first and only voyage. Having made stops in French Cherbourg and Irish Queenstown, the ship entered the Atlantic Ocean with 1,317 passengers and 908 crew members on board. Captain Edward Smith commanded the ship. On April 14, the Titanic radio station received seven ice warnings, but the liner continued to move almost at top speed. To avoid meeting with floating ice, the captain ordered to go a little south of the usual route.
- At 23:39 on April 14, the lookout reported to the captain's bridge about the iceberg directly ahead. Less than a minute later there was a collision. Having received several holes, the ship began to sink. First of all, women and children were put on the boats.
- At 2:20 am on April 15, the Titanic sank, breaking in two, killing 1,496 people. 712 survivors were picked up by the steamer "Carpathia".
The wreckage of the Titanic rests at a depth of 3750 m. They were first discovered by the expedition of Robert Ballard in 1985. Subsequent expeditions recovered thousands of artifacts from the bottom. The bow and stern parts have sunk deep into the bottom silt and are in a deplorable state; it is not possible to bring them to the surface intact.
The wreck of the Titanic
The disaster claimed the lives of, according to various sources, from 1495 to 1635 people. Until December 20, 1987, when the Philippine ferry Dona Paz crashed, killing more than 4,000 people, the sinking of the Titanic remained the largest in terms of number those who died in the disaster at sea in peacetime. Informally, it is the most famous disaster XX century.
Alternative versions of the death of the ship
And now - alternative versions, each of which has its adherents in the world club of mystery lovers.
Fire
A fire in the coal compartment that arose even before sailing and provoked an explosion first, and then a collision with an iceberg. The owners of the ship knew about the fire and tried to hide it from the passengers. This version was put forward by the British journalist Shenan Moloney, writes The Independent. Moloney has been investigating the causes of the sinking of the Titanic for over 30 years.
In particular, he studied photographs taken before the ship left the shipyard in Belfast. The journalist saw black marks along the right side of the ship's hull - just where the iceberg had pierced it. Subsequently, experts confirmed that the traces were probably caused by the fire that had started in the fuel storage. “We looked at exactly where the iceberg got stuck, and it seems that this part of the hull was very vulnerable in this place, and this happened even before it left the shipyard in Belfast,” says Moloney. A team of 12 tried to put out the flames, but they were too big to quickly bring under control. It could reach temperatures up to 1000 degrees Celsius, which made the Titanic's hull very vulnerable in this place. And when he hit the ice, experts say, he immediately broke. The publication also added that the management of the liner forbade passengers to talk about the fire. “This is a perfect match of unusual factors: fire, ice and malpractice. No one has investigated these marks before. It completely changes history,” says Moloney.
Conspiracy
Conspiracy theory: this is not the Titanic at all! This version was put forward by Robin Gardiner and Dan Van Der Watt, experts in the study of the reasons for the death of the ship, published in the book “The Titanic Mystery”. According to this theory, the wreck is not the Titanic at all, but its twin brother, the Olympic. These boats were virtually indistinguishable from each other. On September 20, 1911, the Olympic collided with the British Navy cruiser Hawke, resulting in severe damage to both ships. The owners of Olimpik suffered heavy losses, since the damage that was inflicted on Olimpik was not enough to cover the insurance payment.
The theory is based on the assumption of a possible fraud in order to obtain insurance payments by the owners of the Titanic. According to this version, the owners of the Titanic intended to send the Olympic to the area of possible ice formation and at the same time convinced the captain not to slow down so that the ship would be seriously damaged when it collided with an ice block. This version was initially supported by the fact that from the bottom Atlantic Ocean where the Titanic lies, enough has been lifted a large number of objects, but nothing was found that would carry the name "Titanic". This theory was refuted after parts were raised to the surface, on which the Titanic's tail (building) number was stamped - 401. The Olympic had a tail number of 400. In addition, the Titanic's minted tail number 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 The First World War is two years away, and the prospect of an armed conflict between Germany and Great Britain is becoming more and more likely. Germany is the owner of several dozen submarines, which during the war will unleash a ruthless hunt for enemy ships trying to cross the ocean. For example, the reason for America's entry into the war will be that the U-20 submarine will sink the Lusitania in 1915 - the twin of the same Mauritania that set the speed record and won the Blue Ribbon of the Atlantic - remember?
Based on these facts, in the mid-nineties, some Western publications offered their own version of the death of the Titanic: a torpedo attack by a German submarine that secretly accompanied 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. Cheerful passengers started playing football with ice cubes - that the ship is doomed, it will become clear later. The collision itself was surprisingly quiet - almost none of the passengers felt it. A torpedo, you see, could hardly have exploded completely silently (especially since some claim that the submarine fired as many as six torpedoes at the ship!).
Supporters of the theory of the German attack claim, however, that people in the boats heard a terrible roar just before the Titanic sank - well, that was two and a half hours later, when only the stern lifted up into the sky remained above the water and the death of the ship did not raise any doubts. It is unlikely that the Germans would have fired a torpedo at an almost sunken ship, would they? And the roar that the survivors heard was due to 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 (although they only find out about this after finding the liner at the bottom: the break occurred below the water level), and this is also unlikely to have happened silently . And why would the Germans suddenly begin to sink a passenger liner two years before the start of the war? This seems, to put it mildly, doubtful. And to put it bluntly, it's absurd.
Curse
Mystical version: the 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 - soothsayer. Since the mummy had a rather 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 sailed, did not slow down and thereby doomed the ship to certain death. In favor of this version they say famous cases mysterious death people who disturbed the peace of ancient burials, especially mummified Egyptian rulers. Moreover, the deaths were associated precisely with a clouding of the mind, as a result of which people committed inappropriate actions, there were often cases of suicide. Pharaohs had a hand in the sinking of the Titanic?
Steering error
One of the latest versions of the death of the Titanic deserves special attention. It appeared after the novel by the granddaughter of the second mate of the captain of the Titanic, Ch. Lightoller, Lady Patten, “Worth its weight in gold”, was published. According to the version put forward by Patten in his book, the ship had enough time to dodge the obstacle, but the helmsman, Robert Hitchens, panicked and turned the helm in the wrong direction.
A catastrophic error caused the iceberg to inflict fatal damage on the ship. The truth about what really happened on that fateful night was kept secret in the family of Lightoller, the oldest surviving officer of the Titanic and the only survivor who knew exactly what caused the sinking of the ship. Lightoller withheld this information for 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 passed on 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 a collision 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 the manager of the White Star Line, Bruce Ismay, persuaded the captain to continue sailing. He feared that the incident could cause considerable material damage to the company he leads.
Chasing the Blue Ribbon of the Atlantic
There were and still are many supporters of this theory, especially among writers, since it appeared precisely in writers' circles. “ blue ribbon Atlantic” is a prestigious shipping award given to ocean liners for the fastest crossing of the North Atlantic.
At the time of the Titanic, this prize was given to the Mauritania ship 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, the opinion is put forward 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 allegedly explains the high speed of the vessel in dangerous area Atlantic. But this theory can easily be refuted, because the Titanic simply physically could not reach the speed of 26 knots at which the Mauritania of the Cunard company set a record, which, by the way, lasted more than 10 years after the disaster in the Atlantic.
But how was it really?
Regrettably, but, studying the history of the most famous maritime disaster, we have to admit that the Titanic owes its death long chain fatal accidents. If at least one link of the sinister chain had been destroyed, the tragedy could have been avoided.
Perhaps the first link was the successful start of the journey - yes, yes, that's right. On the morning of April 10, during the departure of the Titanic from the pier wall of Southampton Port, the superliner passed too close to the American ship New York, and a phenomenon known in navigation as the suction of ships arose: the New York began to be attracted to the moving nearby "Titanic". However, thanks to the skill of Captain Edward Smith, a collision was avoided.
Ironically, if an accident had happened, it would have saved one and a half thousand lives: if the Titanic had lingered in the 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 pass it on to Edward Smith: the telegram was not marked with a special prefix “personally to the captain”, and was lost in a pile of papers. This is 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, of big business), but why did he risk the lives of passengers? Not that much of a risk, really. In those years, the captains of ocean liners often passed dangerous ice districts without slowing down: it was like crossing the road at a red light: sort of, and you can’t do that, but it always works out. Almost always.
To the credit of Captain Smith, it must be said that he remained true to maritime traditions and remained on the dying ship to the very end.
But why was the bulk of the iceberg not seen? Here everything turned out one to one: a moonless, dark night, windless weather. If there were at least small waves on the water surface, the lookouts could see white lambs 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 its underwater dark part upside down, saturated with water, due to which it was practically invisible from a distance at night (an ordinary, white iceberg would be distinguishable for a mile ). The sentinel saw him only 450 meters away, and there was almost no time for maneuver. Perhaps the iceberg would have been seen earlier, but another link in the fatal chain played a role here - there were no binoculars in the "crow's nest". The box where they were stored turned out to be locked, and the second assistant to the captain, taken from the ship just before departure, hastily took the key to it with him.
After the lookout nevertheless saw the danger and reported the iceberg to the captain's bridge, a little more than half a minute remained before the collision. The officer of the watch Murdoch, who was on watch, gave the helmsman the order to turn left, at the same time transmitting the command "full astern" to the engine room. Thus, he made a gross mistake by adding another link in the chain that led the liner to death: even if the Titanic had crashed into the 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 be flooded. With such damage, the liner would have remained afloat and could wait for the help of other ships.
And if Murdoch, turning the ship to the left, ordered to increase, and not decrease the speed, the collision might not have happened at all. However, frankly speaking, the order to change the speed is unlikely to play a significant role here: in thirty seconds it was hardly possible to execute it in the engine room.
So the collision happened. The iceberg damaged the ship's fragile hull along the six starboard compartments.
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 the captain's order to put women and children into the boats too literally, and did not let men go 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 the matter, and did not want to leave the huge, comfortably lit, such a reliable liner and it is not clear why they should 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 in the places on the lifeboats? The owners of the Titanic, praising the merits of the new ship, stated that they even overfulfilled the instructions of the code: instead of the required 962 rescue places, there were 1178 on the ship. Unfortunately, they did not attach any importance to the discrepancy between this number and the number of passengers on board.
It is especially bitter that not far from the sinking Titanic, another passenger steamer, the Californian, stood, waiting out the danger of ice. A few hours ago, he notified neighboring ships that he was locked in ice and forced to stop so as not to accidentally run into an ice block. The radio operator from the Titanic, who was almost stunned by the Morse code from the Californian (the ships were very close, and the signal of one was too loud in the headphones of the other), impolitely interrupted the warning: “Go to hell, you are preventing me from working!”. 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 need, and this miracle of technology aroused great interest among the wealthy public. From the very beginning of the voyage, radio operators were literally inundated with messages of a private nature - and no one saw anything reprehensible in the fact that the radio operators of the Titanic paid such attention to wealthy passengers who wished to send a telegram to the ground directly from the ship. And at that moment, when colleagues from other courts reported about floating ice, the radio operator was transmitting another message to the continent. Radio communication was more like an expensive toy than a serious tool: the ships of that time did not even have a round-the-clock watch at the radio station.
Titanic is a ship that challenged higher powers. A marvel of shipbuilding and the most big ship of his time. The builders and owners of this giant passenger fleet arrogantly declared: "The Lord God himself will not be able to sink this ship." However, the launched ship went on its maiden voyage and did not return. It was one of the largest disasters, forever included in the history of navigation. In this topic, I will talk about the most key points related to the Titanic. The topic consists of two parts, the first part is the history of the Titanic before the tragedy, where I will talk about how the ship was built and went on its fatal voyage. In the second part, we will visit the bottom of the ocean, where the remains of the drowned giant lie.
First, I will briefly talk about the history of the construction of the Titanic. There is a mass interesting photos ship, which captures the construction process, the mechanisms and units of the Titanic, and so on. And then the story will go about the tragic circumstances that were destined to happen on this fateful day for the Titanic. As always happens with major disasters, the tragedy of the Titanic was due to a series of errors that coincided on the same day. Each of these errors individually would not have entailed anything serious, but all together turned into death for the ship.
Titanic was laid down on March 31, 1909 at the shipyards of the Harland and Wolf shipbuilding company in Belfast, Northern Ireland, launched on May 31, 1911, passed sea trials on April 2, 1912. The unsinkability of the ship was ensured by 15 watertight bulkheads in the hold, creating 16 conditionally watertight compartments; the space between the bottom and the flooring of the second bottom was divided by transverse and longitudinal partitions into 46 watertight compartments. In the first photo - the slipway of the Titanic, construction is just beginning. 
The photo shows the laying of the keel of the Titanic
In this photo, the Titanic is on the slipway next to Olympic, the twin brother
And these are the huge steam engines of the Titanic 
giant crankshaft 
This photo shows the turbine rotor of the Titanic. The huge dimensions of the rotor stand out against the background of working 
Titanic propeller shaft 
Solemn photo - the body of the Titanic is completely assembled 
The launching process begins. The Titanic is slowly sinking its hull into the water. 
The giant ship almost left the stocks 
Titanic launch successful 
And now the Titanic is ready, the morning before the first official launch in Belfast 
The Titanic was officially launched and transported to England. In the photo, a ship in the port of Southampton before her fateful voyage. Few people know, but 8 workers died during the construction of the Titanic. This information is available in a selection of interesting facts about the Titanic. 
And this is the last photo of the Titanic taken from the shore in Ireland 
The first days of the journey were successful for the ship, nothing foreshadowed trouble, the ocean was completely calm. On the night of April 14, the sea remained calm, but icebergs were visible in some places in the navigation area. They did not embarrass Captain Smith ... At 11:40 pm, a cry was suddenly heard from the observation post on the mast: "Directly on the course of the iceberg!" ... Everyone knows about the further events that took place on the ship. The “unsinkable” Titanic failed to resist the water element and went to the bottom. As already mentioned, many factors turned against the Titanic that day. It was a fatal bad luck that destroyed the giant ship and more than 1500 people. 
The official conclusion of the commission investigating the causes of the sinking of the Titanic read: the steel used to sheath the Titanic's hull was of poor quality, with a large admixture of sulfur, which made it very brittle at low temperatures. If the skin had been made of high quality, low sulfur, tough steel, it would have softened the force of impact to a great extent. The metal sheets would have simply bent inward and the damage to the hull would not have been so serious. Perhaps then the Titanic would have been saved, or at least kept afloat for a long time. However, for those times this steel was considered the best, there was simply no other. This was only the final conclusion, in fact, there were a number of other factors that did not allow avoiding a collision with an iceberg 
In order, we list all the factors that influenced the death of the Titanic. The absence of any of these factors could have saved the ship...
First of all, it is worth noting the work of Titanic radio operators: the main task of telegraph operators was to serve especially wealthy passengers - it is known that in just 36 hours of work, radio operators transmitted more than 250 telegrams. Payment for telegraph services was made on the spot, in the radio room, and at that time it was not very small, and the tip flowed like a river. Radio operators were constantly busy sending telegrams, and although they received several reports of drifting ice, they were not paid attention to. 
Some criticize the lookout's lack of binoculars. The reason for this lies in the tiny key to the box with binoculars. The tiny key that opened the cabinet where the binoculars were stored could have saved the Titanic and lives 1522 dead passengers. This should have happened if not for the fatal mistake of a certain David Blair. Blair, the key keeper, was transferred from his service on the "unsinkable" liner just a few days before the ill-fated voyage, but he forgot to hand over the key to the binoculars locker to the worker who replaced him. That is why the sailors on duty on the observation tower of the liner had to rely solely on their own eyes. They saw the iceberg too late. One of the crew members on duty that fateful night later said that if they had binoculars, they would have seen the ice block earlier (even if pitch darkness reigned) and the Titanic would have had time to change course.
Despite warnings about icebergs, the captain of the Titanic did not slow down or change the route, so confident was he in the unsinkability of the ship. The speed of the steamer was too high, due to which the impact of the iceberg on the hull was of maximum force. If the captain had ordered in advance, when entering the iceberg belt, to reduce the speed of the ship, then the force of impact on the iceberg would not have been enough to break through the hull of the Titanic. The captain also did not make sure that all the boats were filled with people. As a result, a much smaller number of people were saved. 
The iceberg belonged to a rare type of so-called. "black icebergs" (turned over so that their dark underwater part hits the surface), because of which it was noticed too late. The night was windless and moonless, otherwise lookouts would have noticed the lambs around the iceberg. Pictured is the same iceberg that caused the sinking of the Titanic. 
The ship did not have red rescue rockets signaling distress. Confidence in the power of the ship was so high that it never occurred to anyone to supply the Titanic with these missiles. And everything could have worked out differently. Less than half an hour after meeting with the iceberg, the assistant captain shouted:
Lights to port, sir! The ship is five or six miles from us! Boxhall saw clearly through his binoculars that it was a single-tube steamer. He tried to contact him with a signal lamp, but the unknown vessel did not answer. “Apparently, there is no radiotelegraph on the ship, they could not see us,” Captain Smith decided, and ordered the helmsman Rowe to signal with emergency rockets. When the signalman opened the box of rockets, both Boxhall and Roe were dumbfounded: the box contained ordinary white rockets, not emergency red ones. “Sir,” Boxhall exclaimed in disbelief, “there are only white rockets here!” - Can not be! said Captain Smith in astonishment. But, making sure that Boxhall was right, he ordered: - Shoot the whites. Maybe they'll guess we're in trouble. But no one guessed, everyone thought it was fireworks on the Titanic 
The California cargo-and-passenger steamer, on a London-Boston flight, missed the Titanic on the evening of April 14, and an hour later it was covered with ice and lost speed. His radio operator Evans contacted the Titanic at about 11 p.m. and wanted to warn about the difficult ice conditions and that they were covered with ice, but the Titanic's radio operator Philippe, who had just barely established contact with Cape Race, rudely cut him off: - Leave me alone! I'm busy working with Cape Reis! And Evans "lagged behind": there was no second radio operator on the "California", the day was difficult and Evans officially closed the radio watch at 23:30, having previously reported this to the captain. As a result, all the blame for the biased investigation into the sinking of the Titanic fell on the captain of the California, Stanley Lord, who until his death proved his innocence. He was acquitted only posthumously, after Hendrik Ness, the captain of the ship Samson, testified ... 
On the map is the place where the Titanic sank
So, the night of April 14-15, 1912. Atlantic. Board of the fishing vessel "Samson". "Samson" returns from a successful fishing trip, having avoided encounters with US ships. On board are several hundred slaughtered seals. The tired crew rested. The watch was carried by the captain himself and his first assistant. Captain Ness was in good standing with his masters. The voyages of his steamer were always successful and brought a good profit. Hendrik Ness was known as an experienced and risky captain, not too scrupulous in violating territorial waters or in exceeding the number of prey animals. The Samson often found itself in alien or forbidden waters, and was well known to the ships of the US Coast Guard, with which he successfully avoided close acquaintance. In a word, Hendrik Ness was an excellent navigator and a gambling, successful businessman. Here are the words of Nessus, from which the whole picture of what is happening becomes clear:
“The night was amazing, starry, clear, the ocean is calm and gentle,” said Ness. - My assistant and I chatted, smoked, sometimes I went out of the wheelhouse to the bridge, but I didn’t stay there for a long time - the air was right chilling. Suddenly, accidentally turning around, I saw two unusually bright stars in the southern part of the horizon. They surprised me with their brilliance and size. Shouting to the officer on duty to give a spyglass, I pointed it at these stars and immediately realized that these were the top lights of a large vessel. "Captain, I think it's a Coast Guard ship," the aide said. But I have thought about it myself. There was no time to estimate on the map, but we both decided that we had climbed into the territorial waters of the United States. Meeting with their ships did not bode well for us. A few minutes later, a white rocket took off over the horizon, and we realized that we had been discovered and were required to stop. I still hoped that everything would work out and we could escape. But soon another rocket took off, after some time a third ... Things turned out badly: if we had been searched, I would have lost not only all the booty, but also, possibly, lost the ship, and we would all have ended up in prison. I decided to leave.
He ordered to turn off all the lights and give full speed. For some reason they didn't follow us. After some time, the border ship disappeared altogether. (That is why the Titanic witnesses claimed that they clearly saw a large steamer in the distance that had left them. The ill-fated California was at that time jammed with ice and was not visible from the Titanic at all.) I ordered to change course to the north, we went at full speed and only in the morning slowed down. On the twenty-fifth of April we anchored off Reykjavik in Iceland, and only then, from the newspapers delivered by the Norwegian consul, did we learn of the tragedy of the Titanic.
During a conversation with the consul, it was as if they hit me on the head: I thought - weren't we then at the crash site? As soon as the consul left our board, I immediately rushed into the cabin and, looking through the newspapers and my notes, realized that the dying people did not see the California, but us. So, it was us who called for help with rockets. But they were white, not red, emergency. Who would have thought that people were dying right next to us, and we were leaving them at full speed on our reliable and large "Samson", which had both boats and boats on board! And the sea was like a pond, quiet, calm… We could have saved them all! Everyone! Hundreds of people died there, and we saved the smelly seal skins! But who could know about it? We didn't have a radiotelegraph. On the way to Norway, I explained to the crew what had happened to us, and warned that all of us had only one thing to do - keep quiet! If they find out the truth, we will become worse than lepers: everyone will shy away from us, we will be kicked out of the fleet, no one will want to serve with us on the same ship, no one will give us a hand or a crust of bread. And none of the team took any oath.
Hendrik Ness spoke about the incident only 50 years later, before his death. Nevertheless, no one can be directly blamed for the sinking of the Titanic. If the rockets were red, he would certainly rush to the rescue. In the end, no one was able to help. Only the steamer "Carpathia", developing an unprecedented speed for her of 17 knots, rushed to the aid of dying people. Captain Arthur X. Roston ordered the preparation of beds, spare clothing, food, accommodation for the rescued. At 2 hours 45 minutes of the Carpathia, icebergs and their fragments, large ice fields began to meet. Despite the danger of collision, the Carpathia did not slow down. At 3:50 a.m. on the Carpathia they saw the first lifeboat from the Titanic, at 4:10 a.m. they began to rescue people, and by 8:30 a.m. the last living person was picked up. In total, "Carpathia" saved 705 people. And the Carpathia delivered all the rescued to New York. Pictured is a boat from the Titanic
Now let's move on to the second part of the story. Here you will see the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean in the form in which it remained after the tragedy. For seventy-three years the ship lay in its deep underwater grave as one of the countless testimonies of human carelessness. The word "Titanic" has become synonymous with doomed adventures, heroism, cowardice, upheaval and adventure. Societies and associations of surviving passengers were formed. Entrepreneurs involved in the recovery of sunken ships dreamed of lifting a superliner with all its countless riches. In 1985, a team of divers, led by American oceanographer Dr. Robert Ballard, found it, and the world became aware that under the enormous pressure of the water column giant ship broke into three parts. The wreckage of the Titanic was scattered over an area with a radius of 1600 meters. Ballard found the bow of the ship, deeply embedded in the ground under its own weight. Eight hundred meters from her lay the stern. Nearby were the ruins of the middle part of the building. Among the wreckage of the ship, a variety of objects of material culture of that distant time were lying all over the bottom: a set of copper kitchen utensils, wine bottles with corks, coffee cups with the logo of the White Star shipping line, toiletries, doorknobs, candelabra, stoves and ceramic heads dolls played with by little children... One of the most stunning underwater images captured by Dr. Ballard's movie camera was a broken davit hanging limply from the side of the ship - a silent witness to a tragic night that will forever remain on the list of world catastrophes. In the photo, the wreck of the Titanic, the picture was taken underwater vehicle"Peace" 
Over the past 19 years, the hull of the Titanic has undergone serious destruction, the reason for which was not at all sea water, and souvenir hunters, who gradually plunder the remains of the liner. So, for example, the ship's bell or mast lighthouse disappeared from the ship. In addition to direct looting, damage to the ship is caused by time and the action of bacteria, leaving behind only rusty ruins.
In this photo we see the propeller of the Titanic 
Huge ship anchor 
One of the Titanic's piston engines 
Preserved under water cup from the Titanic 
Here is the same hole formed after the meeting with the iceberg. Perhaps, in addition to weak steel, the rivets between the sheets of metal could not stand it, and water poured into the 4 compartments of the Titanic, leaving no chance of salvation. There was no point in pumping water, it was equivalent to pumping water from ocean to ocean. The Titanic sank to the bottom, where it rests to this day. There is talk of bringing the Titanic to the surface to make it a museum, while various souvenir enthusiasts continue to tear the ship apart. How many more secrets does the Titanic hold? It is unlikely that anyone will give an answer to this question in the near future .. 
April 9, 1912. "Titanic" in the port of Southampton the day before sailing for America.
April 14 marks the 105th anniversary of the legendary catastrophe. The Titanic is a British steamer of the White Star Line, the second of three Olympic-class twin steamships. The largest passenger liner in the world at the time of its construction. During the first voyage on April 14, 1912, she collided with an iceberg and sank after 2 hours and 40 minutes.
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.
Here is how the Ogonyok magazine and the New Illustration magazine talked about this tragedy:
Dining room on the Titanic, 1912
Room for second class passengers aboard the Titanic, 1912.
The main staircase of the Titanic, 1912.
Passengers on the deck of the Titanic. April, 1912
The Titanic orchestra had two members. The quintet was led by the 33-year-old British violinist Wallace Hartley, it included another violinist, double bass player and two cellists. An additional trio of musicians from a Belgian violinist, a French cellist and a pianist were hired for Titanic to give Caf? Parisien continental touch. The trio also played in the lobby of the ship's restaurant. Many passengers considered the Titanic's ship's orchestra to be the best they had ever heard on a ship. Usually, the two members of the Titanic orchestra worked independently of each other - in different parts of the liner and in different time, but on the night of the sinking of the ship, all eight musicians played together for the first time. They played the best and funniest music ever. last minutes liner life. In the photo: Musicians of the ship's orchestra "Titanic".
Hartley's body was found two weeks after the sinking of the Titanic and sent to England. A violin was tied to his chest - a gift from the bride.
There were no survivors among the other members of the orchestra ... One of the rescued passengers of the Titanic will write later: “Many heroic deeds were committed that night, but none of them could compare with the feat of these few musicians who played hour after hour, although the ship sank deeper and deeper, and the sea crept up to the place where they stood. The music they played gave them the right to be listed as heroes. eternal glory". In the photo: The funeral of the conductor and violinist of the ship's orchestra "Titanic" Wallace Hartley. April 1912.
The iceberg that the Titanic is believed to have collided with. The photo was taken from the Mackay Bennett, a cable ship operated by Captain DeCarteret. The ship "Mackay Bennett" was one of the first to arrive at the site of the Titanic disaster. According to Captain DeCarteret, it was the only iceberg near the crash site of the ocean liner.
Lifeboat "Titanic", filmed by one of the passengers of the ship "Carpathia". April, 1912
The rescue ship Carpathia picked up 712 survivors of the Titanic. Photo taken by Carpathia passenger Louis M. Ogden shows lifeboats that are approaching the Carpathia.
April 22, 1912. Brothers Michel (4 years old) and Edmond (2 years old). They were considered "orphans of the Titanic" until their mother was found in France. My father died in a plane crash.
Michel died in 2001, the last male survivor on the Titanic.
A group of rescued Titanic passengers aboard the Carpathia.
Another group of rescued passengers of the Titanic.
Captain Edward John Smith (second from right) with the ship's crew.
Drawing of the sinking Titanic after the disaster.
Passenger ticket for the Titanic. April 1912.
On April 14, 1912 at 11:40 p.m., the Titanic collided with an iceberg. As a result of a sliding collision with an ice block, the lining of the starboard side of the giant ship was damaged for a distance of one hundred meters, and water began to flow into five watertight compartments of the Titanic. In the sixth compartment, the leak was insignificant. But the 16 compartments into which the hold was divided, although they were considered watertight, their bulkheads were not hermetically connected to the decks from above, and the water overflowed into the other as one compartment was filled. This explains the gradually increasing trim (tilt of the ship in the longitudinal plane) on the bow of the Titanic, which ultimately led to the death of the giant.
However, this is precisely the sinister charm of this story, that not everyone agrees with the official version of death. There are other versions - one more bizarre than the other.
Let's start with the fact that at present the official version is considered to be this: the ship died not just because of a collision with an iceberg, but because of the high speed with which the Titanic was going.
And now - alternative versions, each of which has its adherents in the world club of mystery lovers.
1. A fire in the coal compartment that arose even before sailing and provoked an explosion first, and then a collision with an iceberg.
This one has existed for a long time, but one of the experts who has devoted more than 20 years to studying the history of the Titanic, Ray Boston, has put forward new evidence for this theory. According to him, the fire in the sixth hold of the ship broke out on April 2, and it was not possible to extinguish it. The owner of the ship, John Pierpont Morgan, decided that the Titanic would quickly get to New York, disembark the passengers, and then the fire would be extinguished. The ship went to sea with a fire on board, and during the voyage there was an explosion. The high speed of the Titanic at night, when the danger of collision with ice was especially high, can be explained by the fears of Captain Edward John Smith that his ship would blow up before reaching New York. Despite numerous ice warnings from other ships, Smith did not slow down, causing the Titanic to collide with an iceberg.
2. Conspiracy theory: this is not the Titanic at all! This version was put forward by Robin Gardiner and Dan Van Der Watt, experts in the study of the reasons for the death of the ship, published in the book “The Titanic Mystery”. According to this theory, the wreck is not the Titanic at all, but its twin brother, the Olympic. These boats were virtually indistinguishable from each other. On September 20, 1911, the Olympic collided with the British Navy cruiser Hawke, resulting in severe damage to both ships. The owners of Olimpik suffered heavy losses, since the damage that was inflicted on Olimpik was not enough to cover the insurance payment. The theory is based on the assumption of a possible fraud in order to obtain insurance payments by the owners of the Titanic. According to this version, the owners of the Titanic intended to send the Olympic to the area of possible ice formation and at the same time convinced the captain not to slow down so that the ship would be seriously damaged when it collided with an ice block. 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 would bear the name Titanic. This theory was refuted after parts were raised to the surface, on which the Titanic's tail (building) number was stamped - 401. The Olympic had a tail number of 400. In addition, the Titanic's minted tail number was discovered and on the propeller of a sunken ship. And even despite this, the conspiracy theory still has a number of followers.
3. The Titanic was torpedoed by a German submarine. There is a version that the Titanic sank not at all from the damage that the iceberg inflicted on it, but from a torpedo fired by a German submarine, and in order to receive the same insurance payment. And the commander of the submarine, who agreed to be a participant in the scam, was a relative of one of the owners of the Titanic. But this theory does not have strong arguments in its favor. If the torpedo somehow damaged the hull of the Titanic, this would not have gone unnoticed by both passengers and crew members.
4. Mystical version: the 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 - soothsayer. Since the mummy had a rather 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 sailed, 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 a clouding of the mind, as a result of which people committed inappropriate actions, there were often cases of suicide. Pharaohs had a hand in the sinking of the Titanic?
5. Steering error. One of the latest versions of the death of the Titanic deserves special attention. It appeared after the novel by the granddaughter of the second mate of the captain of the Titanic, Ch. Lightoller, Lady Patten, “Worth its weight in gold”, was published. According to the version put forward by Patten in his book, the ship had enough time to dodge the obstacle, but the helmsman, Robert Hitchens, panicked and turned the helm in the wrong direction. A catastrophic error caused the iceberg to inflict fatal damage on the ship. The truth about what really happened on that fateful night was kept secret in the family of Lightoller, the oldest surviving officer of the Titanic and the only survivor who knew exactly what caused the sinking of the ship. Lightoller withheld this information for 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 passed on 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 a collision 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 the manager of the White Star Line, Bruce Ismay, persuaded the captain to continue sailing. He feared that the incident could cause considerable material damage to the company he leads.
6. The pursuit of the Blue Ribbon of the Atlantic. There were and still are many supporters of this theory, especially among writers, since it appeared precisely in writers' circles. The Blue Ribbon of the Atlantic is a prestigious shipping award given to ocean liners for the record speed across the North Atlantic. At the time of the Titanic, this prize was given to the Mauritania ship 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, the opinion is put forward 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 allegedly explains the high speed of the ship in the dangerous area of the Atlantic. But this theory can easily be refuted, because the Titanic simply physically could not reach the speed of 26 knots at which the Mauritania of the Cunard company set a record, which, by the way, lasted more than 10 years after the disaster in the Atlantic.
