In April 110 years ago the Titanic set sail. On her maiden voyage on April 14, 1912, the Titanic collided with an iceberg en route from Southampton to New York. She sank two hours and 40 minutes later, killing 1,514 of the 2,200 people on board. Since the wreck of the Titanic was found in the North Atlantic in 1985, numerous myths have been clarified or corrected.
The Titanic was the largest ship of its time
That is only partly true. When the Titanic was built in Belfast, it was the same size as the ‘Olympic’, which was built ten months earlier and was a sister ship to the Titanic. Both ships were 269 meters long. Five weeks after the sinking of the Titanic, the “Imperator” was completed in Hamburg. This ship had a length of 276 meters.
The Titanic sailed around the “Blue Ribbon”
One of the most popular legends surrounding the Titanic is that the White Star Line attempted to win the Blue Riband on the maiden voyage for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic. But that’s not true. The “Mauretania” held the prize for the fastest Atlantic crossing. The Titanic couldn’t compete with her. With 51,000 hp instead of 78,000, it was a whole day slower. “The Titanic owners opted for luxury,” says Dortmund professor Metin Tolan, who wrote the book “Titanic: With Physics to Sin”. “The journey should be so pleasant that one would like to be on board a little longer.”
There were too few lifeboats on board
In fact, the Titanic even had more lifeboats on board than the laws of the time required. The lifeboats had room for 1178 people, according to the regulations the Titanic should have provided only 900 places. Nevertheless, there were far too few to offer a place for each of the more than 2200 people on board. With so many passengers, the regulations of the time were simply outdated.
The Titanic went way too far north
That’s not true. In fact, there was a winter route and a summer route. The latter was shorter, but further north and thus closer to possible icebergs. However, the Titanic drove on the southern winter line – and after an ice warning even a little further south than usual. Nevertheless, the fateful collision with the iceberg, which was much further away from the Arctic Ocean than would have been expected at this time of year, took place.
Titanic’s route and where it collided with the iceberg:
Missing binoculars
The claim that the sailors in the crow’s nest (lookout on the ship’s forward mast) did not have binoculars is correct. In the dark night and in the cold wind, they had to search the sea for obstacles with their naked eyes. The binoculars had apparently been locked in a cupboard by second officer David Blair, who was originally assigned. In the end, Blair didn’t even board the ship, so no one knew where the binoculars were hidden.
The Titanic was sliced through dozens of meters by the iceberg
That’s not true. That would also not be physically possible, after all, steel is harder than ice. The problem was different: the ice pressed against the outer wall of the ship so hard that rivets came loose and cracks formed. “There wasn’t a big leak, but lots of small ones spread out 100 feet across the ship’s first six compartments. The leaks in the Titanic were a mere one square meter – not much more than an open newspaper,” says Tolan.
Most of the first class passengers were rescued
That’s not true either. Above all, women and children were saved, regardless of their class. The survival rate for the men in the first class was higher than for the third class, but that was for completely different reasons: “They were higher up, were educated and spoke English,” says Tolan. Before the people below realized what was going on, it was too late for some. “But to speak of a deliberate preference for the higher classes is simply nonsense. Because at only eight percent, the fewest men survived in the second class. Even in the third class, twice as many survived at 16 percent,” says Tolan.
The Titanic broke up
Anyone who has seen James Cameron’s 1997 box office hit Titanic will be familiar with the scene when the ship breaks apart and then sinks. And that’s actually how it happened. “Physically, she couldn’t do anything else. After two hours, there were 40,000 tons of water in the bow, but the whole stern also weighed 10,000 tons. That’s why it tore apart in the middle. The ship wasn’t built for such a load,” says Tolan . Nevertheless, the Titanic sank “exemplarily” over the bow: “Had it capsized, far fewer people could have been saved.”
Titanic’s fourth flue was a dummy
That’s actually true. The rear funnel was added because, in the eyes of contemporaries, such a large ship simply had to have four flues. But it wasn’t just for show, it was used for ventilation.
The music played until the end
There is a lot of speculation surrounding this myth. It will probably no longer be possible to determine with certainty whether this actually happened. Many survivors later reported that the musicians played until shortly before the sinking to calm the people on board. None of them survived. There is also speculation about the last piece played by the band. While some survivors thought they remembered the hymn “Nearer, my God, to thee,” others mentioned the hymn “Autumn,” a popular song at the time. The body of one band member, Wallace Hartley, was recovered two weeks after the accident: his music box, which he used as an instrument, was still around his neck.
The sinking could have been prevented
In theory, at least, that’s true. When the iceberg was detected, it was only 300 meters away. First Officer William Murdoch attempted to “skip” the iceberg. However, there wasn’t enough time for that. If the Titanic had rammed the iceberg head-on, the damage would have been much more severe, but would have been limited to the front 30 meters of the ship. In the worst case, the forward three compartments would have been flooded, which would not have endangered the ship’s buoyancy. However, this would have been a very unusual order: a large number of crew members who had their quarters in the bow would have lost their lives.
Source: Nachrichten
