The Titanic is a true disaster story. History of the Titanic: Past and Present

You have already read and heard about the Titanic many times. The history of the creation and crash of the liner is overgrown with rumors and myths. For more than 100 years, the British steamship has been haunting the minds of people trying to find the answer - why did the Titanic sink?

The history of the legendary liner is interesting for three reasons:

• it was the largest ship for 1912;
• the number of victims turned the catastrophe into a global failure;
• finally, James Cameron, with his film, singled out the history of the liner from the general list of maritime disasters, and there were quite a few of them.

We will tell you everything about the Titanic, as it was in reality. About how long the Titanic is in meters, how much the Titanic sank, and who was really behind the massive disaster.

Where did the Titanic sail from and to?

We know from Cameron's film that the liner was bound for New York. The American up-and-coming city was to be the final stop. But far from everyone knows for sure where the Titanic sailed from, considering that London was the starting point. The capital of Great Britain was not in the ranks of seaports, and therefore the steamer could not leave from there.

The fateful flight began from Southampton, a major English port, from where transatlantic flights ran. The path of the Titanic on the map clearly shows the movement. Southampton is both a port and a city located in the southern part of England (Hampshire).

See how the route of the Titanic ran on the map:

Dimensions of the Titanic in meters

To understand more about the Titanic, the causes of the disaster must be disclosed, starting with the dimensions of the ship.

How many meters is the Titanic in length and in other dimensions:

exact length - 299.1 m;

width - 28.19 m;

height from the keel - 53.3 m.

There is also such a question - how many decks did the Titanic have? Only 8. Boats were located on the top, therefore the upper deck was called the boat deck. The rest were distributed according to the letter designation.

A - deck I class. Its peculiarity is limited in size - it did not lie down the entire length of the vessel;

B - anchors were located in the front of the deck and its dimensions were also shorter - by 37 meters of deck C;

C - deck with a galley, a mess for the crew and a promenade for class III.

D - walking area;

E - cabins I, II classes;

F - cabins II and III classes;

G - deck with boiler rooms in the middle.

Finally, how much does the Titanic weigh? The displacement of the largest ship of the early 20th century is 52,310 tons.

Titanic: the story of the crash

What year did the Titanic sink? The famous disaster occurred on the night of April 14, 1912. It was the fifth day of the trip. Chronicles indicate that at 23:40 the liner survived a collision with an iceberg and after 2 hours 40 minutes (2:20 a.m.) it went under water.

Things from the Titanic: photo

Further investigations showed that the crew received 7 weather warnings, but this did not prevent the ship from reducing its speed limit. The iceberg was sighted directly ahead of us too late to take precautions. As a result - holes in the starboard side. Ice damaged 90 m of hull and 5 bow compartments. This was enough to sink the liner.

Tickets for the new liner were more expensive than for other ships. If a person was used to traveling in first class, then on the Titanic he would have to transfer to second class.

Edward Smith, the captain of the ship, began the evacuation after midnight: a distress call was sent, the attention of other ships was attracted by flares, lifeboats went to the water. But the rescue was slow and uncoordinated - there was an empty place in the boats while the Titanic was sinking, the water temperature did not rise above two degrees below zero, and the first steamer arrived in time only half an hour after the disaster.

Titanic: how many people died and survived

How many people survived on the Titanic? No one will say the exact data, as they could not say this on the fateful night. The list of Titanic passengers initially changed in practice, but not on paper: some canceled the trip at the time of departure and were not crossed out, others traveled anonymously under assumed names, and others were listed as dead on the Titanic several times.

Photos of the sinking of the Titanic

It is only approximately possible to say how many people drowned on the Titanic - about 1500 (minimum 1490 - maximum 1635). Among them was Edward Smith with some assistants, 8 musicians from the famous orchestra, large investors and businessmen.

Classiness was felt even after death - the bodies of the dead from the first class were embalmed and placed in coffins, the second and third classes were given bags and boxes. When the embalming agents ran out, the bodies of unknown third-class passengers were simply thrown into the water (according to the rules, unembalmed corpses could not be brought to the port).

The bodies were found within a radius of 80 km from the crash site, and due to the current of the Gulf Stream, many were dispersed even further.

Photos of dead people

Initially, it was known how many passengers were on the Titanic, although not completely:

crew of 900 people;

195 first class;

255 second class;

493 people of the third class.

Some passengers left at intermediate ports, some called. It is believed that the liner went to the fatal route with a staff of 1317 people, of which 124 are children.

Titanic: scuttling depth - 3750 m

The English steamer could accommodate 2,566 people, of which 1,034 seats were for first-class passengers. The half-load of the liner is due to the fact that transatlantic flights were not popular in April. At that time, a coal strike broke out, this disrupted coal supplies, schedules and changes in plans.

The question of how many people escaped from the Titanic was difficult to answer because the rescue operations took place from different ships, and the slow connection did not provide fast data.

After the crash, only 2/3 of the delivered bodies were identified. Some were buried locally, the rest were sent home. In the disaster area, bodies in white vests were found for a long time. Of the 1,500 people who died, only 333 bodies were found.

How deep is the Titanic

When answering the question about the depth at which the Titanic sank, one must remember about the pieces carried by the currents (by the way, they learned about this only in the 80s, before that it was believed that the liner sank to the bottom entirely). The wreckage of the liner on the night of the crash went at a depth of 3750 m. The bow was thrown 600 m from the stern.

The place where the Titanic sank, on the map:

In which ocean did the Titanic sink? - in the Atlantic.

Titanic lifted from the bottom of the ocean

They wanted to raise the ship from the moment of the crash. Initiative plans were put forward by relatives of the dead from the first class. But 1912 did not yet know the necessary technologies. The war, lack of knowledge and funds delayed the search for the sunken ship for a hundred years. Since 1985, 17 expeditions have been carried out, during which 5,000 items and large plating have been raised to the surface, but the ship itself has remained at the bottom of the ocean.

What does the Titanic look like now?

In the time since the crash, the ship has become covered in marine life. Rust, painstaking work of invertebrates and natural decomposition processes have changed the structures beyond recognition. By this time, the bodies had already completely decomposed, and by the 22nd century, only anchors and boilers, the most massive metal structures, would remain from the Titanic.

Even now the interiors of the decks have been destroyed, the cabins and halls have collapsed.

Titanic, Britannic and Olympic

All three ships were manufactured by the Harland and Wolf shipbuilding company. Before the Titanic, the Olympic saw the world. It is easy to see a fatal predisposition in the fate of the three ships. The first liner was wrecked as a result of a collision with a cruiser. Not such a large-scale disaster, but still an impressive failure.

Then the story of the Titanic, which received a wide response in the world, and, finally, the Gigantic. They tried to make this ship especially durable, given the mistakes of previous liners. He was even launched into the water, but the First World War disrupted the plans. The giant became a hospital ship called the Britannic.

He then just managed to carry out 5 quiet flights, and on the sixth there was a disaster. Having been blown up by a German mine, the Britannic rapidly sank. The mistakes of the past and the preparedness of the captain made it possible to save the maximum number of people - 1036 out of 1066.

Is it possible to talk about evil fate, remembering the Titanic? The history of the creation and crash of the liner were studied in detail, the facts were revealed, even through time. And yet the truth is only now being revealed. The reason the Titanic is attracting attention is to hide its true motive - to create a currency system and destroy opponents.

The Titanic is a British transatlantic steamship, the second Olympic-class liner. 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.

• The entire power plant 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 first-class interiors, 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 decorated as simply as possible: steel walls were painted white 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 sank, killing more than 4,000 people, the death of the Titanic remained the largest in terms of the number of deaths at sea in peacetime. Informally, it is the most famous disaster of the 20th 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 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.

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. 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?

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. The Blue Ribbon of the 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 Mauretania 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, urged 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.

But how was it really?

Regrettably, but, studying the history of the most famous maritime disaster, one has to admit that the Titanic owes its death to a long chain of 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 quay 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 through areas dangerous by ice without slowing down: it was like crossing the road at a red light: it’s like, 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. Maybe 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 was not clear 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 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 Titanic radio operators paid such attention to wealthy passengers who wished to send a telegram to the ground directly from the ship. So at that moment, when colleagues from other ships reported on floating ice, the radio operator transmitted 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.

The reason for the collapse of the largest ocean liner of its time, the Titanic, could be a fire in the fuel storage.

The tragic legend of the Titanic

According to the British journalist Shannon Moloney, who studied the history of the ship for thirty years, the fire on board started even before the ship left Southampton, and they unsuccessfully tried to extinguish it for several weeks. During this time, the lining of the liner heated up, which is why the collision with the iceberg ended so badly.

According to The Independent newspaper, the journalist succeeded in making before the start of the Titanic's journey. Moloney found traces of soot in the area of ​​the skin, which was subsequently damaged due to a collision with an iceberg. According to experts, with a high probability they arose due to a fire in one of the liner's fuel storage facilities.

According to the researcher, the owners of the ship knew about the fire, but hid this fact from the passengers. The team was also ordered to keep quiet about the fire. According to Shannon Moloney, as a result of exposure to fire, the ship's skin heated up to a temperature of about 1000 degrees Celsius, which made the steel, which had lost up to 75 percent of its strength, extremely brittle.

According to the journalist, when on the fifth day of the trip the Titanic collided with an iceberg, the skin could not stand it, a huge hole appeared in the board. Therefore, the iceberg cannot be considered the only culprit of the disaster that claimed the lives of more than 1500 people on April 15, 1912.

Note, "" belonged to the British company "White Star Line". At the time of construction, it was considered the largest passenger liner in the world, and, in addition, it was considered unsinkable. May 31, 1911 the liner was launched. "The Lord himself cannot sink this ship!" - said about the ship its captain Edward John Smith.

A little over a year later, the Titanic set off on its maiden voyage. There were 2224 people on board: 1316 passengers and 908 crew members. On April 14, 1912, the ship collided with an iceberg and sank 2 hours and 40 minutes later. 711 people were saved, 1513 died ...

With icebergs, too, everything is not so simple. Typically, Greenland icebergs get stuck in shallow waters off the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland and only swim further south after they have melted thoroughly, often under the influence of the tides. However, in the case of the Titanic, several large icebergs managed to swim far south at once.

Physicist Donald Olson of the University of Texas (USA) and his colleagues investigated the hypothesis of oceanographer Fergus Wood, who claimed that the icebergs were lifted ashore by the tide in January 1912, when the Moon was unusually close to the Earth. By mid-April, the fatal ice mountain had reached the collision site.

Indeed, says Olson, on January 4, 1912, the Moon approached the Earth at its closest distance in the last 1,400 years. On the eve of the Earth as close as possible to the Sun. The Moon and the Sun found themselves in such a position when their mutual gravitational influence on the Earth increased. Obeying the force of the tide, the killer iceberg broke off from Greenland and set off.

At the same time, one of the biggest mysteries associated with the death of the Titanic is the more than frivolous behavior of the liner's captain, Edward Smith. An experienced sea wolf, who repeatedly plowed the waters of the North Atlantic, for some reason did not pay attention to the warning about approaching icebergs. Perhaps he simply did not believe the information about them.

Although it could be something else. The hypothesis, which radically changes the history of the catastrophe, belongs to two researchers - amateur Robin Gardner (a plasterer by profession) and historian Dan Van der Wat. After studying the archives of the navy for 50 years, they came to the conclusion that it was not the Titanic that actually died, but another ship - the Olympic! The latter was built almost simultaneously with the Titanic and at the same shipyards. But from the very first days, this ship was haunted by trouble. When it was launched on October 20, 1910, it crashed into a dam. The owner of the ship, Bruce Ismay, and the owner of the Harland and Wolf shipyards, Lord Pirrie, were forced to pay a considerable amount for repairs and damages, which almost ruined them.

While sailing, "Olympic" repeatedly got into accidents. After that, not a single insurance company undertook to insure the "damned ship." And then Ismay and Pirrie conceived the "scam of the century" - to send the Olympic under the name of "Titanic" to sail across the Atlantic and, when it crashed, get insurance for it - 52 million pounds sterling!

The owners had no doubt that their plan would succeed. To protect the passengers, they intended to send another ship along the same route, which, supposedly by accident, would pick up passengers and crew. But, in order not to arouse any suspicion, the shipowners decided that the "rescue" ship would leave the pier no earlier than a week after the start of navigation. Alas, I had to wait only three days ...

The captain of the imaginary "Titanic" Edward John Smith was ready to fulfill any order from his superiors. So, a few hours before the tragedy, binoculars were confiscated from the on-duty observers. And a few minutes before the crash, Smith allegedly ordered the liner to be turned sideways towards the iceberg. It seemed like he was trying to ensure disaster!

The further history of the Titanic (or the pseudo-Titanic) is known to us. What happened to the real Titanic? According to Gardner and van der Wat, under a different name, he sailed safely, first as part of the Royal Navy, then he was acquired by the White Star Line. The ship was taken ashore in 1935.

Is it "his" death (or the ship that everyone took for the "Titanic")? Or was he "helped" to crash? This we will most likely never know. Of course, both the "conspiracy theory" and the "moon hypothesis" are nothing more than versions. But the fact remains: the Titanic sank. And, no matter what led to its death, we are no longer able to change the tragic fate of this ship ...

Did the "Titanic" (or the ship that everyone took for the "Titanic") die by "his" death? Or was he "helped" to crash? This we will most likely never know. Of course, both the "conspiracy theory" and the "moon hypothesis" are nothing more than versions. But the fact remains: the Titanic sank. And, no matter what led to its death, we are no longer able to change the tragic fate of this ship ...

About the terrible death of a luxury liner Titanic in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean everyone knows. Hundreds of people distraught with fear, heart-rending female cries and children's crying. Third-class passengers buried alive at the bottom of the ocean are on the lower deck and millionaires choosing the best seats in half-empty lifeboats are on the upper, prestigious deck of the ship. But only a select few knew that the sinking of the Titanic was planned, and the death of hundreds of women and children was another fact in a cynical political game.

April 10, 1912 Port of Southampton, England. Thousands of people in the port of Southampton gathered to see the liner Titanic, on board of which 2000 lucky people went on a romantic trip across the Atlantic. The cream of society gathered on the passenger deck - mining magnate Benjamin Guggenheim, millionaire John Astor, actress Dorothy Gibson. Not everyone could afford to buy a first class ticket for $3,300 at the prices of that time, or $60,000 at the prices of today. Passengers of the 3rd class paid only 35 dollars (650 dollars in terms of our money), therefore they lived on the third deck, not having the right to go upstairs, where the millionaires were accommodated.

Tragedy Titanic still remains the largest peacetime maritime disaster. The circumstances of the death of 1,500 people are still shrouded in mystery.

The archives of the British Navy confirm that for some reason there were half as many boats on the Titanic as needed, and the captain knew even before the collision that there would not be enough seats for all the passengers.

The crew of the ship ordered first to rescue passengers of the 1st class. One of the first to board a lifeboat was Bruce Ismay, CEO of the company. White Star Line", which belonged Titanic. The boat in which Ismay sat was designed for 40 people, but she left the side with only twelve.

The lower deck, where there were 1,500 people, was ordered to be locked so that third-class passengers would not burst upstairs to the boats. Panic broke out below. People saw how water began to flow into the cabins, but the captain had an order to save rich passengers. The order - only women and children, was made much later, and according to experts, the sailors were primarily interested in this, since in this case they became rowers on boats and they had a chance of salvation.

Many passengers of the second and third classes, without waiting for the boats, threw themselves overboard in life jackets. In a panic, few people understood that it is almost impossible to survive in icy water.

sinking of the titanic

In the list of passengers of the third class, which only recently became public, the name of Winni Goutts (Winnie Couts), a modest Englishwoman with two sons, appears. In New York, the woman was waiting for her husband, who a few months earlier got a job in America. It will seem incredible, but 88 years later, on February 3, 1990, Icelandic fishermen picked up a woman with that name on the shore. Wet, frozen in tattered clothes, she cried and screamed that she was a passenger Titanic and her name is Winnie Couts. The woman was taken to a psychiatric hospital and for a long time was mistaken for a madwoman, until one of the journalists found her name in the handwritten lists of Titanic passengers. She described the chronology of events in detail and never got confused. The mystics immediately put forward their version - they fell into the so-called space-time trap.

After the declassification of the archives Investigation into the death of 1,500 passengers on the Titanic» On July 20, 2008, the Senate Commission of Inquiry learned that on the night of the disaster, almost 200 passengers managed to board boats and sail away from the sinking ship. Some of them describe a strange phenomenon. At about one in the morning, passengers saw a large luminous object near the liner. The men thought that these were the lights of another ship. R.M.S. Carpathia", which can save them. About 10 boats sailed to this light, but after half an hour the lights went out. It turned out that there was no ship nearby, and the liner " R.M.S. Carpathia Came only after 1 hour. Many eyewitnesses described strange lights observed near the site. wreck of the titanic. These testimonies were classified.

Anomalous events around sinking of the Titanic have been carefully hidden for a long time. It is known that no one could officially confirm the identity of Winnie Couts.

In the ranking of the largest maritime disasters of the XX century published by the popular Internet publication Titanic occupies by no means the last place. However, in the column "Cause of death - a collision with an iceberg", it appears in this list only once. The first and last case in the history of navigation when a ship sank due to a collision with an iceberg. Moreover, the consequences of the collision are comparable to the results of a major military operation. What is this?

The official version of the disaster says that Titanic collided with a black iceberg that had recently capsized in the water and was therefore invisible against the night sky. No one has ever wondered why the iceberg was black. The lookout on duty Frederick Fleet, a few seconds before the collision, saw some huge dark mass and heard a strange, very loud rattle coming from under the water, not like the sound of contact with an iceberg.

After 80 years, Russian researchers, having descended to the Titanic for the first time, confirmed that the hull of the ship was indeed cut. Why did the lookouts not notice anything in advance. This is surprising, but they did not have binoculars, that is, formally they were in the safe, but the key to it mysteriously disappeared. And one more strange detail - Titanic the most perfect of the beginning of the 20th century was not equipped with searchlights. Such carelessness looks, at least, strange, because on Titanic telegrams came in all day warning of icebergs plying in the area.

After weighing all the events and facts, it seems that the Titanic disaster was prepared on purpose, but who benefited from the death Titanic and why hundreds of innocent people were drowned. It was clear to the people behind the largest catastrophe of the century that not everyone would believe in a collision with an iceberg. Until now, we are offered many versions to choose from, whoever likes what.

For example, in order to receive an insurance payment, they flooded not Titanic, and the same type of passenger ship Olympic, which was operated for a long time and by 1912 was pretty dilapidated. But in 1995, Russian scientists refuted this assumption with the help of remote-controlled modules introduced inside the sunken ship. It has been proven that it is not the Olympic that lies at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

Then a version was thrown into print that Titanic sank in pursuit of the prestigious Blue Ribbon of the Atlantic award. Allegedly, the captain wanted to arrive at the port of New York a day ahead of schedule in order to receive the prize. Because of this, the ship was moving in a dangerous area at maximum speed. The authors of this version completely overlooked the fact that Titanic just technically could not reach the speed of 26 knots, at which the previous record was set.

They also talked about the mistake of the helmsman, who misunderstood the captain's order, and being in a stressful situation, put the steering wheel in the wrong direction.

maybe Titanic was hit by a torpedo from a German submarine and this disaster actually became the first episode of the First World War. Numerous underwater studies subsequently did not find even indirect signs of a possible torpedo hit, so the fire became the most plausible version of the death of the Titanic.

On the eve of departure, a fire broke out in the hold of the liner, where coal was stored. They tried to put it out, but not successfully. The richest people of that time, cinema stars, the press, an orchestra were already gathered on the pier. The flight could not be cancelled. The owner of the ship, Bruce Ismay, decided to go to New York and try to put out the fire along the way. That is why the captain drove at full speed, fearing with all his might that the ship was about to explode and ignored the message about icebergs.

Another oddity is the owner of the company " White Star Line", which belonged Titanic multimillionaire John Pierpont Morgan, Jr., canceled his ticket 24 hours before departure and removed the famous collection of paintings from the flight, which he was going to take to New York. In addition to Morgan, another 55 first-class passengers refused to travel on the Titanic in just one day, mostly partners and acquaintances of the millionaire - John Rockefeller, Henry Frick, US Ambassador to France Alfred Vandelfield. Previously, this fact was not given almost any importance, but only recently scientists compared certain facts and came to the conclusion that the Titanic was the first major catastrophe aimed at establishing world domination.

Billionaires rule the world, whose goal is unlimited power. The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center are links in the same chain. The sinking of the Titanic not the first and not the last planned disaster. But why did the world government decide to flood Titanic. The answer is to be found in the events of the early 20th century. It was during these years that the sharp growth of industry began - the gasoline engine, the incredible development of aviation, industrialization, the use of electricity in all industries, the experiments of Nikola Tesla, and so on. World financial leaders understood scientific and technological progress, which could soon blow up the world order on planet Earth. John Rockefeller, John Pierpont Morgan, Karl Mayer Rothschild, Henry Ford, who are the world government, understood that following the rapid growth of industry, countries would begin to develop, which in their world concept were assigned the role of only raw material appendages, and then the redistribution of property on the planet would begin, and control over the processes taking place in the world will be lost.

Every year the socialists declared themselves more and more, trade unions gained strength, crowds of protesters demanded freedom and independence. And then it was decided to remind humanity who is the boss in the world.

In the mid-90s, Russian scientists dived to the Titanic and took samples of the metal, which was then analyzed by specialists from the American Institute. The results were truly stunning - by the sulfur content, it was found that it was an ordinary metal. And later studies showed that the metal was not just the same as on other ships, it was of much worse quality, and in icy water it generally turned into a very fragile material. In the autumn of 1993, an event occurred that put an end to the study of the causes of death Titanic. At the New York Conference of American shipbuilding experts, the results of an independent analysis of the causes of the disaster were announced. Experts say they don't understand why such poor quality steel was used for the hull of the world's most expensive ship. In cold water, the hull of the Titanic cracked at the first impact on an insignificant obstacle, while high-quality steel only deforms.

Experts believed that in this way the owners of the shipbuilding company were trying to save money, but it never occurred to anyone to ask why the billionaire owners of the ship cut costs, endangering their own safety. And everything is quite logical, it was a real diversion. Fragile metal, cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean and a dangerous route. It only remained to wait for the SOS signal from the crashed Titanic. During the investigation of the circumstances of the disaster, the US Judicial Commission proved that the northern route that the Titanic was on was chosen by order of Bruce Ismay. He was on board the ship, but was one of the first to be evacuated and safely waited for the arrival. R.M.S. Carpathia", which also belonged to the company" White Star Line” and was specially located nearby to save wealthy passengers. But " R.M.S. Carpathia"an order was given, is not too close, because the disaster was supposed to be a frightening action for the whole world.

Now we can say with certainty sinking of the titanic it was an elaborate propaganda move. Millions of people around the world were shocked by the fate of third-class passengers buried alive, they remained immured in their cabins.

In the eyes of the world government, third-class passengers are you and me - Russia, China, Ukraine and the Middle East, and in December 2012 they are preparing a new act of intimidation for us, but which one. It remains only to wait, and not for long.

Watch National Geographic's reconstruction of the sinking of the Titanic

Initially, the second part of the post was supposed to be mostly textual, describing the causes and circumstances of the death of the ship, as well as some interesting facts from its history. Unfortunately, the story of the death of the Titanic has already become so overgrown with myths and tales (about "poor-quality" steel in the hull plating or, for example, about the conscious sloppiness of the crew of the Californian steamship, which was near the crash site and did not come to the rescue) that some publications on the Web sometimes scary to read. I tried to outline as concisely as possible the main points regarding the causes of the disaster, and also made an additional emphasis on those things that over the years have acquired various myths.
After reading the readers' comments on the first part, I also added a number of historical pictures excluded from the first part to the end of the post, and at the same time I remembered two classic newsreels of the Titanic and the Olympic. If you have not read it, then for a better understanding of the text below, I recommend that you read it.

Why did the Titanic sink?

To this seemingly banal question, a simple answer was not immediately received. Yes, the Titanic sank due to a collision with an iceberg, and it is useless to deny this fact. The ship, contrary to common sense, was moving towards the ice field at a speed of over 20 knots and received numerous damages on the starboard side. We will return to common sense a little later, but for now let's discuss the nature of the collision and damage, disputes regarding which began immediately after the disaster.

1. The iceberg that the Titanic most likely collided with. This photograph was taken on April 15, 1912 by one of the stewards of the German ship Prince Albert near the sinking of the Titanic. The attention of the steward was attracted by a large brown strip at the base of the iceberg, confirming a recent collision with some kind of vessel.

Everyone knows that when colliding with an iceberg, the Titanic tried to avoid a collision with a bow maneuver to the left, and then from a collision with a stern maneuver to the right. This simple and natural maneuver is actually the worst thing that could have been done in that situation. In the manual on the art of navigation of 1910, which was widely popular among the officers of the Atlantic, it was written that in such cases it is better either to do nothing at all, or to put your nose in danger. The reasons are obvious: in the event of a nose strike, a couple of watertight compartments are damaged, there are victims, but this helps to avoid larger damage, and therefore larger potential victims. First mate William Murdoch, who gave the command, knew about these recommendations as well as other officers of the Titanic. Moreover, in Murdoch's track record there were cases that characterized him as a person capable of instantly making the most correct decision of all possible in a critical situation. Now one can only guess what prompted Murdoch to give the command to perform just such a maneuver: perhaps he did not have time to fully appreciate how close the iceberg was, perhaps he was influenced by general euphoria, and he subconsciously opposed the very possibility of a collision of a new ship with an iceberg. Or perhaps he overly relied on the maneuverability of the Titanic, which by that time had not been fully studied.

The Titanic's rudder was located behind the middle propeller, which was driven by a new type of steam turbine (the other two screws were rotated by familiar steam engines). Before the collision with the iceberg, the command "Full astern" was received, and the cars began to stop. In addition to the fact that the steering thrust of the vessel, even with working propellers, was not the best for fast maneuvering, in the case of stopping propellers, it became even worse. If we assume that in the 37 seconds that elapsed between the discovery of the iceberg and the collision, the cars managed to stop and switch to reverse mode, the steering thrust should have dropped to a minimum also because the steam turbine could not rotate backward. Those. in the case of the "full back" command, only the side screws were transferred to the reverse, and the middle one simply stopped, further reducing the tie rod.

Be that as it may, the impact of the iceberg on the side of the ship was not very strong: most of the passengers did not even feel it. Judging by the duration of flooding (2 hours 40 minutes), the holes were relatively small. But due to the fact that five watertight compartments were damaged (and the sixth was slightly affected, but the leak was quickly localized there), despite the fact that the Titanic could stay afloat if only the first four were damaged, the ship was doomed. The very nature of the damage hints at another theme that has become popular in the last decade. Repeated examination of steel samples from the Titanic's hull led to a very important conclusion: the steel of the skin and rivets was brittle due to the high sulfur content. If there was modern steel on the Titanic, most likely there would not have been many damages from the iceberg - the sheets of steel would simply have bent inward, and not crumbled along with the rivets. Unfortunately, 100 years ago, much was not known about the properties of steel, and at that time such steel met all quality standards. Therefore, the use of such steel is not the fault of the shipyard that built the Titanic, but only a "side effect" of its time.

Since we have touched on the issue of finding an iceberg, we should mention one more situation that developed on the first voyage of the Titanic. From the first days of the voyage, Titanic lookouts repeatedly turned to second mate Charles Lightoller with a request to provide them with binoculars. The use of binoculars for early detection of various objects along the course of the ship was a common and quite natural practice (although at night it is debatable). Immediately before leaving Southampton, Captain Smith demanded that Henry Wilde, the chief officer from the Olympic, be put on the first voyage of the Titanic. At the same time, instead of the senior, Murdoch temporarily became first mate, Lightoller became second, and David Blair, who had previously been appointed second mate, simply had to leave the ship. This seemingly innocent story had more far-reaching consequences: when crossing from Belfast to Southampton, Blair hid the binoculars in his cabin, and Lightoller, who replaced him, simply did not know where they were. As a result, the lookouts were left without binoculars. However, their influence on the situation can also be called into question, because. the weather conditions on that fateful night were very unique: there was a complete calm with a new moon - and it was very difficult to notice an iceberg in such conditions, because. there was no reflection of moonlight from the ice, no breaking waves with characteristic white "lambs" on the iceberg. The only thing that could be counted on was the reflection of the faint light of the stars, which that night, according to eyewitnesses, shone especially brightly, "as if coming out of the sky."

Who is guilty?

As in many major disasters, there are no specific perpetrators in this story. There are people whom I call "performers", and the main and only culprit of what happened are the views of society and attitude towards a particular field of activity.

Even in the first days of the voyage, the Titanic began to receive radiograms sent from other ships about the ice situation east of the United States. At first, they did not cause much concern, but by April 13-14, the ice situation clearly began to deteriorate. During the day and evening of April 14, Titanic's radiotelegraphers received a number of messages from other ships, but only half of them hit the captain's bridge. This blatant negligence by modern standards was not such in those days. They simply didn’t think about it, because. radio communication at sea was then relatively young and carried primarily a commercial function: sending and receiving personal telegrams from passengers, as well as receiving fresh news for printing in the ship's daily newspaper. The functions of notifying the team about important navigational messages were secondary at that time and did not have strict regulations. Moreover, radio operators in those days were not subordinate to the captain, but were employees of the corresponding radiotelegraph companies. When radio communication overcame the "childhood illness", and the Marconi company had competitors, situations repeatedly arose when the radio operators of competing companies deliberately interfered with each other on the air.

2. Junior radio operator of the Titanic Harold Bride at work:

On the eve of the crash on the Titanic, a radio transmitter broke down, and while the breakdown was being repaired, a significant amount of unsorted telegrams had accumulated. Not surprisingly, overworked radio operators could simply put aside some messages, for example, to give them later.

However, even if all the radiograms were delivered to the bridge, it is not at all a fact that this had an effect on anything. For decades, a navigational practice has developed in the Atlantic that, from the perspective of today, looks insane. For centuries, sailors have depended on all the forces of nature while sailing at sea. The arrival time at the destination was highly dependent on the weather. With the advent of large steel steamers, which began to run exactly on schedule and which already had neither the waves nor the wind, the vigilance of the sailors gradually began to dull. With the development of competition in the Atlantic, where large companies dominated and the officers of large ships felt in a certain privileged position, the situation worsened even more. On top of that, there hasn't been a particularly major drift ice disaster in decades, and this has created an additional sense of self-confidence, both among seafarers and in society. The shipping companies themselves added fuel to the fire. Formally, the safety of passengers was everywhere regulated as the highest value of the company. Upon acceptance of the vessel, all captains were given letters in which it was clearly stated that nothing could be more important than safety. In fact, everything turned out differently: being late, regardless of the reasons, entailed lengthy and unpleasant explanations for the captain and crew, because. extra hours spent by passengers on the ship automatically meant additional costs for their service and meals. Walking at high speed among the ice fields was simply turned a blind eye by company owners, high speed and early arrival at the port of destination were encouraged, and the public, not knowing the true danger from the saved several hours of travel, expected more and more speed from transatlantic flights every year, and than further, the more she exalted the achievements of shipbuilding above the forces of nature. In this situation, even those officers who still had at least some sense of vigilance were forced to turn a blind eye to warnings about ice fields and pass dangerous sections without slowing down. The agreement on standard routes across the Atlantic was often violated, and some captains allowed themselves to be diverted far north for the sake of time. This situation gradually became common in the Atlantic, and over the years it began to be considered the norm. It was only a matter of time before a truly major catastrophe would occur with such practice.

3. The officers of the Titanic:

Despite all this, it should be noted that the officers of the Titanic were among the best in the Atlantic and very carefully approached the performance of their duties within the framework of the navigation traditions that were in force at that time. Although the speed was not only not reduced, but even increased on the afternoon of April 14 (which the owner of the White Star Line, Bruce Ismay, was indirectly involved in), some security measures were nevertheless taken: for example, on the evening of April 14, the Titanic was supposed to reach the "point turn", however, in fact, this was done an hour later than planned in order to bypass the danger zone as much as possible. In the evening, when taking over his watch, Murdoch ordered the bow of the ship to be darkened as much as possible and the slightest sources of light removed; another similar incident occurred with Lightoller, which once again proves the attention of these people to trifles and thoroughness in the performance of their duties.

In addition to the total disregard for danger, the UK has a unique situation with lifeboat legislation. According to the laws then in force, the number of places in the boats was calculated based on the tonnage of the ship, and not on the number of people on the ship. The law was published in 1894, when the largest ship was 4 times smaller than the Titanic. Therefore, according to this law, it was enough to place boats with a capacity of almost 1 thousand people on the Titanic. At the same time, White Star Line even exceeded this requirement by about 200 seats. It is worth noting that the designers provided a place to accommodate all the necessary boats, but this precaution was considered unnecessary by the owners of the Titanic.

What changed?

Needless to say, after the disaster, many navigational instructions and requirements for the number of seats in lifeboats were put in order. The watch of radio operators became round-the-clock, and radio began to play one of the key roles in navigation. The Titanic also broke a number of social values, shook the privileged position of the 1st class and clearly showed that before death, all of a sudden, everyone is equal, regardless of the class of the ticket. Most of all, society was shocked by the story of the death of the richest man on the ship, John Jacob Astor: after he put his wife on the boat, he turned to the second mate Lightoller with the question "is there a place for me too", to which he received a clear and a direct refusal (Lightoller took the captain's instructions too literally to put children and women in the first place, so he let men into the boats he lowered only to control them).

Mystery Californian

A little north of the Titanic track, a small passenger ship Californian was sailing to Boston. It could accommodate about 50 passengers, but on that flight the cabins were empty. At 22:15 on April 14, the Californian stopped in front of an ice field, which the Titanic was soon to reach. At about 11:00 p.m., a ship was sighted from Californian, which was also moving westward. Captain Stanley Lord asked radio operator Cyril Evans about the presence of steamships nearby and, having received an answer that only the Titanic could be heard nearby, ordered him to transmit information about the California stop and ice fields to him. Evans began sending a message to the Titanic, but he did so not in the form of an official message to the captain, but in the form of a usual greeting from a colleague such as "Hi, old man, we stopped in the ice." The tired radio operator of the Titanic, who shortly before that had established a good connection with the mainland and was trying to transmit the accumulated radio messages as soon as possible, was not at all happy with such a wedged into his work, especially since the signal of the nearby Californian literally deafened him. He rudely interrupted Evans, demanding not to interfere with his work. After listening a little more to how telegrams were transmitted from the Titanic, Evans turned off the radio station at about 23:30 (10 minutes before the collision of the Titanic with the iceberg) and went to bed. He was the only radio operator on the ship, entered the service very early and, accordingly, was very tired.

4. Californian:

After some time, the Californian team noticed that the unknown vessel had stopped and most of the lights on it had gone out. Later it was noted that the lights of the ship somehow looked strange on the water, then white rockets were seen flying over the ship, and after two in the morning the unknown ship disappeared. From the Californians, they tried to signal an unknown vessel with a light using a Morse code, but there was no answer. And only in the morning, when the radio operator was woken up, did the Californians find out what had really happened.

So briefly, according to legend, the events that took place that night on the Californian are described. At first glance, everything is simple: the time the unknown ship stopped coincides with the moment the Titanic collided with the iceberg, the extinguished lights - the Titanic turned around on the other side, rockets were visible, and then, when the Titanic disappeared under water, the ship disappeared. From the Titanic, they also saw the lights of an unknown ship, and the coordinates of the Titanic and the Californians clearly indicated that they were within line of sight.

After the publicity of what was happening on the Californians, almost no one had any doubts: they saw the Titanic from the Californians, they saw the Californians from the Titanic, and the Californian team showed complete indifference and did not approach the crash site. However, inconsistencies immediately surfaced, which both official investigations, on the one hand, chose not to notice, on the other hand, no official charges were brought against Captain Lord. What are these inconsistencies?

1. From the very beginning of the appearance of an unknown ship, many members of the Californian team were sure that the ship was small and could not be a Titanic (here it should be noted that many steamships and sailboats did not yet have radio communication, so the response of the radio operator to the captain about the presence of the Titanic did not mean at all that He could only be around.
2. All members of the Californian crew, except for one person, claim to have seen a red sidelight, which means that the vessel was turned to the port side of the Californian. It is logical to assume that the Titanic, most likely, was turned to the starboard side of the Californians, therefore, green fire should have been seen from the Californians. In fact, it is impossible to say for sure what the position of the Titanic was after the stop, because. no one specifically defined it.
3. Missiles that were launched from an unknown ship seemed to take off very low from the Californians, as if they were actually launched somewhere far behind the ship.
4. Many witnesses from both the Californians and the Titanic note that an unknown ship was moving. As we know, neither the Titanic nor the Californian moved anywhere.
5. Coincidence of some events in time (collision of the Titanic with an iceberg / stop of an unknown vessel, complete sinking of the Titanic / disappearance of an unknown vessel) is not documented in any way.
6. Finally, back in 1912, a number of researchers and witnesses expressed doubts about the correctness of the coordinates broadcast by the Titanic. For example, the captain of one of the steamships, leaving from the west to the point of death of the Titanic, was very surprised that a huge ice field extended to the east. It turns out that the Titanic was supposed to pass through this field, but this, as we know, was not. On the other hand, the captain of the Carpathia claimed that, using the coordinates of the Titanic, he came out exactly to the crash site.

In 1985, when the remains of the Titanic were finally discovered at the bottom of the Atlantic, it became clear that the coordinates of the Titanic had been calculated erroneously. From the Titanic, they really couldn’t see the Californians and vice versa, and Carpathia went to the Titanic boats only because they were in her way. But what then was seen with the Californian and the Titanic? The only obvious explanation is that there was some third ship between them. Why didn’t it come to the rescue, and then completely disappeared from the crash site? Unfortunately, the very fact of the presence of a third ship has never been convincingly proven, although at least two unknown ship history were seen in the disaster area in the morning.

5. The position of the ice field, Titanic and Californian on the night of the disaster:

In 1963, a report was printed that the recently deceased Norwegian captain Henrik Niss had left a will revealing the secret of that unknown ship. On the night of the disaster, Niss commanded the three-masted sailing ship Samson, which was conducting illegal sealing in American territorial waters. There was no radio station on the ship, and no one knew what was happening. Seeing the lights of an unknown vessel and flares, Niss assumed that it was a Coast Guard vessel and chose to hide by turning off the lights. Only upon arrival in Iceland, Niss and the team learned about the death of the Titanic. At the same time, one of the reasons why Niss took the unknown ship for protection was the white color of the missiles that were launched from the Titanic (and, in theory, in case of a disaster, they should be red).

Unfortunately, this story, which seems to be the most reliable explanation of the mystery of the unknown vessel, has never been documented and, most likely, you will have to come to terms with the fact that an exhaustive answer to the Californian riddle will never be found.

Other interesting facts

Even the mere fact that a ship thought to be unsinkable sank on its first voyage is quite unbelievable. The prophetic name "Titanic" should also be added here.

When leaving Southampton, the Titanic pulled the ship New York, which was standing at the pier, by the force of its propellers, which barely missed the stern of the Titanic. This incident had nothing to do with the catastrophe itself, but once again hinted at the need for a more thorough study of the maneuvering qualities of such huge ships.

6. The tug is trying to pull the stern of New York away from the Titanic:

Captain Edward J. Smith, who commanded the Titanic, did not have a single accident at sea in his long career (although this fact is disputed), except for the incident with the Olympic, similar to what happened to the Titanic and New York when leaving Southampton. The White Star Line trusted Smith to command the newest steamships; his authority was unlimited. Before the Titanic went on its maiden voyage, Smith was about to retire, but the company convinced him to go on the last voyage, taking the Titanic on its maiden voyage. Fate decreed that this flight was the last for Smith in the literal sense of the word ...

At Queenstown one of the stokers, urged on by a strange sense of anxiety, stepped ashore.

Senior assistant Wild, who had previously served on the Olympic of the same type, while on the Titanic also experienced some strange feeling, which he wrote to his sister in a telegram.

A few hours before the collision, several 1st class passengers discussed among themselves the achievements of shipbuilding in recent years. One of them literally said the following: "White Star Line, Cunard Line and Hamburg-America Line compete with each other in the speed and luxury of their ships, but soon this will end in the greatest maritime disaster." He had no idea how soon his prediction would come true, and he himself would become one of the many victims of this tragedy.

When the Titanic was already sinking, the lock jammed in one of the cabins, and the passengers of the neighboring cabins broke down the door. The steward who came running said that he would have to pay for the damage upon arrival in New York. This case once again clearly shows how the passengers and crew members did not believe in the very possibility of flooding the ship and took the order to get into the boats only as a precautionary measure.

Boat number 13 fully justified its number. At first, she was almost flooded with a jet of water discharged from the engine room; then she was carried aside to the place where boat No. 15 descended. Because of the general noise, the people lowering the boats could not hear the screams from below, and only at the very last moment on the boat No. 13 they managed to cut off the boat hoists, and she literally “emerged” from under the descending boat No. 15.

There are many more such sometimes incredible facts. You can remember about the ship's orchestra, which played until the last minute, about the mechanics, who selflessly remained in the engine room and provided the decks with light almost until the last moment ... And various small, but very touching and often heroic stories that unfolded on that memorable night, in general, you can list endlessly. The history of the Titanic is too big and multifaceted to fit in a couple of posts. Here I have tried to describe very generally the ship itself and the reasons that ruined it. I think that those who have mastered this text have already had enough of it, so let me take my leave on this. Below you are waiting for a few dozen more interesting, in my opinion, photos and a couple of videos.

For some reason, it so happened that there are much fewer photographs of the construction of the Titanic than those of the Olympic and Britannic. Therefore, in this post, I specifically included photos of various stages of construction and some of the interiors from all three ships in order to better demonstrate the process itself, because. the differences between the three giants were only in the details.

7. The stocks on which the Olympic and Titanic were assembled:

8. The keel of the vessel and the initial stage of the assembly of the second bottom:

9. Where possible, the rivets were riveted with the help of such a pneumatic hammer in the form of "tentacles":

10. The level of the second bottom. In the background, stern frames are already being assembled:

11. The photographer is at the level of the second bottom, and in front rises the partially assembled hull and the next level of the interior (most likely deck F):

12. Assembling the "skeleton" for future interiors:

13. Assembling the stern with guides for propeller shafts and rudder:

14. Installing the left screw guide:

15. Installation of hull plating sheets. By the way, the steel of the Titanic plating had a thickness of 2.5 cm.

16. Riveting. It took millions of rivets to build a ship like the Titanic.

17. Partially assembled vessel. So far, there are a bunch of all sorts of incomprehensible beams and struts, then they will equip the interior of the ship. The only thing that is well defined now is the future ventilation ducts for ventilation and smoke removal from the boiler rooms and the engine room. After launching and until the installation of pipes, all boilers, machines, etc. are lowered through them.

18. Belfast and shipyard stocks in the background. The Olympic has already been launched, and only the Titanic rises above the houses.

19. A small part of the 15 thousand workers who built the Titanic. Actually, the Titanic is in the background.

20. So the boilers were loaded inside the ship. Pictured is Britannica.

21. Installation of the superstructure on the boat deck, view from the side of the forward mast. In the foreground is the future wheelhouse.

22. The captain's bridge is almost ready:

23. Titanic at the factory pier. The construction of the ship is almost completed.

24. In dry dock during hull cleaning and painting. Impressive, right? ;)

25. Screw shaft installation:

26. Installation of propellers:

28. Assembly of a steam turbine in one of the workshops of Harland and Wolff:

29. Steam engine crankshaft:

30. Electric current generator. There were about 10,000 light bulbs on the Titanic alone.

31. The bow of the deck B of the Olympic. In the foreground is a spare anchor, behind it are the anchor chains of the main anchors. The spare anchor could be lowered using a special crane, the lower part of which rises above the anchor right in the center of the photo:

32. Some more interiors. Cafe "Palm Yard":

33. Smoking room 1st class:

34. Common room 1st class:

35. Another angle on the 1st class restaurant on deck D:

36. Chandelier at the bottom of the main staircase:

37. The upper tier of the main staircase:

38. Turkish Baths:

39. Titanic in Southampton:

40. Titanic goes on its maiden voyage:

43. Wave from the bow of the vessel:

44. Stopover in Queenstown:

46. ​​Carpathia lowers the Titanic boats upon arrival in New York:

47. All that remains of the famous ship ....

48. That's all for today according to the photographs.

Finally, a couple of newsreels. The only surviving newsreel footage of the Titanic is from the construction period. If you see other shots of the departure, etc. - don't believe your eyes;)

Newsreel of the Olympic with Captain Smith on the bridge. At the beginning of the last century, they tried to pass off these surveys as filming the Titanic, as evidenced by the shaded names of the tugs. In addition, in many angles, even with the naked eye, you can see that the video is Olympic.