Funnel Lights

The only way I can best imagine the ship looking that night is to google images of cruise ships at night and see their lights glowing on the sea around them. That would be my best guess to describe the Titanic that night when she listed over to port and pointed her lights down at the sea.

Here are a few photos to compare:

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Here's an article of the Titanic's lights at night, which includes pictures of the Titanic herself at Cherbourg:


Here's a snippet I took from the same article of Charlotte Collyer's description of the Titanic's lights:

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The only way I can best imagine the ship looking that night is to google images of cruise ships at night and see their lights glowing on the sea around them. That would be my best guess to describe the Titanic that night when she listed over to port and pointed her lights down at the sea.

Speaking of lights, please visit my new photo album with freshly made photo renditions of the Titanic sinking. You'll love the lighting effects!
 
Speaking of lights, please visit my new photo album with freshly made photo renditions of the Titanic sinking. You'll love the lighting effects!

I would say the lights are far too bright of a red in the last few stages. I think the lights would have remained the color of the third photo you have in the sinking. When we hear talk of a “red haze,” it’s most likely referring to sparks either from the break or a falling funnel.
 
I would say the lights are far too bright of a red in the last few stages. I think the lights would have remained the color of the third photo you have in the sinking. When we hear talk of a “red haze,” it’s most likely referring to sparks either from the break or a falling funnel.

Maybe. But one survivor said that when she left the Titanic, it was surrounded by what she described as an "effulgent glow" - and that was before the funnels fell and/or the ship broke. Jack Thayer described it as a "ruddy glare." I remember one survivor said that the lights on A-deck glowed a "devilish red" color (possibly a reference to the emergency dynamos on the Titanic's A-deck promenade ceiling?) But I do agree that the red lighting is perhaps a little too bright. I think it was probably a subdued reddish-orange color, but who really knows for sure.
 
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Excellent pictures. I think the arctic starry night made the hull of the ship very visible and made the haze above the water glow because after the Titanic went down Colonel Gracie said something about a thin layer of greyish haze that he could see hovering just above the water. The crew on the Parisian saw a very bright night sky and they could have played a sports game. Lookout Reginald Lee testified in Britain that the haze in front of the ship made it too difficult to see the iceberg through it. I think the stars were bright and lighted up the glassy flat surface of the sea and the atmosphere and haze and also the reflective metal of the Titanic when the lights went out and she leaned over on her side like a slanted tiled roof. The smoke that came out of the Titanic was apparently very very black. I think that means the sky must have been brighter so that they could see this very black smoke.

American Inquiry

Mr. OSMAN.It was all black; looked like as if it was lumps of coal, and all that.
Senator BURTON.Coming up through the funnels?

Mr. OSMAN.Through the funnels.
Senator BURTON.That is, there was a great amount of black smoke coming up through the funnels just after this explosion?

Mr. OSMAN.Just after the explosion.
Senator BURTON.And there were lumps of coat, etc, coming up?

Mr. OSMAN.Yes; pretty big lumps.I do not know what itwas.
Senator BURTON.Did any water come up?

Mr. OSMAN.I never seen no water; only the steam and very black smoke.



I googled images of arctic starry nights. Imagine the Titanic with her lights off in one of those photos. I think she would be glistening under the stars.
 
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I have never seen a star field like the first photo with the naked eye. It looks like it was taken from the bridge of the Enterprise NCC 1701.
 
It was a night that nobody had seen before, and maybe nobody alive today has witnessed.



'Edward Dorking wrote, "I had never seen phosphorus in the ocean until the night of the disaster, and I remember seeing the balls of fire all about me, coming up to the surface and apparently bursting into a blaze of yellow light. I did not know what they were, and imagined then that I was dying." Lawrence Beesley wrote, "The sailor’s remark – 'It seemed like a bloomin' picnic' summed up the situation very well. The dead calm, the boat at rest on the quiet, phosphorescent sea, the brilliance of the stars all combined to create a peaceful atmosphere far removed from the imminent tragedy awaiting its culmination a few hundred yards away." Alfred Shiers said, "I saw the phosphorous that was coming up in the water." Richard Williams wrote: "The water was full of phosphorous sparkling like the reflection of a strong light through a prism; the little waves lapping the sides of the boat seemed to turn it momentarily into polished silver."

Helen Churchill Candee
"It was a marvelous sight all emphasized by a more than twilight and a heaven full of such stars as only an arctic cold can produce. They actually lighted the atmosphere. The sea with its glassy surface threw back star by star the dazzling array, and made of the universe a complete unity without the break of a sky-line. It was like the inside of an entire globe. We both gasped at such beauty and for a moment forgot the menace still unexplained but deeply real, wildly impressive."
 
Maybe hyperbole, maybe it was really an extraordinary night. I think that's also why Walter Lord titled his book A Night To Remember. The title was probably a nod to the survivors who described the unforgettably amazing atmospheric conditions of that night, as well as a nod to the memory and the legacy of the Titanic and her sinking and what happened that fateful night.
 
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Hyperbole.
Well I would say they were certainly good story tellers. I remember going out on deck at night when the ship was blacked out, no moon and seeing the stars. A sight I had never seen before like that. My comment was something like "awesome". Not exactly in par with the educated prose of some of the survivors.
 
Here's what the funnels would've most likely looked like on the sinking Titanic. They would appear to be four big blackish cylinders against a brilliantly star-studded night:

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I think as in the james cameron's movie funnel was not trained with lights but it was lighted because of lights in emergency passage for firemen from the boiler room.
When I walkthrough the titanic honor and glory during night time and there is entrance for boiler room no. 6 and there is passage with stairs going up to the boat deck in case of emergency for firemen and there is so many light bulbs on the passage hence I think this is the cause of glare of lights on funnel
 
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