Titanic: A Night Remembered

Description

“Whether you are an enthusiast about the Titanic or just interested in maritime events, then this book certainly won’t disappoint.” — Shipping Today and Yesterday

Why does the story of the Titanic continue to fascinate us nearly 100 years after the event? And why do we in Britain feel such ownership of the tragedy?

Published on April 15th 2004, the 92nd anniversary of the tragedy, Titanic A Night Remembered, is the first substantial account of the local impact of the event and an investigation of the struggle between the US and Britain for ownership of this story.

Certainly, there are universal elements.‘It is a story of how much human ingenuity can achieve and how easily that same ingenuity can fail in a brief, random encounter with the forces of nature. It is a story of how different human beings react differently to dire peril…in which the closest bonds that human beings can form were put to the test as people were forced to make impossible choices.’

But equally it is a story of local interest, particularly in the three towns most closely involved with the ship: Belfast, where the ship was built; Southampton – where most of the crew came from and Queenstown, in Eire, the ship’s last port of call. Titanic: A Night Remembered is the first book to explore the shattering impact of the tragedy on the people of these towns.

Stephanie Barczewski also examines the struggle between Britain and America for ownership of the Titanic story, a struggle highlighted most recently by James Cameron’s film. She dissects the myths that have built up about the contrast between English and American cultural values highlighted by the tragedy. Her scholarly and readable account explores the human experience of the collision and the ripples that it sent across the world and down the years.

From the Author

‘What continues to compel our interest in the Titanic story, is that it is at its heart a story that reminds us of our limitations.’ — Stephanie Barczewski

About the Author

Stephanie Barczewski is Associate Professor of History at Clemson University, South Carolina.

Excerpt

What Have We Struck?

Precisely at noon on 10 April 1912 a sonorous blast on the ship’s whistles signalled the departure of the first — and, as the world well knows, last — voyage of the White Star Line’s RMS Titanic. The Titanic was, as is also well known, the largest ship in the world, stretching a sixth of a mile from bow to stern, standing ten stories high from keel to the top of its four funnels and displacing over 45,000 tons. Everything about the Titanic was on a grand scale: a locomotive could pass through each funnel, and a double-decker tramcar through each of its twenty-nine boilers. Its rudder was longer than a cricket pitch, and its anchors weighed fifteen tons each.

The Titanic was, however, more than a behemoth. Unlike the deliberately ponderous ships being built by White Star’s German competitors Hamburg-Amerika and Norddeutscher Lloyd, the Titanic was a graceful vessel, with clean lines and balanced proportions. To be sure, once its massive engines — each four stories high began to crank and its three immense propellers started to churn, there would be no disguising the ship’s 55,000 horsepower. But as the Titanic lay in its berth at Southampton Docks, gangways buzzing as the final passengers and crew members hurried on board, the impression the ship gave was one of quiet strength, not tremendous bulk. So perfect are her proportions, declared the maritime engineering journal the Shipbuilder, that it is well-nigh impossible for the inexperienced to grasp her magnitude except when seen alongside another vessel.

Beneath the Titanic’s hull that appearance of strength was given reality by a system of safety features designed to eliminate the risks posed by ocean travel. In contemplating those risks, the Titanic’s builders, Harland & Wolff of Belfast, had determined that there were three reasons why a ship might sink. First, it could run aground. Secondly, it could run into an object, either another ship or a natural hazard. Thirdly, another ship could run into it. Provide safety measures that could cope with those circumstances, the builders reasoned, and much of the risk would be eliminated. To deal with the first situation, Harland & Wolff gave the Titanic a double bottom, which meant that its keel carried a second set of steel plates seven feet above the first. If the keel scraped the seabed, the ship would thus not be opened to the sea. To deal with the second and third threats, the builders fitted the Titanic with a system of fifteen bulkheads that divided the hull into sixteen watertight compartments. If the Titanic ran into something that crushed its bow, it could float with the first four of these compartments flooded. And if something ran into it, then the Titanic could float with any two of the central compartments flooded, so that even if another ship hit precisely at the junction of two compartments, and breached them both, the hull would remain seaworthy. It was necessary to have some openings in the bulkheads to allow the passengers and crew to get from one part of the ship to another, but these openings were equipped with watertight doors that could be closed with the flip of a switch from the bridge. Each door was also fitted with a float mechanism that automatically closed it if a compartment became flooded with more than six inches of water.

No wonder the builders felt proud of their new creation. Most ships, after all, had only one or two collision bulkheads in the bow, not fully sixteen watertight compartments. Certainly the naval engineering world was impressed: practically unsinkable, declared the Shipbuilder. The system seemed foolproof. So confident were Harland & Wolff that the Titanic’s plans did not call for a double hull, as White Star’s rival Cunard had given its flagships, the Lusitania and Mauretania. This certainly pleased White Star, because it saved considerably on construction expense. And when White Star also suggested cutting the number of lifeboats from the forty-eight called for by the original plans to twenty, Harland & Wolff put up little resistance. It would cut down further on costs, after all, as well as reduce the amount of clutter on the Titanic’s decks. This meant that the Titanic would carry sufficient lifeboat space for only about a third of its 3300-person capacity, but what harm would that do? Its extensive safety features made the ship its own lifeboat, and twenty boats were still four more than the law required. White Star’s money, both owners and builders agreed, was better spent on ensuring the ship’s reputation as the most luxurious vessel afloat. About the meeting in which the plans for the Titanic and its sister ship the Olympic were finalized, Harland & Wolff’s managing director Alexander Carlisle recalled, We spent two hours discussing the carpets for the first-class cabins and fifteen minutes discussing lifeboats.