The Titanic

– History Of A Disaster Essay, Research Paper

On April 14,1912 a great ship called the Titanic sank on its

maiden voyage. That night there were many warnings of icebergs from

other ships. There seems to be a conflict on whether or not the

warnings reached the bridge. We may never know the answer to this

question. The greatest tragedy of all may be that there were not

enough lifeboats for everyone on board. According to Walter Lord,

author of The Night Lives On, the Titanic could have been saved in the

very beginning of the crisis when the iceberg was first reported to

the bridge. If First Officer Murdoch had steamed right at the iceberg

instead of trying to avoid it, he might have saved the ship. The

author feels there would have been a loud crash and anyone within the

first one hundred feet would have been killed, but the ship would have

remained afloat(82). This view was entirely speculation and we will

never really know if this would have happened. In contrast, Geoffrey

Marcus, author of The Maiden Voyage, suggests that the bridge did not

receive warning of the ice from the very beginning. One of the

messages received was from the Masaba warning the Titanic of a mass of

ice lying straight ahead. According to Marcus, the message never

reached the bridge, but instead was shoved under a paper-weight (126).

At 10:30 p.m. that evening, a ship going the opposite direction of the

Titanic was sighted. This ship, the Rappahannock, had emerged from an

ice field and had sustained damage to its rudder. The vessel signaled

the Titanic about the ice and the Titanic replied that the message was

received (Marcus 127). At 11 p.m. another ice report was received.

This one was from the Californian. This liner had passed through the

same ice field that the Rappahannock had reported to the Titanic. Like

all the other warnings, this warning never reached the bridge though

it was known to both of the Titanic’s wireless operators (Marcus 128).

By the time the bridge realized the ship was about to hit an iceberg,

it was too late. Quartermaster Hitchens tried to turn the wheel hard

to the starboard. Twenty seconds later, he had an order for full speed

astern but the iceberg was too close. The starboard side hit the

iceberg, bringing a block of ice onto the deck (Pellegrino 21). After

the collision occurred, there was only one thing open for Captain

Smith to do. It was almost midnight and he gave the order to take to

the lifeboats (Lord, Lives On 82). This decision brought Captain Smith

face-to-face with the fact that there were 2,201 people on board and

enough

lifeboats for only 1,178 people (Lord, Lives On 83). The

Captain was going to have to make a choice as to who would be the

first allowed on the lifeboats. Around 12:30 a.m. the bridge informed

the crew that only women and children would be loaded on the lifeboats

(Eaton,Haas,152). By 1:30 a.m., there was panic among some of the

passengers. One example was on the port side of the boat. A group of

passengers threatened to jump into a boat full of passengers. To scare

them, one of the officers fired three shots on the ship’s side. The

warning proved to be successful. Nobody was injured and the passengers

calmed down (Eaton and Haas 154). At the last moments with only forty

seven available spaces on the last lifeboat, the crew instructed

everyone to form a circle around the boat. Women and children were the

only people permitted to pass through the circle. A little while after

the last lifeboat left, the stern lifted clear out of the water with

more than 1500 people still on board (Eaton and Haas 157-161). The

climatic moment came at 2:20 a.m. The Titanic stood perpendicular to

the water. As people in the lifeboats looked on, they noticed the ship

stayed perpendicular for a minute and then disappeared to the bottom

of the ocean (Lord, Lives on 137). Captain Rostron of the ship

Carpathia determined the distance to the Titanic and quickly

calculated the course to answer the Titanic’s distress call (Eaton and

Haas 177). Once the Carpathia reached the lifeboats, it did not take

long to load the passengers on board. It was 4:45 a.m. when the last

lifeboat was loaded on board. The survivors peered around the

Promenade Deck, searching for family members lost (Lord, To Remember

152-53). Why wasn’t their enough lifeboats for everyone. The Titanic

came under a regulating board that made laws for vessels over 10,000

tons. In 1894 only twenty lifeboats were needed. This number was never

changed when the size of ships increased, and because of this, over a

thousand lives were lost (Lord, Lives On 84). Another problem with the

lifeboats was that there was no consistency in loading them. To

Officer Lightoller, women and children first meant no men were allowed

to board. In many case

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