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One hundred years after the sinking of the Titanic
during its maiden voyage to New York, the story ofthe UK’s most famous liner is being retold like never
before, writes Richard Johnstone-Bryden
As the centenary of the RMS
Titanic’s tragic demise
approaches, the city of
Belfast will embrace its
heritage as the birthplace of
the world’s most famous ship when the
£97million visitor attraction Titanic
Belfast opens its doors to the public.
Standing a mere 100 yards away from the
slipway where Titanic was built, the
museum’s eye-catching building has
been inspired by the rich history of the
legendary liner and the Harland &
Wolff shipyard. Its profile represents
four 90ft-high hulls, while its
façade has been influenced by ice
crystals and waves. Inside, visitors
will be able to explore nine
galleries devoted to Titanic’s
captivating story.
As the second member of White Star’s
Olympic class, Titanic’s origins date back to
the debut of Cunard’s Lusitania and
Mauretania in 1907.Their size, luxury and
speed gave Cunard a significant advantage
in the highly competitive transatlantic
passenger market. To counter the threat
posed by this duo,White Star’s chairman,
Bruce Ismay, ordered three new liners
from the Belfast shipyard of
Harland & Wolff. They would
have a similar speed but exceed
their rivals by an additional
length of nearly 100ft and be
fitted out to more lavish standards
throughout. Harland & Wolff’s
managing director, Thomas
Andrews, took charge of the design
work for these leviathans which,
on completion, became the
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Facing page, left: workmen aredwarfed by Titanic’s propellers.Bottom left: a bell recoveredfrom the ill-fated liner’s wreck.
Here: illustration used topromote the 1953 film Titanic,one of many inspired by thetragic events a century ago
world’s largest ships. Two new slipways,
topped by the towering Arrol Gantry, had
to be built before the keels ofOlympic and
Titanic could be laid on 16 December
1908 and 31 March 1909 respectively.
Four thousand tradesmen participated
in the construction of each ship. Titanic’s
launch on 31 May 1911 attracted
100,000 spectators and also marked the
official completion of Olympic.
Afterwards, Titanic’s hull was brought
alongside the fitting-out berth for the
installation of her machinery and lavish
interiors, while Olympic embarked on her
maiden voyage. The disruption caused by
Olympic’s return for repairs on two
separate occasions turned Titanic’s final
months in Belfast into a race against time.
Despite these problems,White Star
pressed on with the preparations for
Titanic’s maiden voyage by announcing
the appointment of Edward Smith as her
first captain.
Titanic passed her sea trials with flying
colours on 2 April 1912 before leaving
Belfast that evening for Southampton. To
regain lost time, the publicity visit to
Liverpool was cancelled. As the location
of White Star’s head office and the liner’s
registered home port, Liverpool boasts a
rich Titanic heritage including links to the
lookout Fred Fleet, who spotted the fatal
iceberg, which will form the basis of a
new exhibition at the Merseyside
Maritime Museum.
The majority of Titanic’s crew were
recruited during her week-long visit to
Southampton, which proved to be a
hectic period as workmen completed the
remaining unfinished areas. As the visit
drew to a close, the activity increased
with the embarkation of stores, cargo and
passengers. Southampton’s own
connections to Titanic will be portrayed
within the new Sea City Museum, due to
open on 10 April to coincide with the
centenary of the liner’s departure from
Southampton’s docks. The museum’s
displays include re-creating the
experience of joining Titanic from the
quayside, an audio visual show based on
the British inquiry and the disaster room
which describes the liner’s final hours.
Titanic’s departure nearly ended in
disaster as she passed the moored liner
New York. The powerful surge created by
Titanic’s hull snapped New York’s
mooring lines and swung her hull
perilously close to Titanic’s stern. Quick
thinking by Captain Smith, the local pilot
and the captain of the tug Vulcan averted
a serious accident.
That evening, the passengers enjoyed a
beautiful sunset as she dropped anchor in
Cherbourg harbour. A lack of suitable
facilities meant that all of the passengers
who used the French port had to be
conveyed to Titanic byWhite Star’s
tenders Nomadic and Traffic which had
been built at Harland &Wolff. Once
capable of transporting 1,000 first- and
second-class passengers, the 220ftNomadic
is now the sole survivingWhite Star
vessel. She was brought back to Belfast in
2006 for restoration in the Hamilton
Graving Dock near Titanic Belfast.
Within two hours of arriving in
Cherbourg Harbour, Titanic sailed for
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The fate of theWhite Star Line’sother mighty passenger vessels
Nicknamed ‘The Old Reliable’, the lead shipof White Star’s Olympic class proved to bethe longest serving of the trio. Olympic’s(see above right; Titanic on left) chequered24-year career included colliding with thecruiser HMS Hawke in 1911, rescuing thecrew of the battleship HMS Audacious,serving as a troopship in the First WorldWar, sinking the German submarine U103,and colliding with the floating lighthouseNantucket in 1934. A review of thecombined fleet created by the merger ofWhite Star and Cunard in 1934 led to thewithdrawal of Olympic in 1935, by whichtime it had steamed over 1,500,000 milesand completed 257 round trips to America.
She was sold for scrap in September 1935and her interior fittings were sold byauction. Many of her elaborate woodenpanels were sold for re-use in hotels andprivate homes, including the White SwanHotel in Alnwick, Northumberland, whereher dining room can still be seen.
Britannic, the last of the trio, nevercarried a fare-paying customer due to theoutbreak of the First World War before hercompletion. She was requisitioned by thegovernment and commissioned as HisMajesty’s Hospital Ship Britannic in 1915 tobring the wounded back to the UK from theGallipoli campaign. A German minebrought her brief career to a halt on 21November 1916 off the Greek island of Keawith the loss of 28 lives. Her wreck wasdiscovered lying on its starboard side by theFrench explorer Jacques Cousteau at adepth of approximately 400ft in 1976.
TITANIC’S SISTER SHIPS
Queenstown, since renamed Cobh.
Among those leaving at the liner’s final
port of call on 11 April was the trainee
Jesuit priest Father Francis Browne,
whose photographs provide a unique
insight into life onboard. Following the
disaster, Browne’s photographs appeared
in newspapers across the world and
subsequently inspired some of the scenes
in James Cameron’s 1997 film.
From Ireland, Titanic set sail for the
North Atlantic’s southern sea lane.
Normally, it would have been free of ice
but that winter was the mildest for 30
years, which led to an unusually high
number of icebergs along the route.
Titanic’s date with destiny occurred on
the fifth night of her voyage. Although
several warnings had been received of
icebergs ahead, a speed of 21 knots was
maintained, even though the clear, calm,
moonless conditions significantly increased
the risk of not being able to see an iceberg.
The lookout Fred Fleet saw the fatal
iceberg at 11.40pm on 14 April and
immediately alerted the bridge. The
subsequent attempts to avoid it failed to
prevent a lethal glancing blow along the
starboard bow. Titanic had been designed
to remain afloat in the event of her first
four watertight compartments being
flooded, yet the collision breached the
first five, thereby sealing her fate. Her
designer, Thomas Andrews, inspected the
damage and predicted that she might stay
afloat for between 1½ and 2 hours.
Captain Smith responded by issuing
orders to uncover the lifeboats and for
the wireless operators to issue the
standard CQD distress signal – that night
Titanic became the first ship in distress to
issue a SOS signal. At a distance of 58
miles, the Cunard liner Carpathia was the
closest ship to respond, but she could not
reach the stricken liner in time, so
Captain Smith gave orders to load the
Attempts to avoid the fatal iceberg failedto prevent a lethal glancing blow along
Titanic’s starboard bow
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Clockwise from facing page, top: passengers take astroll on deck while docked in County Cork; tugsgive Titanic a helping hand; eye witness sketches ofthe ship’s final moments; the radio station fromwhere the doomed vessel issued an SOS signal;original poster advertising Titanic’s maiden voyage
TITANIC’S 100th ANNIVERSARY
lifeboats, starting the process with thewomen and children.Despite complying with the Board of
Trade’s regulations, Titanic’s 16 woodenand four collapsible lifeboats could onlycarry 1,178 of the 2,208 people onboard.The situation was compounded by thereluctance of some passengers to board thefirst lifeboats, thereby resulting in thedispatch of lifeboats with unused capacity.Many believed that help would arrive intime not least because the lights of anothership could initially be seen on the horizon.The identity of this ship has remained thesubject of intense debate with CaptainLord’s freighter Californian identified asthe principal suspect, even thoughevidence suggests that up to five othervessels may have been closer.The salvation offered by the approaching
Carpathia was nearly two hours awaywhen Titanic met her end at 2.20am (localtime) on 15 April 1912. 1,503 people losttheir lives in the icy waters that night,while 705 survivors endured the cold onthe lifeboats until Carpathia’s arrival.News of the tragedy took hours to
emerge. Remarkably, some initial pressreports stated that everyone had beensaved and Titanic was being towed toHalifax, Nova Scotia. Such optimismquickly evaporated as those left behindwere forced to deal with the loss of theirloved ones. The death toll confirmed thatneither wealth nor seniority guaranteedsurvival with Captain Smith, ThomasAndrews and the American multi-millionaire Colonel John Jacob Astoramong the dead.Afterwards, four vesselsretrieved 328 victims from the Atlantic, ofwhich 150 were buried in Halifax.Official inquires weresubsequently held on both sidesof the Atlantic and the on-going ‘Titanic Industry’established itself within daysof the disaster.The prospect of locating
and raising the wreckcaptivated the public’simagination for decades and eveninspired the film Raise The Titanic
based on Clive Cussler’s novel. However,hopes of finding Titanic intact were dashedon 1 September 1985 when Dr RobertBallard’s joint American and French teamdiscovered her upright wreck in two piecesat a depth of 2½ miles. Stripped of all herwoodwork by wood-borers and covered inrusticles formed by iron-eating bacteria,
Titanic’s devastated wreck is a shadow ofher former glory. The 1,970ft gap betweenthe two sections contains a debris fieldstrewn with thousands of items, rangingfrom personal possessions to large pieces ofthe ship. The most poignant discoverieswere pairs of shoes lying side by side whichserve as a lasting reminder that the wreckis a grave site and should be treated withrespect. Not all subsequent expeditionshave heeded Ballard’s calls to treat the sitewith dignity and only take photographs. Ofthese, RMS Titanic Inc, the official salvager,has attracted the most criticism byrecovering more than 5,000 artefacts fromthe wreck to form a unique collection,offered for sale as one lot by the New York-based auctioneers Guernseys on 11 April.
The rules governing the future publicaccess to this collection and the
opening of the new museums willensure that the RMS Titanic
remains the world’s mostfamous ship for theforeseeable future.
Clockwise from right: Explore Southampton’sconnections to Titanic at the new Sea City
Museum; the ship’s last resting place; a pocketwatch salvaged from the wreck; a partially full
lifeboat flees the stricken vessel; news eventuallybreaks of the scale of the disaster
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TITANIC’S 100th ANNIVERSARY
1,503 poeple lost their lives in the icywaters that night, while 705 survivorsendured the cold on the lifeboats
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