Titanic Leaving Queenstown 11 April 1912. Believed to be the last photograph of ship before it sank. Public Domain
On the early morning of 1 Sept 1985, the wreck of the RMS Titanic was found 400 miles east of Newfoundland in North Atlantic by a joint U.S.-French expedition. The liner lay 13,000 feet below the surface of the ocean and its finding would excite the world that continues to this day.
Ever since Titanic sank in 1912, there have been many attempts in locating the wreck. However the depth of the ocean, the vastness of the search area, and technological limitations made that impossible. Robert Ballard, a former Naval officer and oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts had tried in 1977 without success. In 1985, Ballard along with French oceanographer Jean-Louis Michel, decided to set out in search of the wreck using more sophisticated technology to help locate the wreck.
This time they were equipped with more sophisticated technology to aid them in seeing what was on the ocean floor. The Argo, an unmanned and experimental submersible sent photographs up to the research vessel Knorr. And on the morning of 1 September, while investigating debris on the ocean floor, it passed over a massive boiler that came from Titanic. The following day the wreck of the ship was found and that it had split in two with a debris field between the stern and forward sections, The ship and much of the debris was in good shape despite being down there since 1912. The discovery electrified the world and confirmed (but was discounted in the British enquiry) that Titanic had split in two. Unmanned submersibles were sent down to look at the wreck giving us the first look at the ship in its watery grave. The images are just as haunting today as they were back then.
The use of the submersibles for this type of deep diving to wrecks opened up a new world of exploring shipwrecks outside of the normal diving depth humans could endure. Ultimately manned submersibles would be developed to allow researchers to slowly descend to those great depths and study the wreck of Titanic and other ships as well. While genuine controversy exists over the later salvage of Titanic (Ballard was not part of that and opposed it), the discovery of the wreck and the technology used to find it has opened up new worlds in seeing the fascinating world in our oceans.
I’m also willing to bet that almost none of you knows that two years later, on May 29, 1914, a similar passenger ship called the Empress of Ireland suffered a similar fate in the St. Lawrence River, in Canada, causing the deaths of nearly 1,000 souls. Why are we so familiar with one tale, while we know next to nothing about the other? Maybe because Titanic was on its maiden voyage, and the Empress had nearly 200 missions to its credit. But I can spend the next several paragraphs trying to rectify the situation.
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Costa Concordia, 12 Feb 2012 Horacio Arevalo via Wikimedia Commons The Costa Concordia was righted, re-floated, and sent to Genoa where it was scrapped. All that remains are the surviving lifeboats now on other vessels. The area it sank had to cleaned up to prevent environmental damage.
Within the last 100 years, only 10 cruise ships have sunk, if you include river cruises. Almost 900 people have died in these incidents but around half of those can be attributed to one river cruise ship sinking. Many of the incidents involved no loss of life at all. Arguably the most famous cruise ship sinking in the last 100 years is that of the Costa Concordia. She sank in 2012 and is the only modern major ocean cruise ship serving passengers from around the world to have sunk during a cruise.
(I suspect they will get lots of email on this-MT)
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Harland & Wolff David and Goliath crane in Belfast, 2006 Plastic Jesus (Dave) via Wikimedia Commons
Shipbuilder Harland and Wolff has reported a widened pre-tax loss of £25.5m as expenses swelled during its Covid-19 recovery. It added that it had £20m in future contracted revenue. More recently, outside of the reported period, Harland and Wolff has struck two deals – worth £8.5m and £10m – with waste management company Cory Group and its subsidiary Riverside Energy Park to build barges for transporting waste on the River Thames. Bosses said the company had made an operating loss of £22.3m (up from £9.1m in July 2020). Chief executive John Wood said the company had gone from a “one-project non-revenue generating” company to having “one of the largest” fabrication footprints in the UK.
For example, did you know that there were only two bathtubs on the ship for first class passengers to use, one for men and one for women? And that this was considered a big deal, since most ships didn’t have any bathtubs on board at all? Most of the first-class passengers didn’t even get to have their own private bathrooms, since those were reserved for the wealthiest people on the ship.
[The article does not quite explain that first and second class, they did have their own sinks to wash up . There were showers available but, to conserve water, the use of bathtubs was limited so you had to reserve them in advance. It was considered a luxury to have two bathtubs. Even today cruise ships use showers rather than bathtubs to conserve water. Pity the poor stewards that had to clean the bathtubs after every use or make sure the water tanks were filled in the first- and second-class suites so that people had hot and cold running water in their basins. MT]
The theory of a fire on board had been suggested in the past, but new analysis of rarely seen photographs has prompted researchers to attribute the fire to being the primary cause of the ship’s demise. Irish journalist Senan Molony, who has spent more than 30 years researching the sinking of the Titanic, studied photographs taken by the ship’s chief electrical engineers before it left Belfast shipyard. He identified 30-foot-long black marks along the front right-hand side of the hull which suggest this area was damaged before the iceberg struck the ship’s lining.
Thomas Byles was played by James Lancaster in Titanic, and he only appears in one scene, and it’s a very brief appearance. In it, Byles is seen reciting the Rosary and Revelations 21:4, while many passengers prayed with him and held his hand. Unfortunately, Titanic failed to show Byles’ heroic acts in helping save the lives of many third-class passengers and instead left that to Jack, Tommy, and Fabrizio, who broke their fellow third-class passengers free when they were locked by the ship’s security guards.
On July 13, 1890, the steamer Sea Wing was returning from a carnival-like day at a military encampment when it capsized from a sudden and violent storm. Many of the excursionists made the understandable but fateful decision to retreat to the ship’s passenger cabin for protection. When the ship flipped over, they were trapped inside the upside-down boat and drowned. Ninety eight passengers – nearly half of the people on board – died as they were tossed into or submerged in the churning waters. The sense of tragedy was accentuated by the fact that the day had begun so promisingly: a pleasure cruise down the Mississippi River from Diamond Bluff to a National Guard encampment at Camp Lakeview near Lake City.
The Incredible Story of the Iceberg That Sank the Titanic (Smithsonian Magazine, 16 Aug 2022)
This course of events has become so widely known—told endlessly in films, books, museum exhibits, consumer products and looping TV specials—that it’s easy to forget the most astounding detail: how close it came to not happening. Icebergs had struck ships as long as there had been ships to strike, but the one that felled the largest passenger liner ever built was nearly gone. After three years adrift, the icy mass likely had one week to live, two at most. It was getting smaller while wading into warmer water. As icebergs melt from the bottom. They grow top?heavy and flip, followed by more erosion and more flipping, until eventually, when they’ve been reduced to the size of a basketball, they’re constantly flipping until nothing is left.
During the interwar years, it was regarded as Poland’s floating embassy, carrying passengers to New York in state-of-the-art luxury. After the outbreak of World War II, it was fitted out to serve as a transport ship but sank during its first military voyage. It was the largest Polish vessel to be lost during the war. Subsequently nicknamed ‘the Polish Titanic’, the ocean liner MS Pi?sudski now rests intact just off the coast of northeast England only 30 metres under the water. Though the wreck has been well-researched by divers, the circumstances of its sinking in the first weeks of WWII remain one of the greatest naval mysteries of the war.
After the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank in 1912, the group was formed to monitor the movement of icebergs in the North Atlantic and keep mariners safe. More than 110 years later, the team continues to plot ice from the air and advise seafarers about any threat. The U.S. Coast Guard, which runs the operation, allowed CBC cameras aboard in May to watch the team in action.
That is where Romero and his company Choco-Expo, which was founded by his parents 20 years ago, are exhibiting a replica of the legendary British ship the Titanic, which is six metres long and made with 500 kilos of chocolate, and several famous London and New York buildings. In total, 1,500 kilos of pure chocolate – white, dark and milk – have been used for this display, as well as nuts and other ingredients for the emblematic buildings such as the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building in New York and Big Ben and St Paul’s Cathedral in London. “They took over 20,000 hours of work and are completely hand-crafted by me,” Romero told SUR.
Touring the Titanic wreck is no easy thing, unless you are doing it virtually. First you have to fork over a lot of money to go on an expedition. And if you are good health, you get inside a submersible craft that will slowly descend for 2 1/2 hours down to the wreck. The atmospheric pressure is immense and the craft small enough for 3 people and the equipment. The article is incorrect about there not being a toilet. Previous submersibles didn’t have them, but the OceanGate Titan does. However because of the tight space, using it is a last resource. According to their website,
“By limiting Mission Specialist’s diets before and during the dive, the need to use the bathroom is largely eliminated.”
Vintage News recounts how this journey goes leaving you at the end wanting to just watch a video of the wreck or a computer simulation of it.
The two-and-a-half-hour trip down to the Titanic wreckage isn’t your standard vacation boat trip. The underwater pressure on the ocean floor is roughly 5,541.9 pounds per square inch, enough to explode the submersible vessels used in the expeditions if even a small hole or scratch occurs. The submersible vessels can only fit three people. Each expedition takes roughly eight to ten hours round trip, and with limited space, basic amenities like a private bathroom are out of the question.
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I do not watch The Antiques Roadshow that much. Occasionally though they come upon a real prize. Many people have brought Titanic related items to such places, only to be disappointed. Not in this case according to the Express. The lucky person had some memorabilia that is worth some decent money. And something autographed by a Titanic survivor is going to get a good valuation.
Antiques Roadshow expert Clive Farahar left one guest “amazed” when he explained the valuation of Titanic items she’d been left by her relative Millvina Dean, who was the last remaining survivor of the doomed passenger liner.
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Wayback Machine:
Vintage Battlestar Galactica opening. The old BSG series, I think, had more heart and soul than the newer one. While it had many flaws (and I have written about it here and here.) it had something the newer one didn’t.
Mary worked as a stewardess on the large vessels belonging to the White Star Line and, on April 15, 1912, with her youngest daughter Daisy aged six back home, she was on the Titanic when it struck the iceberg. Mary quickly clambered aboard lifeboat 11, was picked up by Carpathia after a few hours bobbing around, and was dropped off at New York on April 18, 1912. Before the year was out, she was working aboard another White Star liner, Majestic, and in 1914 when war broke out, she was transferred to HMHS Rohilla. Two-and-a-half years after surviving the sinking of the Titanic off the coast of America, she survived the wreck of the Rohilla off Whitby.
At the time, Harry’s death was reported by the Western Morning News in 1912 describing Rogers as a ‘smart and steady young fellow’, whilst also stating that ‘both mother and grandmother are in much distress, fearing the worst.’ Harry’s mother remained living in Devon until 1955 when she died. Unfortunately, Harry’s body was never recovered and his death is now remembered on the Tavistock grave. The family vault is situated in Plymouth Road Cemetery with Harry’s name listed on his father’s tombstone.
Despite some reports to the contrary, there is no evidence that his violin was found strapped to his chest in its case. We do know, however, that it must have been recovered, along with a satchel embossed with Hartley’s initials, as a telegram transcript from Maria Robinson to the Provincial Secretary of Nova Scotia reads, ‘I would be most grateful if you could convey my heartfelt thanks to all who have made possible the return of my late fiancé’s violin’. When Robinson died in 1939, her sister gave the violin to the Bridlington Salvation Army, who passed it on to a violin teacher. The teacher passed it on further, and in 2004 it was rediscovered in an attic in the UK.
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Straus Memorial Park, New York City, 1915. This memorial and park was dedicated on 15 April 1915. Photo:Public Domain (U.S. Library of Congress, Bain Collection,call number LC-B2- 3446-4)
The couple married in 1871. Isidor worked for his father’s business — L. Straus & Sons — which was a pottery brand that later integrated into the glass and china department at Macy’s. He worked hard, eventually all the way up to being a co-owner of the entire Macy’s chain. Ida Straus was both a housewife and a very busy mother, as the couple had seven children together. (One son, Clarence, died around the age of two.) Even though Isidor also had his hands full with work — in addition to his duties serving as a member of the U.S. Congress for a year — the couple was said to be particularly close.
In June 2022, Meier spoke with V?nity F?ir ?bout the ver?city of the m?nners depicted in well-liked movies ?nd TV shows like Tit?nic. Be?umont Etiquette, ? business owned by Meier, provides ?dvice ?nd instruction in proper Continent?l Europe?n, British, ?nd Americ?n m?nners. When it comes to depicting m?nners of the er?, “Tit?nic is one of my f?vorite movies,” Meier s?id. It tr?nsports us to 1912, The m?nners you displ?yed in public ?nd in society reve?led your fin?nci?l status ?nd level of education, as well as whether you were wealthy or not.
A small vessel sunk in Lafayette on Sunday, flanked by pirates and a small whale watching craft. The captain, Carter Aram, 20, and his first mate, Harper Arenson-Pie, 16, never abandoned their ship, despite only a mangled duct tape hull left to cling to by the time they returned to the ladder at the shallow end of the pool. “I sunk with pride,” said a breathless Aram, after competing against two other teams during the maiden cardboard boat regatta at the Great Outdoors Water Park. The lifeguard knew the irony of naming his boat “Titanic 2.”
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Titanic Wreck Bow Image: Public Domain (NOAA-http://www.gc.noaa.gov/images/gcil/ATT00561.jpg)
The eerie footage, posted on TikTok and other platforms, showed the vessel’s rusted icicle shapes that have formed on the hull. Background voices of the expedition members suggest even they were both happy and pleasantly surprise by what they saw. “Wow. Did the lights just go off? It didn’t sound like anything, but it went darker on the right side. Starboard side,” a man is heard saying.
After a short while, the video begins to make more sense and we see what looks like the top portion of the boat accompanied by a central anchor. All of a sudden, the light begins to change and a strange fog appears at the left hand side of the video. One of the voices can be heard saying: “Wow. Did the lights just go off?” to which someone else replies: “It didn’t sound like anything, but it went darker on the right side. Starboard side.”
Meanwhile, the Titanic exhibition will allow visitors to see artefacts from the ship, explore Torquay’s connection to the Titanic and learn about the people that travelled on board.Alongside these latest exhibitions comes brand new stock in the gift shop.
Ramy Awad, an urban explorer living in New York City, set out to central France to document an abandoned 19th-century castle, which he claims was once home to victims of the Titanic disaster. The result? A TikTok video that has already garnered more than 10.2 million views in which Awad gives viewers a tour inside the castle, which features fully furnished rooms with vintage rugs and furniture, wooden panels, built-in bookshelves and bed covers.
Chances are you’ve heard the story of the RMS Titanic. On its voyage from the United Kingdom to New York City, the ocean liner hit an iceberg and sank. The wreck, famously dramatized in a 1997 movie, is a real-life event that made headlines in the early 1900s. But what’s fact and what’s fiction?
On this day, July 21, 1924, Dick Williams claimed the gold medal after winning the mixed doubles at the Olympic Games in Paris, partnering Hazel Wightman. Twelve years before, Williams had survived the sinking of the Titanic and had closely escaped having his leg amputated after remaining for hours in the icy waters of the Northern Atlantic Ocean.
After arriving home on Monday, MacLennan said he is feeling the jetlag, but also an overwhelming sense gratitude for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He boarded the eight-day expedition with a number of researchers and civilians, where he learned about the marine ecosystems that live on and around the wreck site. This included Paul Henri Nargeolet, a famous Titanic diver, and Rory Golden, the first Irish diver to visit the site of RMS Titanic.
RIP David Warner (29 July 1941 – 24 July 2022)
David Warner was one of those actors who made his appearance memorable no matter what he was in-film, television, or stage. He is often remembered for his memorable villains, but he played his fair share of regular ones as well. I remember well from an early movie that has been mostly forgotten now: Time After Time (1979) where he plays Jack the Ripper who uses H.G. Welles time machine to escape (and to be followed by H.G. Welles). He got a Saturn Award nomination for best supporting actor. Whether he was playing Nazi figures (he played Reinhard Heydrich in two different tv miniseries) or playing Bob Cratchit in A Christmas Carol (1984) that was memorable considering the lead was none other than George C. Scott. He was a talented actor and widely respected for his skills. He will be missed.
The USS Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413) circa in June 1944, while off Boston, Massachusetts (USA) Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
The destroyer, USS Samuel B. Roberts was identified on Wednesday, broken into two pieces on a slope at the depth of around 6,985 meters (around 22,916 feet). To put things into perspective, the popular Titanic sank and rests at a depth of around 12,600 feet. The destroyer participated in the Battle off Samar, the final phase of the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944, where the Imperial Japanese Navy suffered its biggest loss of ships and failed to dislodge the US Forces from Leyte that they invaded earlier as part of the liberation of the Philippines. Previous records have indicated that the destroyer took down a Japanese heavy cruiser with a torpedo while damaging another. After it lost all of its ammo, the ship was critically hit by the lead battleship Yamato, which caused it to sink.
He went back up to help women and children onto the escape vessels, throwing some in because the Titanic was tilting, which made the lifeboat swing “about a yard and a half from the ship’s side”. When the order for him to board the boat as the captain never came, Charles assumed it was full and went back to his room once more, where he “had a drop of liqueur” with water at his feet.Upon remerging above deck, “all the boats had gone”, so Charles started throwing deck chairs into the water as flotation devices. All the while, the Titanic listed further to one side until Charles “heard a kind of a crash as if something had buckled”, like the “iron was parting”.
A British gold coin, two US bank notes and a block of coal retrieved decades ago from the detritus of the doomed passenger liner wrongly fell into the hands of a company that is trying to auction them off, claims RMS Titanic Inc., which owns the salvage rights to the ship and is suing to stop the auction. RMS Titanic is the “steward and custodian” of the wreck, and claims in Manhattan Supreme Court papers that one of its former execs, G. Michael Harris, took the artifacts, which were then sold off to Mobile Grocers of America Inc. when Harris later filed for bankruptcy. Harris claimed the four items had been gifted to him by another Titanic exec, George Tulloch, with whom he frequently butted heads, the group charges in court papers. RMS Titanic contends Tulloch had no right to gift the artifacts to anyone.
Titanic Memorial Lighthouse,South Street Seaport Museum, New York (2008) Image: Andy C (Wikipedia)
If you are ever in New York City, specifically in the lower financial district at Fulton and Pearl Streets, you are going to see something different than the ordinary sidewalk with cars passing by and people going to and fro. For there stands a 60 foot lighthouse which is a Titanic Memorial erected by public subscription in 1913 and with the support of Molly Brown.
The lighthouse originally stood on the roof of the Seamen’s Church Institute of New York and New Jersey where it looked out on the East River. Between 1913 to 1967, it had a time ball that would signal twelve noon to ships in the harbor. And it was exceedingly accurate since it was connected by telegraphic signal to the Naval Observatory in Washington D.C.
When the Seamen’s Church Institute moved to 15 State Street in 1968, the memorial was donated to the South Street Seaport Museum. It was erected in its current location in May 1976 with funds provided by Exxon Corporation. Since then it has stood there In silent testimony to the tragedy of 1912. And during that time it slowly but surely started looking a bit dingy since nothing was done to keep it spiffy. The South Street Seaport Museum has struggled financially so it could not afford a major refit of the lighthouse.
Stepping up to meet the challenge is a group that decided to help raise funds to renovate the Titanic Memorial Lighthouse. Meanwhile it looks like the South Street Seaport Museum may be getting a huge donation from the Howard Hughe’s development project going up Titanic. It is a marvelous idea this group wants to do and one hopes they will raise the money need to make the memorial stand brightly again.
A Norwegian cruise ship in Alaska (Norwegian Sun) encountered a growler (an iceberg that is mostly underwater) which was filmed by some passengers. It is quite a dramatic moment. The ship was damaged but not severely enough to evacuate.
A video went viral this week after it showed footage of a Norwegian Cruise Line ship that hit an iceberg in Alaska over the weekend. The cruise company cut short the remainder of its scheduled trip due to damage from the collision. In the viral video, a passenger can be heard exclaiming, “Titanic 2.0,” after the ship hit an iceberg that floated to the surface following the impact. Other passengers in the video could be heard gasping at the collision and size of the iceberg floating next to the ship.
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The Week has a interesting story about Ruth Blanchard. She was born in India and was on Titanic as they migrated to America.
Lynch says Ruth had an important Indian connection—she was born and raised in India. “The last Titanic survivor to have a really good memory of the ship was someone from India. Ruth was an American, but she grew up in India. She could tell the story of the fateful day from start to finish. She gave us a wonderful account of the sinking,” says Don over phone from Los Angeles.
After the huge boat smashed into the obstacle, water began to flood into the enormous vessel, causing panic on board. However, to make matters worse, many passengers then opened their portholes to see why the ship had come to a grinding halt. According to Tim Maltin, a British author, historian and TV presenter who spent more than six years trawling through the first-hand account of those who survived the disaster, this was detrimental.
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CS Mackay Bennett (circa 1884) Artist Unknown Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons
The vessel had been quickly turned into a “morgue ship” following the disaster, fitted with 100 coffins, all the embalming fluid in the city of Halifax, and 100 tons of ice to preserve bodies in transit. It wasn’t enough. The crew found many more bodies than they were expecting, most held half above the water by life vests, floating in the icy water. Upon the ship’s return, carrying 190 dead from the Titanic disaster, Captain Lardner told the press that they had been unable to return all the dead to shore, and that many had been buried at sea.
The 110-Year-Old Titanic Violin That Miraculously Survived The Sinking Ship
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