The Edwardian Way

APRIL 10-11th 1912 - TITANIC SETS SAIL

[part 1, feat.  "not enough lifeboats", "untrained crew", "no lifeboat drills" and "speeding & ignoring ice warnings", here]

"The Titanic lowered lifeboats half filled"

Now this is true! Here's a breakdown of which lifeboats went down when and with how many people in them (approximately, since we’re not sure on some and the last two literally washed off the deck). However, this is often framed in two ways: Titanic's officers were inexperienced and thus couldn't load the boats fully in time (we already covered this) or Titanic's officers were stopping men and third class passengers from entering.

Reality is once again more complicated than that. To make one thing clear, yes, Officer Lightoller was specifically not allowing men in via the boat deck, apart from crew members who were needed to work the boats. 

This stems from him interpreting Smith's "put the women and children in and lower away" order as "women and children only", while Murdoch interpreted it as "women and children first". Since the Birkenhead Drill was not a law but rather chivalric code that got implemented in different ways (or sometimes not at all), no interpretation can really be deemed as "wrong".

Now, Lightoller also indicated that he didn't consider loading the boats full before they were in the water as safe, mainly worrying about the strain on the construction. While Titanic's lifeboats were actually tested completely filled during her drills and Lightoller was aware of them, he was basically pulling on his years of experience at sea where lowering fully loaded lifeboats often resulted in tragedy. We don't know if Murdoch, who was in charge of the lifeboats on the other side of the ship, had the same reservations since he (probably, it's debated whether it was him or Wilde) shot himself before the ship went down.

And before people start vilifying Lightoller, he and the rest of the crew were actually planning on loading the lifeboats from the gangways down below. Besides seemingly being safer, this would avoid crowding on the boat deck and give folks who were down below a fighting chance. The crew thought the boat was going down in about an hour, that would not be enough time for all the 2nd and 3rd class passengers who largely occupied the lower decks to find their way up. Lightoller specifically sent down crew men to open the doors (which did happen almost everywhere, though the crew probably drowned or got trapped while doing so). We also have Boxhall saying that Smith was ordering boats to come back and load from the gangways during the sinking, which is also backed up by survivors. Now, this didn't happen. Why? Some boats were scared of being swamped (even after the ship went down), some thought they needed to get away quickly to avoid being sucked under water when the Titanic actually went down or being damaged by another boat. This actually almost happened, lifeboat 13 almost had lifeboat 15 lowered on their head when they had to row to the side to avoid water being released by a condenser exhaust.

But the crew were always planning on filling the boats up fully to their best ability, and as safely as possibly.

There's also the issue that especially at the start of the sinking no one wanted to get into the goddamn boats. Titanic's impact wasn't super dramatic, the damage she received was actually ridiculously small, only around 12-13 square feet/1.1-1.2 square meters. It took them awhile to figure out whether Titanic was actually sinking, since they needed to go down and see exactly where the damage was located (see the green lines here). 

The only reason she sank is that the damage was spread over six watertight compartments. Freak bad luck.

But this also meant that Titanic sank very evenly and calmly for almost two hours. People frankly just did not think she was going down, and were understandably reluctant to get into tiny boats to be lowered into the ice cold, pitch black ocean when the big liner seemed so much safer. Some even went up to the boat deck, saw the boats, and decided to go back down to their cabins. 

Additionally, people were reluctant to be separated from their families, which is understandable enough. The officers however, as I said, thought she was going down in about an hour and would probably capsize violently (that was Thomas Andrews', the chief designer's, estimate), so lowering the boats quickly was their priority, even if they were not filled. 

Better to lower two boats quickly than to spend half an hour convincing people to get into one, because boats in the water could at least pick people up or load them from the gangways or water, while boats still chained on deck would go down with the ship (and they really had no time to spare, they didn’t even manage to launch the last two boats).

"Titanic's third class passengers were locked down below"

Now the third class passengers being locked down below is a combination of issues. For one, there were waist-high gates that locked off third class. These were there due to US immigration regulations. We also know that a lot of them were opened once the ship started going down (see testimonies linked below), though of course there is the possibility that they didn't get to all of them in time. 

The testimony most often cited (and probably also used by Cameron as inspiration) is that of Daniel Buckley. He woke up due to "a terrible noise", immediately stepped into water, and decided that this was Not Good (which not everyone did, so good for him). His cabin is in the bow, so one of the first to be flooded. 

He goes outside, encounters two sailors that shout "All up on deck! Unless you want to get drowned!". He also testifies that he went up on deck, then back down, and back up again before being given a lifejacket by a first class passenger.

When further asked, he does say that guys he thinks were sailors "tried to keep us down at first on our steerage deck. They did not want us to go up to the first class place at all". When asked whether there "was any effort made on part of the officers or crew to hold the steerage passengers in the steerage?" he says that "[he does] not think so".

Little bit of a contradiction at first glance.

However, there's a pretty logical explanation: the stewards and sailors wanted them to go up, but they wanted them to go up quickly and safely. Having passengers stream into the first class areas would not be beneficial, they did not know their way around and would most likely get lost, Titanic was a maze. We have examples like Minnie Coutts stating that she got lost and couldn’t find her way until a sailor guided her up. 

The stewards were most likely trying to get the third class passengers to their own deck space, from where they could just walk up to the boat deck. This would also have the added benefit of having them go towards the stern, away from the flooding. 

However, there's panic and confusion around (more in Third Class then elsewhere, since their compartments actually started to flood early) and a lot of the third class doesn't speak English. There were also only around 50 third class stewards for hundreds of passengers, and a handful of them were ordered to help out on the boat deck to launch the lifeboats early on. 

So it's understandable that some situations may have arisen where Third Class passengers were held back from going through the first class spaces, not out of malicious intent, but actually in an attempt to get them up safely. 

Not a lot of the third class stewards survived, so we obviously can't be sure, but we know that John Edward Hart took "his" passengers up personally for exactly those reasons, as did Albert Pearcy. They also both testify that the Chief Steward of the Third Class, James Kieran, ordered them to collect passengers and take them up. 

We also have other third class passengers stating that to their knowledge, no passengers in steerage were prevented from going on (Berck Pickard, Olaus Abelseth). 

There’s also often the idea that the rich passengers on board were given priority at the lifeboats. That is not the case, pretty much the sole factor up there was gender. It’s all over the inquiries, they’ll always mention how a crew men told them to get in, or how there were no women around at all. Dickinson H Bishop, Henry Blank and others were accused of dressing up as women to get into the boats or otherwise bribing their way in. If you were a man and had the audacity to survive, you better have a damn good reason for it. 

We also have multiple very, very rich people dying. John Jacob Astor (at that point one of the richest men in the world with a net worth of over 2 billion), Isidore and Ida Straus (she refused to leave the ship without him), Benjamin Guggenheim, Archibald Butt (who was a close friend to president Taft) and his supposed boyfriend/partner/”[his] artist friend who lives with [him]” Francis Davis Millet. If there was priority given to the First Class/rich passengers, they were doing a bad job. 

"They didn't see the ice berg because of the missing binoculars"

The famous missing binoculars. Remember officer David Blair, who was assigned elsewhere last minute since Wilde was pulled over from the Olympic? The story is that in his haste to leave Titanic, he accidentally took the keys for the locker that housed the binoculars intended for the lookouts with him. Fleet and Lee, the lookouts at the time of the collision, thus were unable to see the iceberg in time.

Now, there's actually quite a few oddities in this story. The whole idea that Blair took the key with him mostly originates from the testimony of another lookout, George Hogg, who said that "Mr. Blair was in the crow's-nest and gave me his glasses, and told me to lock them up in his cabin and to return him the keys." and that then there were "none [in the crow's nest] when we left Southampton.". 

We then have George Symons, yet another lookout (Titanic had six who covered shifts in pairs), testifying that after they left Southampton, he went and asked Lightoller for binoculars, who told him that "there are none", which Lightoller backs up here.

Blair was supposed to be the second officer, replaced by Lightoller (who got bumped down from first). However, we know that Lightoller had access to binoculars. Meaning that even if Blair took his keys with him, Lightoller either had his own key or managed to procure a replacement. 

We also know that there were multiple pairs on board, "A pair for each Senior Officer and the Commander, and one pair for the Bridge, commonly termed pilot glasses". Meaning if the lookouts seriously needed some, they could have been loaned some, especially since there'd only be one senior officer "on watch" at any given time. 

This also makes it clear that there were no dedicated binoculars for the lookouts, a fact that is backed up by both the Marine Superintendent of the White Star line here when describing the contents of the box in the crow's nests. We also have multiple captains testifying on whether they consider binoculars essential, which might explain why they weren't usually supplied:

No, I do not. - Captain Richard Jones I never heard of it until I read it in the paper the other day. We have never had them - I never have. - Captain Frederick Passow My Lord, I do not believe in any look-out man having glasses at all. I only believe in the Officer using them, and then only when something has been reported in a certain quarter or certain place on the bow. - Sir Ernest Shackelton, Artic Explorer

Now, why is that the case? Binoculars were considered to be useful in identifying an object once they were spotted, and as Lightoller puts it: "[The lookout] might be able to identify it, but we do not wish him to identify it. All we want him to do is to strike the bells.” 

It seems like binoculars were sometimes issued on White Star Line ships (Hogg testified that he had used them on the White Star Line’s Adriatic, but no other ship), but that it "[was] a matter of opinion for the officer on watch."

We also have multiple lookouts testifying that binoculars would, by their best judgment, not have helped Fleet and Lee spot it earlier since binoculars were not used for that:

Not much of a help to pick anything up; but to make it out afterwards, they were. - Thomas Jones "Do you mean you believe in your own eyesight better than you do in the glasses? Yes - George Hogg Yes. You use your own eyes as regards the picking up anything, but you want the glasses then to make certain of that object. - George Symons

"A fire weakend Titanic's hulls, which caused it to fail"

This old chestnut. I say old, but it's a "theory" originating in the 1990s. The idea is that there was a raging coal fire that heavily damaged the Titanic, proven by black smudges on a handful of pictures. 

Now, it is true that there was a coal fire on the Titanic. This was fairly common in ocean liners at the time, due to the ridiculous amount of coal on board occasionally spontaneously combusting (fun) and there were procedures in place to deal with it.

The coal was stored in bunkers within the boiler rooms, see here, specifically to separate them out a bit. The boiler rooms (and other parts of the ships) were separated into watertight compartments divided by watertight bulkheads and doors. 

The bulkheads were made of fairly thick steel and able to hold hundreds of tons of water. The coal bunkers themselves were made out of thinner steel, since they only needed to hold the coal itself, not water.

The fire on the Titanic happened in bunker Y in boiler room 6, presumably right when she left port. We know this because men were shoveling out coal both out of bunker Y and bunker W, the adjoining bunker on the other side of the watertight bulkhead in boiler room 5. 

Ironically enough, that specific bunker was the last one that just got nicked by the iceberg, dooming the ship (if it had stayed intact Titanic probably would have floated along). The bunkers, as I said, were not made watertight. So when bunker W was flooded, the steel eventually failed and flooded boiler room 6 completely.  

We can glean this both from recreations of the damage and the testimony of chief fireman Frederick Barrett, who was actually in boiler room 6 when it started flooding.

The "fire theory" states that the fire warped the bulkheads, which caused them to fail. To warp the bulkheads seriously, the fire would have had to burn at over 1000 degrees Fahrenheit/537 degrees celsius, probably hotter, which would then cause the rivets used to fasten the steel together to fail. 

Directly above the fire was the First Class Swimming Pool, which would have heated up considerably if it sat above a raging inferno. One might find it hard to believe that a boiling pool would have been described as "heated to a refreshing temperature" and that "in no swimming bath had [he] ever enjoyed such a pleasure before" by Archibald Gracie. 

Now we do know that there was a small "ding" in the bulkhead, according to Barrett, but that was small enough to just be painted over and investigated by the chief engineer, who deemed it to be no issue. And as previously stated, we can be pretty certain that the coal bunker burst, not the watertight bulkhead. 

Oh tumblr user @burr-ell, i am giving you a friendly little kiss on the forehead for asking this. I would love nothing more. 

Let's give the rundown of some common Titanic "facts" that people love to parade around especially nowadays and why they're either fully wrong, misinterpretations or actually close to the truth! With sources, because I'm nice like that. 

This will be long, but I feel like it needs to be to actually give y'all the proper information and context, and frankly I think I'm writing this mostly for myself. 

I'll divide it up into two parts, so here's "not enough lifeboats", "untrained crew", "no lifeboat drills" and "speeding & ignoring ice warnings".

Part two featuring "half empty lifeboats", "locking folks below deck", “missing binoculars", and "fire sank the Titanic, actually" is here!

"They didn't have enough lifeboats because they thought the ship was unsinkable"

Almost ship back then had enough lifeboats for all its passengers. Lifeboats were considered a very, very last ditch attempt at safety and more often than not resulted in the deaths of the people in them due to capsizing in bad weather, accidents while being lowered, drifting off etc etc. (SS Clallam, SS Valencia, SS Atlantic). 

If they had to be used, the idea was to use them as ferries to other boats. Ocean liners started getting more watertight compartments, bulkheads and double bottoms, meaning they were able to survive collisions and stay floating for longer. Since the Atlantic shipping lanes were VERY busy back then and most accidents happened near the harbor someone was expected to be in reasonable distance at all times when such an accident occurred. 

Besides that, ships had just gotten new, sparkly wireless machines, the Marconi transmitters. While their operators were technically not employed by the ship and their tasks consisted of sending letters from passengers, it was expected that they'd facilitate communication in accidents. And that system worked, for a while! 

Best example is the sinking of another White Star Line ship, the RMS Republic in 1909. She got rammed, sunk, every ship nearby ran up to help her, all her passengers got transferred over, how nice, our procedures worked!

So while it's true that regulations for the amount of lifeboats hadn't kept up with the steeply increasing size of the new ocean liners (Titanic was actually carrying more than her size demanded), the authorities expected that these new technological advancements were sufficient. 

Titanic showed them that this was not correct, so they were adjusted mainly through the SOLAS treaty (which actually resulted in tragedy itself, when ships not designed to fit so many lifeboats suffered from accidents due to the refitting, like the SS Eastland, who rolled over in dock, killing 844 people)

As for the ship being unsinkable, some surviving advertisements described Titanic and her sister Olympic as "And as far as it is possible to do so, these two wonderful vessels are designed to be unsinkable". Which was fairly common at the time (Captain Rostron actually does it in the inquiry after the sinking) due to the aforementioned new, fancy safety features. Hubris? Yes, but not a stand out characteristic of the Titanic.

"The Titanic Crew was untrained & overwhelmed"

Captain Smith had been at sea for 49 years, a commander for White Star for 25 years and the captain of their maiden voyages for ten years, including the then biggest ships in the world Baltic and Olympic. He was regarded as a "safe captain" by both the line and passengers, some who only booked with him. His most notable incident was probably when Olympic collided with the HSM Hawke, but he wasn't even in command of the ship at the time. They were under compulsory pilotage, i.e. a harbor pilot was giving the orders.

All her officers were also very experienced. From Chief to Sixth:

Wilde, on sea since his teens, with White Star for 15, including Majestic and Olympic

Murdoch, on the sea since he was 18, 12 years at White Star line, including Olympic, Celtic and Adriatic

Lightroller, with White Star for 13 years, including Oceanic and Majestic

Pitman, on the sea for 16 years, White Star for 5/12

Boxhall, on the sea for 13 years, with White Star for about 4 1/2 years 

Lowe, on the sea for 14 years, with White Star for 15 months

Moody, on the sea for about 9-10 years (including his Navy education), with White Star for about half a year on the Oceanic

So really the only one you could clock for being inexperienced was Moody, who was the sixth officer. And he was well educated and perfectly qualified for that position. Wilde was actually pulled in sort of last minute just after Titanic's sea trials, bumping down Murdoch & Lightroller one position and causing Officer David Blair to leave the ship entirely, presumably so that the well-oiled team of officers from the Olympic could set Titanic up for a good start. 

(This also caused the supposed missing binoculars, more on that below).

This was White Star's newest, biggest ship. White Star's whole sales pitch was luxury and comfort, they're the line running the "Millionaire's ship". They're not gonna risk anything, even if it's just their rich passengers having to deal with inexperienced officers. They were gonna put their best on it.

There were no lifeboat drills

Titanic needed drills to get her certifications and completed them in early April. The officers (minus Wilde plus Blair) were all there and involved, everything got checked and a bunch of the lifeboats lowered. 

There was also a separate Board of Trade drill on the 10th of April. Lightoller, Pitman, Lowe, Moody and "[nearly all seaman], including able-bodied seamen, ordinary seamen, lookouts and quartermasters" were all involved. There was also the bulkhead and the emergency boat drill.

Now there is some confusion around the "Sunday Drill". This was another drill involving the crew, not the passengers. 

It's essentially a muster plus a check of the boats, not actually anything to do with the procedure of loading the boats. This didn't happen on Titanic, but there seems to be no clear reason why. Some crew members state it was scheduled, others said the drill didn't happen due to weather, some said they only happened on Sundays "in New York", potentially because otherwise the firemen wouldn't join in. The "Sunday in New York" one is the one that gets mentioned the most, but truly this is anyone's guess. 

However, it's clear that this drill would have changed nothing. The crew already had undergone similar drills before, this one was not new information. Here's a really good, well sourced article on the whole drill issue.

The Titanic was speeding & ignoring ice warnings.

Titanic had received multiple ice warnings throughout her journey. This was nothing unusual, it was April in the North Atlantic. The ice warnings were communicated via the wireless, given to the bridge and marked on the board. 

We know of a bunch of specific warnings that were received and posted on the bridge, mainly from the Caronia and the Baltic. The Baltic one is the famous message that made it to Bruce Ismay's, chairman of the White Star Line, pocket. He showed it to some passengers before giving it back to Captain Smith.

There's two warnings that probably didn't make it to the bridge, captain or all officers. One from the Californian to the Antillian that the Titanic happened to overhear, warning of "three large bergs 5 miles southward of latitude 42° 3′ N, longitude 49° 9′ W". Harold Bride, junior wireless operator, testified he delivered this warning to the bridge, but Pitman testified he wasn’t aware of it. It could be that Murdoch, who was actually on duty at time of collision, was, but he ended up dying in the sinking. 

The other one is from the Mesaba at around 9:40 PM, stating: "In latitude 42° N to 41° 25′, longitude 49° W to longitude 50° 30′ W, saw much heavy pack ice and great number large icebergs, also field ice, weather good, clear". While this message was received by Phillips, Titanic's senior wireless operator, we’re pretty sure it never made it to the bridge.

There's also the infamous Californian warning at 11:00 PM, about 40 minutes before Titanic hit the iceberg, that Phillips interrupted with a seemingly harsh "Shut up, I'm busy, I'm working Cape Race". Now, that seems rough, but was actually a really common "tone" between the wireless operators of the time:

They were a fraternity of pioneers, considered to be cranks, and had the curious habit of addressing one another as O M ("Old Man"). A common signal exchanged between them was GTHOMQRL ("Get to hell, old man, shut up, I'm busy"), or A S O M ("Wait a minute, old man!"). [James Bisett, Commodore of the Cunard Line, “Tramps and Ladies - My Early Years At Steam]

What happened is that Phillips was working through a backlog of messages, Titanic's wireless had been broken earlier and he had fixed it against standing orders from the Marconi company (which actually made it possible for any of them to survive in the end). 

He had cranked the power all the way up to be able to understand the messages of Cape Race, which was on the edge of his receivers' span. Californian's operator, Cyril Evans, chimed in in the middle of that with a "I SAY, OLD MAN, WE ARE STOPPED AND SURROUNDED BY ICE!" essentially blasting Phillips' ears off, since Californian was much closer. 

Phillips told him to pipe down, Evans signed off and went to bed. The issue is: no one is at fault here. Phillips had already received and delivered multiple ice warnings, Evans was telling him nothing new or indicating that it was an urgent message, so Phillips had no reason to consider it important. Evans, in his inquiry, literally states that he was "jamming" him and gives no indication that Phillips was acting rude.

Titanic's speed at the time is debated. Boxhall says he estimates it at around 22 knots based on the propeller speed, Lightoller at 21.5, the US inquiry at "no less than 21". However, that is an estimation, and we nowadays think that Titanic was going around 20-21 knots. 

The officers were also unsure about the exact position of the Titanic, Boxhall actually calculated her a good 13 nautical miles further west than she was, so some mis-estimates are to be expected. We actually aren't quite sure what her exact top speed would have been, Lightoller estimated it at 22-23 knots based on "general rumours", Lowe at 24 to 25, which is a really hefty difference. 

We can assume Titanic's top speed to be similar to her sister ship Olympic's after Olympic got refitted with a three-bladed central propeller, which was around 24.5 knots (according to Chirnside). So while we can't be fully sure of her potential, it's a pretty safe bet that she wasn't going full speed, she was essentially going "cruising" speed. 

Now, was Titanic ignoring all the ice warnings? No. The surviving officers testified they were aware of them, and that Smith had told them to expect ice at around midnight and to get him immediately (his cabin was right on the bridge) if anything changed. 

Now, was she speeding? That, actually, comes down to your interpretation of events. Some could say that going "cruising" speed at night with ice warnings would be constituted as reckless speeding. However, all evidence indicates that holding your speed and posting look outs, only reducing once you actually spot dangerous ice yourself, was the common procedure. Here's an excerpt from the UK inquiry that sums it up well:

It was shown that for many years past, indeed, for a quarter of a century or more, the practice of liners using this track when in the vicinity of ice at night had been in clear weather to keep the course, to maintain the speed and to trust to a sharp look-out to enable them to avoid the danger. This practice, it was said, had been justified by experience, no casualties having resulted from it. I accept the evidence as to the practice and as to the immunity from casualties which is said to have accompanied it. But the event has proved the practice to be bad.

Titanic, by her best judgment, was not acting recklessly. She was following common procedures for a ship her size and built at the time (very, very unlike the Titan, since I see that comparison often). 

The idea that "as long as the weather is clear, you go top/normal speed" is also backed up by other captains in the inquiry, mainly Pritchard (commander of the Mauretania, who as mentioned was much quicker) but also Andrew Braes, Hugh Young, Edwin Cannons and William Stewart as well as others. They all say the exact same thing: if they were warned about ice and it was clear weather, they'd go their normal speed, day and night. They would only add extra lookouts in bad weather conditions, and only do "what they thought was proper" once they actually saw any ice themselves. 

They really emphasize the "in clear weather" part, and we know that the Titanic thought they were traveling in clear weather (Smith and Lightoller had even discussed it that very night). And they were! 

The issue is that it was almost TOO clear. 

The waves didn't even break on the iceberg, and the stars didn't even reflect off it. Meaning they saw it way later than they would usually. This was very, very unusual. Lightroller said that "the first time in my experience in the Atlantic in 24 years, and I have been going across the Atlantic nearly all the time, of seeing an absolutely flat sea.". 

This was an unprecedented condition for them, and they had no way of knowing how it would impact visibility of icebergs.

Cameron shows a scene where Ismay urges Captain Smith to go quicker to reach New York a day earlier. This seems to be entirely based on the testimony of Elizabeth Lindsey Lines, who states that she overheard Ismay and Smith discussing Olympic's and Titanic's maiden voyages, and that Ismay was saying:

"Well, we did better to-day than we did yesterday, we made a better run to-day than we did yesterday, we will make a better run to-morrow. Things are working smoothly, the machinery is bearing the test, the boilers are working well". They went on discussing it, and then I heard [Ismay] make the statement: "We will beat the Olympic and get in to New York on Tuesday."

It's true that Titanic was being quicker than Olympic, but we know now that that is mostly down to Titanic's superior propellor system (something we actually didn't know until someone dug up an engineering notebook like a decade ago). We have zero other evidence that Titanic was trying to be quicker, or that Ismay somehow was trying to force Smith to speed.