The Sinking of the RMS Titanic and other ships.

[Mayerling]

I remember from my childhood parking myself in front of the TV to watch some Titanic special starring Telly Savalas opening up some safe pulled up from the wreck. And I don't think it was a main safe, maybe a purser's safe? I remember ruined banknotes being in it, and that it was live.

Does anyone remember anything interesting at all coming out of that safe? I think I was maybe nine, and don't remember anything really other than Telly Savalas and bitter disappointment.

Hi Errata,

That show with Savalas was on the air about 1989 or so, and was subject to a great deal of criticism. For one thing, Savalas was given some particularly stupid dialog: "One moment it was unsinkable, but the next it was unthinkable". They found a piece of luggage which was opened up - it belonged to a second class passenger (who survived, by the way). There was also some "Titanic expert" who insisted that the ship was on fire from the moment it left Southhampton, and that was the real cause of the sinking.
That this idiot was ignoring a collision with an iceberg that hundreds of people witnessed was only part of he reason for disliking his comment. His big fire was that coal bunker fire that had burned for a day, but never threatened the ship at all.

They did not find any safe for that program, but a few years earlier a safe had been retrieved by Peter Gimbel from the Andrea Doria, and placed for its protection in a shark tank at he New York City Aquarium at Coney Island. It was opened on television, and turned out to have some waterlogged currency. Gimbel had been looking for another safe (the purser's I believe) but found this one. The other safe supposedly had valuables in it (jewelry).

The purser on Titanic (McElroy?) actually had been handing out jewelry from his safe to First Class Lady Passengers as they entered life boats.

The most interesting piece of personal property retrieved from the wreck site of Titanic (and not part of the Savalas program) was the wallet of Major Arthur Peuchen of the Cold Stream Guards. It was mentioned that he dropped the wallet while getting into lifeboat, and it's retrieval decades later was amazing.

Jeff

[Robert]

Kennedy had an abiding interest in things naval, for which this obituary provides the explanation :

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/6374967/Sir-Ludovic-Kennedy.html

[Errata]

I remember from my childhood parking myself in front of the TV to watch some Titanic special starring Telly Savalas opening up some safe pulled up from the wreck. And I don't think it was a main safe, maybe a purser's safe? I remember ruined banknotes being in it, and that it was live.

Does anyone remember anything interesting at all coming out of that safe? I think I was maybe nine, and don't remember anything really other than Telly Savalas and bitter disappointment.

[Adam Went]

Hi Jeff,

Definitely agree with you about Bismarck, she was the pride of the German fleet and considered by many to be unsinkable, as with the Titanic.

You may be interested to know, if you didn't already, that John Moffat, who was one of the men responsible for the bombing of Bismarck from the air, which jammed her rudder and essentially meant she was just cruising around in a large, inescapable circle - is still alive. He's in his 90's now, as most of them are, but I understand he was or is attending some sort of memorial to the battle. He also has a relatively new book called "I Sank The Bismarck" - here's a link to an article in regards to this:
More at http://www.thesouthernreporter.co.uk...tion_1_1644250

Also some sort of nice ending to a tragic tale that it was Robert Ballard who discovered both Titanic and Bismarck....and within a few years of each other too.

Karl Doenitz and Erich Raeder, commanders of the German fleet of course ended up on trial at Nuremberg in 1946.....Doenitz got 10 years and Raeder got life IIRC.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Mayerling]

Part two

To continue what I would have put in the single message:

Finally, if I am not mistaken the man responsible for rekindling interest in Bismarck was Ludovick Kennedy in his book about it's voyage, pursuit, and destruction. I believer that was the basis for the film SINK THE BISMARCK in 1960. Kennedy (a believer in the abolition of capital punishment) also wrote the first popular (not first book) on the Christie - Evans case, TEN RILLINGTON PLACE (also turned into a film). So he sort of links both shipwreck/sea adventure and true crime books in himself. To be fair though, Kennedy was involved in the pursuit of the Bismarck.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Hey Archaic and Jeff,

Thanks for the link, Archaic. Of course the old theory before the ship was found was that she'd had a huge 300 foot gash down her side but it was discovered later that the iceberg damage itself was actually minimal, it just popped rivets and plates, etc and this continued to worsen as the water pressure build up, hence letting the water in faster.

Yeah pretty sure Gardiner and Van Der Vat's work has pretty well been ruled out altogether now Jeff, though it was outlandish to say the least in the first place.

Also, on a final note, the 70th anniversary of the sinking of the great German battleship Bismarck has just taken place. What an amazing sequence of events that was.

Cheers,
Adam.

Adam, I am going to try his again - again I wrote a response and it was demolished by the Board for no reason (supposedly I had not signed on - but I had).

I was unaware of the anniversary of Bismarck's career. In many ways it resembles the Titanic. Both were the greatest of their class of ship up to that time. Both were on a maiden voyage. Both were lost with heavy loss of life (ironically, because it was a warship, Bismarck lost 2,200 men and that is more than the 1,517 or so lost on Titanic, but the latter were lost in peacetime). Bismarck did have a chance to prove herself - she sank HMS Hood.* Titanic only could boast not having been in a collision with the ship New York, and completing the voyages to Cherbourg and Queenstown before her rendevous with the iceberg.

*Ironically Hood too was to lose more than Titanic: 1,800 to 1,517 or so.

I always felt that Bismarck's cruise was a waste, as she only travelled with Prince Eugen. She should have had Tirpitz, Scharnhorst, Schleswig-Holstein, and Eugen. Possibly a more formadable fleet of dreadnoughts might have changed the result of the battle-campaign. But Hitler never did like or understand sea power.

Jeff

[Adam Went]

Hey Archaic and Jeff,

Thanks for the link, Archaic. Of course the old theory before the ship was found was that she'd had a huge 300 foot gash down her side but it was discovered later that the iceberg damage itself was actually minimal, it just popped rivets and plates, etc and this continued to worsen as the water pressure build up, hence letting the water in faster.

Yeah pretty sure Gardiner and Van Der Vat's work has pretty well been ruled out altogether now Jeff, though it was outlandish to say the least in the first place.

Also, on a final note, the 70th anniversary of the sinking of the great German battleship Bismarck has just taken place. What an amazing sequence of events that was.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Mayerling]

Jeff:

Interesting point, considering Olympic was still in service for some two decades after both her sisters had gone down. Britannic of course was a victim of war though. If you have a copy of, or can get a copy of Bob Ballard's "Lost Liners" there's some photos of the surviving Olympic memorabilia in modern times.

No doubt you've heard of Robin Gardiner and Dan Van Der Vat's book "Riddle Of The Titanic" which claims that Olympic and Titanic were switched and it was really the Olympic which was sunk as part of a massive scam?

Lusitania and Mauretania had another sister called Aquitania - now she was a real tough old ship. Served in and survived both world wars. Here's an info page about her which might be of interest:

http://www.ocean-liners.com/ships/Aquitania.asp

Cheers,
Adam.

Hi Adam,

Yes, I had heard of Gardiner's and Van Der Vat's book, but I believe further examination of the wreckage of the Titanic showed that it could not be Olympic due to certain numbers on the plates or something like that.

I have never read the book by Carlo Pelegrino, but I've heard it is an absolute must for fans of Titanic.

Jeff

[Archaic]

Titanic Documentary

Here's an interesting documentary about Titanic that examines the possibility that she suffered greater hull damage than was previously thought.
(The link contains a good summary.)

'Titanic's Final Moments': http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/titan...ries+Online%29

Best regards,
Archaic

[Adam Went]

I'm the kind of reader who will buy a heap of books and then they'll just sit around never getting read....so just recently i've finished reading one of those books that had sat on the shelf gathering dust for years, and i'd definitely highly recommend it to anybody with an interest in the Titanic, or marine exploration in general, because it covers quite a few bases in a way which most books don't.....

It's "Her Name, Titanic" by Charles Pellegrino....the author having been involved in Titanic and maritime studies for a loooooong time now. It's not the most up to date book, having been written in 1987, but Stephen King described it as "Hypnotic", and he's quite right - an excellent read.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Adam Went]

Jeff:

Interesting point, considering Olympic was still in service for some two decades after both her sisters had gone down. Britannic of course was a victim of war though. If you have a copy of, or can get a copy of Bob Ballard's "Lost Liners" there's some photos of the surviving Olympic memorabilia in modern times.

No doubt you've heard of Robin Gardiner and Dan Van Der Vat's book "Riddle Of The Titanic" which claims that Olympic and Titanic were switched and it was really the Olympic which was sunk as part of a massive scam?

Lusitania and Mauretania had another sister called Aquitania - now she was a real tough old ship. Served in and survived both world wars. Here's an info page about her which might be of interest:

http://www.ocean-liners.com/ships/Aquitania.asp

Hatchett:

Glad to hear there's another member here with that book - we can perhaps forgive some of the factual accuracy issues given the emotion of the time it was written and what we've learnt in the 98 years since.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Hatchett]

Hello Adam,

Yes, I have a copy of that book. Like you say it is not very factual, alas. But an interesting read all the same. Whet's the whistle, so as to say.

Best wishes.

[Mayerling]

Hi Adamm

I have rarely thought about Olympic, as the tragic fates of her two sisters always put her long career into a kind of quiet success (despite those two collisions), but I have long wondered how travellers on her felt about being on her (or on her opposite number in the Cunard line, Mauretania). In both cases the ships looked like Titanic / Britannic, and Lusitania, and yet did it effect ticket sales? Mauretania had a longer career (from what I recall), but Olympic was "honored" (as would be Normandie) when after the scrapping fixtures were sold to collectors. I seem to recall there is a pub or some restaurant in England that has an "Olympic" room.

Jeff

[Adam Went]

Hi Jeff,

I agree with you about Andrews. In many ways he was probably ahead of his time, and if he had had his way with Titanic's design, there would have been enough lifeboats on board for everybody. The men who worked for him certainly spoke of him very highly - 90 years on, the Ghosts Of The Abyss team discovered a drinking fountain near the engine room for the works - Bill Paxton said something like "Even here one can feel the hand of Thomas Andrews. Even this small kindness would have been greatly appreciated." The fact that one of the last sightings of him was from a steward who asked if he wasn't going to try and save himself, and he simply stared blankly into the distance, lost in thought.

As for Olympic, the collision with the Nantucket Lightship was probably the death knell for the ship - as you say she was scrapped soon afterwards and White Star ceased to exist around that time as well.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Mayerling]

Hi Adam,

I have heard of the book, as it is used in bibliographies of the Titanic. But I never read Andrews' biography. I always have felt that Thomas Andrews final hours of courage were partly based on the sad knowledge that he failed the hundreds of people who were about to die on his great floating machine. He was a perfectionist (that was why he was on that voyage - to note any improvements needed (ironically enough). He probably wished he had made the watertight compartment bulkheads higher. I suspect his unwillingness to save himself was his way of making personal amends to those who were about to die by joining them. Even though he'd never see his family again

Very sad. Truly a decent man.

As for Olympic she was involved (as far as I know) in three disasters. In 1911 she had a well-publicized collision with HMS Hawke in British waters (Hawke was later torpedoed and sunk in the opening stages of World War I). In 1914 Olympic was headed for America when steaming past Lough Swilly off northern Ireland. The passengers and crew watched as the HMS Audacious slowly sank after hitting a mine. No lives were lost here (or in the Hawke collision). Audacious (great name for a dreadnought) was a new ship, and the British kept a curtain of silence down on it's loss - but the news got out anyway. Dozens of Americans took photographs of the sinking (one of the best photographed ship disasters of that time) that were gleefully published in American newspapers (particularly the Hearst papers, as William Randolph Hearst was pro-German at that time). Finally in 1935 (I believer - it was just before she was sent to be scrapped) Olympic rammed and sank the Nantucket Light Ship, killing 20 men or so. That tragedy is not too well recalled these days.

Jeff