The Sinking of the RMS Titanic and other ships.

[Adam Went]

As a side point of interest, Gloria Stuart, who played Old Rose in James Cameron's Titanic, celebrated her 100th birthday a few days ago. Cameron hosted a function for her....

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/entertainment/post/2010/07/titanic-star-gloria-stuart-turns-100-/1

Great stuff!

Cheers,
Adam.

[Adam Went]

Hey all,

Good to see some fellow maritime researchers here as well. Thought this story might be of interest to you - good to see the Andrea Doria still getting some attention as well:

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/06/nj_divers_discover_andrea_dori.html

Cheers,
Adam.

[ChrisGeorge]

Hi all

The Titanic exhibition at the Merseyside Maritime Museum includes images and discussion of artifacts from the lost ship.

Also links to displays on the Lusitania and Empress of Ireland disasters of 1916 and 1914, respectively.

More Titanic information at Yo! Liverpool.

Chris

[SaraCarter33]

Sorry for posting as this thread has not been responded to in such a long time , But i am so happy to have found this topic as this is a another one of my interests.

[Shangas]

That's a popular myth, and some it is true, but unfortunately, it was the Titanic that sank.

The Olympic crashed into the HMS Hawke, by the way.

[brummie]

Just to add a bit of controversy to the Titanic Story I remember seeing a little while ago a documentary on the conspiracy theory that the ship which sank was not actually the Titanic at all! As I recall the story goes that the White Star Line had invested so much money into two massive new ships, the Titanic and her identical sister ship the Olympia, that they were in financial trouble. The Olympia was completed first and went from Belfast to , I think Porstmouth, for sea trials where she was damaged in a collision with a navy ship. On return to Belfast for repair it was found she was so badly damaged that she would no longer get a certificate to sail, and since the insurers refused to pay up the company was in danger of folding, so they switched identities with the Titanic with the intention of scuttling her in the Atlantic and collecting the insurance. It was alledgedly arranged for the Carpathia to rendezvous with her in North Atlantic and remove the passengers and thatis was she was sailing at high speed to keep that rencezvous. Anyway I think thats how the story went unlikely I know but I thought it might be of interest to you.

[Shangas]

That last one you told me of reminds me of an episode of The Shadow. In it, this guy attacks ocean-liners in his private submarine and when the people are all lowered in lifeboats, he surfaces in his submarine, gets out on deck and shoots them all. He got the tides turned on him in the end when the government planted a phoney ship out at sea, loaded with soldiers and artillery.

[Mayerling]

Hi Shangas,

Actually on the Britannic two of the lifeboats with 30 crew members in them had the misfortune of being dragged into the wake of the still turning screws of the liner. They were cut to pieces. In a television film made about ten years ago about the ship, they showed how this happened.

But the rest did get off safely. The remarkable thing about Britannic as opposed to her famous sister ship was that she sank faster than Titanic did
(the latter taking a little over two and a half hours to sink (11:45 P.M. to 2:20 A.M.), which I have always considered a kind of tribute to her design and designer, Thomas Andrews. By the way, Britannic had no load of recuperating soldiers in her when she was fatally damaged by that mine or torpedo. I believe she had recently unloaded them. It has been said that had she had the one or two thousand "Tommies" on board, all with serious battle wounds, the death toll might have eclipsed the Titanic's.

The record number of deaths in any torpedoed or sunk vessel in World War I/the Great War is not the Lusitania's 1,198 or so, but the French transport Provence (sunk in 1917). Of 3,600 on board only 300 survived.

The worst hospital ship disaster of World War I was not Britannic (unless you consider the fine ship itself), but the "Glenart Castle", sunk on February 26, 1918 in the Bristol Channel. The doctors and nurses had gotten into lifeboats, when the blood-thirsty U-Boat Commander (his name was something with a "P" like "Patzell") rammed and sank most of them. 166 doctors, nurses, orderlies, were all drowned or killed. After the war there was a trial of the captured officers of the crew (who were unrepentant), and two got prison terms which were slaps on the wrist. The Captain also survived the war, but was not found and tried.

Best wishes,

Jeff

[Shangas]

Never read it, but Jessop is something of a miracle. To be on all three ships in times of danger and survive each time.

Although with the sinking of the Brittanic, it could be argued that she wasn't in any huge amount of danger. The majority of passengers and crew managed to escape thanks to the design-improvements, the lifeboats and the fact that the ship was so close to shore. In fact if I remember correctly, only 30 people died, and that was in the initial impact.

What is more impressive in my mind, is that she escaped the Titanic. Even if she was a woman, it was still hard.

[mac-the-kipper]

'Titanic Survivor' by Violet Jessop.


A must for any Titanic buff. Not only did she survive the Titanic sinking but was on board the 'Olympic' when it collided with the 'Hawke' AND survived the sinking of 'Brittanic' when she served as a nurse during the 1st WW

an amazing read..

[Mayerling]

A Belated tribute I cut from he NY TImes Obit page.

Celeste had asked for an obituary notice I saw regarding King Richard III and his men at Bosworth Field on August 22, on the thread for the Little Princes.
I noticed in my envelope of clippings that on Sunday, June 15, 2008, in the New York TImes on page A 25 there was this notice under "Memoriam".

"In loving memory of some 1,200 dead, mostly women and children, on June 15, 2004 for the 104th anniversary disaster of the burning an d sinking of the steamer General Slocum in New York's East River. THe SLocum disaster had the greatest loss of lives in New York City's history until September 11, 2001.
Maritime Industry Museum, Fort Schuyler, NY. 718 - 409 - 7218."

Most estimates actually put the dead at about 1,021 or so...maybe 1,030. In any case it was dreadful.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Hi Celesta,

I suspect that the aspects of the battle that Gracie concentrated on were the following:

1) Who was responsible for the victory over the Federal troops under William Rosecrans (the actual commander of the Confederate army, Lt. General Braxton Bragg, or the "borrowed" commander of the troops from the forces of General Robert E. Lee, Lt. General James Longstreet?

2) Who was really responsible for the fatal error that hurt the Federal defense perameter, Rosecrans of hs closest advisor, Major General James Garfield? As Garfield was the martyred 2nd Assassinated President (see Dr. Tumblety and his possible connection to Charles Guiteau), Gracie was involved in a delicate problem in discussng this matter.

Best wishes,

Jef

[Celesta]

Almost forgotten postscript.

Col. Gracie actually left two valuable books. Besides his account of the "Titanic", he wrote a still useful account of the last major Confederate battle victory in the American Civil War - THE TRUTH ABOUT CHICKAMAUGA.

Jeff

Hi Jeff, I was at Chickamauga a couple of weeks ago. We went up to the Nat'l Cemetary to my parent's grave and stopped back by there. I have never seen so many monuments. It's actually divided into two sites, one up on the ridges and the other down on the lower ground. We weren't able to tour it the way I would have wanted due to time constraints. I'll look into this book and find out what the truth is.

Best to you, Jeff.

[Celesta]

Hi Cel,

Sorry, I asked to get my profile name changed but yes for a short period of time I was MK...well in name only of course. Sorry for the confussion.

Esther

Got it! I was thinking it was kind of ballsy of you to use MK's name and then suddenly it was gone! Actually I thought of doing that when I first registered but then, out of superstition, changed my mind.

Take care,

Cel

[Shangas]

If I recall, the Vasa sank due to an unequal distribution of weight and a top-heavy design, right? The ship rolled, and the open gunports let the water rush in and the ship just tipped right over and sank.