The Sinking of the RMS Titanic and other ships.

[GUT]

Sorry GUT. Glad to hear from you and hope you've been having a good time.

I'll be scarce for about 3 more weeks.

Not much Internet at sea unless you pay a fortune, and not much time either.

So far it's fantastic thanks Jeff.

Some rough conditions but that's to be expected.

[Mayerling]

Hey I'm in the Indian Ocean at the moment enough shipwreck stories already.

Sorry GUT. Glad to hear from you and hope you've been having a good time.

[Rosella]

Gut, welcome back after your little break. I hope you're well? On the Indian Ocean eh, and very nice too! At least if you get shipwrecked the water's warm. Just ignore the sharks!

[Rosella]

Delete

[GUT]

Hey I'm in the Indian Ocean at the moment enough shipwreck stories already.

[Mayerling]

Oh, yes I think the consensus is that the Waratah was top-heavy (though this was fiercely disputed at the subsequent Inquiry) and sank in a storm, though other vessels managed to plough through the heavy weather and survive.

The mystery is more where is she now, as she has never been found, and the fact that not one body, not one scrap of wreckage was ever sighted. There have also been several interesting theories as to how she actually sank.

There are one or two stories with a supernatural element involving this ship. Not just engineer Claud Sawyer's dreams, with a strange figure urging him to leave, but also the captain of the last vessel to have contact with the Waratah, who stated that he had seen an old fashioned sailing ship following in its wake. Shades of the Flying Dutchman!

There were odd reports of ships thinking they saw floating bodies, and sailors told by officers it was refuse from a whale in the distance. In any case, if the passengers were inside the ship due to the storm, few would have been cast into the sea, and in that really bad stormy sea few would have floated very long. As for wreckage - it could have come ashore but was ignored (this happens).

One might say that in 1909 (without wireless telegraphy adopted around the globe) such a total disappearance could only have happened up to that year. Then one recalls we are just over a year and a half since the Malaysian airliner vanished (probably a couple of thousand miles off Australia) and we only have some wreckage that came ashore on Reunion, clean on the other side of the Indian Ocean.

[Rosella]

Oh, yes I think the consensus is that the Waratah was top-heavy (though this was fiercely disputed at the subsequent Inquiry) and sank in a storm, though other vessels managed to plough through the heavy weather and survive.

The mystery is more where is she now, as she has never been found, and the fact that not one body, not one scrap of wreckage was ever sighted. There have also been several interesting theories as to how she actually sank.

There are one or two stories with a supernatural element involving this ship. Not just engineer Claud Sawyer's dreams, with a strange figure urging him to leave, but also the captain of the last vessel to have contact with the Waratah, who stated that he had seen an old fashioned sailing ship following in its wake. Shades of the Flying Dutchman!

[sdreid]

Due out in December, In the Heart of the Sea-the true story about the sinking of the Essex after its battle with a sperm whale, the possessor of the largest brain on Earth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-H35Mpj4uk

[Mayerling]

There were some passengers who left the ship at Durban, including an engineer who had a nightmare about the ship for three nights before he decided to leave her. He testified at the London hearings about the disappearance.

The general feeling seems to be that "Waratah" had some problems about her ability to quickly regain her equilibrium when in a heavy sea. On a previous voyage one of the passengers had been a respected professor of physics who noted this and tried to tell the crew (he was basically respectfully told to not mind it). Given the storm she entered that last night, it is not too difficult to figure out what happened to her.

[Graham]

About 15 years ago it was announced that the Waratah had been found, but later investigation showed that the wreck didn't match the size and shape of the Waratah. I also seem to remember that at least one other ship disappeared on the Durban - Cape Town run, leading to later claims that the area was a new Bermuda Triangle.

Waratah was an unlucky name for a ship, as prior to this one's disappearance at least three other similarly-named ships had sunk during the 19th century.

Graham

[Rosella]

^ I think one of the enduring mysteries of the sea is the disappearance of the SS Waratah into the seas around the South African coast in July 1909. 211 passengers (many Australian) and crew were lost. It was often referred to as 'Australia's Titanic' but it is more puzzling than the sinking of the Titanic. No bodies were ever found, nor was there a trace of wreckage although search parties were out for weeks afterwards. There have been several search expeditions in modern times but no-one knows the Waratah's final resting place.

[Mayerling]

I see that the tragically lost container ship, that was sunk in that hurricane last month, was finally located at a depth of 15,000 feet (further than the Titanic) off Bermuda. Sad for the 33 souls lost on her, but at least now they know her location (so she won't enter the "Bermuda Triangle" nonsense). The wreck will be visited by underwater, unmanned submergibles that will photograph the wreck and seek out the ship's black boxes.

Amazing how fast they found this ship in comparison to that missing Malaysian airliner, which so far has only yielded some wreckage on the island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean. But the container ship's last position was better established.

[sdreid]

The 40th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald is the 10th of this month and gave us song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vST6hVRj2A

[Mayerling]

This centennial ends...

Hi all,

I saw the first sign that the Titanic's centennial was finished in the New York Times three weeks back. It was announced that Mr. Eric Larson signed to write his next non-fiction book, SEA OF MYSTERIES, and it would be about the sinking of the Lusitania.

My only question is if anyone will write a book about the Empress of Ireland first? For that matter will another book on the EASTLAND pop up too?

I have a note to bring forward here. 1912 is recalled for Captain Scott and his companions, and the Titanic tragedy. I noticed that it was the year that the dramatist August Strindberg and the novelist Bram Stoker both died. In the United States there was a remarkable once in history chance: Four first rate candidates running for President, of whom three became President:

Incumbent Republican: William Howard Taft
Progressive or "Bull Moose" ex-President: Theodore Roosevelt
Democrat: Woodrow Wilson
Socialist: Eugene Debs

It was a brutal election - Taft and Roosevelt had been friends but the latter felt the former betrayed the former's political policies. It literally ended with them calling each other names like "Honeyfugler" (Roosevelt called by Taft) and "Puzzlewit" (Taft called by Roosevelt).

Wilson had problems getting nominated (46 ballots!!) but his chief rival Champ Clark (Speaker of the House) miscalculated. He gave his version of a democratic liberal platorm.

Debs, the hero of labor for his work in the Pullman Strike, pushed a Socialist program.

Teddy would be shot by a nut named John Schrank in Milwaukee (Schrank disliked third term seekers). Roosevelt still delivered a speech he was scheduled to give, before going to the hospital.

Taft (who knew he'd lose - but wanted to make sure so would Roosevelt) lost his Vice President John S. Sherman a week before the election Nicholas Murray Butler agreed to replace Sherman, after being assured that Taft and he would lose (Butler was head of Columbia University).

Wilson won.

Finally in September 1912 a dreadful typhoon hit the Sea of Japan and the Chinese Seas. A Japanese liner was lost with over 1000 passengers. I know of no accounts of this tragedy that have ever been published.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Graham - I am also in the process of reading The Sinking of J Bruce Ismay. If the reader is to be believed then yes, it does sound as if Lightoller was 'brown-nosing' Ismay.

After reading the first chapter, something occurred to me. After the Titanic sank, I wonder just how many of us would have consented to our lifeboat being turned around to go back for survivors?

It's a difficult one isn't it?

Hi Louisa,

Supposedly (and I wonder how true this is) many people in the boats recalled how in 1782 when HMS Royal George capsized and sank at Spithead anchorage, several boats tried to rescue some of the hundreds of sailors (many with their families on board that day) only to be overturned and lost with their crews as a result. More recently, in July 1898, a French liner, La Bourgoyne, had been in a collision off Sable Island, Nova Scotia. While it sank, many crew members had commandeered the lifeboats, and fought like beasts to prevent passengers in the water from getting into them. The loss (for that time) of 560 people was immense for an ocean liner disaster. Oddly enought, the same day (July 2nd) the battle of Santiago Bay in Cuba was won by a fleet under Admirals William Sampson and Winfield Schley. The Spaniard fleet under Admiral Cervera was destroyed, and a could of hundred Spanish sailors died, as well as one American. More died in the sinking of the ocean liner that same day.

Jeff