W.T. Stead On The Titanic- Myths Vs. Facts

[Archaic]

Sterring Mistake?

Hi everyone. I just caught up on the thread and very much enjoyed reading everyone's posts.

Jeff, love the story about Senator 'Watertight' Smith asking if the passengers saved themselves by fleeing to the safety of the Titanic's watertight compartments.

Thank God Senator Smith lived 100 years ago, because if he lived today he'd probably be a Presidential candidate.

While looking for a particular video to post I came across a news article I haven't seen before. Perhaps some of you have, as it came out last year, but for the benefit of the others: Charles Lightoller's grand-daughter says that he told her the impact with the iceberg was directly caused by human error- the helmsman misunderstood an order and turned the wheel right instead of left.

Lightoller Article: http://abcnews.go.com/International/...ry?id=11701578

The ABC News video accompanying the article is interesting, but it's about the weak rivets on the Titanic, not about what Lightoller told his grand-daughter. I'll see if I can find another interview with her.

Best regards,
Archaic

[louisa]

I'm wondering how accurate a test - using a scale model of the Titanic - would actually be. The water density and pressure would be different - wouldn't it? I'm no scientist though.


I expect everyone reading this thread already knows about the following excellent website - but just in case they don't...here it is:

http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/

[Adam Went]

Hey all,

Jeff:

Interesting account of the Canadian gentleman, what a horrible way to go that would have been. Several passengers and crew likely suffered the same fate, unfortunately, whether it was by choice or not. The engine room crew were amongst those, having made the heroic decision to stay below decks and keep the power going for the lights and the wireless, sealing their own fate. And those poor third class passengers, some of whom remained trapped below decks. Another scene in Ghosts Of The Abyss was when they were deep in the innards of the ship and came across some of the gates which closed off the third class areas from the rest of the ship - they were still locked. THAT was a moment which sent shivers down the spine and many of the crew on the ship watching it were in tears.

Incidentally, a test was once carried out on a scale model of the ship to see whether leaving the watertight compartments open would have allowed the ship to survive longer, as it would have sunk on a more even level. The result was that it would have sunk some 35 minutes sooner, having capsized with even the smallest shift in such a hefty amount of water.

Seem to remember as well that the Lusitania may have sunk quicker than she otherwise might have because the watertight doors were controlled automatically from the bridge, but after the torpedo struck, the power went out very quickly and so they had no control over the doors or the engines.

Ben:

Glad you've seen the book. It is a brilliant one but also a reminder of the time that has elapsed since the sinking - when that book was written in around 1998, several survivors were still alive. Now there are none.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Ben]

Hi Jeff,

The Canadian gentleman in question was George Wright of Halifax. There are indeed no accounts of his whereabouts during the sinking, and I've yet to find a single survivor account that alludes to his presence on board during the entire trip! There are a quite a number of relatively high-profile passenger whose movements remain nebulous. Ann Isham, one of only five first class females to perish, was another who nobody remembered meeting as far as we're aware. In the case of Seattle/Denver businessman Hugh Rood, there was even speculation that he was never aboard (or else fellow Denverite Margaret "Molly" Brown would have mentioned him, so the theory goes). To my mind, it seems just as likely that the shipboard acquaintances of these passengers were also victims.

Adam - Yes, the Gellar book is an excellent read!

All the best,
Ben

[jason_c]

Hey all,

Kensei:

Off the top of my head, no, I don't believe the body of Thomas Andrews was ever recovered, like the vast majority of victims. He went down with the ship. He was always a man who loved technology and it really struck me in the film Ghosts Of The Abyss when Bill Paxton said something along the lines of "If only there was some way for Thomas Andrews to be able to see these little robots [Jake and Elwood] exploring his ship...."

Im sure you are correct. Andrews body was never recovered.

[Mayerling]

Kensei/Louisa:

Yes, i'm afraid that would have been the unfortunate fate of the bodies of some of the victims - even if not in the immediate vicinity of the shipwreck, as we've said, they floated some considerable distance. One needs only look at the film footage of the shipwreck to see that some pretty large marine life lives even in that harsh climate.

We must remember as well that not all of the victims ended up on the stern of the ship in the final minutes, some of them chose to stay indoors, or were forced to stay indoors.

Also strangely and gruesomely enough, the thought of these people being in a pretty bad state after just a few days in the water makes me think about the condition of poor M.J. Druitt after having been in the Thames for nearly a month before being discovered.....different circumstances entirely, I know, but still horrible.

Cheers,
Adam.

Hi Adam,

A book on the disaster that I have by Michael Davie mentions a particularly horrid situation that may have killed one of the first class victims. After the sinking people asked about a wealthy Canadian who was on board Titanic, and who was a large and somewhat loud (but in a pleasant way) man, who nobody who saw could miss. Yet no survivors recalled seeing him on deck as the ship went down. None recalled him near the lifeboats either. Than it was recalled that the gentleman was a heavy sleeper. He was the sort of individual who turned in early that night, and would probably not have heard any steward knocking at the door to warn him that the ship was sinking. It was later surmised he must have slept through those terrible last hours without noticing anything until it was too late. He probably drowned in his stateroom.

Also, Walter Lord and others have commented on one of the questions Senator William A. Smith asked at the hearings about whether any of the passengers went to the watertight compartments to save themselves. Smith's reputation was only rebuilt by Wyn Wade's account of the U. S. hearing in his book, but at the time people called the Senator "Watertight" Smith for his error regarding the watertight compartments.*

*When the poisoner John Tawell wss on trial in 1845 for killing his mistress Sarah Hart with prussic acid, his barrister Sir Fitzroy Kelly made a similar goof by trying to claim Ms Hart had been killed by eating apples with their pips (pits) which contain minor amounts of cyanide. After that trial (Tawell was convicted and hanged) Kelly became known forever after as "Apple Pip" Kelly.

As for Monty Druitt's body, gases in the human body may have distended parts of it. He was probably identified by his posessions.

Jeff

[Adam Went]

Kensei/Louisa:

Yes, i'm afraid that would have been the unfortunate fate of the bodies of some of the victims - even if not in the immediate vicinity of the shipwreck, as we've said, they floated some considerable distance. One needs only look at the film footage of the shipwreck to see that some pretty large marine life lives even in that harsh climate.

We must remember as well that not all of the victims ended up on the stern of the ship in the final minutes, some of them chose to stay indoors, or were forced to stay indoors.

Also strangely and gruesomely enough, the thought of these people being in a pretty bad state after just a few days in the water makes me think about the condition of poor M.J. Druitt after having been in the Thames for nearly a month before being discovered.....different circumstances entirely, I know, but still horrible.

Cheers,
Adam.

[louisa]

Sharks live in all the oceans. We're only made aware of the ones in warm waters because warm climates are where most people have their holidays.

Many of the bodies would have been eaten by fish.

[kensei]

This might be somewhat gruesome to contemplate but it's something I've always wondered about, since there is some discussion here of all those bodies floating in the ocean for so long- is anything known on whether there was any predation by sharks or other sea creatures? The sounds and smells of shipwrecks generally do tend to attract them. I know the water was cold but some sharks do live in cold water- the Greenland shark for instance, which is huge. The area is also known for giant squid, which are thought to come nearer the surface at night.

[Adam Went]

Hi Jeff,

Yes, very true, there were sightings of both debris and bodies for miles around the area of the sinking for a considerable time afterwards. It also wasn't helped by the fact that it took the Mackay-Bennett a few days to get to the scene, by which time a lot of the bodies had spread out as you mentioned - many more probably went down with the ship.

I can't remember the exact figure off the top of my head but I think the MB only recovered a few hundred of the bodies, then a couple of other vessels which were tasked with 'double checking' managed to pick up another hundred or so between them, but the majority were never found and many of those who were found couldn't be identified.....very sad.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Mayerling]

Hey all,

Louisa:

It's not entirely true that it was only the bodies of the wealthy who were recovered for burial, it was more case of recovering the bodies of those who were still in a condition fit enough to do so - there was not the technology to take care of such bodies then as there is now, especially on board a ship. There may have been more care taken of the bodies of the wealthy but most of those unidentified victims buried in cemeteries such as Halifax are from the poorer classes and the crew.

Cheers,
Adam.

Hi Adam,

I agree that the selection of bodies that were pulled out of the ocean was more equal to the classes on board Titanic than the permission given to enter the lifeboats, but I believe one of the problems was that the gulf stream currents caused the bulk of the bodies to be farther away from the area that was examined for corpses. One writer (I can't say who - possibly Wade or Marcus) mentioned that for months after the disaster ships crossing the Atlantic spotted corpses bobbing up and down. It is also possible that a number of people never left the ship but drowned in their staterooms or other rooms.

Jeff

[Adam Went]

Hey all,

Kensei:

Off the top of my head, no, I don't believe the body of Thomas Andrews was ever recovered, like the vast majority of victims. He went down with the ship. He was always a man who loved technology and it really struck me in the film Ghosts Of The Abyss when Bill Paxton said something along the lines of "If only there was some way for Thomas Andrews to be able to see these little robots [Jake and Elwood] exploring his ship...."

Nemo:

Very interesting....I wonder how long it would have taken to float to the nearest land on an iceberg from the middle of the North Atlantic? I'd suggest W.T. would have been very old, and very cold, by the time he arrived.

Ben:

Indeed you're right, I double checked about Astor and it is an apparently fallacy, though it's been expounded plenty of times of the years. Seems I was led into the myth as well....

As for Candee's "Our Coterie" group, there is an excellent biography of her, along with many other passengers and families in Judith B. Geller's "Titanic: Women and Children First" - according to that, "Our Coterie" consisted of, aside from Helen: Edward A. Kent, Hugh Woolner, Edward Colley, Clinch Smith, Hakan Mauritz Bjornstrom-Steffanson and Colonel Archibald Gracie.

Louisa:

It's not entirely true that it was only the bodies of the wealthy who were recovered for burial, it was more case of recovering the bodies of those who were still in a condition fit enough to do so - there was not the technology to take care of such bodies then as there is now, especially on board a ship. There may have been more care taken of the bodies of the wealthy but most of those unidentified victims buried in cemeteries such as Halifax are from the poorer classes and the crew.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Errata]

I have always been suspicious of eyewitness accounts from the final moments of the ship. I can understand someone seeing a guy in the lounge before the evacuation was ordered and assuming the guy stayed there till the end. But somehow it just seems that if you are rushing for a lifeboat and you look up and think " my god! is that W.T. Stead at the poker table?" then your priorities are clearly not in such good order that it would enhance your chances of survival.

To me it breaks down to two truths. If you were on a lifeboat, you can place someone in location, but not in time. Clearly you would have no idea if the person you saw stayed there until the end. If you weren't in a lifeboat, and were in fact on the ship as it broke apart and sank, likely you were dead. But if you did not die, you were in no condition to give a crap about who was at the poker table.

It's like the "Nearer my God to Thee" thing. Nobody heard the same song from the band because they were concentrating on something else. Some say it was "Nearer my God to Thee". Others remember other songs. But the only people who can answer that question with any authority died that night.

[louisa]

In one of the books that I read it said that the 'I ordered ice but this is ridiculous' quotation was probably made up because JJA was never known for his humour.

When JJA's body was recovered by the Mackay Bennett, it was identified by the collar, printed with his initials. He was also wearing brown boots.

Only the 1st and 2nd class passengers' bodies were taken back for a decent burial. All the others had to be put back into the sea as fish food.

It's a shame that Kitty couldn't have been saved, but then, I'm an animal lover.

It was lucky that Madeleine Astor was pregnant because it gave her more of a claim to the Astor fortune.

[Mayerling]

I just checked the Wikipedia article on John Jacob Astor IV and it too mentions that there were persistant rumors that his body showed signs of being crushed, but that those who examined it before it was buried said it looked normal. Interestingly enough, in the 1997 blockbuster film TITANIC, Astor is killed when the grand ballroom gets flooded as it's glass roof is destroyed.

There is a problem I thought of regarding the issue of the falling funnel. It was (I thought) tied to the matter of the ship splitting in half. Very few of the survivors thought it split in half (only one - I that it was Jack Thayer Jr. - actually drew a series of sketchs showing this happening). If so, why would it become such an attention grabber without the hundreds noticing that the boat was now in half?

The Wikipedia article mentioned that the second Mrs. Astor (pregnant with his second son, the future John Jacob Astor VI) and her maid survived, but not Victor Robbins (Astor's valet) nor his airedale Kitty. It also mentioned the apochryphal story that after the berg hit he supposedly quipped, "I asked for ice, but this is ridiculous!" I suspect most people just thought it was a silly joke that surfaced (no pun intended) decades after the shock of the disaster (similar to "Aside from that, how did you lie the play, Mrs. Lincoln?").

Jeff