The ship "Titanic". Mystical legends around the wreck of the Titanic

America

On April 14, 1912, the world was still well-fed, impudent and unsinkable. Mankind subjugated the power of steam and electricity - it no longer needed God. Therefore, by the end of Black Saturday, April 14, rock reminded of itself. Heavy salty waves closed over the most ambitious after Tower of Babel the dream of mankind - the luxurious Titanic. Nobody was supposed to survive. It was an execution.

Studying the details of the shipwreck, the researchers can not get rid of a strange feeling: everything that happened was lined up in an endless goal of absurd, inexplicable and tragic misunderstandings. Thousands of petty human oversights merged into one monstrous absurdity, as if everyone around was deliberately working to bury a giant liner in the black Atlantic depths.

Literally a week before the disaster, when the liner was sailing from Southampton to Sherba, all the sentinels had binoculars. And when the four-pipe ship rushed at full speed into the Atlantic clogged with ice floes, no one turned out to have binoculars except the captain, but he was not at all going to be a lookout.

Miss Mary Young, a second-class passenger, had binoculars and saw the fatal iceberg half an hour before the collision, but she did not tell anyone. The sailor in the observation "nest" on the mast noticed him two and a half minutes before the edge of the ice floe cut through the side of the Titanic and the water rushed into the "watertight" compartments of the hold.

But even without binoculars, an experienced sentinel is able to see much earlier - unless, of course, we are talking about a "black" iceberg. They are extremely rare, violating all the laws of physics, for some reason ice blocks turn over in the water, exposing to the surface not a white frosted iceberg crown, but a translucent dark green part. It is believed that the chance of meeting a “black iceberg” is about one in a thousand. Of course, the Titanic got this chance.

Meanwhile, the Black Ice Killer was spotted by one of the ships ahead of the Titanic on the busy New York route. Usually, information about dangerous ice floes is immediately transmitted to the ships following behind. But ... it was on April 14 that the ship's radio station "Titanic" went out of order. Radiotelegraphers Phillips and Bride fiddled with the Marconi apparatus for seven hours straight and repaired it a few hours before the disaster.

However, in seven hours, 250 telegrams were immediately accumulated, which had to be sent to New York. They were paid in advance by passengers who hurried to inform their relatives that the Titanic had arrived at the port of destination a day ahead of schedule, setting a new record for the speed of crossing Atlantic Ocean. Therefore, telegraph operators simply did not have time to receive warning messages from other ships.

A thousand nonsense! For some reason, only 20 of the 32 boats on the liner turned out to be. But these 20, in turn, departed from the ship only half loaded, which is why 473 more people remained on the sinking ship. The passengers of the third class did not have life jackets. Moreover, none of the crew members were trained to use vests until they went out to the ocean from Queenstown.

The ship's captain had no direct telephone communication with a radio room, although telephones were in 50 first-class passenger cabins. At the same time, in the tragedy of absurdities and mistakes, there are several fatal scenes that cannot be explained from the point of view of human logic. Twelve miles from the sinking ship was the steamer Californian, frozen for the night, whose crew watched with interest as white flares flashed above the unfamiliar ship on the horizon.

"Falling stars?" suggested the officer in charge of the Californian. “No, you jokers!” Jung replied with a smile. In vain the fourth officer, Boxhall, barely holding on to the tilted deck of the Titanic, released his "crackers" eight times into the starry sky. After all, signal flares, meaning a call for help, are red. Everyone at sea knows this. And if an officer fired a red rocket from the Titanic, the Californian would have managed to lift 1,400 people on board, frozen in icy water among the wreckage.

But he released white. Because there were Turkish baths and pools, palm trees and chapels, caged parrots and boxes of first-class Burgundy on board, but no red flares. By whose will the Californian's radio operator turned off his receiver and went to bed just a few minutes before the first signal for help was sent on the air from the nearby Titanic.

"CQD" - the then analogue of "SOS" - was heard even in ... Egypt, in Port Said, 3000 miles from the site of the tragedy, but not on the Californian, in the line of sight. An impenetrable magical wall grew between the two courts that night - they were close, but forever far from each other. And therefore, on the sinking ship, they did not notice the signals given by the lantern officer of the Californian.

And he filed them just in case, but received no answer. Of the two thousand people rushing about on the rearing deck of the liner, no one noticed the flashes of light on the horizon.
Bitter coincidences the very next day after the tragedy gave rise to persistent rumors about the mystical doom of the Titanic. They remembered the “bad sign” - in the very first minutes of the voyage, leaving the port of Southampton, the Titanic almost collided with the New York ship, which was standing at a nearby pier.

The powerful propellers of the Titanic created undercurrents of such force that the New York was irresistibly pulled towards the giant liner - a collision was barely avoided. Then the surviving passengers began to talk about more and more mysterious signs that did not bode well for the Titanic from the very first minutes of its voyage.

The ceremony of launching the Titanic on May 31, 1911 was organized with great fanfare: thousands of guests and journalists were invited, special postcards and souvenirs were issued, 23 tons were used to lubricate the "sleigh" along which the monstrous carcass of the steamer slid off the slipway into the water. locomotive oil and liquid soap. Rockets were launched into the sky, dozens of bottles of champagne were broken ... For some reason, the organizers forgot only one thing - they did not consecrate the ship according to the Christian maritime custom.

Maybe it all started already when the ship was given a name? The titans, the children of the earth goddess Gaia, in Hellenic mythology personified the blind, unrestrained and aggressive forces of nature. The Titans challenged the celestial Olympians, intending to seize power over the world - and each time they were defeated and driven back into the deep bowels of their mother earth.

The creators of the Titanic - the bosses of the transatlantic company White Star Bruce Ismay and Lord James Pirrie - conceived their brainchild as a kind of cutting-edge challenge to nature, thrown to her by the scientific and technological revolution. Like eiffel tower, the ship was intended to demonstrate the triumph of the daring human mind. It was a hundred feet longer than the former Atlantic champion, the Lusitania, owned by rival Cunard, and 1,004 tons heavier than its younger brother, the Olympic.

The attack of gigantomania took possession of the creators so much that they built four pipes on the Titanic, although in reality only three worked (therefore, the shots from the films where all four pipes of the Titanic are pouring smoke cause a smile). The fourth was ordered to be added by the owner of the holding, multimillionaire Pearson Morgan.

The Titanic's maiden voyage was conceived as an event on a scale comparable to mine's in scale with the major supershows of the century. A first-class ticket cost about $ 50,000 in today's money. Hundreds of people paid money not because they needed to go to New York. They bought tickets for the show. They got it.

All the newspapers wrote about the “unsinkability” of the Titanic: a system was created that put an end to the centuries-old struggle of man with the elements. Even icebergs are no longer scary, because this is not the first time that, having collided with ice floes, steamships remained afloat - in 1879 this happened with the Arizona, in 1879 with the Concordia, in 1911 with the Columbia. All vessels received holes below the waterline, but none of them sank. The Titanic was far better prepared for the iceberg than any of those ships.

It sank in an hour and a half. When the news of his death reached London, one of the master warlocks there figured out that the liner's ship number - 390904 - after the operation of "turning" numbers into letters, reads like a short blasphemous phrase "No Pope". This observation became another argument in the treasury of "facts" and "prophecies" that predetermined, in the opinion of many, the fate of the Titanic.

Among the first, by the way, there was a version about the mysterious “cursed diamond”, which was allegedly in the possession of one of the passengers (it was not possible to verify the information about the diamond, but it is known for certain that the pearl necklace of Mrs. Widener, who successfully escaped, was then worth 16 million). They also talked about a certain “universal villain” who was on board the liner: as if providence, sending one and a half thousand people to the bottom, actually pursued the goal of destroying only one of the passengers. The search for the villain is still ongoing.

The list of famous personalities is very long - along with the Titanic, Colonel Archibald Butt, military adviser to US President Taft, millionaire Gutenheim, who, according to legend, managed to change into a tailcoat in order to meet his death in a flooded cabin like a gentleman, died. Another millionaire, 21-year-old Asley Widener, became a victim of the Titanic (his mother came to the port of New York to meet the Titanic on her own train of four Pullman cars).

The ocean floor became the grave of the Strauss spouses, owners of the Macy's chain of stores that are still flourishing in the United States. The death of these people is also inexplicable. If you think logically, someone else, but millionaires and aristocrats, in the first place, would find places in lifeboats.

There were almost three times more people of the lower classes among the dead, according to statistics. And disputes still do not subside: is it true that third-class passengers were locked in the holds. This forces some scientists to put forward their own version of the ship's fatal doom. In their opinion, the fatal purpose of the catastrophe is to intensify the class struggle in the Old and New Worlds.

Indeed, the total wealth of first class passengers on the Titanic exceeded $ 500 million. And more men from first class were saved than women from third class. And this is despite the tough maritime rules "Places in boats - for women and children!" “On the example of the Titanic, the poor were convinced that if the world perishes, only the rich will survive,” said a third-class passenger who escaped in an interview ...

However, if you follow this logic, among the 705 who survived, John Jacob Astor, one of the richest people of his time, must have been. He was returning with his young wife (the second in a row and already pregnant) from a trip to Egypt. A day after the death of the liner, the secular publication American published a 4-page article about the deceased Mr. Astor and only at the end mentioned the rest of the victims of the disaster.

Astor's wife escaped, and her husband's disfigured body was identified only by the monogram on his shirt - he was fished out of the water a week later. Astor had to save himself, the amazed New York rich repeated to each other in shock. A lot of things weren't supposed to happen that night, but Providence had its eye on the Titanic. Isn’t pride dictated every word in the book of the deceased John Jacob Astor, in which he tells how a person in the year 2000 will live on Mars and Saturn, and giant steamships “will cross the Atlantic in four and a half days” and “will be stable like a fortress "?

As the Titanic sank into the ocean, eight musicians on the mangled deck continued to play - and they died, all eight, when the waves washed them overboard overnight. When the bow of the ship came off and went deeper, they played "Autumn". And then the last song started. It was called "God Gets Closer".

The dead carcass of the Titanic had collapsed into the depths, and now the people in the lifeboats were slowly freezing to death. The Californian standing nearby, as if in the grip of an obsession, was still unable to notice them and come to the rescue. The rest of the ships were terribly far away - the Russian steamship "Burma" heard "SOS" and hurried to the rescue, but even at full speed it could only be in time in the morning.

Mount Temple is 60 miles, Baltik is 55 miles, Olympic is 70... Salty water does not freeze at minus one degree Celsius. The crests of cold waves rolled over the low sides of the boats, which were mostly women and children, many of them hysterically trying to jump overboard to share the fate of their loved ones.

In the boat "A" people were sitting waist-deep in icy water, and after half an hour the corpses of two women had to be thrown overboard - they froze right in the boat. Rescue boat number 12 was twice covered by a wave - it did not sink only by a miracle. As the doctors later calculated, any of the 705 surviving passengers had no chance of living more than 12 hours ...

The small, low-powered vessel, the Carpathia, was 58 miles southeast of the crash site when the ship's radio operator, Francis Cottam, heard a hysterical "CQD" from the sinking Titanic. He later recalled that he caught the signal at the very last moment, already removing his headphones from his head and about to sleep. Cottam did not have a replacement. Had he fallen asleep five minutes earlier, the captain of the Carpathia would never have known that the Titanic was already sinking. The captain's name was Arthur Rostron. He never drank, smoked, or cursed. Even in the age of steam and electricity, in the era of the most ambitious dreams of mankind, he did not forget how to pray.

Subordinates nicknamed Rostron "electric spark" - for the ability to instantly make strong-willed decisions. The willpower of this man was well known. At 23, when Rostron joined the Kunard company, he once and for all forbade himself to drink alcohol. I stopped smoking two years later. He swore extremely rarely - exactly once a month, as one of the officers calculated - and each time later he asked the Lord aloud for forgiveness for the foul language that escaped his tongue.

For the first time, Arthur Rostron went to sea as a boy, at the age of 13, together with his father. They say that it was during the “sea baptism” of the boy that a certain incident occurred that had a strong impact on his psyche - since then Rostron has been praying every day.

When the radio operator Kottam, his face contorted with horror, burst onto the captain's bridge and mumbled incoherently something about the sinking Titanic, Arthur Rostron, as usual, made a decision instantly. First, he turned to the crucifix hanging on the wall and whispered a few words. Then he turned to his subordinates. “We are turning the ship around,” he said. It was a very risky decision - there were already eight hundred passengers aboard the Carpathia.

Rushing to the aid of the victims of the disaster, the captain sent the ship to a terrible area of accumulation of icebergs, one of which turned out to be fatal for the Titanic. Carpathia, with its only pipe, developed a speed of only 14 knots - therefore, Rostron ordered all additional resources of steam, hot water and electricity to be transferred to the boilers. At full speed, a small and unsightly ship flew into the kingdom of icebergs. Needless to say, the sentinels, alas, also did not have binoculars? Providence took into account a lot, it did not take into account the will of Arthur Rostron.

The owners of the Titanic were going to bring the liner to New York a day ahead of schedule so that there would be a record. The record was set by the Carpathia - she arrived at the crash site almost an hour earlier than she could and than everyone expected. Captain Rostron won only an hour of time from fate, but an hour turned out to be more valuable than a whole day. They did. 705 passengers were taken on board.

“Carpathia” now really looked like a crowded Noah’s Ark: canteens and corridors were hastily converted into hospital wards, tables were turned into beds, and yet dozens of people only had enough space on the floor .. All the doctors from among the passengers of the “Carpathia” were mobilized for treatment sick and wounded, all healthy women are sent to the kitchen to cook hot broth and coffee ...

When the Carpathia, overloaded with people, slowly and carefully entered the New York port and moored at Pier 41, when the crowd on the pier burst into tears and flashbulbs flickered away, the second officer of the Carpathia recalled one detail in a conversation with reporters: during the entire four-hour raid to the place where the Titanic sank, Captain Rostron… prayed.

“His lips were moving,” the officer said, “this is understandable: at such a speed, we also almost did not have a chance to notice the iceberg in time.” A few days later, Rostron himself confessed to one of the journalists: “I still can’t get rid of a strange feeling.

When we walked among the ice, it seemed to me that someone else's hand was at the helm. She was the one who steered the ship. It is possible that it was this feeling that made him order a short church service aboard the Carpathia immediately after the last of the victims was taken aboard. Only after the end of the service, Rostron gave the order to move on to New York.

Arthur Rostron overcame the will of providence. Or maybe it just slipped away. After all, the main thing has already been done: a terrible blow has been dealt to the pride of mankind. That's enough ... And in honor of Arthur Rostron, a special medal of the US Congress was issued.

He was knighted by British royal decree. After some time, Sir Arthur led the entire passenger fleet of the Cunard company. In many cities in England, the USA, France and Ireland, monuments have been erected to him. On one of them - in the vicinity of Southampton - the inscription is embossed - "To Sir Arthur Rostron. Who turned the "age of steam" into the "age of the spirit."

Noah's ark called "Carpathia" sank quietly and imperceptibly to everyone on July 1, 1918. The old 13600-ton ship was hit by three torpedoes fired by a German submarine. Of the 75 people, five died from the explosion, the remaining 70 safely reached the nearby British warship Snowdrop. "Carpathia" disappeared under water very quickly in just 15 minutes. However, she never claimed the title of "unsinkable".

And what happened to another captain, Stanley Lord, who took his Californian out from under the very nose of trouble? Both the British and American commissions of inquiry into the circumstances of the sinking of the Titanic found him indirectly guilty of this. He was removed from naval service and died in obscurity. The son of Stanley Lord stubbornly tried to rehabilitate his father's name. In the 1950s, he repeatedly applied to both commissions with requests for a re-investigation. But everything was in vain. Stanley Lord fulfilled the will of Providence. It no longer needed him and rewarded him with oblivion.

On April 14, 1912 at 11:40 p.m., the Titanic collided with an iceberg. As a result of a sliding collision with an ice block, the lining of the starboard side of the giant ship was damaged for a distance of one hundred meters, and water began to flow into five watertight compartments of the Titanic. In the sixth compartment, the leak was insignificant. But the 16 compartments into which the hold was divided, although they were considered watertight, their bulkheads were not hermetically connected to the decks from above, and the water overflowed into the other as one compartment was filled. This explains the gradually increasing trim (tilt of the ship in the longitudinal plane) on the bow of the Titanic, which ultimately led to the death of the giant.

However, this is precisely the sinister charm of this story, that not everyone agrees with the official version of death. There are other versions - one more bizarre than the other.

Let's start with the fact that at present the official version is considered to be this: the ship died not just because of a collision with an iceberg, but because of the high speed with which the Titanic was going.

And now - alternative versions, each of which has its adherents in the world club of mystery lovers.

1. A fire in the coal compartment that arose even before sailing and provoked an explosion first, and then a collision with an iceberg.
This one has existed for a long time, but one of the experts who has devoted more than 20 years to studying the history of the Titanic, Ray Boston, has put forward new evidence for this theory. According to him, the fire in the sixth hold of the ship broke out on April 2, and it was not possible to extinguish it. The owner of the ship, John Pierpont Morgan, decided that the Titanic would quickly get to New York, disembark the passengers, and then the fire would be extinguished. The ship went to sea with a fire on board, and during the voyage there was an explosion. The high speed of the Titanic at night, when the danger of collision with ice was especially high, can be explained by the fears of Captain Edward John Smith that his ship would blow up before reaching New York. Despite numerous ice warnings from other ships, Smith did not slow down, causing the Titanic to collide with an iceberg.

2. Conspiracy theory: this is not the Titanic at all! This version was put forward by Robin Gardiner and Dan Van Der Watt, experts in the study of the reasons for the death of the ship, published in the book “The Titanic Mystery”. According to this theory, the wreck is not the Titanic at all, but its twin brother, the Olympic. These boats were virtually indistinguishable from each other. On September 20, 1911, the Olympic collided with the British Navy cruiser Hawke, resulting in severe damage to both ships. The owners of Olimpik suffered heavy losses, since the damage that was inflicted on Olimpik was not enough to cover the insurance payment. The theory is based on the assumption of a possible fraud in order to obtain insurance payments by the owners of the Titanic. According to this version, the owners of the Titanic intended to send the Olympic to the area of possible ice formation and at the same time convinced the captain not to slow down so that the ship would be seriously damaged when it collided with an ice block. This version was initially supported by the fact that from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, where the Titanic lies, enough a large number of objects, but nothing was found that would carry the name "Titanic". This theory was refuted after the details were raised to the surface, on which the Titanic's tail (building) number was stamped - 401. The Olympic had a tail number of 400. In addition, the Titanic's minted tail number was discovered and on the propeller of a sunken ship. And even despite this, the conspiracy theory still has a number of followers.

3. The Titanic was torpedoed by a German submarine. There is a version that the Titanic sank not at all from the damage that the iceberg inflicted on it, but from a torpedo fired by a German submarine, and in order to receive the same insurance payment. And the commander of the submarine, who agreed to be a participant in the scam, was a relative of one of the owners of the Titanic. But this theory does not have strong arguments in its favor. If the torpedo somehow damaged the hull of the Titanic, this would not have gone unnoticed by both passengers and crew members.

4. Mystical version: the curse of the pharaohs. It is known for certain that one of the historians, Lord Canterville, transported on the Titanic in a wooden box a perfectly preserved Egyptian mummy of a priestess - soothsayer. Since the mummy had a rather high historical and cultural value, it was not placed in the hold, but placed directly next to the captain's bridge. The essence of the theory is that the mummy influenced the mind of Captain Smith, who, despite numerous warnings about ice in the area where the Titanic sailed, did not slow down and thereby doomed the ship to certain death. This version is supported by well-known cases of mysterious deaths of people who disturbed the peace of ancient burials, especially mummified Egyptian rulers. Moreover, the deaths were associated precisely with a clouding of the mind, as a result of which people committed inappropriate actions, there were often cases of suicide. Pharaohs had a hand in the sinking of the Titanic?

5. Steering error. One of the latest versions of the death of the Titanic deserves special attention. It appeared after the novel by the granddaughter of the second mate of the captain of the Titanic, Ch. Lightoller, Lady Patten, “Worth its weight in gold”, was published. According to the version put forward by Patten in his book, the ship had enough time to dodge the obstacle, but the helmsman, Robert Hitchens, panicked and turned the helm in the wrong direction. A catastrophic error caused the iceberg to inflict fatal damage on the ship. The truth about what really happened on that fateful night was kept secret in the family of Lightoller, the oldest surviving officer of the Titanic and the only survivor who knew exactly what caused the sinking of the ship. Lightoller withheld this information for fear that the White Star Line, which owned the ship, would go bankrupt and his colleagues would lose their jobs. The only person to whom Lightoller told the truth was his wife Sylvia, who passed on her husband's words to her granddaughter. In addition, according to Patten, such a large and reliable liner as the Titanic sank so quickly because, after a collision with an ice block, it was not immediately stopped, and the rate of water entering the holds increased hundreds of times. The liner was not immediately stopped because the manager of the White Star Line, Bruce Ismay, persuaded the captain to continue sailing. He feared that the incident could cause considerable material damage to the company he leads.

6. The pursuit of the Blue Ribbon of the Atlantic. There were and still are many supporters of this theory, especially among writers, since it appeared precisely in writers' circles. The Blue Ribbon of the Atlantic is a prestigious shipping award given to ocean liners for the record speed across the North Atlantic. At the time of the Titanic, this prize was given to the Mauritania ship of the Cunard company, which, by the way, was the founder of this award, as well as the main competitor of the White Star Line. In defense of this theory, the opinion is put forward that the president of the company that owned the Titanic, Ismay, urged the captain of the Titanic, Smith, to arrive in New York a day ahead of schedule and receive an honorary prize. This allegedly explains the high speed of the ship in the dangerous area of the Atlantic. But this theory can easily be refuted, because the Titanic simply physically could not reach the speed of 26 knots at which the Mauritania of the Cunard company set a record, which, by the way, lasted more than 10 years after the disaster in the Atlantic.

Almost 105 years have passed since the most famous shipwreck of the 20th century - the sinking of the Titanic passenger liner, but it seems that this story will give us reasons for conversations, investigations and inspire the creation of new films and books for a long time to come!

But I wonder if James Cameron will ever agree to reshoot the romantic story about Jack and Rose, knowing that it was not an iceberg that separated them, but a fire?

Yes, this is exactly what the new year 2017 brought! British journalist Shenan Moloney, who has more than 30 years of experience in researching the Titanic shipwreck, confirmed the earlier version of experts that the cause of the death of the ship was a fire in the fuel storage! As indisputable evidence, Moloney cites the results of a study of photographs taken by the electrical engineers of the Titanic before it left the Harland and Wolf shipyard in Belfast!

Construction of the Titanic

So, the journalist reports that the fuel in the three-story storage began to burn even before the solemn departure of the liner from Southampton in April 1912. And even more, a team of 12 people tried to eliminate the fire for several weeks, but, alas, to no avail. The owners of the vessel were informed about what had happened, only they considered the cancellation of the first flight of the “unsinkable” a greater disaster for their reputation than the possible consequences. The officers were ordered not to disclose this information to passengers, but before leaving, turn the liner on the other side to the shore!

Ticket for the Titanic

According to Moloney's version, the ship's hull at the fire site heated up to over 1000 degrees Celsius, and this made it 75% more fragile. And when, on the fifth day of the voyage, the Titanic collided with an iceberg, it could not withstand the load, and a huge hole formed on board!

Rescue of the passengers of the Titanic

Let's be honest, blaming the iceberg as the only cause of massive loss of life and sinking of the ship would be unfair. The negligent crime of the owners and the fire on the eve of sailing played a much larger role in the disaster.

"Titanic" at the bottom

It is known that out of 2229 crew members and passengers of the Titanic, only 713 people were saved. Today, the wreckage of the liner rests at a depth of 3,750 meters in the waters of the North Atlantic, and the artifacts found by adventurers and explorers from time to time excite the memory and excitement of everyone who is not indifferent to this story.

Newspaper report on the sinking of the Titanic

But it turns out that not only the fire was an obvious reason not to go sailing ... When the Shipbuilder magazine called the Titanic a "virtually unsinkable ship", its owners seized on this phrase and everyone possible ways began to demonstrate his greatness and reliability.

Staircase under the dome in 1st class

First of all, they violated the tradition of the fleet and did not break a bottle of champagne on the side of the ship during the first voyage - the Titanic is unsinkable, which means that subsequent voyages will be just as successful!

And the troubles were not long in coming - the Titanic had not yet sailed far from Southampton and almost collided with the American liner New York. The first catastrophe was avoided almost at the last minute!

Two of the three propellers of the Titanic

Everything is known to the smallest detail about the luxury of the interior and service on the Titanic. But only for one ticket to the first class in terms of modern money, passengers paid several tens of thousands of dollars! And it is not surprising that greedy divers dream of a big jackpot - on the first (and last) voyage of the Titanic, 10 millionaires went on a journey with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of gold and jewelry in safes.

Smoking room 1st class

It's impressive that "special cabins" were also intended for such important people, made in eleven different interior styles - from the Dutch and Adam style to the interior in the style of the French and Italian Renaissance! Interestingly, how many hours did the richest passengers of the ship manage to cover all 7 km of its promenade decks?

Bedroom 1st class (B-64)

But, how boring for the hundredth time to re-read about 40 tons of potatoes, 27 thousand bottles mineral water and beer, 35 thousand eggs and 44 tons of meat, oysters from Baltimore and cheeses from Europe on board the Titanic. Whether business to learn the most impressive facts!

Captain Smith on deck

It is sad to admit that the cost of a ticket on the liner determined the chances of salvation. It is known that out of 143 first-class passengers, only 4 died. And only because they did not get into the lifeboat.

One of them was Ida Strauss. The woman did not want to part with her husband Isidor Strauss, co-owner of the largest Macy's supermarket chain.

Ida and Isidor Strauss

“I will not leave my husband. We have always been together, together we will die,

Ida declared, giving up her place in lifeboat No. 8 to the maid and giving her a fur coat, adding that she no longer needed it ...

Eyewitnesses claim that at the time of the death of the ship, the Strauss spouses were calm. They sat in armchairs on the deck, holding each other with one hand, and waved goodbye to the rescued with their free hand. By the way, the maid not only survived, but even outlived her owners by 40 years!

Orchestra musicians

Went to the bottom of the Titanic to the music. Until the last minutes, the orchestra stood on the deck and played the church hymn "Nearer, Lord, to you." None of the musicians survived. Well, the body of the leader of the orchestra - 33-year-old violinist Wallace Hartley was found 10 days later with a violin tied to his chest!

Thanks to the inscription on the instrument, it was established that the violin was given to the musician by his fiancee Maria Robinson. Yes, the girl was found, but Maria nevertheless decided to say goodbye to the commemorative instrument and handed it over to the British Salvation Army. In 2013, the violin was sold at auction for $1.5 million!

The icy waters of the Atlantic forever carried away the body of Captain Edward John Smith. A naval officer with 30 years of experience never completed his first transatlantic voyage, tragically sinking to the bottom with the entire crew without trying to escape ...

Captain Edward John Smith

Did you know that the last Titanic passenger, Elizabeth Gladys Milvin Dean, died just 8 years ago at the age of 97? At the time of the sad event, she was only 2 months and 13 days old.

The last passenger on the Titanic

But even Jack Dawson, played by our pet Leonardo DiCaprio, is a real person! And let director Cameron arbitrarily prove that this character is a figment of his imagination, on the ship Titanic there was actually a collier named Jack Dawson, who, however, was not in love with Rose, but with a friend’s sister.

But this is not all mysticism. Get ready for the most interesting - it is known that on April 15, 1972 (do you remember that the Titanic went down on the night of April 14-15?), the radio operator of the battleship Theodore Roosevelt received an SOS signal.

The signal from the Titanic, which received the passenger steamer "Carpathia"

So far not impressive? But he received a signal for help from the Titanic! Then the poor fellow thought that he had “moved with his mind” and hurried to the military archive, where he found that radiograms from the sunken ship had already been received in 1924, 1930, 1936 and 1942. But that's not all - the last signal from the Titanic in April 1996 was received by the Canadian ship Quebec.

105 years ago, April 15, 1912, "unsinkable ship", "the largest and most luxurious ocean liner"On his very first flight, he crashed into an iceberg and took with him to the bottom of the ocean more than one and a half thousand passengers. It would seem that for many decades there were no more secrets and secrets about this terrible disaster. And yet let's remember how it was.

Captain Edward Smith aboard the Titanic. Photo: New York Times

First official version

Two government investigations that were carried out in the wake of the disaster, decided that it was the iceberg, and not the defects of the ship, that caused the death of the liner. Both commissions of inquiry concluded that the Titanic sank not in parts, but in its entirety - there were no major faults.

The blame for this tragedy was completely shifted to the shoulders of the ship's captain, Edward Smith, who died along with his crew and passengers of the Atlantic liner. Experts reproached Smith for the fact that the ship was moving at a speed of 22 knots (41 km) through a dangerous ice field - in dark waters, not far from the coast of Newfoundland.

Discovery of Robert Ballard

In 1985, oceanographer Robert Ballard, after a long unsuccessful search, still managed to find the remains of the ship at a depth of about four kilometers at the bottom of the ocean. Then he discovered that in fact the Titanic had split in half before sinking.

A couple of years later, the wreckage of the ship was first brought to the surface and a new hypothesis immediately appeared - low-grade steel was used to build an "unsinkable ship". However, according to experts, it was not steel at all that turned out to be low-grade, but rivets - the most important metal pins that bind together the steel plates of the hull of the liner. And the found wreckage of the Titanic does indicate that the stern of the ship did not rise high into the air, as many believed. It is believed that the "Titanic" was divided into parts, being relatively even on the surface of the ocean - this is a clear sign of miscalculations in the design of the ship, which were hidden after the disaster.

Design miscalculations

"Titanic" was built in a short time - in response to the production of a new generation of high-speed liners by competitors.

The Titanic could keep afloat even if 4 of its 16 watertight compartments were flooded - amazing for a ship of such gigantic size.

However, on the night of April 14-15, 1912, in just a few days of the debut flight of the liner, its Achilles heel was opened. The ship, due to its size, was not nimble enough to be able to avoid the iceberg that the sentinels were screaming about at the last minute. The Titanic did not collide with the fatal iceberg head-on, but drove over it on its right side - the ice punched holes in the steel plates, flooding six "watertight" compartments. And after a couple of hours the ship was completely filled with water and sank.

According to experts studying the Titanic's potential weak spot, the rivets, they found that due to the fact that time was running out, builders began to use low-grade material. When the liner hit the iceberg, the weak steel rods in the ship's bow could not stand it and cracked. It is believed that it is not by chance that the water, having flooded six compartments fastened with low-grade steel rods, stopped exactly where the high-grade steel rivets began.

In 2005, another expedition studying the crash site, using the wreckage of the bottom, managed to establish that during the crash the ship tilted only about 11 degrees, and not at all 45, as was long thought.

Memories of Passengers

Due to the fact that the ship listed quite a bit, the passengers and crew had a false sense of security - many of them did not understand the seriousness of the situation. When the water has flooded enough bow hull, the ship, remaining afloat, split in two and sank in minutes.

Charlie Jugin, the Titanic's chef, was standing close to the stern at the time of the ship's wreck and noticed no sign of the hull breaking. neither did he notice the suction funnel or the colossal splash. According to his information, he calmly sailed away from the ship, without even getting his hair wet.

However, some passengers in the lifeboats claimed to have seen the Titanic's stern high in the air. However, this could only be an optical illusion. With an 11-degree tilt, propellers sticking out in the air, the 20-story building Titanic seemed even higher, and its roll into the water even more.

How the Titanic sank: a real-time model

In New York, they sold the menu of the last dinner on the wrecked liner Titanic in 1912. They got 88 thousand dollars (about 1.9 million hryvnias) for it.

The company "Blue Star Line" announced the construction of "Titanic-2". According to the designers, the ship will be an exact copy of the famous liner that sank in 1912. However, the liner will be equipped with modern security features. Australian mining magnate Clive Palmer came to finance the project.

Now this 105-year-old cracker is considered the most expensive in the world.

It turns out that a Spillers and Bakers cracker called "Pilot" was included in the survival kit that was placed on every lifeboat. Later, one of these products went to a man who kept it as a souvenir. It was James Fenwick, a passenger on the Carpathia, which was raising shipwrecked survivors.

REFERENCE

On the night of April 15, 1912, the Titanic collided with an iceberg and sank. He sailed in the Atlantic Ocean on his way from Southampton (England) to New York. Then about 1.5 thousand people died, mostly third-class passengers. In total, it was more than 2.2 thousand people.

The sinking of the Titanic claimed the lives of 1,517 of the 2,229 passengers and crew (official figures vary slightly) in one of the worst maritime disasters in world history. 712 survivors were brought aboard the RMS Carpathia. After this disaster, a great resonance swept through the public affecting attitudes towards social injustice, radically changed the way passengers were transported along the North Atlantic Passage, the rules for the number of lifeboats carried on board were changed passenger ships and the International Ice Reconnaissance was established (where merchant ships crossing the North Atlantic continue to transmit accurate information about the location and concentration of ice using radio signals). In 1985, a major discovery was made, the Titanic was discovered at the bottom of the ocean and became a turning point for the public and for the development of new areas of science and technology. April 15, 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the Titanic. It became one of the most famous ships in history, her image has remained in numerous books, films, exhibitions and monuments.

Crash of the Titanic in real time

duration - 2 hours 40 minutes!

British passenger liner The Titanic leaves Southampton, England, on her maiden voyage on April 10, 1912. The Titanic was called to Cherbourg, France and Queenstown, Ireland, before heading west towards New York. Four days in transit, she hit an iceberg at 11:40 pm, 375 miles south of Newfoundland. Shortly before 2:20 am, the Titanic broke up and sank. More than a thousand people were on board at the time of the accident. Some died in the water within minutes from hypothermia in the waters of the North Antaltic Ocean. (Frank O. Braynard Collection)

The luxury liner Titanic, pictured in this 1912 photograph, left Queenstown for New York on her ill-fated last voyage. The passengers of this ship were included in the list of the richest people in the world, such as millionaires John Jacob Astor IV, Benjamin Guggenheim and Isidor Strauss, as well as more than a thousand emigrants from Ireland, Scandinavia and other countries seeking new life in America. The disaster was greeted around the world with shock and outrage over the huge loss of life and violation of the regulatory and operational parameters that led to this disaster. The investigation into the sinking of the Titanic began a few days later and led to a significant improvement in maritime safety. (United Press International)

A crowd of workers. Shipyard Harland and Wolf shipyard in Belfast, where the Titanic was built between 1909 and 1911. The ship was designed to be the last word in comfort and luxury and was the most big ship afloat on her first voyage. The ship is visible in the background of this 1911 photograph. (Photo Archive/Harland & Wolff/Cox Collection)

Photo taken in 1912. In the photo, a chic dining room aboard the Titanic. The ship has been designed to be the last word in comfort and luxury, with an onboard gym, swimming pool, libraries, upscale restaurants and luxurious cabins. (Photo archive of The New York Times / American Press Association)

1912 photograph. Second class canteen on the Titanic. A disproportionate number of people - over 90% of those in second class - remained on board because of the "women and children first" protocols followed by lifeboat loading officers. (Photo archive of The New York Times / American Press Association)

Photo April 10, 1912, it shows the Titanic leaving Southampton, England. The tragic death of the Titanic took place a century ago, one of the causes of the death of, according to some, weak rivets used by the ship's builders in some parts of this ill-fated liner. (Associated Press)

Captain Edward John Smith, commander of the Titanic. He commanded the largest ship at that time making its first voyage. The Titanic was a massive ship - 269 meters long, 28 meters wide and weighing 52,310 tons. 53 meters separated from the keel to the top, almost 10 meters of which were below the waterline. The Titanic was higher above the water than most city buildings of the time. (The New York Times Archive)

First Mate William McMaster Murdoch, who is regarded as a local hero in his hometown Dalbeattie, Scotland, but in the film, the Titanic was portrayed as a coward and a murderer. At the ceremony, on the 86th anniversary of the ship's sinking, Scott Neeson, executive vice president of film producers 20th Century Fox, presented a check for five thousand pounds (US$8,000) to Dalbeattie School as an apology for the painting to an officer's relative. (Associated Press)

It is believed that it was this iceberg that caused the accident of the Titanic on April 14-15, 1912. The picture was taken aboard the Western Union ship, Mackay Bennett, commanded by Captain DeCarteret. McKay Bennet was one of the first ships to reach the site where the Titanic sank. According to Captain DeCarteret, it was the only iceberg at the site of the sinking when it arrived. It is assumed, therefore, that he was responsible for this tragedy. A glimpse of a collision with an iceberg caused the Titanic's hull plates to buckle inward in a number of places on her board and opened five of her sixteen watertight compartments into which water gushed in an instant. Over the next two and a half hours, the ship gradually filled with water and sank. (United States Coast Guard)

Passengers and some crew members were evacuated in lifeboats, many of which were launched only partially filled. This photo of a lifeboat from the Titanic approaching the rescue ship Carpathia, was taken by Carpathia passenger Louis M. Ogden and was on display in 2003, an exhibition of photographs that relate to the Titanic (bequeathed by the National maritime museum in Greenwich, England, Walter Lord). (National Maritime Museum / London)

Seven hundred and twelve survivors were brought aboard from lifeboats on the RMS Carpathia. This photograph taken by Carpathia passenger Louis M. Ogden shows the Titanic lifeboat approaching the rescue ship, the Carpathians. The photograph was part of an exhibition in 2003 at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England named after Walter Lord. (National Maritime Museum / London)

Although the Titanic had advanced safety features such as watertight compartments and remotely activated watertight doors, she lacked enough lifeboats to accommodate all those on board. Due to outdated maritime regulations safety precautions, she carried only enough lifeboats for 1,178 people - a third of her total passenger and crew capacity. This sepia photograph depicting the recovery of the passengers of the Titanic is one of the memorabilia about to go under the hammer at Christies in London, May 2012. (Paul Tracy / EPA / PA)

Members of the press interview Titanic survivors coming off the rescue ship, Carpathians, May 17, 1912. (American Press Association)

Eva Hart is portrayed as seven years old in this photograph taken in 1912 with her father, Benjamin, and mother Esther. Eva and her mother survived the sinking of the British liner Titanic on April 14, 1912, but her father died in the crash. (Associated Press)

People stand on the street waiting for the arrival of Carpathia after the sinking of the Titanic. (The New York Times / Wide World Photo Archive)

A huge crowd gathered in front of Star Line's White office at Lower Broadway in New York to receive latest news on the sinking of the Titanic on April 14, 1912. (Associated Press)

The editors of The New York Times at the time of the sinking of the Titanic, April 15, 1912. (Photo archive of The New York Times)

(Photo archive of The New York Times)

The two messages were sent from America by insurers to Lloyds in London in the mistaken belief that other ships, including those of Virginia, were coming to the rescue when the Titanic sank. These two commemorative messages are due to go under the hammer at Christies in London in May 2012. (AFP/EPA/Press Association)

Laura Francatelli, and her employers Lady Lucy Duff-Gordon and Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon, standing on the rescue ship, Carpathians (Associated Press / Henry Aldridge & Son / Ho)

This vintage seal shows the Titanic shortly before leaving for its maiden voyage in 1912. (New York Times Archive)

Photo released by Henry Aldridge and Son/Ho auction in Wiltshire, England, April 18, 2008 shows the extremely rare Titanic passenger ticket. They were auction handling the complete collection of Miss Lilian Asplund's last American Titanic Survivor. The collection consists of a number of important objects including a pocket watch, one of the few remaining tickets for the Titanic's maiden voyage and the only example of a direct emigration order the Titanic thought to exist. Lillian Asplund was a very private person, and because of a terrible event, she became a witness that on a cold April night in 1912, she rarely spoke about the tragedy that claimed the lives of her father and three brothers. (Henry Aldridge)

(National Maritime Museum / London)

Breakfast menu aboard the Titanic, signed by survivors of the disaster. (National Maritime Museum / London)

The nose of the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean, 1999 (Institute of Oceanology)

The image shows one of the Titanic's propellers at the bottom of the ocean during an expedition to the site of the tragedy. Five thousand exhibits planned to be auctioned off as a single collection on April 11, 2012, 100 years after the sinking of the ship (RMS Titanic, Inc, via The Associated Press)

Photo August 28, 2010, released for the premiere of the exhibition, Inc-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, shows the starboard side of the Titanic. (Premier Exhibitions, Inc. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute)

Dr. Robert Ballard, the man who found the remains of the Titanic almost two decades ago, returned to the site and calculated the damage from visitors and hunters for the "souvenir" of the ship. (Institute of Oceanography and Archaeological Research Center / University of Rhode Island Grad. Schools of Oceanography)

The giant propeller of the sunken Titanic lies on the floor in North Atlantic in this undated photograph. The propeller and other parts of the famous ship were seen by the first tourists to visit the wreck in September 1998.

(Ralph White/Associated Press)

The 17-ton part of the Titanic's hull rises to the surface during an expedition to the site of the tragedy in 1998. (RMS Titanic, Inc., via The Associated Press)

July 22, 2009, photo of the 17-ton part of the Titanic, which was raised and restored during an expedition to the site of the tragedy. (RMS Titanic, Inc., via The Associated Press)

A gold-plated American Waltham pocket watch, owned by Carl Asplund, in front of a contemporary watercolor painting of the Titanic by CJ Ashford at the Henry Aldridge & Son Auctions in Devizes, Wiltshire, England, April 3, 2008. The watch was recovered from the body of Karl Asplund who drowned on the Titanic, and is part of Lillian Asplund, the last American to survive the disaster. (Kirsty Wigglesworth Associated Press)

The currency, part of the Titanic collection, is photographed at a warehouse in Atlanta, August 2008. The owner of the largest trove of artifacts from the Titanic is putting a huge collection up for auction in a single lot in 2012, on the 100th anniversary of the most famous shipwreck in the world. (Stanley Leary/Associated Press)

Photographs by Felix Asplund, Selma and Carl Asplund and Lillian Asplund, by Henry Aldridge and Son Auctions at Devizes, Wiltshire, England, April 3, 2008. The photographs were part of Lillian Asplund's collection of Titanic-related items. Asplund was 5 years old in April 1912 when the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage from England to New York. Her father and three siblings were among the 1,514 dead. (Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated Press)

Exhibits at the "Titanic Artifact Exhibition" at the California Science Center: binoculars, a comb, dishes and a broken incandescent light bulb, February 6, 2003. (Michel Boutefeu/Getty Images, Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times)

Spectacles among the wreckage of the Titanic were among the choicest artifacts of the Titanic. (Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press)

Golden Spoon (Titanic Artifacts) (Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press)

A chronometer from the Titanic Bridge is on display at the Science Museum in London, May 15, 2003. The Chronometer, one of more than 200 items salvaged from the wreck of the Titanic, was on display at the launch of a new exhibit commemorating its ill-fated maiden voyage along with bottles of perfume. The exhibition took visitors on a chronological journey through the life of the Titanic, from its concept and construction, to life on board, and its plunge into the Atlantic Ocean in April 1912. (Alastair Grant/Associated Press)

Logo meter to measure the speed of the Titanic and a hinged lamp. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Artifacts of the Titanic displayed in the tools mass media preview only, to announce the historical sale is complete. a collection of artifacts recovered from the wreck of the Titanic and showcasing highlights from the collection at sea by Intrepid, Air & SpaceMuseum January 2012. (Chang W. Lee / The New York Times)

Cups and pocket watches from the Titanic are displayed during a Guernsey auction press conference, January 5, 2012. (Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images, Brendan McDermid/Reuters Michel Boutefeu/Getty Images-2)

Spoons. RMS Titanic, Inc. is the only company authorized to remove elements from the ocean floor where the Titanic sank. (Douglas Healey/Associated Press)

Gold mesh purse. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

The April 2012 edition of National Geographic magazine (on-line version available on iPad) sees new images and drawings from the Titanic wreck as it remains on the seafloor, gradually disintegrating at a depth of 12,415 feet (3,784 m). (National Geographic)

Two propeller blades peek out from the darkness of the sea. This optical mosaic is assembled from 300 s high resolution images. (COPYRIGHT © 2012 RMS Titanic, Inc; Produced by AIVL, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Making sense of this tangle of metal presents endless challenges to professionals. One says: "If you interpret this material, you must love Picasso." (COPYRIGHT © 2012 RMS Titanic, Inc; Produced by AIVL, WHOI)

The Titanic's two engines lie in a gaping hole in the stern. Wrapped in "rusticles" - orange stalactites made of iron - that eat the bacteria of these massive four-story structures, the largest moving man-made objects on Earth at the time. (COPYRIGHT © 2012 RMS Titanic, Inc; Produced by AIVL, WHOI)