The New York Times
TITANIC SINKS
Vol. LXXII
Over 1500 Life Lost After Hitting ICEBERG
TITANIC was a British passage liner
made by White Star. The Titanic ship
was the largest ship at this time to
ever ride the seas. It was built buy
Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast.
Thomas Andrews, Chief Naval Archi-
tect of the shipyard — he died in this
disasterand — on the night of 15 April
1912 in the Atlantic Ocean the mighty
TITANIC rubbed its side along a
massive iceberg, and the damage was
severe enough that the ship was
doomed to sink in a matter of hours
and there were 2,224 person on the
ship between passengers and the crew
members, more than 1,500 people
died. The sinking side was on the dead-
liest part of the ship which increased
the deaths and made the time for it to
sink faster.
On March the 31st 1911, over 100,000
people gathered at the dock in Belfast,
Ireland to watch the huge TITANIC,
known as the unsinkable ship, the
most luxurious ship at it’s time. Yet on
april 14, 1912, four days after leaving
South Hampton, on its ways to New
York it struck an iceberg. Now, barely
more than a century after that tragedy
experts are still puzzled about the
reasons and theories of how the
titanic sank and why. But investiga-
tors have some pieces of evidence
exclaiming the reason for the titanic’s
downfall.
“It may have taken a fatal wrong turn.”
According to a claim made in 2010 by
Louise Patten the granddaughter of the
most senior Titanic officer to survive.
Charles Lightoller, one of the ship’s
crewmembers panicked after hearing
the order to turn “hard-a-starboard”
New York, TUESDAY, April 16, 1912
in order to avoid the approaching
iceberg. Ships at that time operated on
two different steering order systems,
he became confused and turned the
wrong way—directly toward the
iceberg. Patten included this version of
events, which she mentions that she
heard from her grandmother after
Lightoller’s death, in her fictionalized
account of the Titanic disaster, Good
as Gold.
The main reasons
why titanic sunk
• Climate caused more icebergs: The
weather conditions in the North Atlan-
tic were easily formed into icebergs
Due to the temperatures in the North
Atlantic Ocean. The weather vas really
quite and it was very clear making it
harder to spot icebergs.
• Speed of the ship: The sinking was
also partially blamed on Edward. J.
Smith, the Captain of the ship, because
he was aiming for a speed record
ignoring all the warnings.
• Ignoring all warnings: Titanic
receives a lot of warnings about places
full of icebergs in the North Atlantic,
and apparently the captain didn’t take
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the warnings too seriously and decid-
ed to avoid it.
• Binoculars were locked up: Binocu-
lars that could have been used by
lookouts on the night if the collision
were locked aboard the ship, the key
was with a man who left the ship
before its departure. If the binoculars
are working they would have located it
more sooner and had a higher chance
of avoiding it.
• Reverse thrust reduced the ship’s
maneuverability: Just before that
incident the engine has been put on
reverse. It would cause
the left and right
propeller to turn back-
wards, but the central
propeller can be held
not reversed which
meant it would take
more time to move
backwards to avoid
the iceberg
• The iron rivets are
too weak: A few metal-
lurgists looked into the materials used
for the building of the titanic at its
Belfast shipyard, they found the steel
plates toward the stern held together
with low quality iron rivets. Those
rivets may have been used because of
shortage of the supply of high quality
Why did so many people die
There were too few lifeboats, perhaps
the biggest tragedy is that there were
not enough lifeboats to accommodate
all of the Titanic's passengers, more
than 2,200 passengers and crew mem-
bers were abroad. “The lifeboats
could accommodate only about 1,000
people — which was still in excess of
the 1,060-person capacity. ” It seems
that in 1912, in a way not dissimilar to
our own, responsibility avoiding
culture today, lack of effective over-
rivets. Metallurgists said those low sight on the part of the authorities
grade rivets have been more easily caused the consequences of the disas-
ripped apart during the collision ter to be much worse than they might
causing the ship to sink more quickly have been," Corfield wrote, a witness
than stronger rivets. of the TITANIC disaster.