All posts tagged titanic captain
The Titanic Shipwreck: Who is to Blame?
Any time there is a shipwreck, or any time there is a disaster that isn't caused by the forces of nature, for that matter, we look to assign blame. This is doubly true of catastrophes of the first proportion, and the Titanic shipwreck, which claimed over 1,500 lives, would certainly seem to qualify as such. So, who is responsible for the Titanic shipwreck? Was it the captain of the Titanic, Edward Smith, or was it someone else, or perhaps a combination of a few different people? Or is the Titanic shipwreck the rare kind of disaster to which no one can be assigned blame? Read more [...]
The Captain of the Titanic
Who was the captain of the Titanic? This is a simple question about a complicated man: Edward Smith, or, if you please, Edward John Smith. The legacy of Captain Smith is hard to ultimately make sense of because he, as the Titanic captain, bears at least some of the responsibility for the Titanic shipwreck, but Smith was also a gifted captain with an extremely impressive career at sea. (You don't become the captain of the Titanic, a major transatlantic vessel, without first earning your stripes.) We all know about the Titanic shipwreck, and we also know that Smith was the captain of the Titanic, but what of the rest of his career? What did he do before he become the captain of the Titanic, and why was he made the Titanic captain anyway? To these questions we seek answers as we explore the life of Edward Smith, Titanic captain. Read more [...]