All posts tagged titanic
The Titanic Iceberg
Almost exactly 100 years ago, the Titanic met its doom by striking an iceberg - the infamous Titanic iceberg, which could itself be properly called a titanic iceberg - in the Atlantic Ocean. Most people today know this much, and often a lot more, about the 1912 Titanic iceberg collision, even though it happened so long ago. This is the nature of great historical tragedies. For the most part, they tend not to be forgotten (nor should they be), and this is true to such an extent that we even remember Read more [...]
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 [...]
Titanic Passengers: Notable Passengers On Board the Titanic
We have already written about the Titanic passengers considered as a group of individuals, who, although all on the same doomed ship, where not all equally likely to meet destruction the night the Titanic sank. This is made plain enough by an analysis of the demographics of the Titanic passengers who died. Men were disproportionately likely to die - around 1,514 people died when the Titanic sank, 1,352 of whom were men (i.e., not women or children) - and passengers with lower class tickets were more likely to die than First Class passengers. The fact that not all Titanic passengers were equally likely to die is also made evident when you look at the individual passengers on board the ship. And for reasons unrelated to the unfairness that characterized the Titanic tragedy, it is still quite interesting to look at some of the more notable passengers on the Titanic. And so we will... Read more [...]
The Titanic Ship: Some Facts and Information
Do you want to learn about the Titanic? So did we, so we put together an article containing lots of information about the Titanic. (This is information about a great ship, so we are offering "titanic information" in two senses of the term "titanic.") In this particular article, our focus is on Titanic facts - that is, facts about Titanic the ship (as opposed to, say, the movie. We also won't focus on the Titanic wreck, as we have covered that in a separate article marking the 100th anniversary of the ship's sinking. With out further ado, some facts and information about the Titanic: Read more [...]
The Titanic Passengers
How many passengers were on the Titanic? Strangely, given the extraordinary level and scope of attention that has been given to the Titanic wreck, it is not known exactly how many people were on board the Titanic ship. But before getting into the specifics, it should be noted that people often wonder about the number of "Titanic passengers," or they ask questions about how many "passengers" died on the Titanic, but for the most part these people are not only referring to the Titanic passengers, but also the crew members of the Titanic as well. This is helpful to keep in mind because technically there is a distinction between the passengers on the Titanic and its crew members, even if in common parlance "Titanic passengers" covers both. Usage notes aside, we have a fairly good idea of how many people were on board the ship (including both the Titanic crew members and passengers), and by extension we also have a more or less accurate view of the number of people who survived the wreck and the number of people who did not. Read more [...]