Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: Rev M. Bresciani
"As for the lifeboats, Titanic’s owners were so certain that the ship would never need them, they only included enough for less than half those on board, to make for a better looking, less crowded boat deck."

Yellow Journalism at its best.

The Titanic was only required by regulation to carry 14 lifeboats. She was carrying 20.

Why wasn't she required to have enough for all passengers? Because with the advent of iron ships with multiple watertight compartments, sinkings became a rare occurrence, and on the rare occasion one did sink, it always took several hours.

Plus, in the era before airline travel, everything and everybody in America that wanted to go to Europe (or the reverse) had to go by sea. There was a "superhighway" across the north Atlantic following the "great circle" route from New York to Europe that was constantly crowded with commercial vessels.

Some joked that there were so many ships at any moment on the trans-Atlantic route that you could almost use them like stepping stones and walk to Europe on them. So even if a vessel was in distress in the middle of the ocean, aid would never be far away. What lifeboats were required were in fact meant to be used to transfer passengers and crew to the rescue ships.

Under these circumstances, no one foresaw the need for lifeboats for all passengers. But no one had ever foreseen an event as catastrophic as to cause loss of containment in five of a great ship's 16 watertight compartments. Or the series of human errors that both caused the accident in the first place, then prevented aid reaching Titanic sooner.

The ship Californian was only 40 minutes away when Titanic struck the ice berg. She didn't sink for more than 160 minutes.

The OP's linked story doesn't tell an outright lie but it is a half lie, omitting key details and putting a negative spin on what details it does offer -- taking great pains to make the owners' role seem sinister when they EXCEEDED the lifeboat regulation by 25% -- all to promote an ignorant opinion in an effort to tar the Titanic's owners and sensationalize the deaths of 1500 people for the writer's own benefit.

It wasn't the owners' fault Titanic hit an ice berg. It wasn't the owners' fault that rescue didn't arrive in time. The man whose fault those errors were paid for his mistakes with his life.

Do we castigate Henry Ford for not putting seat belts in the 1903 Model T? The first seat belt was patented in 1885, but they weren't mandated by law in the US until 1968. Not Henry Fords fault. Sometimes it takes a tragedy (or 65 years of excess automobile deaths) before people see that there's a better way to do things.

If the guy who wrote this has to resort to such low tactics to make his point, he isn't worth reading.

10 posted on 04/09/2024 7:32:25 PM PDT by Paal Gulli
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]


To: Paal Gulli

bttt


11 posted on 04/09/2024 7:48:15 PM PDT by linMcHlp
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson