Tim Maltin - 101 Things You Thought You Knew About the Titanic But Didnt

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PENGUIN BOOKS

101 THINGS YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW ABOUT THE TITANIC... BUT DIDNT!

Tim Maltin is a London businessman who has been researching the Titanic in his spare time for the last twenty-five years. Captivated by the sinking since he was only seven years old and first saw the film version of Walter Lords A Night To Remember, Tim has made a detailed study of the public enquiries into the disaster and the extraordinary atmospheric conditions that night. Tim is a marketing and PR consultant and lives in the Wiltshire countryside with his wife and two children.

Preface

Jack Thayer was only seventeen years old when he survived the sinking of the Titanic by swimming to an overturned lifeboat. His father died in the disaster and his rude awakening into adulthood no doubt coloured his perspective; but in his privately published 1940 account of the sinking, this is how Jack recalled what life was like before the Titanic sank:

There was peace and the world had an even tenor to its way. Nothing was revealed in the morning the trend of which was not known the night before. It seems to me that the disaster about to occur was the event that not only made the world rub its eyes and awake but woke it with a start keeping it moving at a rapidly accelerating pace ever since with less and less peace, satisfaction and happiness. To my mind the world of today awoke April 15th, 1912.

The sinking of the Titanic on April 15th, 1912 was as shocking to the world as the destruction of the Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001. Titanic triggered the first global media storm, with The New York Times devoting its first twelve pages to the story: the newest, largest and most luxurious ship in the world, the unsinkable Titanic, packed with many of the biggest celebrities of the day, had sunk on her maiden voyage, with catastrophic loss of life.

As soon as her survivors disembarked in New York from the rescue ship Carpathia and told their stories, the world began a game of Chinese Whispers about what really happened the night the Titanic sank. Each survivor only saw a small piece of the complete picture of what happened and the press in 1912 attempted to fill in the gaps as sensationally as possible. As a result, wild rumours developed, many of which still persist today.

The Titanic disaster was the subject of contemporary public inquiries on both sides of the Atlantic and is consequently one of the best-documented disasters in history. These Hearings corrected many of the rumours circulating at the time, but they also propagated new ones of their own. As Titanic passes into folklore, old myths persist and new ones continue to be created to suit the worldview of new generationsand cinema audiences. The result is that what most people know about Titanic today is a mixture of fact and fiction.

As Lord Byron said in his comic-epic poem, Don Juan, in 1823:

T is strange,but true; for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction; if it could be told,
How much would novels gain by the exchange!
How differently the world would men behold!

This was never truer than in the case of Titanic. The difficulty howeveras Byron points outis how to tell it. I hope that the accessible format of this book will be a way in, for some, to discovering the truth about the Titanic. Where possible, I have tried to get at this through eye witness testimony, which is fully quoted and referenced.

As Walter Lord observed in both his classic 1957 account of the sinking, A Night To Remember and his 1986 sequel, The Night Lives On:

It is a rash man indeed who would set himself up as final arbiter on all that happened the incredible night the Titanic went down.

This book is not intended as the final word on any of the 101 points it covers, but it is intended to make you think differently about the Titanic.

Tim Maltin, 15th April 2010

Notes on the text

The US Inquiry, which began on 19th April, 1912 and finished on 25th May, 1912, numbered its questions by witness. For example, CHL100 is the 100th question asked to Charles Herbert Lightoller, Titanics most senior surviving Officer.

The British Inquiry, which began on 2nd May, 1912 and finished on 3rd July, 1912, numbered its questions in simple chronological order, regardless of witness initials. For example, question number 16802 happens to be the first question asked to Charles Herbert Lightoller on the 14th day of that inquiry.

In May 1915 Limitation of Liability Hearings regarding the Titanic were held in the US, but these do not have numbered questions as the testimony itself has been lost, with only some witness depositions presently available.

Wherever this book quotes from the US or British Inquiries, I have included the official question number, so the reader may easily conduct his own research at www.titanicinquiry.org.

Details of the authors forthcoming book A Very Deceiving Night, together with articles and other Titanic information and links, can be found at www.averydeceivingnight.com, where I also welcome your comments and questions on this book.

The Ship

I TITANIC WAS THE LARGEST SHIP IN THE WORLD IN 1912.

Yes, but only just. Titanic was built to the same design as her slightly older twin sister, Olympic, launched about seven months before Titanic on 20th October, 1910. Olympic, Titanic and Britannic, the third sister of the Olympic Class trio, were all 882ft 9ins long. Titanic and her older sister Olympic were almost identical, the only visual difference being Olympics open A Deck promenade, which was later enclosed on Titanic and Britannic. However, Titanic also differed from Olympic in other small respects, including extended B Deck Staterooms and additional cabins, giving her a Gross Register Tonnage (GRT) of 46,328, only 1,204 GRT (or 2%) larger than Olympic at 45,124 GRT, but nonetheless just enough to give Titanic the title of largest liner in the world. However, Olympic, as the first in this new class of superliner, was 42% larger than the previous largest ship in the world, Cunards Mauretania, at only 31,738 GRT.

For this reason, Olympics building and launch attracted much more public interest than Titanics.

Olympic was later to learn from the disaster which occurred to her younger sister, as after the Titanic sank, Olympic was withdrawn from service in order to increase her watertight protection and lifeboat provision. These modifications were also built into the Britannic, which then became a slightly larger ship again at 48,158 GRT. Olympic outlived both her younger sisters, travelling at least 1.8 million miles during her eventful career and continuing in successful service until she was scrapped in 1935 following American restrictions on the emigrant trade and an increase in the popularity of travelling across the Atlantic by airplane.

2 TITANIC WAS THE FASTEST SHIP IN THE WORLD IN 1912.

No, the Mauretania and the Lusitania, built by Cunard in 1906, were both significantly faster than the

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