The Titanic: What Really Happened?

Lesson Plan - Get It!

Audio:

Olympic

The RMS Olympic was the first of its series, and the sister ship to the RMS Titanic. Being the largest and most luxurious ocean liner ever built at its time, this ship cost the White Star Line very much to construct.

After many successful voyages, the Olympic suffered a collision with a British naval ship, the HMS Hawke.

As you watch this animation of that collision, pay attention to whom you think is at fault.

• It looks obvious that the HMS Hawke was at fault, right?

It got too close to the Olympic and was sucked into her wake. Because of this, the White Star Line sued the British government to pay for the damages suffered by the ship.

However, the company lost the lawsuit and had to pay for the repairs out of pocket. Not only did the company suffer financially from this incident, but it was also humiliated and lost credibility for its ships.

Double-Hull

These ships were unique because they had two hulls, essentially one ship body (or hull) on top of another.

This separation allowed for the bottom of the ship to be separated into 16 sections by 15 waterproof bulkheads. This construction feature gave the Olympic and Titanic the title of unsinkable because even if four of the 16 compartments flooded fully, the ship would not sink.

Moreover, this construction made the ships much more expensive. After the Olympic incident, the White Star Line could not afford to suffer another failure.

• What caused the Titanic to needlessly speed through the North Atlantic when the captain knew icebergs were all around?

Watch this CGI reenactment, notice how fast the ship is going when it hits the iceberg.

Normally, the engines would have been going more slowly, and the furnaces would have had less coal. At a slower speed, the Titanic likely would not have hit the iceberg.

The Titanic was traveling almost at its maximum speed of 23 knots, and many thought the ship was trying to show off how fast it could travel across the Atlantic Ocean.

The Fire

While showing speed seems like a reckless but reasonable explanation, this had nothing to do with it.

Look at this image of the Titanic below and look for the black spot just above the water. Note that this was the side of the ship not facing the dock when it set out on its maiden voyage.

That black spot resulted from a coal fire raging inside one of the coal storage beds within one of the bulkheads before the voyage to America.

This three-story bed of coal somehow caught on fire. This was not unheard of, but with such a large collection of coal, it was tough to get the fire under control.

Ultimately, the White Star Line kept this fire a secret because, in many ways, they could not afford to postpone this opportunity to prove the ship's worth.

To put this fire out, the ship was going as fast as possible because that would burn more coal and get to the center of the raging fire. If they could burn enough coal, the fire would go away.

This is why the Titanic was going at full speed through the field of icebergs.

Beyond causing the ship to go so fast, the fire had also weakened a bulkhead and the entire front side of the ship, where the iceberg struck.

Assessment

The fire in the coal had weakened the metal on the outside and the inside of the ship, resulting in even more damage from the iceberg than should have been suffered.

The weakened, less-than-watertight bulkheads could not withstand the pressure from the flooded sections as they had been designed to do. This resulted in five sections flooding with water.

Once this was discovered, the ship's designer, Thomas Andrews, knew it had only hours before it sank. Because of this urgency, distress calls and flares were rapidly used to get a rescue ship.

• The USS California was only 20 miles away, so why did they not show up as a rescue?
• Why was the RMS Carpathia, which was 58 miles away, the one to respond?

Telegrams

Sending telegrams over the air in 1912 was very new and, therefore, quite popular.

The rich people in the Titanic's first class were willing to spend the money to send messages to people back home and in the U.S. to say hello. The Titanic's operator was very busy because many wanted to do this.

To learn more, watch the following video.

Incredibly, Jack Phillips' dismissal of the USS California operator caused him to shut off the ship's radio, which meant the Titanic passengers would not have a rescue ship until the morning.

Sinking

With the Titanic's fate sealed, people scrambled to the lifeboats. While the ship did not have enough for every passenger, it had more than British regulations required.

After seeing all the issues that lined up to make this unsinkable ship sink, move on to the Got It? section to determine what could have been done differently.