105 years ago, on April 15, 1912, the “unsinkable ship,” “the largest and most luxurious ocean liner,” crashed into an iceberg on its first voyage and took more than one and a half thousand passengers with it to the bottom of the ocean. It would seem that for many decades there are no more mysteries and secrets about this terrible catastrophe. And yet, let's remember how it was.

Captain Edward Smith on board the Titanic. Photo: New York Times

First official version

Two government investigations that followed the disaster determined that it was the iceberg, and not the ship's defects, that caused the death of the liner. Both commissions of inquiry concluded that the Titanic sank not in parts, but as a whole - there were no major faults.

The blame for this tragedy was placed entirely on the shoulders of the ship's captain, Edward Smith, who died along with his crew and passengers of the Atlantic liner. Experts reproached Smith for the fact that the ship was traveling at a speed of 22 knots (41 km) through a dangerous ice field - in dark waters, off the coast of Newfoundland.

Robert Ballard's discovery

In 1985, oceanographer Robert Ballard, after a long unsuccessful search, finally managed to find the remains of a ship at a depth of about four kilometers on the ocean floor. It was then that he discovered that the Titanic had actually split in half before sinking.

A couple of years later, the wreckage of the ship was brought to the surface for the first time, and a new hypothesis immediately appeared - low-grade steel was used to build an “unsinkable ship.” However, according to experts, it was not the steel that turned out to be of low quality, but the rivets - the most important metal pins that tie together the steel plates of the airliner's hull. And the found wreckage of the Titanic does indicate that the stern of the ship did not rise high into the air, as many believed. It is believed that the Titanic split into parts while relatively level on the surface of the ocean - this is a clear sign of miscalculations in the design of the ship, which were hidden after the disaster.

Design miscalculations

The Titanic was built in a short time - in response to the production of a new generation of high-speed liners by competitors.

The Titanic could stay afloat even if 4 of its 16 watertight compartments were flooded - this is amazing for a ship of such gigantic size.

However, on the night of April 14-15, 1912, just a few days into the liner’s debut voyage, its Achilles’ heel was revealed. The ship, due to its size, was not agile enough to avoid a collision with the iceberg, which the watchmen had been shouting about for the last minute. The Titanic did not collide with the fatal iceberg head-on, but drove along it on its right side - the ice punched holes in the steel plates, flooding six “watertight” compartments. And after a couple of hours the ship was completely filled with water and sank.

According to experts studying the potential weak point of the Titanic - the rivets, they found that due to the fact that time was running out, builders began to use low-grade material. When the liner hit an iceberg, the weak steel rods in the bow of the ship cracked. It is believed that it was no coincidence that the water, having flooded six compartments held together by low-grade steel rods, stopped exactly where the high-quality steel rivets began.

In 2005, another expedition studying the crash site was able to establish from the wreckage of the bottom that during the crash the ship tilted only about 11 degrees, and not 45, as had long been believed.

Memories of Passengers

Because the ship tilted only slightly, passengers and crew were lulled into a false sense of security—many of them did not understand the gravity of the situation. When the water sufficiently flooded the bow of the hull, the ship, while remaining afloat, split in two and sank in minutes.

Charlie Jugin, the Titanic's chef, was standing near the stern when the ship sank and did not notice any signs of hull fracture. Nor did he notice the suction funnel or the colossal splash. According to his information, he calmly sailed away from the ship, without even getting his hair wet.

However, some passengers sitting in lifeboats claimed to have seen the stern of the Titanic raised high in the air. However, this could only be an optical illusion. With a tilt of 11 degrees, propellers sticking out in the air, the Titanic, the height of a 20-story building, seemed even taller, and its roll into the water even greater.

How the Titanic sank: a real-time model

The menu for the last dinner on the Titanic, which sank in 1912, has been sold in New York. The price for it was 88 thousand dollars (about 1.9 million hryvnia).

Blue Star Line announced the construction of Titanic 2. According to the designers, the ship will be an exact copy of the famous liner that sank in 1912. However, the liner will be equipped with modern safety equipment. Australian mining magnate Clive Palmer undertook to finance the project.

Now this 105-year-old cracker is considered the most expensive in the world.

It turns out that a cracker made by Spillers and Bakers called "Pilot" was included in the survival kit that was placed on each lifeboat. Later, one of these products went to a man who kept it as a souvenir. It was James Fenwick, a passenger on the ship Carpathia, which was picking up shipwreck survivors.

REFERENCE

On the night of April 15, 1912, the Titanic collided with an iceberg and sank. He sailed in the Atlantic Ocean on his way from Southampton (England) to New York. About 1.5 thousand people died then, mostly third class passengers. In total there were more than 2.2 thousand people there.

Titanic is a ship that challenged higher powers. A miracle of shipbuilding and the largest ship of its time. The builders and owners of this giant passenger fleet arrogantly declared: “The Lord God himself cannot sink this ship.” However, the ship launched on its maiden voyage and did not return. It was one of the largest disasters, forever etched in the history of navigation. In this topic I will talk about the most key points related to the Titanic. The topic consists of two parts, the first part is the history of the Titanic before the tragedy, where I will tell you about how the ship was built and went on its fateful voyage. In the second part we will visit the bottom of the ocean, where the remains of a drowned giant lie.

First, I will briefly talk about the history of the Titanic's structure. There are a lot of interesting photos of the ship, which depict the construction process, mechanisms and assemblies of the Titanic, and so on. And then the story will tell about the tragic circumstances that were destined to happen on this fateful day for the Titanic. As always happens with major disasters, the Titanic tragedy occurred due to a series of mistakes that coincided on one day. Each of these mistakes individually would not have entailed anything serious, but all together they resulted in death for the ship.

Titanic was laid down on March 31, 1909 at the shipyards of the Harland and Wolf shipbuilding company in Belfast, Northern Ireland, launched on May 31, 1911, and underwent sea trials on April 2, 1912. The ship's unsinkability was ensured by 15 watertight bulkheads in the hold, creating 16 conditionally watertight compartments; the space between the bottom and the second bottom flooring was divided by transverse and longitudinal partitions into 46 waterproof compartments. The first photo shows the Titanic slipway, construction is just beginning.


The photo shows the laying of the Titanic's keel

In this photo, the Titanic is on the slipway next to the Olympic, its twin brother

And these are the huge steam engines of the Titanic

Giant crankshaft

This photo shows the turbine rotor of the Titanic. The huge size of the rotor stands out especially against the background of the working

Titanic propeller shaft

Ceremonial photo - the Titanic hull is completely assembled

The launching process begins. The Titanic slowly sinks its hull into the water

The giant ship almost left the slipways

Titanic's launch is successful

And now the Titanic is ready, the morning before the first official launching in Belfast

The Titanic was officially launched and transported to England. The photo shows the ship in the port of Southampton before its fateful voyage. Few people know, but during the construction of the Titanic, 8 workers died. This information is available in a selection of interesting facts about the Titanic.

This is the last photograph of the Titanic taken from the shore in Ireland.

The first days of the voyage were successful for the ship, there were no signs of trouble, the ocean was completely calm. On the night of April 14, the sea remained calm, but icebergs were visible in some places in the sailing area. They did not embarrass Captain Smith... At 11:40 in the evening, a cry was suddenly heard from the observation post on the mast: “An iceberg is right on course!”... Everyone knows about further events that took place on the ship. The “unsinkable” Titanic was unable to withstand the elements of water and sank to the bottom. As already mentioned, many factors turned against the Titanic that day. It was fatal bad luck that killed the giant ship and more than 1,500 people

The official conclusion of the commission investigating the causes of the sinking of the Titanic stated: the steel used to sheath the hull of the Titanic was of low quality, with a large admixture of sulfur, which made it very brittle at low temperatures. If the casing were made of high-quality, tough steel with a low sulfur content, it would significantly soften the force of the impact. The metal sheets would simply bend inward and the damage to the body would not be so serious. Perhaps then the Titanic would have been saved, or at least would have remained afloat for a long time. However, for those times this steel was considered the best, there was simply no other. This was only the final conclusion; in fact, a number of other factors occurred that did not allow us to avoid a collision with the iceberg

Let us list in order all the factors that influenced the sinking of the Titanic. The absence of any of these factors could save the ship...

First of all, it is worth noting the work of the Titanic's radio operators: the main task of the telegraph operators was to serve especially wealthy passengers - it is known that in just 36 hours of work, the radio operators transmitted more than 250 telegrams. Payment for telegraph services was made on the spot, in the radio room, and at that time it was quite large, and tips flowed like a river. Radio operators were constantly busy sending telegrams, and although they received several messages about drifting ice, they did not pay attention to them

Some criticize the lookout's lack of binoculars. The reason for this lies in the tiny key to the binoculars box. A tiny key that opened the cabinet where the binoculars were kept could have saved the Titanic and the lives of 1,522 dead passengers. This should have happened if not for the fatal mistake of a certain David Blair. Keyman Blair was transferred from service on the “unsinkable” liner just a few days before the ill-fated voyage, but he forgot to give the key to the binocular locker to the employee who replaced him. That is why the sailors on duty at the observation tower of the liner had to rely solely on their eyes. They saw the iceberg too late. One of the crew members on watch that fateful night later said that if they had binoculars, they would have seen the ice block earlier (even if it was pitch black) and the Titanic would have had time to change course.”

Despite warnings about icebergs, the captain of the Titanic did not slow down or change the route, so confident was he that the ship was unsinkable. The speed of the ship was too high, due to which the iceberg hit the hull with maximum force. If the captain had ordered the ship's speed to be reduced in advance, upon entering the iceberg belt, then the force of the impact on the iceberg would not have been enough to break through the Titanic's hull. The captain also did not make sure that all the boats were filled with people. As a result, far fewer people were saved

The iceberg belonged to a rare type of so-called. “black icebergs” (overturned so that their dark underwater part reaches the surface), which is why it was noticed too late. The night was windless and moonless, otherwise the lookouts would have noticed the whitecaps around the iceberg. The photo shows the same iceberg that caused the sinking of the Titanic.

There were no red rescue flares on the ship to signal distress. Confidence in the ship's power was so high that no one even thought of equipping the Titanic with these missiles. But everything could have turned out differently. Less than half an hour after meeting the iceberg, the captain’s mate shouted:
Lights on port side, sir! The ship is five or six miles away! Boxhall clearly saw through his binoculars that it was a single-tube steamer. He tried to contact him using a signal lamp, but the unknown vessel did not respond. “Apparently, there is no radiotelegraph on the ship, they could not help but see us,” Captain Smith decided and ordered helmsman Rowe to signal with emergency flares. When the signalman opened the box with the missiles, both Boxhall and Rowe were dumbfounded: the box contained ordinary white missiles, not emergency red ones. “Sir,” Boxhall exclaimed in disbelief, “there are only white rockets here!” - Can't be! - Captain Smith was amazed. But, convinced that Boxhall was right, he ordered: “Shoot the whites.” Maybe they'll realize we're in trouble. But no one guessed, everyone thought it was a fireworks display on the Titanic

The cargo-passenger steamer California, on a London-Boston flight, missed the Titanic on the evening of April 14, and a little over an hour later it was covered in ice and lost speed. Its radio operator Evans contacted the Titanic at about 11 p.m. and wanted to warn about the difficult ice conditions and that they were covered in ice, but the Titanic’s radio operator Philippe, who had just had difficulty establishing contact with Cape Race, rudely interrupted him: “Leave me alone!” I'm busy working with Cape Race! And Evans “fell behind”: there was no second radio operator on the California, it was a difficult day, and Evans officially closed the radio watch at 23:30, having previously reported this to the captain. As a result, all the blame for the biased investigation into the sinking of the Titanic fell on the captain of the California, Stanley Lord, who proved his innocence until his death. He was acquitted only posthumously after Hendrik Ness, captain of the ship Samson, testified...


On the map the place where the Titanic sank

So, the night of April 14-15, 1912. Atlantic. On board the fishing vessel "Samson". "Samson" returns from a successful fishing trip, avoiding encounters with US ships. On board are several hundred slaughtered seals. The tired crew rested. The watch was kept by the captain himself and his first mate. Captain Ness was in good standing with his owners. The voyages of his ship were always successful and brought good profits. Hendrik Ness was known as an experienced and risk-taking captain, not too scrupulous about violating territorial waters or exceeding the number of animals killed. “Samson” often found himself in foreign or forbidden waters, and he was well known to US Coast Guard ships, with whom he successfully avoided close acquaintance. In a word, Hendrik Ness was an excellent navigator and a gambling, successful businessman. Here are the words of Ness, from which the whole picture of what is happening becomes clear:

“The night was amazing, starry, clear, the ocean was calm and gentle,” Ness said. “The assistant and I chatted, smoked, sometimes I went out of the control room onto the bridge, but I didn’t stay there for long - the air was absolutely freezing.” Suddenly, accidentally turning around, I saw two unusually bright stars in the southern part of the horizon. They surprised me with their brilliance and size. Shouting to the watchman to hand over the telescope, I pointed it at these stars and immediately realized that these were the masthead lights of a large ship. “Captain, I think this is a coast guard ship,” the mate said. But I thought about it myself. There was no time to figure it out on the map, but we both decided that we had entered the territorial waters of the United States. The meeting with their ships did not bode well for us. A few minutes later a white rocket flew over the horizon, and we realized that we had been discovered and were being asked to stop. I still hoped that everything would work out and we would be able to escape. But soon another rocket took off, and after some time a third... Things turned out badly: if we had been searched, I would have lost not only all the loot, but also, possibly, the ship, and we would all have gone to prison. I decided to leave.

He ordered to turn off all the lights and give full speed. For some reason we were not followed. After some time, the border ship disappeared altogether. (This is why witnesses from the Titanic claimed that they clearly saw a large steamer in the distance, leaving them. The ill-fated California at that time was sandwiched in ice and was not visible from the Titanic at all.) I ordered a change of course to the north, we were going at full speed and only slowed down in the morning. On the twenty-fifth of April we dropped anchor off Reykjavik in Iceland and only then did we learn about the Titanic tragedy from newspapers delivered by the Norwegian consul.

During the conversation with the consul, it was as if I had been hit on the head: I thought: weren’t we at the scene of the disaster then? As soon as the consul left our board, I immediately rushed to the cabin and, looking through the newspapers and my notes, realized that the dying people saw us not as the Californian, but as us. This means that it was us who were called to help with rockets. But they were white, not red, emergency ones. Who would have thought that people were dying very close to us, and we were leaving them at full speed on our reliable and large “Samson”, which had both boats and boats on board! And the sea was like a pond, quiet, calm... We could save them all! Everyone! Hundreds of people died there, and we saved stinking seal skins! But who could know about this? But we didn’t have a radiotelegraph. On the way to Norway, I explained to the crew what happened to us and warned that all of us had only one thing left to do - remain silent! If they find out the truth, we will become worse than lepers: everyone will shy away from us, we will be kicked out of the fleet, no one will want to serve with us on the same ship, no one will give us a hand or a crust of bread. And none of the team took any oath.

Hendrik Ness spoke about what happened only 50 years later, before his death. However, no one can be directly blamed for the sinking of the Titanic. If the rockets had been red, he would certainly have rushed to help. In the end, no one had time to help. Only the steamer "Carpathia", developing an unprecedented speed of 17 knots, rushed to the aid of the dying people. Captain Arthur H. Roston ordered the preparation of beds, spare clothing, food, and quarters for the rescued. At 2 hours 45 minutes, “Carpathia” began to encounter icebergs and their fragments, large ice fields. Despite the danger of a collision, the Carpathia did not slow down. At 3 hours 50 minutes on the Carpathia they saw the first boat from the Titanic, at 4 hours 10 minutes they began to save people, and by 8 hours 30 minutes the last living person was picked up. In total, Carpathia saved 705 people. And “Carpathia” delivered all those rescued to New York. The photo shows a boat from the Titanic

Now let's move on to the second part of the story. Here you will see the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean in the form in which it remained after the tragedy. For seventy-three years the ship lay in its deep underwater grave as one of the countless evidence of human carelessness. The word "Titanic" has become synonymous with adventures doomed to failure, heroism, cowardice, shock and adventure. Societies and associations of surviving passengers were created. Entrepreneurs involved in the recovery of sunken ships dreamed of raising a superliner with all its countless riches. In 1985, a team of divers led by American oceanographer Dr. Robert Ballard found it, and the world learned that under the enormous pressure of the water column, the giant ship broke into three parts. The wreckage of the Titanic was scattered over an area with a radius of 1600 meters. Ballard found the bow of the ship, deeply buried in the ground under its own weight. Eight hundred meters away from her lay the stern. Nearby were the ruins of the middle part of the hull. Among the wreckage of the ship, various objects of material culture of that distant time were scattered throughout the bottom: a set of kitchen utensils made of copper, wine bottles with corks, coffee cups with the emblem of the White Star shipping line, toiletries, door handles, candelabra, kitchen stoves and ceramic heads dolls with which small children played... One of the most stunning underwater images that Dr. Ballard's movie camera captured was a broken sloop beam hanging limply from the side of the ship - a silent witness to a tragic night that will forever remain on the list of world disasters. The photo shows the wreck of the Titanic, taken by the Mir submersible

Over the past 19 years, the hull of the Titanic has undergone serious destruction, the reason for which was not sea water at all, but souvenir hunters who are gradually plundering the remains of the liner. For example, the ship’s bell or mast lighthouse disappeared from the ship. In addition to direct plunder, damage to the ship is caused by time and the action of bacteria, leaving behind only rusty ruins

In this photo we see the Titanic's propeller

Huge ship anchor

One of the Titanic's piston engines

Preserved underwater cup from the Titanic

This is the same hole that formed after the encounter with the iceberg. Perhaps, in addition to weak steel, the rivets between the sheets of metal failed, and water poured into 4 compartments of the Titanic, leaving no chance of salvation. There was no point in pumping water out; it was equivalent to pumping water from ocean to ocean. The Titanic sank to the bottom, where it rests to this day. There is talk of raising the Titanic to the surface in order to set up a museum, meanwhile various souvenir lovers continue to take the ship apart piece by piece. How many more secrets does the Titanic keep? It is unlikely that anyone will answer this question in the near future.

The cause of the sinking of the largest ocean liner of its time, the Titanic, could have been a fire in a fuel storage facility.

The tragic legend of the Titanic

According to British journalist Shannon Moloney, who studied the history of the ship for thirty years, the fire on board broke out even before the ship left Southampton, and for several weeks they tried unsuccessfully to put it out. During this time, the skin of the liner heated up, which is why the collision with the iceberg ended so badly.

According to The Independent newspaper, the journalist managed to take pictures taken before the start of the Titanic's voyage. Moloney found traces of soot in the area of ​​the hull, which was subsequently damaged due to a collision with an iceberg. According to experts, they most likely arose due to a fire in one of the airliner’s fuel storage facilities.

According to the researcher, the ship's owners knew about the fire, but hid this fact from passengers. The team was also ordered to remain silent about the fire. According to Shannon Moloney, as a result of the fire, the ship's hull heated to a temperature of about 1000 degrees Celsius, which made the steel, which had lost up to 75 percent of its strength, extremely brittle.

According to the journalist, when the Titanic collided with an iceberg on the fifth day of its voyage, the lining could not stand it and a huge hole appeared in the side. Therefore, the iceberg cannot be considered the sole culprit of the disaster that claimed the lives of more than 1,500 people on April 15, 1912.

Note that " " belonged to the British company White Star Line. At the time of construction, it was considered the largest passenger liner in the world, and, in addition, was considered unsinkable. On May 31, 1911, the liner was launched. "God himself cannot sink this ship!" - its captain Edward John Smith said about the ship.

A little over a year later, the Titanic set off on its first voyage. There were 2,224 people on board: 1,316 passengers and 908 crew members. On April 14, 1912, the ship collided with an iceberg and sank 2 hours and 40 minutes later. 711 people were saved, 1513 died...

It's not so simple with icebergs either. Typically, Greenland icebergs get stuck in shallow waters off the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland and float further south only after they have been thoroughly thawed, often under the influence of the tides. However, in the case of the Titanic, several large icebergs managed to swim far to the south at once.

Physicist Donald Olson from the University of Texas (USA) and his colleagues investigated the hypothesis of oceanographer Fergus Wood, who argued that the icebergs were refloated by high tide in January 1912, when the Moon was unusually close to the Earth. By mid-April, the fatal ice mountain had reached the collision site.

Indeed, Olson says, on January 4, 1912, the Moon came its closest to the Earth in 1,400 years. The day before, the Earth came as close as possible to the Sun. The Moon and the Sun found themselves in a position where their mutual gravitational influence on the Earth increased. Obeying the power of the tide, the killer iceberg broke away from Greenland and set off on its way.

At the same time, one of the biggest mysteries associated with the death of the Titanic is the more than frivolous behavior of the captain of the liner, Edward Smith. An experienced sea wolf, who had repeatedly plied the waters of the North Atlantic, for some reason did not pay attention to the warning about approaching icebergs. Perhaps he simply did not believe the information about them.

Although the matter may be different. A hypothesis that radically changes the history of the disaster belongs to two researchers - amateur Robin Gardner (a plasterer by profession) and historian Dan Van der Wat. Having studied the archives of the navy for 50 years, they came to the conclusion that it was not the Titanic that actually sank, but another ship - the Olympic! The latter was built almost simultaneously with the Titanic and at the same shipyards. But from the very first days this ship was plagued by troubles. When it was launched on October 20, 1910, it crashed into a dam. The owner of the ship, Bruce Ismay, and the owner of the Harland and Wolf shipyards, Lord Pirrie, were forced to pay a considerable amount for repairs and damages, which almost bankrupted them.

While sailing, the Olympic was repeatedly involved in accidents. After that, not a single insurance company undertook to insure the “damned ship.” And then Ismay and Pirri conceived the “scam of the century” - to send the Olympic under the name of the Titanic on a voyage across the Atlantic and, when it crashed, to receive insurance for it - 52 million pounds sterling!

The owners had no doubt that their plan would succeed. To protect the passengers, they planned to send another ship along the same route, which, supposedly by chance, would pick up passengers and crew. But, in order not to arouse any suspicion, the shipowners decided that the “rescue” ship would leave the pier no earlier than a week after the start of the voyage. Alas, I only had to wait three days...

The captain of the imaginary Titanic, Edward John Smith, was ready to carry out any order from his superiors. Thus, a few hours before the tragedy, binoculars were confiscated from the observers on duty. And a few minutes before the crash, Smith allegedly ordered the plane to be turned sideways towards the iceberg. It seemed like he was trying to ensure disaster!

The further history of the Titanic (or the false Titanic) is known to us. What happened to the real Titanic? According to Gardner and van der Wat, he sailed safely under a different name, first as part of the Royal Naval Forces, then he was acquired by the White Star Line. The ship was decommissioned in 1935.

Was it “his own” death (or the ship that everyone mistook for the Titanic)? Or was he “helped” to crash? We will most likely never know. Of course, both the “conspiracy theory” and the “lunar hypothesis” are nothing more than versions. But the fact remains: the Titanic sank. And, no matter what led to its death, we are no longer able to change the tragic fate of this ship...

Did the Titanic (or the ship that everyone mistook for the Titanic) die “its own” death? Or was he “helped” to crash? We will most likely never know. Of course, both the “conspiracy theory” and the “lunar hypothesis” are nothing more than versions. But the fact remains: the Titanic sank. And, no matter what led to its death, we are no longer able to change the tragic fate of this ship...

"Titanic" (eng. Titanic) is a British transatlantic steamer, the second liner of the Olympic class. Built in Belfast at the Harland and Wolfe shipyard from 1909 to 1912 for the White Star Line shipping company.

At the time of commissioning it was the largest ship in the world.

On the night of April 14-15, 1912, during her maiden voyage, she crashed in the North Atlantic, colliding with an iceberg.

Vessel information

The Titanic was equipped with two four-cylinder steam engines and a steam turbine.

• The entire power plant had a capacity of 55,000 hp. With.
• The ship could reach speeds of up to 23 knots (42 km/h).
• Its displacement, which exceeded the twin ship Olympic by 243 tons, was 52,310 tons.
• The ship's hull was made of steel.
• The hold and lower decks were divided into 16 compartments by bulkheads with sealed doors.
• If the bottom was damaged, the double bottom prevented water from entering the compartments.

Shipbuilder magazine called the Titanic virtually unsinkable, a statement that was widely circulated in the press and among the public.

In accordance with outdated rules, the Titanic was equipped with 20 lifeboats, with a total capacity of 1,178 people, which was only a third of the ship's maximum load.

The cabins and public areas of the Titanic were divided into three classes.

First class passengers were provided with a swimming pool, a squash court, an A la carte restaurant, two cafes, and a gym. All classes had dining and smoking lounges, open and closed promenades. The most luxurious and sophisticated were the first class interiors, made in various artistic styles using expensive materials such as mahogany, gilding, stained glass, silk and others. The third class cabins and salons were decorated as simply as possible: steel walls were painted white or lined with wood panels.

1 On April 0, 1912, the Titanic set sail from Southampton on its first and only voyage. After making stops in Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown, Ireland, the ship entered the Atlantic Ocean with 1,317 passengers and 908 crew members on board. The ship was commanded by Captain Edward Smith. On April 14, the Titanic's radio station received seven ice warnings, but the liner continued to move almost at top speed. To avoid encountering floating ice, the captain ordered to go slightly south of the usual route.

• At 23:39 on April 14, the lookout reported to the captain's bridge about an iceberg directly ahead. Less than a minute later there was a collision. Having received several holes, the ship began to sink. Women and children were put on the boats first.
• At 2:20 on April 15, the Titanic sank, breaking into two parts, killing 1,496 people. 712 survivors were picked up by the steamship Carpathia.

The wreckage of the Titanic rests at a depth of 3,750 m. They were first discovered by Robert Ballard's expedition in 1985. Subsequent expeditions recovered thousands of artifacts from the bottom. The bow and stern parts are deeply buried in the bottom silt and are in a deplorable condition; raising them to the surface intact is not possible.

The wreck of the Titanic

The disaster claimed the lives, according to various sources, from 1,495 to 1,635 people. Until December 20, 1987, when the Philippine ferry Dona Paz sank, killing more than 4,000 people, the sinking of the Titanic remained the deadliest peacetime maritime disaster. Informally, it is the most famous disaster of the 20th century.

Alternative versions of the ship's death

And now - alternative versions, each of which has its adherents in the worldwide club of mystery lovers.

Fire

A fire in the coal compartment that broke out before sailing and provoked first an explosion and then a collision with an iceberg. The ship's owners knew about the fire and tried to hide it from passengers. This version was put forward by British journalist Shanan Moloney, writes The Independent. Moloney has been researching the causes of the Titanic's sinking for more than 30 years.

In particular, he studied photographs taken before the ship left the Belfast shipyard. The journalist saw black marks along the right side of the ship's hull - exactly where the iceberg hit it. Experts subsequently confirmed that the marks were likely caused by a fire that started in a fuel storage facility. “We looked at the exact location where the iceberg was stuck and it appears that part of the hull was very vulnerable at that location, and that was before it even left the Belfast shipyard,” Moloney says. A team of 12 tried to put out the flames, but they were too big to bring under control quickly. It could reach temperatures of up to 1000 degrees Celsius, making the Titanic's hull very vulnerable in this area. And when it hit the ice, experts say, it immediately broke. The publication also added that the liner's management prohibited passengers from talking about the fire. “This is a perfect confluence of unusual factors: fire, ice and criminal negligence. No one had investigated these marks before. It changes the story completely,” says Moloney.

CONSPIRACY

Conspiracy theory: this is not the Titanic at all! This version was put forward by experts who studied the causes of the death of the ship, Robin Gardiner and Dan Van Der Watt, published in the book “The Mystery of the Titanic.” According to this theory, the sunken ship is not the Titanic at all, but its twin brother, the Olympic. These ships looked practically no different from each other. On September 20, 1911, the Olympic collided with the British Navy cruiser Hawk, causing both ships to be seriously damaged. The owners of "Olympic" suffered heavy losses, since the damage that was caused to "Olympic" was not enough for an insurance payment.

The theory is based on the assumption of possible fraud in order for the owners of the Titanic to receive insurance payments. According to this version, the owners of the Titanic intentionally sent the Olympic to an area of ​​possible ice formation and at the same time convinced the captain not to slow down so that the ship would suffer serious damage when colliding with a block of ice. This version was initially supported by the fact that a fairly large number of objects were raised from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, where the Titanic lies, but nothing was found that bore the name “Titanic.” This theory was refuted after parts were brought to the surface, on which the Titanic’s side (construction) number was stamped - 401. The Olympic had a side number of 400. In addition, the minted side number of the Titanic was discovered and on the propeller of a sunken ship. And even despite this, the conspiracy theory still has a number of followers.

German attack

1912 With the First World War two years away, the prospect of armed conflict between Germany and Great Britain is becoming increasingly likely. Germany owns several dozen submarines, which during the war will launch a merciless hunt for enemy ships trying to cross the ocean. For example, the reason for America’s entry into the war will be the fact that the U-20 submarine will sink the Lusitania in 1915, a twin of the same Mauritania that set the speed record and won the Atlantic Blue Ribbon - remember?

Based on these facts, some Western publications proposed their own version of the death of the Titanic in the mid-nineties: a torpedo attack by a German submarine secretly accompanying the liner. The purpose of the attack was to discredit the British fleet, famous for its power throughout the world. In accordance with this theory, the Titanic either did not collide with the iceberg at all, or received very minor damage in the collision and would have remained afloat if the Germans had not finished off the ship with a torpedo.

What speaks in favor of this version? Honestly, nothing.

There was a collision with an iceberg - this is beyond doubt. The deck of the ship was even covered with snow and ice chips. Cheerful passengers started playing football with ice cubes - it would become clear later that the ship was doomed. The collision itself was surprisingly quiet - almost none of the passengers felt it. The torpedo, you must admit, could hardly have exploded completely silently (especially since some claim that the submarine fired as many as six torpedoes at the ship!).

Supporters of the theory of the German attack claim, however, that people in the boats heard a terrible roar just before the Titanic sank - well, this was two and a half hours later, when only the stern raised into the sky remained above the water and the death of the ship did not raise any doubts. It’s unlikely that the Germans would have fired a torpedo at an almost sunken ship, would it? And the roar that the survivors heard was explained by the fact that the stern of the Titanic rose almost vertically and huge steam boilers fell from their places. Also, do not forget that at about the same minutes the Titanic broke in half - the keel could not withstand the weight of the rising stern (however, they will learn about this only after the liner is discovered at the bottom: the break occurred below the water level), and this, too, is unlikely to have happened silently . And why would the Germans suddenly start sinking a passenger liner two years before the start of the war? This seems dubious, to put it mildly. And to put it bluntly, it’s absurd.

A curse

Mystical version: curse of the pharaohs. It is known for certain that one of the historians, Lord Canterville, transported on the Titanic in a wooden box a perfectly preserved Egyptian mummy of a priestess - a soothsayer. Since the mummy had a fairly high historical and cultural value, it was not placed in the hold, but placed directly next to the captain's bridge. The essence of the theory is that the mummy influenced the mind of Captain Smith, who, despite numerous warnings about ice in the area where the Titanic was sailing, did not slow down and thereby doomed the ship to certain death. This version is supported by well-known cases of mysterious deaths of people who disturbed the peace of ancient burials, especially mummified Egyptian rulers. Moreover, the deaths were associated precisely with clouding of mind, as a result of which people committed inappropriate actions, and cases of suicide often occurred. Did the pharaohs have a hand in the sinking of the Titanic?

Steering error

One of the latest versions of the sinking of the Titanic deserves special attention. She appeared after the novel by the granddaughter of the second mate of the Titanic, Charles Lightoller, Lady Patten, “Worth Its Weight in Gold,” was published. According to Patten's book, the ship had enough time to avoid the obstacle, but helmsman Robert Hitchens panicked and turned the wheel the wrong way.

A catastrophic mistake led to the iceberg causing fatal damage to the ship. The truth about what really happened that fateful night was kept secret by the family of Lightoller, the oldest surviving officer of the Titanic and the only survivor who knew exactly what caused the ship's sinking. Lightoller hid this information out of fear that the White Star Line, which owned the ship, would go bankrupt and his colleagues would lose their jobs. The only person to whom Lightoller told the truth was his wife Sylvia, who conveyed her husband’s words to her granddaughter. In addition, according to Patten, such a large and reliable liner as the Titanic sank so quickly because after colliding with an ice block it was not immediately stopped, and the rate of water entering the holds increased hundreds of times. The liner was not immediately stopped because White Star Line manager Bruce Ismay convinced the captain to continue sailing. He feared that the incident could cause considerable material damage to the company he headed.

Chasing the Atlantic Blue Riband

There were and still are many supporters of this theory, especially among writers, since it appeared precisely in literary circles. The Atlantic Blue Ribbon is a prestigious shipping prize awarded to ocean liners for achieving record speeds across the North Atlantic.

At the time of the Titanic, this prize was awarded to the ship Mauritania of the Cunard company, which, by the way, was the founder of this award, as well as the main competitor of the White Star Line. In defense of this theory, it is argued that the president of the company that owned the Titanic, Ismay, encouraged the captain of the Titanic, Smith, to arrive in New York a day ahead of schedule and receive an honorary prize. This supposedly explains the ship's high speed in a dangerous area of ​​the Atlantic. But this theory can easily be refuted, because the Titanic simply physically could not have reached the speed of 26 knots at which the Cunard Mauritania set a record that, by the way, lasted for more than 10 years after the disaster in the Atlantic.

But what was it really like?

Sadly, when studying the history of the most famous maritime disaster, we have to admit that the Titanic owes its death to a long chain of fatal accidents. If at least one link of the ominous chain had been destroyed, the tragedy could have been avoided.

Perhaps the first link was the successful start of the journey - yes, that’s right. On the morning of April 10, during the departure of the Titanic from the quay wall of the port of Southampton, the superliner passed too close to the American ship New York, and a phenomenon known in navigation as ship suction arose: the New York began to be attracted to the one moving nearby. "Titanic". However, thanks to the skill of Captain Edward Smith, a collision was avoided.

Ironically, if the accident had happened, it would have saved one and a half thousand lives: if the Titanic had been delayed in port, the ill-fated encounter with the iceberg would not have happened.

This time. It should also be mentioned that the radio operators who received the message from the Mesaba ship about the ice fields of icebergs did not transmit it to Edward Smith: the telegram was not marked with a special prefix “personally to the captain”, and was lost in a heap of papers. That's two.

However, this message was not the only one, and the captain knew about the ice danger. Why didn't he slow down the ship? Chasing the Blue Ribbon is, of course, a matter of honor (and, more importantly, big business), but why did he risk the lives of passengers? It wasn't that much of a risk, really. In those years, captains of ocean liners often passed through areas dangerous with ice without slowing down: it was like crossing the road at a red light: it seems like you shouldn’t do that, but it always works out. Almost always.

To the credit of Captain Smith, it must be said that he remained faithful to maritime traditions and remained on the dying ship until the very end.

But why was the bulk of the iceberg not noticed? Here everything came together: a moonless, dark night, windless weather. If there were even small waves on the water surface, those looking ahead could see whitecaps at the foot of the iceberg. Calm and moonless night are two more links in the fatal chain.

As it turned out later, the chain was continued by the fact that the iceberg, shortly before the collision with the Titanic, turned over with its underwater, water-saturated, dark part upward, which is why it was practically invisible at night from afar (an ordinary, white iceberg would have been visible a mile away ). The watchman saw him only 450 meters away, and there was almost no time left for maneuver. Perhaps the iceberg would have been noticed earlier, but here another link in the fatal chain played a role - there were no binoculars in the “crow’s nest”. The box where they were kept was locked, and the key to it was hastily taken with him by the second mate, who had been removed from the ship just before departure.

After the lookout nevertheless saw the danger and reported the iceberg to the captain's bridge, there was a little more than half a minute left before the collision. Officer of the watch Murdoch, who was on watch, gave the order to the helmsman to turn left, while simultaneously transmitting the command “full astern” to the engine room. Thus, he made a grave mistake, adding another link in the chain that led the liner to death: even if the Titanic had crashed into an iceberg head-on, the tragedy would have been less. The bow of the ship would have been crushed, part of the crew and those passengers whose cabins were located in front would have died. But only two watertight compartments would have been flooded. With such damage, the liner would have remained afloat and could have waited for help from other ships.

And if Murdoch, having turned the ship to the left, had ordered an increase rather than a decrease in speed, the collision might not have happened at all. However, frankly speaking, the order to change the speed hardly plays a significant role here: in thirty seconds it was hardly executed in the engine room.

So, the collision happened. The iceberg damaged the ship's fragile hull along six compartments on the starboard side.

Looking ahead, let's say that only seven hundred and four managed to escape: the next link in the chain of failures was that some sailors took too literally the captain's order to put women and children in the boats, and did not allow men there, even if there were empty seats. However, at first no one was particularly eager to get into the boats. The passengers did not understand what was happening and did not want to leave the huge, comfortably lit, such a reliable liner, and it was unclear why they should go down in a small unstable boat down to the icy water. However, pretty soon anyone could notice that the deck was tilting forward more and more, and panic began.

But why was there such a monstrous discrepancy between the places on the lifeboats? The owners of the Titanic, praising the merits of the new ship, stated that they even exceeded the instructions of the code: instead of the required 962 life-saving seats on the ship, there were 1178. Unfortunately, they did not attach any importance to the discrepancy between this number and the number of passengers on board.

It is especially sad that another passenger steamer, the Californian, stood very close to the sinking Titanic, waiting out the ice danger. A few hours ago, he notified neighboring ships that he was locked in ice and was forced to stop so as not to accidentally run into an ice block. The radio operator from the Titanic, who was almost deafened by the Morse code from the Californian (the ships were very close, and the signal of one echoed too loudly in the headphones of the other), impolitely interrupted the warning: “Go to hell, you are interfering with my work!” What was the radio operator of the Titanic so busy with?

The fact is that in those years, radio communication on a ship was more of a luxury than an urgent necessity, and this miracle of technology aroused great interest among the wealthy public. From the very beginning of the voyage, the radio operators were literally inundated with private messages - and no one saw anything reprehensible in the fact that the Titanic’s radio operators paid such attention to rich passengers who wished to send a telegram to the ground directly from the liner. So at that moment, when colleagues from other ships reported about floating ice, the radio operator transmitted another message to the continent. Radio communication was more like an expensive toy than a serious tool: ships of that time did not even have a 24-hour watch at the radio station.

100 years ago, on the night of April 15, 1912, after colliding with an iceberg in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, the Titanic liner sank, carrying more than 2,200 people.

Titanic is the largest passenger ship of the early 20th century, the second of three twin steamships produced by the British company White Star Line.

The length of the Titanic was 260 meters, width - 28 meters, displacement - 52 thousand tons, height from the waterline to the boat deck - 19 meters, distance from the keel to the top of the pipe - 55 meters, maximum speed - 23 knots. Journalists compared it in length to three city blocks, and in height to an 11-story building.

The Titanic had eight steel decks, located one above the other at a distance of 2.5-3.2 meters. To ensure safety, the ship had a double bottom, and its hull was separated by 16 waterproof compartments. Watertight bulkheads rose from the second bottom to the deck. The ship's chief designer, Thomas Andrews, stated that even if four of the 16 compartments were filled with water, the liner would be able to continue its journey.

The interiors of the cabins on decks B and C were designed in 11 styles. Third class passengers on decks E and F were separated from first and second class by gates located in different parts of the ship.

Before the Titanic set out on its first and last voyage, it was especially emphasized that there would be 10 millionaires on board the ship on its first voyage, and in its safes there would be gold and jewelry worth hundreds of millions of dollars. American industrialist, heir to a mining magnate Benjamin Guggenheim, millionaire with his young wife, assistant to US Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft Major Archibald Willingham Butt, US Congressman Isidore Strauss, actress Dorothy Gibson, wealthy public figure Margaret Brown, British fashion designer Lucy Christiane Duff Gordon and many other famous and wealthy people of that time.

On April 10, 1912, at noon, the Titanic superliner set off on its only journey along the route Southampton (Great Britain) - New York (USA), with stops in Cherbourg (France) and Queenstown (Ireland).

During the four days' journey the weather was clear and the sea was calm.

On April 14, 1912, on the fifth day of the voyage, several ships sent reports of icebergs in the area of ​​the ship's route. The radio was broken for most of the day, and many messages were not noticed by the radio operators, and the captain did not pay due attention to others.

In the evening, the temperature began to drop, reaching zero Celsius by 22:00.

At 23:00, a message was received from the Californian about the presence of ice, but the Titanic's radio operator interrupted the radio exchange before the Californian had time to report the coordinates of the area: the telegraph operator was busy sending personal messages to passengers.

At 23:39, two lookouts noticed an iceberg in front of the liner and reported it by telephone to the bridge. The most senior of the officers, William Murdoch, gave the command to the helmsman: “Rudder to port.”

At 23:40 "Titanic" in the underwater part of the ship. Of the ship's 16 watertight compartments, six were cut through.

At 00:00 on April 15, Titanic designer Thomas Andrews was called to the bridge to assess the severity of the damage. After reporting the incident and inspecting the ship, Andrews informed everyone present that the liner would inevitably sink.

There was a noticeable tilt on the ship's bow. Captain Smith ordered the lifeboats to be uncovered and the crew and passengers to be summoned for evacuation.

By order of the captain, the radio operators began sending distress signals, which they transmitted for two hours, until the captain relieved the telegraph operators of their duties a few minutes before the sinking of the ship.

Distress signals, but they were too far from the Titanic.

At 00:25, the coordinates of the Titanic were accepted by the ship Carpathia, which was located 58 nautical miles from the site of the wreck of the liner, which was 93 kilometers. ordered to immediately head to the site of the Titanic disaster. Rushing to help, the ship was able to reach a record speed of 17.5 knots - with the maximum possible speed for the ship being 14 knots. To do this, Rostron ordered to turn off all appliances that consume electricity and heating.

At 01:30 the operator of the Titanic telegraphed: “We are in small boats.” By order of Captain Smith, his assistant, Charles Lightoller, who led the rescue of people on the left side of the liner, put only women and children in the boats. The men, according to the captain, were supposed to remain on deck until all the women were in the boats. First Mate William Murdoch on the starboard side to the men if there were no women or children in the line of passengers gathering on deck.

At about 02:15, the Titanic's bow dropped sharply, the ship moved forward significantly, and a huge wave rolled across the decks, washing many passengers overboard.

At about 02:20 minutes the Titanic sank.

At about 04:00 in the morning, approximately three and a half hours after receiving the distress signal, the Carpathia arrived at the site of the Titanic's wreck. The ship took on board 712 passengers and crew members of the Titanic, after which it arrived safely in New York. Among those rescued were 189 crew members, 129 male passengers and 394 women and children.

The death toll, according to various sources, ranged from 1,400 to 1,517 people. According to official data, after the disaster, 60% of passengers were in first class cabins, 44% in second class cabins, 25% in third class.

The last surviving passenger of the Titanic, who traveled on board the liner at the age of nine weeks, died on May 31, 2009 at the age of 97. The woman's ashes were scattered over the sea from the pier in the port of Southampton, from where the Titanic set off on its last voyage in 1912.

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources