Leaping over the side of the boat, passengers splash into the icy waters below. With one
lifeboat left, proplr are fighting to get on. All of a sudden, a thunderous crack is heard, and
a crewman screams out, “The boat has cracked in two!” Now the frightened travelers are
moving frantically toward the stern. (This might have been the scene 86 years ago.) The
unsinkable Titanic went down catastrophically and the safety on the liner as well as the
prevention of the incident became issues after the sinking and before the discovery of the
ship on the ocean floor.
The luxury liner was constructed with a purpose. It was built to transport
passengers across the Atlantic in a fast, yet extravagant way. The ship was housed to carry
a king. It had every comfort that anyone could ever have imagined. Such as the rooms that
were in the first class. The rooms had the finest quilts, mirrors and even were supplied
with fancy cigars. The Titanic was built at the Harvard and Wolff yard where White Star
liner’s ships were built. The construction began on March 31, 1909. An American
financier, J. Pierpont Morgan, who became interested in large passenger shipping
companies was the builder of the magnificent pleasure ship.
) The idea was a good one, little did
he know tragedy loomed ahead.
The massive ship, the crew, and the captain’s desires all added up to trouble. The
crewmen of the Titanic were not prepared for the possibility of a sinking ship because they
thought the vessel was unsinkable, and they didn’t concentrate on safety. For example
wireless operator interrupted the Californians wireless operator by a moderate, “Keep

Out! Shut-up! You’re jamming my signal. I’m working the Cape Race!” The Californian’s
sole operator listened to Titanic’s reply and at 11:30 turned off his set and retired for the
night. The possibility of a problem never entered the Titanic operators mind.
(hhtp://gil.ipswichcity.qld.gov.au/~dalgarry/time.html) In addition the captain’s intentions
were to cross the Atlantic at a record speed, and these wishes were not to be impeded.
White Star’s senior captain and the master of the Titanic, decided to continue on course at
full speed of twenty knots through the ice felds despite daylong warnings of icebergs in the
vicinity. (Brown, Donald pg.3) This decision and the crews carelessness foreshadow
tragedy. Accordingly, the unsinkable luxury liner struck an iceberg towering
approximately fifty to sixty feet at 11:50 P.M. on April 14, 1912.
(hhtp://gil.ipswichcity.qld.gov.au/~dalgarry/time.html) When the vessel hit the iceberg, a
rockhard object sneaking invincibly underneath the ocean’s surface. Struck the ship and
left four gashes on the starboard side and shaking those on board. As the iceberg moved
along the flank of the ship, it scraped the first three hundred feet of the hull way below the
water line. (Tibbals, Geoff pg.70)
Thus, the Titanic was given only was given only a few hours to stay afloat. In this
process, five of the presumably watertight compartments flooded, but five was too much
for her to bear. Although twelve square feet of the hull had been penetrated by the
collision, this was enough to sink her. The adjacent compartments also filled up equivalent
to ice-cube trays do when filled. As each compartment flooded with water, the bow of the
ship sank lower and lower. Just ten minutes after the impact, the water level had risen to
fourteen feet above the keel in the first five compartments. Water was also pouring into
the boiling room. At around 1:15 AM., the Titanic suddenly perched from starboard to
port. She was becoming increasingly rickety; the deck was tilting more and more steeply,
making the removal of passengers out of the boat more difficult. By 2:00 AM., the water

had risen to just ten feet below the promenade deck. At 2:17 AM. the unsinkable pleasure
vessel began to sink into the water, 2:17 AM., the stern flopped back into the water, two
of the four funnels broke off freeing soot into the clear blackness atmosphere. There was a
series of explosions and the immersed forward section broke away from the stern. Finally,
the stern also slide beneath the surface and began it’s two and a half, mile journey to the
ocean’s floor. ( Tibbals, Geoff pg. 72- 84) She sank somewhere around forty one degrees
North and fifty degrees West in the Atlantic. In the two hours it took the ship to sink, the
passengers had two hours to save themselves.
During the sinking of the massive ship, “The passengers acted without dignity.”
Said first-class Steward Edward Brown. But most of the passengers acted like gentleman:
“As I was put into the boat, he cried to me, ‘It’s all right, little girl. You go, I will stay. As
our boat shoved off he threw me a kiss, and that was the last I saw him.” Said Mrs. Daniel
Warner Marvin of New York. She had been on her honey moon, lost her new husband in
the disaster. Another eye-witness account came from a Philadelphia banker, Robert W.
Daniel. He was only wearing a bathrobe, when he leaped from the sinking ship two
minutes before she went down:
“Not until the last five minutes did the awful realization come that the end
was at hand. The lights became dim and went out, but we could see slowly,
ever so slowly, the surface of the water seemed a dream. Deck after deck
About me where many others in the water. My bathrobe floated away, and

there helpless toward off approached death. I saw captain Smith on the
bridge. My eyes seemingly clung to him. The deck from which I had lept
bridge. Then it was to captain Smith’s waist. I saw him no more. He died a
hero. The bows of the ship were far beneath the surface, and to me only the
four monster funnels and the mast were now visible. It was all over in an
thirty, forty, sixty feet into the air. Then, with her body slanting at an angle
of forty five degrees, slowly the Titanic Slipped out of sight.”

On the other hand, some reacted differently. Chief officer Henery Wilde with second
officer Leghtoller were in charge of launching the last lifeboat. Leghtoller had to draw his
pistol to reestablish order among the panicking passengers. He also ordered other
crewman to assemble a human barrier between those who just came from the steerage and
the last lifeboat. The band tried to relate the frantic passengers and crew by playing until
the end. (Tibballs, Geoff pg. 62, 79-81) Many different acts took place during the sinking
of the ship and it was only after all was said and done that safety issues were discussed.
Was safety taken into careful consideration? The supplement of enough lifeboats
would turn out to be one of the most unaffiliated issues. Under the British Board of Trade
Regulations, all British vessels of more than ten thousand tons had to carry at least 16
lifeboats with adequate amount of rafts and floats for seventy five percent of it’s capacity.
The ship weighed forty, six thousand tons and only had to carry just as many lifeboats as a
vessel that weighed ten thousand tons. These regulations meant that the Titanic only had
to carry enough lifeboats for only nine hundred and sixty, two people when she had the
capacity for three thousand, five hundred, and forty seven. Alexander Carelisle evidently

had misgiving’s about the management’s. Alexander’s original layout included sixty four
boats, sufficient for everyone. As discussions carried on the builders and owners started to
decline the amount of lifeboats within the Titanic. They decided first to change the number
of lifeboats to forty, then to thirty two and finally to sixteen, thirty-foot-long boats as well
as four englehadrt collapsible boats. Of course anyone that could do math would know
that sixteen, thirty-foot-long boats also with four englehardt collasspables would not be
enough for all those on-board the Titanic. (Tibballs, Geoff pg. 26) Furthermore, safety
measures were doled out unfairly. Treatment of the people on board the Titanic was
inequitable. In general the third class and second class travelers did not have as good of a
chance of surviving as the first class passengers. The lower class people were ordered to
stay in the lower areas and held by other crewman until the first class could safely
evacuate on lifeboats. Lastly, the factor of the crew’s late reactions might have been the
cause of more deaths. By the way that the crew left some passengers behind during the
sinking. (Titanic. Dir. James Cameron. Perf. Leonardo Decaprio, Kate Winscet, Kathy
Bates, Bill Paxton, Billy Zane, and Frances Fisher. Fox, 1996.) Stating safety issues aside
the next question that comes to mind is:
Could the accident have been avoided? This incident could have been
avoided if there were a sufficient amount of telegraphers throughout the ship, so they did
not have to depend on one person for the only source of communication. For example,
when the young wireless operator, previously mentioned interrupted an important message
and did not heed its warning, the message may have gotten through id there had been
another operator. (http:gil//ipswichcity.qld.gov.au/~dalgarry/time.html) This clearly
displays the need for more telegraphers on-board the liner. Secondly, the question
surrounding the number of lifeboats on the Titanic directly relates to the number of saved
lives. There was space for more lifeboats on the S.S.S Titanic, but the builders and owners
made luxury a priority over safety. More lives could have been saved if only there had

been more lifeboats. Thirdly, weather considerations was another important factor of these
tragic incident. If captain Smith had only stopped and deliberated his decision going
twenty one knots full speed through ice felds, this all could have been precluded. The
accident could have been avoided, but was not and it sank.
The Titanic was found at the bottom of the Atlantic. In the summer of 1985 by.
(Ballard, Robert pg.454) Dr. Robert Ballard, the head of Woods Hole’s Deep
Submergence laboratory. His interest of finding the Titanic dated back to the 1970′s, but
at that time could not, because he could not get financial support. Dr. Ball