Why Did the Titanic Sank

Why did the Titanic’s maiden voyage ended in such disaster? One of the largest passenger liner of the early 20th century made in the history, having the first and final voyage 100 years ago, owned by the magnificent White Star Line, was travelling without interference through the calm waters until one of the sailors on board reported that the Titanic is heading for a vast and humongous iceberg in April 12 1912 at that lethal midnight. The disaster had caused 1517 deaths on board, though there were only partially of the passengers that survived the disaster; which strangely are mostly consisted of women and children.

In this essay we will embark on a journey to find out the causes of the Titanic’s maiden voyage ended in such disaster. Competition and pressure for Atlantic passengers At that time, Bruce Ismay, the Managing Director of the White Star Line, was fierce about the competition for Atlantic passengers with other companies and the White Star Line wanted to show them that they could make a six-day crossing from Southampton to New York City. In order to meet this schedule, the Titanic could not afford to slow down, putting pressure on Captain Smith to maintain the travelling speed of the ship.

Over confident by Captain Smith of the Titanic As the ship was manoeuvring on calm waters, the captain received several warnings about iceberg. In fact, the captain ignored seven warnings. If he was cautious and more concern than been on schedule, he would have slowed down the ship and put more crews to keep eyes on the icebergs, maybe the Titanic disaster would not have happened. Poor quality of the rivets in Titanic Besides that, a few million rivets were used to hold sections of Titanic together steadily.

As some of the rivets were recovered from the wreckage and investigated, the result shows that the rivets were made of sub-standard iron which caused sections of the Titanic to break due to the force of impact of the ship and the iceberg. If a better iron were used for the rivets, the Titanic may have been able to survive the disaster. No binoculars for lookouts at night time and going too fast Other than that, though there were binoculars aboard the ship, hardly a crew knew there was even one in the ship.

It is possible that the crews can give an early warning about the iceberg where the Titanic was heading to. In addition to the worst, as the warning was received by the captain, the ship was in full speed. In quick reaction, the captain adjusted the speed to reverse, which was a mistake. This caused the ship to skid a slightly and hit the iceberg at the side instead of head on. It was believed that if Titanic hit the iceberg head on, other than causing of a disastrous result, the ship may destroy the iceberg instead of vice versa.

The Lifeboat Tales

When the lifeboats were fitted onto the ship, there were only 16 of them on Titanic, which however only allow approximately 1648 passengers to be rescued, which is about one third of the total amount of people on board. This is because the ship rather provided comfort for the passengers than safety. And since the Titanic had the title of “unsinkable”, the people grew more confidence and they felt that the Titanic did not need much of the lifeboats. Addition to the trouble, Boards of Trade’s regulation stated that ships over 10 000 tons were only allowed to bring 16 life boats only.

This would also mean that out of the original 64 lifeboats Titanic was supposed to carry, the White Star Line only provided life boats as legally required. Next, many of the lifeboats in initial stage were not fully filled and utilized. It was due to the lack of experience and knowledge of the crew members on board. It was believed that only about 50 members of the deck crew knew how to launch the lifeboats. It was Captain Lord of Californian’s fault It was said that the last iceberg warning was sent to Titanic by the Californian, at about 1 hour before the SOS message of Titanic went out.

The crew of the Californian were fed up of hearing messages being sent by passengers on the Titanic to friends and family back home, telling about their great experience they had been having. As the crew of Californian saw the fireworks which was intended to be the SOS message, Captain Lord concluded that the passengers on Titanic were having a party. This was one of the great mistakes taken by the Californian crew, if they were patient enough to hear the distress message from the Titanic, they probably can do something such as arriving at the scene of the disaster earlier and save more victims.

Conclusion At the end of the essay, there were several hypothesis of the massive and lethal event. Before the journey, the rivets should be made of a better quality of iron so that the ship is durable enough to withstand the impact of iceberg. During the journey, Captain Smith should be more cautious about the warning concerning about the icebergs and alert of first journey of this heavy duty ship and Captain Lord should be a little patient and put more attention on the SOS message which is extremely vital and significant for the people on board of the Titanic could be rescued by them.