The loss of a submersible with five people who were going to visit the remains of the Titanic has, unfortunately, once again made the news of the legendary ocean liner. We think we know everything about her tragic shipwreck, especially thanks to the cinema and movies like the one starring Leo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet, but what if her end occurred under circumstances other than those we suppose?
We are used to thinking that the trigger for the catastrophe was an advertising claim. The White Star Line, owner of the ship, supposedly wanted to break a speed record and surpass the 23.7 knots of the Cunard Mauretania, which in 1907 had won the “Blue Band”, the award given to the ship. to cross the Atlantic in less time. It is believed, according to this version of events, that company executives pressured Captain Edward Smith to go faster than was prudent. Hence, he could not dodge the iceberg.
But historian Niall Ferguson takes a different view in Disaster. History and politics of catastrophes (Debate, 2021). The Titanic was actually doing only 18 knots at the time of the collision. In addition, even if she had gone full steam ahead, her technical characteristics did not allow her to get ahead of Mauretania.
However, none of this means that Captain Smith was blameless. When he knew that an ice pack was approaching, a bed of ice that made navigation difficult, he could have ordered to slow down, and he did not.
He was not the only one to be wrong. The radio operator Jack Phillips, for example, prioritized sending messages from millionaire passengers, such as Madeleine Astor. He didn’t have time to focus on what really mattered: the warnings about the presence of icebergs.
For his part, lookout Fred Fleet only saw the iceberg when it was half a kilometer away. If he hadn’t lost his binoculars, he would have spotted it at a distance of a kilometer, thus the reaction time would have been greater.
According to Ferguson, “If some men had behaved differently for a few seconds, we might not be caring more about the Titanic than its forgotten brother, the Olympic.”
But one thing is to explain the reasons for the collapse and another is the extremely high mortality. Is it true that it was all due to not having enough lifeboats? Those that were, together with the four boats, ensured a place for 1,178 people, barely half of the passengers and crew. J. Bruce Ismay, president of the White Star, became the big villain for not adding more boats, which would have reduced the promenade space on the first-class deck.
However, the author of Disaster cites the testimony of an anonymous officer from another passenger ship who in 1913 exonerated Ismay. In his opinion, more lifeboats wouldn’t have fixed anything. If there was not enough space to lower them, they would only have served to hinder evacuation. In addition, the crew of the Titanic, inexperienced, was not prepared for this type of task.
Thus, the situation was so complex that it was already a considerable feat for a few hundred people to save their lives.
One piece of data is striking: unlike what happened in similar shipwrecks, women and children had a higher survival rate than adult male passengers and the crew. According to Ferguson, this was one of the rare occasions when the principle of “women and children first” was respected.
