90
SVN Solovelanet Global
on duty on the Cunard Line ocean steamer receives
a message from a ship, asking for news about Titanic
that is not answering, so he proposes to relay the
messages to the competitor company's ship, knowing
she is nearby. When he sends the message, the answer
he receives from Titanic is unmistakable and chilling:
three dots, three dashes, and three dots. S.O.S.
Without thinking twice Arthur Henry Rostron, the
captain of Carpathia, has the ship make a sharp turn
and consciously accepting the his own ship hitting
an iceberg gives the order: "Full speed ahead".
While Carpathia was dodging ice at 18 knots, the
crew began to clear the lounges of chairs and
armchairs in order to make room for the shipwreck
survivors. Meanwhile on Titanic Bruce Ismay, the
man that many saw as responsible for the disa
-
ster boarded one of the lifeboats and fled to safety,
leaving hundreds behind him.
As the ship started singing, music continued to be
heard from the main deck, where the orchestra has
moved. The bandleader Wallace Hartley led the musi
-
cians with his violin, and their notes magically succee-
ded in keeping passengers' panic under control for
a long time. Titanic's orchestra kept playing until the
very end, and none of the musicians survived. At 02:20
a.m. on April 15th, 1912, the last song heard from the
Titanic was "Nearer My God To Thee".
A lifeboat of Carpathia approaches
a capsized dinghy of Titanic. Here
below, a drawing of the Titanic in an
ice field.
Al centro, l'arrivo del Titanic a
Southampton.
Sopra, una delle due lance pieghe-
voli del Titanic
T
o build RMS Titanic, it took 2 years' work by
3,000 men and 3 million rivets.
The ship was equipped with 4 funnels, but one
of them was fake. According to regulations of
that time, a ship the size of Titanic was required
to carry enough lifeboats for 962 people. Tita
-
nic had enough lifeboats for 1,178 people. She
would have needed enough for 2,300 people.
Many lifeboats were launched almost empty. It
has been calculated that they could have carri
-
ed 472 people more than they did.
Titanic sank because the watertight bulkheads,
as usual at that time, were not designed to be
welded to the deck and sealed. As they were not
capped at the top, water could spill over a floo
-
ded compartment to fill the next one, and so on.
Regulations
