The sinking of the R.M.S.
Titanic on April 15th, 1912 was a monumental disaster, claiming the lives of 1,517 passengers
in the frigid Atlantic Ocean.
It's since been elevated to one of those moments in history that feels more legendary than
real — because it's hard to fathom how such a terrible disaster ever took place.
That epic status has led to countless misconceptions being repeated again and again as absolute
fact.
So let's try to separate fact from fiction.
Lifeboat lies
Let's start with one of the biggest mistakes people make when they think of the Titanic:
the myth that there weren't enough lifeboats for all of its passengers because the White
Star Line was run by greedy, corporate jerks who didn't think the ship would sink anyway.
The idea is that they cut corners on safety because who wants to spend money on lifeboats
for an unsinkable ship?
In actuality, the White Star Line had gone above and beyond the legal requirements for
the number of lifeboats on the Titanic.
At the time she was built, Titanic was bound by the laws that had been put in place at
the end of the 19th century which declared the number of lifeboats on a vessel should
be based on the ship's gross tonnage, not the number of passengers it was carrying.
Since Titanic's weight was 46,000 tons, the ship was only required to have lifeboats that
could safely hold 1,060 people.
Titanic exceeded that by providing enough lifeboats to fit 1,178 people — perhaps
not comfortably, but still.
It was only after the Titanic sank that both the British and American governments took
a good, hard look at the regulations and the British Commissioner lodged an official recommendation
that the number of lifeboats be based on the number of people on board the ship, rather
than her weight.
World record
It's often repeated that the crew of the Titanic weren't just crossing the Atlantic, but they
were trying to do it in record time to win the Blue Riband.
"The press knows the size of Titanic.
Now I want them to marvel at her speed.
We must give them something new to print."
But Titanic wasn't trying to set a speed record at all, and we know that because when she
hit the iceberg — and for much of the journey — all of her boilers hadn't even been lit.
Also, the route she was taking wasn't right for a race anyway.
By the time she set sail, they were well-defined routes and shipping lanes across the Atlantic.
She was following a southern route which rang in about 200 miles longer than a northern
one — besides, White Star had a strict policy of "slow and steady."
That was mainly to cater to their First Class passengers and to make their trip as smooth
as possible, because Titanic was, first and foremost, the picture of luxury.
Doom and gloom
Hindsight can be a terrible, terrible thing, and countless ill omens have been assigned
to the construction of the Titanic.
She was built in Belfast, and according to one rumor, the Catholic workers who labored
to build her knew she was doomed when they saw her hull number: 390904.
Written on pieces of the ship by hand and then read backwards, it spelled: NO POPE.
It's a chilling theory and all, but it's still just a story.
There's tons of evidence that this is just a fanciful tale that grew up in the aftermath
of the tragedy.
For one thing, Titanic was actually assigned two different numbers while she was being
built.
The Board of Trade assigned her 131,428, and the number given to her by the Harland & Wolff
shipyard was 401.
Either way, the "NO POPE" thing doesn't work.
And it's doubtful that even the most devout of Belfast's dockworkers would have been convinced
that the number predicted doom for the ship, mainly because most of them were Protestant.
Precious cargo
Another myth that often crops up when people start looking for a reason for what happened
is that the Titanic was carrying some kind of Egyptian mummy — and a curse — or that
she was weighed down with gold bullion.
Neither of those things were true, though.
The mummy legend was first written by a London journalist named William Thomas Stead, who
wrote a story about a mummy that had been removed from her tomb in Egypt and taken to
London, where she brought destruction to everything in her path.
Stead linked the story to a very real mummy that sat in the British Museum, belonging
to a Priestess of Amun.
So, when Stead suggested that the mummy was a cursing machine, people ran with it, and
when he later died on the Titanic, the mummy legend became linked with the sinking ship.
But the mummy in question still rests peacefully in the Museum, so that's one myth busted.
There was also no gold bullion on the Titanic, and we know this partially because we have
the cargo manifests, partially because no claim was ever issued, and partially because
the ship that was actually carrying that gold was the HMS Laurentic, another White Star
ship that came out of the same shipyard as Titanic and sank in 1917 with the metal onboard.
Sure, it was a bad few years for White Star, but the gold curse wasn't on Titanic.
Bubbly break
Another legend that's made the rounds is that when Titanic was launched and christened,
the champagne bottle smashed against her hull didn't break.
It's thought to be bad luck when that happens, and a sunken ship killing thousands is pretty
much the definition of bad luck.
Thing is, no champagne bottle was ever broken — or not broken — on Titanic's hull, because
White Star never did the launching ceremony with any of their ships.
The process of getting the ship out of dry dock and into the water is impressively complicated
enough, and White Star apparently didn't buy into any pomp and circumstance or care about
appeasing any ocean gods.
Of course, given their track record, maybe they should have.
Cross-dressing salvation
Another rumor that's held water over the years is that one male passenger dressed up as a
woman to secure a seat on a lifeboat.
Not only is this one not true, but it ruined the life of the man who was said to have done
it.
According to William T. Sloper, he escaped in a lifeboat because he was simply in the
right place at the right time.
There weren't enough women and children to fill the lifeboats, so whoever was there got
in and launched.
Other eyewitness reports verify that's exactly what happened, except for tabloid pioneer
William Hearst, who never let the truth get in the way of a sensational story that would
sell more papers.
His "journalists" ran another story, claiming that Sloper had disguised himself as a woman
to get on board.
Sloper could never live it down, and was called "Skirts" for the rest of his life.
He even had to build a wall around his house to keep the curiosity-seekers away, and the
whole thing seemed to add insult to injury.
This only proves that something doesn't have to be the truth to be repeated as such.
And while we're on that subject …
Captain kook
Let's talk about the sad tale of the Titanic's captain, Edward Smith.
There's a whole lot of stories about him and how he contributed to the disaster, from pushing
for the speed record we've already debunked, to ignoring warnings about icebergs.
Smith didn't ignore iceberg warnings — he had them all posted in the chart room.
He's often accused of having failed his navigation test, and that one, at least, is true.
While yes, he failed once upon a time, he eventually passed the test with flying colors
in 1888.
After that, he went on to be such a successful captain, he was called the "Millionaire's'
Captain," because he was so good at his job that most anyone who could afford to request
a certain captain chose him.
As for the stories that he committed suicide before the ship sank, it's uncertain as to
how he spent his last moments, but some of the final eyewitness reports of his activities
place him on the bridge about seven minutes before the ship sank, meaning that however
he died, we know that he did choose to go down with his ship.
Sent to steerage
As myth and the movie would have it, third class passengers were locked below while first-class
passengers boarded their lifeboats, and when you look at the numbers, it seems logical
that this horrible fact would be true.
While the majority of first-class passengers survived — including a third of the men
and almost all the women and children — most of the third-class passengers died.
Popular belief dictates that poorer people were locked below to save the lifeboats for
the rich, but it's not exactly true.
Survivor testimonies, like the one from Irishman Daniel Buckley who resided in the third-class
cabins, contest this theory.
Women and children
We've all heard that the Titanic set a chivalrous precedent when it came to loading up its lifeboats.
"Women and children first.
Yes."
“Women and children first.”
In truth, it wasn't a strict rule on the boats, and really hasn't been much of a thing since,
but the practice of selective salvation did have a hand in who got a raft seat and who
didn't.
There were two different men managing the lifeboats on each side of the Titanic.
On the left, liferafts were overseen by Second Officer Charles Lightoller who took the captain's
orders seriously, and as a result, there were almost no male passengers saved on his side.
On the right, First Officer William Murdoch was in charge.
He took a slightly different approach, which was still to put women and children on first.
However, if there were no more waiting and ready to go, the men were ushered on.
In the end, Murdoch and his flexible interpretation saved 62 more lives.
In the ship's final moments, Lightoller jumped into the water, and was the last survivor
picked up by the Carpathia.
Murdoch's body, meanwhile, was never recovered.
The idea of "women and children first" was around before Titanic, but it was that shipwreck
that firmly entrenched the idea into maritime lore.
So, how have we done since then?
In a study of 18 shipwrecks and the 15,000 passengers involved, children had only about
a 15 percent chance of surviving.
Adult men?
Twice as likely to live as their female counterparts.
Titanic was an exception in another bit of maritime lore, too, as her captain died with
her.
Look at those same 18 wrecks and you'll find that the captain and crew had a 61 percent
chance of seeing the sun rise, while their male passengers only had a 37 percent chance.
So yeah.
Happy sailing, everybody.
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