Frequently Asked Questions

This list of questions will be updated regularly. If you have a question that I have not answered, feel free to email me.

Q) Why did they think Titanic was unsinkable?

A) You have to realize the time period in which Titanic was built. The gilded age was an era when new and wondrous things were happening every day. The Titanic's shear size gave an impression of invulnerability. Most people don't realize it, but the White Star line never actually claimed Titanic was unsinkable. This line was made popular by the press of the time, and maybe a few over-zealous shipyard workmen.

Q) How long did it take to build Titanic?

A) The keel for Titanic was laid in March 1909, and her hull was launched May, 1911. She was then towed to a fitting out basin where her interiors were installed. She was completed in Feb 1912. So it basically took 3 years to build the Titanic.

Q) Who was Titanic's wealthiest passenger?

A) The wealthiest passenger aboard was undoubtedly 47 year old John Jacob Astor. Though he had inherited a vast fortune from his great grandfather, he had extended this empire through real estate, particularly hotels.

Q) What caused Titanic to sink?

A) Titanic was designed with a series of transverse bulkheads, separating her into 16 "water-tight" compartments. Unfortunately, these bulkheads, while extending above the water-line, were not capped with water-tight decks. Her designers considered a breach between two compartments a worse case scenario, and in fact designed her to float with any four compartments flooded. When Titanic tried to turn and avoid the berg, she struck a glancing blow, damaging the hull and allowing seawater to invade 5 compartments. With the weight of this amount of seawater, the bow was pulled so low that the water began to spill over into adjacent compartments, like an ice-cube tray. Eventually, she foundered.

Q) Why didn't they see the iceberg?

A) On the night of April 14th, the sea was unusually calm, and there was no moon. With no waves breaking against the berg, it was difficult to see. In addition, the binoculars for the lookouts had been misplaced before the ship departed Southampton.

Q) Were the 3rd Class passengers prevented from escaping?

A) There are conflicting reports on this matter. However, there are a few things to keep in mind when pondering this question. First, because of the position of 3rd class accommodations, getting from 3rd class areas on the ship to the crowded boat deck, in first class, was difficult. Many of the 3rd class passengers were immigrants from various European countries and did not speak English. All were factors in making escape for third class passengers difficult. Although there is no hard evidence that 3rd class was deliberately prevented from being saved, the high percentage of 3rd class losses in comparison to 1st and 2nd class does invite suspicion.

Q) I heard a coal fire was the real cause. Is this true?

A) In a word....no. There is a large break in the hull on the starboard side, just forward of the bridge. This was caused by the buckling of the hull when the bow section slammed into the seabed. Some have claimed that this hole is the result of a coal dust explosion, and somewhat fancifully, is what sank the ship. The fire was extiguished long before the collision occurred, the hole is well above the waterline, and is not adjacent to a coal bunker.

Q) What is the Californian Incident?

A) The Californian was a liner, believed by some to have been close enough to the Titanic to have rescued many of those on board.Supporters of the Californians Captain, Stanley Lord, who feel he was made a convenient scapegoat, are known as Lordites. The night Titanic struck the iceberg, the Californian was stopped by ice. She remained drifting for the rest of the night. Around 11:40, Californian's 3rd officer saw the lights of another steamer to the southeast. At 11:40, the steamer stopped, and later, rockets were seen from the Californian. Two of Californian's officers suspected the ship was in trouble. When Captain Lord was informed, he asked what color the rockets were, and instructed his men to try and signal the ship by morse lamp. The radio operator was never wakened, and nothing further was done to investigate the source of the rockets. Lord later claimed a second (mystery) ship was the one seen from the Californian, and Lordites have turned up all sorts of possibilities. But the true story will never really be known. Both British and American inquiries held Captain Lord responsible for his inaction that night, and Lord maintained until his dying day that he was a scapegoat.

Q) What Happened to the Lifeboats?

A) The ultimate fate of Titanic's lifeboats is not known. Unloaded at the White Star pier in New York by Carpathia, the name plates were removed. It is likely that the boats were taken home by Titanic's sister, the Olympic and discreetly returned to service.

Q) How did they die? Did they Drown?

A) Most of the passengers who survived the sinking, but didn't make it into the boats, would have quickly succumbed to exposure in the near freezing water.

Q) Why weren't there enough boats?

A) The British Board of Trade regulations for lifeboats were not written with ships of Titanic's size in mind. The lifeboat requirements were based on tonnage. When the laws were penned, 10 or 15 thousand tonnes would have been a huge vessle, so the most boats required would have been 16 boats for a vessle over 10,000 tons. No one imagined a monster of 45,000 tons. Ships were growing much faster than the laws were being revised. After Titanic foundered, many of the regulations relating to passenger safety were revised.

Q)What happened to the victims?

A) The first vessel sent to recover bodies was the cable ship Mackay Bennett, which departed Halifax two days after the sinking. They recovered 306 corpses before leaving the site on Friday, April 26. All First Class passengers whose bodies could be identified were embalmed and returned to Halifax to be claimed by family members. Those corpses that were very badly damaged or unidentifiable, particularly those believed to be of crew members, were sewn up in weighted canvas and buried at sea. Several other ships were searched the area of the sinking for several weeks. For many, Titanic's maiden voyage ended in the quiet of a Halifax graveyard.

Q) Are there any human remains at the wreck?

A) No. Due to the efforts of marine organisms, as well as the seawater, the human remains have been consumed in the years following the sinking. It is a logical assumption that since the wreck lies in over 12,500 feet of water, and the decent of bodies would have been gradual, many of the victims would likely have come to rest some distance from the remains of the ship itself. This was certainly not the case for all of the victims. An interesting and eerie point, is that pairs of shoes and boots lie side by side on the bottom, where some of the victims came to rest. The chemicals used in the tanning process may have served to keep micro organisms at bay.

Q)Where is the Titanic's wreck?

375 miles southeast of St. John's, Newfoundland, at a depth of 12,500 feet.

Stern: 41°43'35" N, 49°56'54" W

Bow:41°43'57" N, 49°56'49" W

Q) Are the characters in the Movie Real People?

A) Yes and No. While Jack, Rose, Cal, Ruth (Roses Mother) Fabrizio (Jacks friend) Lovejoy and the "Heart of the Ocean" were all ficticious, all of the other background characters were based on real people on the Titanic.

An interesting note: There actually was a crew member named "J.Dawson" on board Titanic, who perished. Although people have flocked to the gravesite, the similarity in names is, as far as I know, ficticious.

Q)I heard there was a mummy on board, and that a curse sank the Titanic?

A) As far as can be known, the mummy is the result of someone's overactive imagination.

Q) Is there treasure on the wreck?

A) The real treasures of Titanic are less tangible than gold, and more precious than diamonds. Although the wreck probably contains numerous articles of passengers jewellery, the real "gold" is woven throught the fabric of the story itself. Apparently, the pursers safes were emptied prior to the sinking, and the cargo manifest lists fairly common articles.

Q) What is Cape Race?

A) Often referred to in stories about Titanic, Cape Race was a wireless station on the East Coast of Canada.

Q) Why is the Stern So Damaged Compared to the Bow?

A) The main reason for the drastic difference in the two sections of the wreck is likely the difference in the way the two sections left the surface after the breakup.

The bow section, already flooded after sinking beneath the surface, had already reached point where the pressure inside the hull and the pressure of the surrounding seawater were very nearly equal.

After it detached from the stern, it planed away relatively smoothly, while the stern section, weighed down by the enormous engines, plunged under relatively quickly. Air trapped inside would be subjected to enourmous stresses by the ambient pressure of the surrounding sea. This would have caused an implosion of sorts, leading to many catastrophic structural failures.

There would have been other contributing factors, such as shape, weight distribution angle of impact etc, but I believe the greatest reasons to be the speed at which the stern left the surface.

Q) I Heard Titanic was Switched for Olympic. Is this possible?

A) There are a number of books by an "author" who I will not name, for fear it may make it easy to find his books, which put forth this ridiculous theory. There are a number of visible, structural differences between the two ships. They were at the time the largest vessels in the world, and were constructed, launched and sailed under the celebration and scrutiny of the world and the media. The idea of switching the two ships without anyone knowing is absurd, and an insult to the memory of the crew, passengers and officers of the White Star Line. I saw the author on Titanic special, during which he says Olympic had very likely "broken her back". Olympic sustained damage to her hull plating, starboard aft. She was laid up for some re-plating and put back into service. This ranks up there with the theory that aliens sank the Titanic. Some books just shouldn't be published.

Q) I heard Titanic was built with badly made steel. Is this true?

A) The steel used to plate both Titanic and her sister Olympic was, by 1912 standards, of very high quality well suited to 1912 ship building practices. Each plate was milled to exact specifications at tremendous cost to the builder and shipowner. There was nothing new or unusual about the steel, and hulls built with similar steel lived long and productive years of service.

Harland and Wolff, a had been given leave to build the ships on a cost plus basis, with complete freedom to make Titanic the finest ship afloat...there was no need to cut corners with substandard material or workmanship. Although there have been improvements in both steel production and ship building since Titanic, the quality of steel used played little part in the sinking. Riviting the plates instead of welding, as in modern hulls, may have contributed to the disaster. The glancing blow the iceberg dealt Titanic caused the rivits to shear and pop, allowing plates to separate and allow seawater to enter the hull.

Q) I recently read on another website, that had the Titanic steered directly into the path of the iceberg, it would not have been as severely damaged. Could this have been true?

A) Yes. Titanic would have remained afloat had she struck the berg head on. The glancing blow caused damaged so far along the ships hull that many more compartments would have been open to the sea then would have been had she struck head on. The hull would have sustained heavy damage, and people would have been killed on impact, but the ship would have remained afloat and ultimately the death toll would have been lower.