In the end, the U.S. investigation faulted the British Board of Trade, “to whose laxity of regulation and hasty inspection the world is largely indebted for this awful fatality.” Other contributing causes were also noted, including the failure of Captain Smith to slow the Titanic after receiving ice warnings.
The Titanic sank from human error. According to the granddaughter of the second officer of the Titanic, Louise Patten, a new steering system led to a mistake by the steersman, Robert Hitchins, into going "hard a port" instead of "hard a starboard" and straight into the iceberg instead of away from it.
Robert Hichens: How 'man who sank the Titanic' spiralled into depression before being jailed for attempted murder. The man at the wheel of the Titanic when it struck a fateful iceberg in 1912 has not been remembered well throughout history.
Smith was accused of ignoring ice warnings from other ships and failing to reduce the ship's speed to fit the conditions at hand. The British inquiry essentially exonerated him, saying he did nothing other captains wouldn't have done. The American inquiry was only slightly harsher in its judgment.
The Events Leading Up To The Titanic's Sinking
From this moment on, Captain Smith's whereabouts are a bit spotty, though he held up a brave front until the very end when it's said he died in some tragic, and some nonchalant, ways. His body was never found and his death - or lack thereof - ever confirmed.
Captain Smith having done all man could do for the safety of passengers and crew remained at his post on the sinking ship until the end. His last message to the crew was 'Be British.'"
J. Bruce Ismay, in full Joseph Bruce Ismay, (born December 12, 1862, Crosby, near Liverpool, England—died October 17, 1937, London), British businessman who was chairman of the White Star Line and who survived the sinking of the company's ship Titanic in 1912.
Capt. Edward Smith was handed a note warning him that a mast from a submerged wreck in the Atlantic was “standing perpendicular, height about 10 feet,” The Guardian reported. The crumpled note was handed back to the messenger before the ship left Southampton on April 10, 1912.
Iceberg warnings went unheeded: The Titanic received multiple warnings about icefields in the North Atlantic over the wireless, but Corfield notes that the last and most specific warning was not passed along by senior radio operator Jack Phillips to Captain Smith, apparently because it didn't carry the prefix "MSG" ( ...
On April 14, 1912, the Titanic tragically struck an iceberg in the cold Atlantic Ocean despite receiving seven warnings throughout the day of the imminent danger. Editor's note: In the early hours of April 15, 1912, the RMS Titanic sunk having struck an iceberg while en route to New York.
Introduction. After the Titanic sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912, hundreds of the survivors, families of victims, and owners of cargo filed claims against the White Star Line for loss of life, property, and for injuries sustained. Their claims totaled $16.4 million.
William Mintram (March 1866 – 15 April 1912) was a fireman (stoker) on the RMS Titanic until it struck an iceberg on 14 April 1912. William worked for White Star Line after his release from prison for the murder of his wife.
Yes, people did sue after the sinking of the Titanic. A number of lawsuits were filed against the White Star Line, the owners of the Titanic, for negligence.
TWO killers roamed the RMS Titanic on her maiden voyage… Not the stuff of lurid pulp adventure, instead actual fact. The two wrongdoers were a fireman and an able-bodied seaman. Stoker William Mintram inhabited a suitably Dantean inferno after the crime of killing his wife.
According to Mr. Cooper, the author of a book on Captain Smith, Smith was not ignoring the ice warnings; he was simply not reacting to them. Ice warnings were just warnings that a ship sent saying that they had seen ice at a certain location (Kasprzak, 2012).
As depicted in the 1997 film starring Kate Winslet, Capt Smith later received warnings of icebergs while the liner was en route to New York. But these were not heeded and the ship travelled at speed until it struck an iceberg and sank.
While we cannot know for sure how he spent his final moments, it is known that Captain Edward Smith perished in the North Atlantic along with 1517 others on April 15, 1912.
On April 14, after four days at sea the Titanic collided with a jagged iceberg at 11:40 p.m. Because it was dark that night, and the lookouts in the crow's nest didn't have binoculars with them since they were locked up, they didn't see the iceberg until it was too late.
He had recently arrived there himself on the Lusitania, having at a late stage changed his original plan to cross the Atlantic on Titanic. Photograph of Jack Phillips, the radio operator who was drowned in the disaster.
The closest ship to respond to the Titanic's distress signals, the RMS Carpathia, did not reach the lifeboats until 4 A.M., one hour and forty minutes after the Titanic sank. According to generally accepted reports, the rescue continued until the last lifeboat was collected at 8:30 A.M.
Titanic sank at approximately 2:20 a.m. on April 15, 1912, claiming the lives of 1,500 passengers. With the Californian stopped in the ice before any SOS messages were sent from the Titanic, the ship didn't see the sinking liner's calls for help until dawn, hours after they'd been sent.
Competition for Atlantic passengers was fierce and the White Star Line wanted to show that they could make a six-day crossing. To meet this schedule the Titanic could not afford to slow down. It is believed that Ismay put pressure on Captain Smith to maintain the speed of the ship.
During the congressional investigations, some passengers testified that during the voyage they heard Ismay pressuring Captain Smith to increase the speed of the Titanic in order to arrive in New York ahead of schedule and generate some free press about the new liner.
More than 1,500 people died during the sinking of the Titanic, according to History.com. Of the ship's crew members, approximately 700 died. Another high fatality rate was among third class passengers. Of approximately 710 passengers in third class, around 174 people survived, according to Britannica.
John Jacob Aster
Undoubtedly the wealthiest man to go down with the Titanic and the Astor family was very prominent. Most notably with building the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City.