The ill fated TITANIC is surounded to no end by
myriads of conspiracy theories, some with some sense, the most but irrational. A
coal fire, not Just an iceberg, doomed the Titanic, as the journalist Senan
Molony is claiming, is the
last one ... but it seems very plausible but only as add on in a list of fatals.
by Earl of Cruise
Ever since
the Titanic sank more than 104 years ago, killing more than 1,500 men, women and
children, mystery has swirled around the tragedy. The best parody about
conspiracy is written by Anthony Nicholas - travelswithanthony.
I
guess there is a lot of readers in my blog, who my have realised that I am no a
fan of rms TITANIC. The fascination about this catastrophy is far off to my
understanding. Fueled by the fact, that each and everything is compared to this
"special" vessel that never reached its port of destination, never
was a milestone in naval architure and machine technology, nor interior design.
TITANIC was simply, to me!, nothing else than a blown up, paddle steamer of
19th century, constructed in steel and without paddles but screws. Her exterior
appearance, yes, was nice, well balanced with the forth dummy funnel. Which had
been added in a last review of the design of the new WHITE STAR trio. Of which
the first, rms OLYMPIC only did survive. Hmhs BRITANNIC sunk during the
Dardanelle campaign, and TITANIC hit an iceberg with the result of changing
savety regulations. Up to the loss of TITANIC the regulations did not grow with
the fast growing of ships sizes and machine technology.
Further the luxury of TITANIC was not that
advenced as it is told today like a mantra. It seems to me as if these
repetitions are made to make each and everyone believing TITANIC was!
The vessel only offered quite luxurious quarters
for the third class passengers, despite the standards of those days had been
very low. But for £ 9 for the one way crossing ... what would or could you
expect? That is in todays money US$ 1,063 for which the hero in Camerons film
would have to work a year for ... The entrence price for a I. class ticket was £
30 which is in todays money ~ US$ 4,200 or € 4,900. In 1912 a mere fortune! A
single ticket of the top suites on TITANIC did cover half of the fully booked
3rd class quarters by the way. All 3rd class passengers together did not pay off
the voyage, it was the I. class that brought WHITE STAR the revenues as with
any other major line. Despite there have been emigrant only vessels which
sailed with these low cost passengers to their destinations of dreams, and a
perhaps better living. But they had to take freight too covering the costs.
On board TITANIC the 3rd class passengers did not
find big halls to live and sleep in, but cabins of max 8 beds. That was the
real luxury TITANIC was offering. For the I. class it was the common standard
the Edwardian high class members would find in any hotel or at home. If they
had water closets and such. The I class had been outfitted in luxury, with
carpets and rich tapisseries at the walls, fine linnen in the beds, but the
cielings had been low as if the vessel was just from the 19th century. The
outfitting itself was Edwardian, and for the time and country contemporary. As
taste is in the eye of the beholder - I love that design, but please, for me!,
only in a country home.
And only because of the film TITANIC, of David
Cameron, with Kate Winslet and Leonardo di Caprio, the hype rose to never known
hights. For many the TITANIC love did start there. The love story could have been staged on any other sinking vessel, which deserved
not to be forgotten. And it was filmed in the hype just a few years after discovering
the sunken vessel off Newfoundland in the Atlantic some 5,000 meters under the
surface.
Is the hype about TITANIC caused of the number of
losses of life? There has been the WILHELM GUSTLOFF with far more losses than
TITANIC. It was during WWII and it was a German ship with not only refugees
from Prussia on board.
Is the reason of the fascination eventually
the great loss of high society members? Such as Ida and IsidorStraus, John Jacob Astor IV, Jacques Futrelle, Benjamin Guggenheim, etc. As uncountable delight
themselves about the life of the rich and beautyful in the tabloids and yellow
press?
Helping the fascination TITANIC had been
uncountable book, articles, films and novels, amoung them the film and book “A
Night to Remember,” based on Walter Lord’s 1955 book, David Cameron´s TITANIC, The
German Nazi propaganda TITANIC of Tobis Filmkunst GmbH, etc.
The sinking caused major savety changes in ship
constructions under way in the year of sinking - e.g. the BALLIN trio of
IMPERATOR class. They got a new layout for positioning lifeboats, which is a
regulation for any cruise vessel of today. And in 1914 we saw the implementing
of InternationalConvention for the Safety of Life at Sea. Further we have since then the Internationalen Ice Patrole.
And now we have the newest and most
disturbing theory - A new
documentary postulate that the sinking of the ship - hailed at the time as the
largest ever built, and praised for its professed unsinkability, which was a
simple misunderstanding of a sensation lusting journalist - may have been
accelerated by a giant coal fire in its hull that appeared to have started as
long as three weeks before it set off on its fateful journey to New York from
Southampton, England.
In the documentary, which was broadcast on Channel 4 in Britain on New Year’s Day, Senan Molony, an Irish journalist who has spent more than 30 years researching the TITANIC, contends that the fire, in a coal bunker next to one of the ship’s boiler rooms, damaged its hull, and bulkhead, helping to seal TITANIC´s fate long before being sliced several times by the iceberg.
In the documentary, which was broadcast on Channel 4 in Britain on New Year’s Day, Senan Molony, an Irish journalist who has spent more than 30 years researching the TITANIC, contends that the fire, in a coal bunker next to one of the ship’s boiler rooms, damaged its hull, and bulkhead, helping to seal TITANIC´s fate long before being sliced several times by the iceberg.
“It’s a perfect storm of extraordinary factors coming together:
fire, ice and criminal negligence,” he argues in the documentary, TITANIC:The New Evidence, which will air in the United States on the Smithsonian
Channel on January 21. “The fire was known about, but it was played down. She
should never have been put to sea.”
As high as an eleven story building and
nearly four city blocks long, the Titanic was one of the largest and most
magnificent ships in the world (photographed in 1912).
This documentary caused an internationa media
hype, with even articles in the most serious and mostly political print and new
media. The TITANIC Society was dementing the conclusion of Senan
Molony. I would too, if the thesis is right, or could be.
Mr.
Molony’s potential breakthrough can be traced to previously unpublished photographs
chronicling the ship’s construction and the preparations for its maiden voyage
had been gathering dust for more than a century. The documentary presents these
photos with dark marks on the liner’s starboard side, which the author believes
to be proof of the fire.
The blaze was actually mentioned
in the 1912 inquiry report, but Molony said its importance to the tragedy,
which killed 1,500 out of 2,224 people aboard, has been neglected.
Back then, the firemen on Titanic
confirmed to investigators that fire was still burning in the boiler room when
ship departed from Southampton on April 10, 1912. According to fireman J.
Dilley from London, Captain Edward Smith and his top officers were aware of the
situation, but kept it a secret. Moreover, Titanic was ordered to travel at
highest speed to reach its destination in New York before the blaze provokes an
explosion or other accident, the fireman claimed.
Senan
Molony is not the first Titanic researcher to blame the boiler room fire as the
reason for the sinking, with Ray Boston making similar claims in 2008.
In an
interview, Richard de Kerbrech, a marine engineer based on the Isle of Wight
who has written two books on the Titanic disaster, said that the fire would
have damaged the ship’s bulkhead, a wall of steel within the ship’s hull, and
made it more vulnerable after it was pierced by an iceberg. An official British
inquiry, in 1912, mentioned the fire, but the judge who presided over it, whom
critics saw as sympathetic to shipping interests, played it down.
Not everyone
is convinced, me included.
David Hill, a former honorary secretary of the British Titanic Society, who
has been studying the cause of the sinking since the 1950s, argued that, while
the damage caused by the fire to the steel walls protecting the hull may have
hastened the disaster, the blaze was not the decisive factor.
“When the Titanic hit the iceberg close to midnight on April 14,
1912, it created a 300-foot-long line of damage on the starboard section of the
hull, including punctures and gashes, that opened up too many compartments to
the sea, so that the weight of the water dragged the bow down so low that the
ship eventually sank,” he said. “A fire may have accelerated this. But in my
view, the Titanic would have sunk anyways.”
Senan Molony, now the political editor at The Irish Daily Mail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Daily_Mail,
Mr. Molony, who has also written a book called “TheIrish Aboard Titanic,” was also drawn to the social divisions reflected on
the ship, where first-class cabins hosted millionaires while hundreds of
working-class passengers, many of them Irish, stayed below.
And finally
I will mention this eccentric Australian magnate and MP Clive Palmer and his
finally bygone ambitions for a TITANIC II ... it can be viewed as abandoned as
in late 2015, when his group has announced that it was a mere delay in plans.
The new deadline to set sail is 2018. No such ship could be build in this short
time, only if the ship is from series of sister vessels, and a Chinese
Shipbuilder with no knowledge in passenger, ferry or cruise shipconstruction,
with no supply chain behind, can´t ever build such a ship or in that time
period. And the shipbuilder in China, Jingling, never got a single contract to
be signed.
But nearly as
TITANIC is compared with each and everything according to luxury and shipping,
this news of building this replica is popping to surface and creates interest,
as it seems to me, it is the reason for these renewed old news. It is nothing
less than "donner des canards" (lying) or "vendre des canards à moitié" (telling
not the hole truth).
The TITANIC is the ship enthusiast's equivalent of being a 12 year old boy with a hard-on who doesn't know what to do with it. It's time to move on...
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