Tales of the Titanic and the White Star Line
At the November meeting 35 members of the Arran Historical Society heard Bill Fitzpatrick give his 42nd delivery of his talk on the White Star Line and in particular RMS Titanic. The society are very grateful to him for coming in place of the programmed speaker who had to cancel, writes Norma Davidson.
Bill was a member of the Kilmarnock and District History Group committee in 2011 when someone remarked that 2012 would be the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic. The task for researching a lecture fell to Bill.
The Blue Riband awarded for the fastest crossing westbound of the Atlantic is still held today by the liner United States, but in the early years of the century it had been held by Germany. Nationalistic pride promoted the United Kingdom Government to provide finance for the building of two new liners with the sole intention to beat the Germans. These ships would be built so that their design could be adapted to serve as warships in the future if necessary.
All the White Star Liners were made by Harland and Wolff in Belfast. J Bruce Ismay of the White Star Line and Lord Pirie, managing director of the shipyard, supervised the project. These ships needed to compete with the Cunarders Mauretania and Lusitania, built in Clydebank. They were designed to be bigger and faster, with the same four funnels, although the aft funnel was purely cosmetic, used for ventilation and never smoked). Pirie’s nephew, Thomas Andrews, was chief designer, and completion was promised for 1911.
The design incorporated the minimum Board of Trade requirements of 16 lifeboats. Titanic and Olympic were to be built side by side, and Britannic later. The shipyard did not have a big enough slipway for three giants, so their three slipways were scrapped and two large ones constructed side by side.
Olympic, with superstar Captain Edward Smith as Captain, was a very good ship, but a bit accident prone, hitting HMS Hawke, a US Lightship, and a U-Boat in her career. Indeed, parts of the Titanic were used in one of her repairs.
Titanic was to be the last word in luxury. Furnishing was sumptuous, and there was even a gymnasium on board. Her sea trials lasted only one day, and last minute snags were to be ironed out on the sailing to Southampton. One Officer on a postcard from Cork to his sister said it was a very unhappy ship, and in retrospect was ill-prepared for her maiden voyage. For example, the binoculars from the crow’s nest were missing – locked in a cupboard!
Although seaworthiness was questionable, her provisioning was not. A few examples: she carried 40,000 eggs, 7,000 lettuces, 1 ton of coffee, 20,000 bottles of beer and 850 bottles of spirits – all for a voyage of less than a week. Crockery and cutlery too were lavish, and she carried 1,000 oyster forks.
She set sail on 10 April, 1912 at noon, pulled by six tugs. Her departure was not without problems, and she arrived at Cherbourg one hour late. She performed well on the leg to Queenstown in Ireland, where she took on a number of Irish emigrants bound for the USA. The engines were performing well and on the third day out she did a 519 miles run.
It had been a warm Arctic spring, and there was a lot of ice about, but speed was of the essence, and the ice did not seem to be a worry. Lifeboat drills for the crew were brief, and none for the passengers. There was no standard radio procedure, no system for ice warnings, no 24-hour watch. It was always thought that if a large liner was holed she could stay afloat long enough to safely evacuate those on board. On the fateful Sunday boat drill was cancelled, the radio had a malfunction and ice warnings were not conveyed to the bridge.
At 11.40pm the crow’s nest reported: ‘Object dead ahead in the water.’ Moving at 20 knots, despite steering hard to starboard and ringing ‘engines astern’, she hit a large blue iceberg and was significantly holed. Few knew there had been an accident. Despite the closing of watertight doors, six compartments were flooding, and a design fault meant flooding spread rapidly. Captain Smith realised she was going down, and sent calls for assistance and ordered the lifeboats to be prepared. ‘Women and children first’ was the order. There was still no sense of urgency, and some lifeboats were launched barely half full. She eventually sunk at 2.20am.
Captain Arthur Rostrom of the Carpathia and Captain Stanley Lord of the Californian were the nearest ships. The Carpathia increased speed to 17 knots and made ready to receive survivors, successfully rescuing 705. The Californian was only 12 miles away, but due to an earlier altercation with the Titanic’s radio officer it ceased radio contact, and Captain Lord went to his cabin. Being an inexperienced and younger captain, and somewhat of a martinet, his crew did not disturb him until the tragedy became obvious.
The ships, Mackay Bennett and the Bremen recovered bodies later. There were 323 recovered and buried in Halifax, Nova Scotia and 119 were buried at sea. In Southampton a memorial to all the victims stands on the berth she sailed from. There are separate memorials to her musicians and her engineers, and in Dalbeattie one of her officers, Officer Murdoch, on the bridge at the time of impact, is commemorated.
Subsequent inquiries both apportioned blame to Captain Lord, and while he was at fault for not responding and rescuing passengers, he could not be blamed for the collision. Afterwards more stringent standards were imposed on all passenger-carrying vessels.
Sister ship Brittanic, launched in 1914, became a hospital ship, and in 1915 hit a mine and sank while serving in the Dardeanelles.
One lucky survivor was Violet Jessop. She was a stewardess on the Olympic which rammed HMS Hawke, a stewardess on Titanic when she sank, a nurse on the Britannic when she was mined, and surviving all three episodes lived to the grand old age of 84.
Harland and Wolff said of the Titanic: ‘She was alright when she left here!’
This is Norma Davidson’s last report as she is ‘retiring’ after 10 years reporting the historical society’s meetings. The Banner wishes to thank Norma for all her efforts over the years which are much appreciated.