Titanic: THE FINAL WORD

[Johann]

I watched a program on the National Geographic channel the other day.
It was "THE FINAL WORD" on the sinking of the Titanic, with a panel of Titanic experts (headed by filmmaker James Cameron) discussing the ship and it's demise.

Some great points and questions were raised.
One was "If you were the Captain of the ship, what would you have done in that situation?"

It was suggested that maybe the Captain could've decisively went full steam ahead, and jam the ship into the massive ice flow that was ahead of them. Capt. Smith would've had to act immediately for that to possibly work. It was also suggested that passengers could climb onto the iceberg for safety-but it was pointed out that if there was total chaos with getting into the lifeboats, then climbing onto an iceberg in the dark was inconceivable.
Passengers were told to row their rowboats toward the Californian, a ship that was sixteen kilometers away.
It was mentioned that if the Titanic's crew made rapid decisions to turn the ship toward the Californian, they might've had a chance to save more people.
An idea that no one on board thought of was to make rafts out of mattresses or tying all of the life preservers together. Again, time was of the essence. The situation required quick thinking, and the enormity of the situation probably stunned a few people into a state of inaction.

James Cameron asked experts if he got the sinking of the ship correct in his movie.
For the most part he was.
Obviously, the stern rising out of the water at such a high angle wasn't accurate- that was movie drama.
But the ship breaking on the surface was correct, and so was the way in which the bow dipped into the ocean.
One thing that's cool to learn is that the ship had almost no list: it sank straight down- almost all shipwrecks have huge lists before they sink (the Costa-Concordia disaster is the most recent example)- some turn right over on their sides. Titanic was so fuckin' big that it just sat there and went down almost straight when the bulkheads overflowed.
We saw a digital reconstruction (an animated film) that the experts say was the DEFINITVE account of how the ship sank.
James Cameron watches it and comments on it as it's shown- he agrees 100% with the findings.


If anybody wants to talk Titanic, I'm all ears.