Why is Titanic's sinking so iconic?

Why is Titanic's sinking so iconic?

The ship was largely hyped as the most well designed and "unsinkable" of its time, there are many fascinating stories to come from its sinking (classes of the passengers, survival, being unprepared, etc), and it led to a ton of new maritime regulations that built up the modern cruise line industry. To my knowledge there aren't many passenger ships near that size that sank because of iceberg collision.

You should read up on J. Bruce Ismay, Molly Brown and John Jacob Astor if you want a good starting point in the mythos.

Because it represents the beginning of the new Age of Titans, where hubris reigns and people strive to prove their worth by building greater and greater material edifices that often end up killing everyone, without realizing the true potential of their souls.

With Titanic, modernity began its reign.

>t. Friedrich Georg and Ernst Junger.

It was quite possibly one of the most avoidable tragedies in history.

>original plan called for 50+ lifeboats and was reduced to 20 to expand the promenade
>the one set of binoculars are locked in a cabinet and no one thought to ask the passengers if they had any or just break the lock
>failed to heed iceberg warnings
>radio operator pissed off the the operator of the one ship that was close enough to save them and he fucked off to bed
>would've missed the iceberg if the ship had an additional 30 seconds to steer clear
>breached ONE compartment too many
>that one kraut ship that kept asking stupid questions and jamming up the airwaves

It's literally Murphy's Law

New money people died. Same with 9/11.

What kraut?

Don't forget that they would have been alright for the rest of the morning if they had hit the iceberg head-in instead of turning at the last second.
I learned too much useless shit from pic related.

Why does the Titanic sinking grip us in a way that no other sinking--even those with greater loss of life--ever has?

Because the Titanic disaster was, and still is, easily transformed into a perfect microscopic example of a human society at sea, doomed to tragedy. First class, second class, third class. Society-enforced etiquette and social standards prevailed during the sinking, almost to the very end. The extended time it took to sink allowed for a wide range of human actions to unfold, making it a perfect drama.

This was no standard 15 minute sinking with trampling panicked passengers scrambling to find a way onto the deck, pushing and screaming, only to find the crew launching boats to save themselves first. This was a prolonged exercise in the gradual realization of impending death, so slow and calm. There was time for people to behave according to social mores and their own personal values, for people to say emotional goodbyes, for people to look around and take account of what they witnessed. And for people to make life-and-death decisions, recounted either by themselves if they lived, or by other survivors who saw their ultimately fatal choices unfold.

1/2

All the technological developments Titanic had featured, which were supposed to ensure that the days of great losses of life were over, could not save the 1500+ passengers who died--and who died horribly, cruelly. Bones broken by falling bodies or furniture or the hard slap of hitting the water in those life belts, screaming for help that floated yards away, help that waited the sounds to die down before they felt safe enough to venture into the dying mass of humanity next to them.

The towns where the poor and the crew hailed from were left scarred for decades, with entire families lost, with fathers and brothers and uncles and cousins missing from almost every house. The wealthy and famous who died left behind internationally-recognized businesses and legacies that changed the face of high class society and finance. The accounts of the survivors were best-sellers for years, and how easily the transition from memoir to historical study to blockbluster films became.

Titanic changed the world.

>ship is paraded around as being 'unsinkable'
>sinks on its first voyage

BRAVO

>original plan called for 50+ lifeboats and was reduced to 20 to expand the promenade

They barely managed to launch the 20 on the davits before it sank. There's no way they would have been able to launch 50, and in fact they probably wouldn't have managed to launch many at all if the ship was outfitted with 50 because they would have been stacked and it takes a lot of time and manpower to get them down when they're stored that way.

>The Titanic lives on because it is the best of stories. It has exotic luxury, arrogance, greed, mystery, heroism, self-sacrifice, romance, suspense, vibrant characters, the implacable forces of nature, the power and ingenuity of huge machines and, at its heart, a little empty space, a space just big enough for us. In our private Titanic story are we a baroness or a lift boy, a second officer or a penniless peasant woman of Europe? Or maybe we play in the orchestra. Maybe we are one of the stokers who stayed too long in the pub in Southampton and missed the maiden voyage. At the end, maybe we were safely packed onto a lifeboat, or we jumped into the frigid water in desperation or we sat in the first-class lounge and played cards while the ship went down. In our private story, be our theme tragedy, irony or lucky, the one thing we never are is ordinary.

-That Fatal Night: The Titanic Diary of Dorothy Wilton

>tfw own that book too
Nice user

>Don't forget that they would have been alright for the rest of the morning if they had hit the iceberg head-in instead of turning at the last second.

The reason Murdoch didn't do that is because the crew quarters were located at the bow. Hitting the iceberg head-on might've saved the ship, but it would've killed hundreds of crewmen sleeping in their bunks and he would've been held responsible for it.

Murdoch was by no means wrong to turn the ship, he just didn't do it fast enough.

>The story of the giant ship that sank on its maiden voyage is so rife with symbolism that if it hadn’t actually happened, we might have had to invent it. Yet it did happen, on that cold, clear April night in 1912. And it happened to real people--stokers, millionaires, society ladies, parsons, parlormaids--people who displayed a full range of all-too-human reactions as the events of the night unfolded. The recollections of those who survived, conflicting and embroidered though they often are, allow us to place ourselves on that sloping desk and ask: “What would we do?” The unsinkable story sails on.

-Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage

Still could've saved additional hundreds of lives though. Remember, Collapsible A and B both got swamped and still managed to carry 30-40 people together.

>>original plan called for 50+ lifeboats and was reduced to 20 to expand the promenade
This was a good thing, reducing the number of boats may have saved more lives.
>>The one set of binoculars are locked in a cabinet and no one thought to ask the passengers if they had any or just break the lock
Binoculars are used to examine an object that has already been spotted. Binoculars would probably have not made a difference.
>>failed to heed iceberg warnings
Smith altered the ship's course to take her further south to avoid the ice.

>Remember, Collapsible A and B both got swamped and still managed to carry 30-40 people together.

Only 15-25 or so people made it onto Collapsible A from the water (depending on the account) and only 13 lived. Some of the A survivors noted that there were many people who simply couldn't get into the boat from the water, and they were too weak themselves to help anyone in. 30 people were rescued from the overturned collapsible B, with anywhere from 15-30 people on or around B dying in the night because they were partially exposed to the frigid water. Some of the survivors (like Archibald Gracie) ended up dying within months because their bodies never recovered from the physical effects of exposure.

Also the only reason Collapsible A and B were able to save lives is that they were unattached from the roof, taken down, and were at the waterline when the ship began its final sinking; the which meant they weren't damaged or broken from falling during the sinking and were pushed away by rush of water onto the deck and the waves created by the falling funnel. If the excess boats were stored like collapsibles, precious time would have been wasted getting them down and onto the boat deck.

Even assuming the 50 boats were all attached to the davits rather than stored like collapsibles, they would have been absolutely useless during the sinking unless they were unhitched from the davits and happened to be near the waterline. They launched 20 boats from the davits during the sinking and were intending on launching the last 2 when the ship rapidly began its final descent. The crew would not have had time to unhitch 30 lifeboats from the davits during this period, and because the davits were placed all around the ship, it's highly unlikely many (if any) of those lifeboats would have made it to the waterline without being smashed into pieces because they would have crashed down the ship (hitting rails, compartments, etc) as it rose.

>he fucked off to bed
Kek

G*rm uboat did the Titanic.

Because of the hubris of man!!!

Drr drrr look everyone I WENt to cOlLege. Look at meeeeeeeeeeee I'm so educated hook blah hoobokka

>radio operator pissed off the the operator of the one ship that was close enough to save them and he fucked off to bed

Philips told the Californian operator to shut up because he couldn't hear the Cape Race signals he was trying to receive. This was about an hour before the sinking. Philips had already received ice warnings in the area from other ships and gave them the bridge, which was why lookouts were posted in the first place.

The wireless operator of the California went to bed because his shift was over and they did not keep their wireless on unmanned, not because Philips pissed him off. The wireless wouldn't have been at his post whether Philips told him to shut up or not.

The crew of the California saw Titanic's distress rockets and woke up the captain, who decided to ignore them and go back to bed.

I didn't know winter break was this long

>The crew of the California saw Titanic's distress rockets and woke up the captain, who decided to ignore them and go back to bed.
To my understand is because they believed it was the Titanic doing a firework display, rather than a visual distress call because there wasn't a standard for that form of alert.

It's the only ship to sink from an iceberg in the Atlantic

Do you guys not also know the theory that throwing the engine in reverse might also have hindered the turning of the ship? If they put the engines in dead slow the rudder would have worked better than when the props we're reversed. The middle prop shut down in reverse, they even showed that in the movie.

It also symbolizes the end of human belief in technology being able to solve almost anything bad in our lives. It shattered the confidence of the old world aristocracy and not soon afterward, WWI destroyed it almost completely as the start of the modern era showed to be uncaring of humans.

The Titanic has sunk so often, it's gotten waterlogged.

>Corey Ford said that, way back in 1959.

Depends on who you believe.

One of the officers said that the Second Officer of the California told him that a ship "would not fire rockets at sea for nothing," and that "she looks very queer, her lights look queer, she looks as if she's out of the water" and that "everything is not all right, this may be some kind of distress."

Stone, however, under the intensity of the British inquiry claimed he never thought they were distress signals. The captain claims that Stone never said he thought they were distress signals.

But, of course--would these two men have admitted that they knew something was wrong but didn't come to the mystery ship's aid, thus resulting in the deaths of 1500+ people? Likely not.

of the Californian, I mean.