Five Titanic myths spread by films

Cleon said:
Floyd did the illustrations.

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/1734f8572dd8eb4a.jpg[/qimg]

Who said he shouldn't?

Two things:


  • I didn't claim that the watch on (I assume you mean) California was asleep on duty. Lord was asleep, but after seventeen hours on duty you're allowed to do that. The wireless operator was also asleep, but off-duty. (Nobody woke him up, either.) Californian was a small vessel that didn't have 24/7 wireless staffing.
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  • It is important to be aware Marconi operators back then were sub-contracted by the Marconi company so for for Lord to wake him would have created an added expense for possibly no real good reason. Something all captains are conscious of.
 
MG1962 said:
It is important to be aware Marconi operators back then were sub-contracted by the Marconi company so for for Lord to wake him would have created an added expense for possibly no real good reason. Something all captains are conscious of.
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Huh. I didn't actually know that. Makes sense, though.
 
Pope130 said:
In February 1912 Olympic lost a prop blade. She returned to Belfast where Harland and Wolfe installed one of the propellers made for the Titanic. So Olympic would have had one propeller with Titanic's build number.
The conspiracy nuts haven't seemed to notice this.
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Did Titanic have four blades on her center propellar or three?
 
Caught a few minutes of a PBS show on Titanic last night. Apparently as the ship was sinking White Star fired everyone on board. Some crew survived and Woolworth's let them work the counter to raise money.
 
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azzthom said:
Dammit... You are correct. The sister ship was Olympic. The third, and largest, of the three ships was Brittanic. She became a hospital ship in World War I, and sank after striking a mine.

Olympic had been badly damaged in a collision, and the myth began that Titanic was actually Olympic, and she had been sent off to sink in some sort of insurance scam. As another poster pointed out, the screw numbers were examined and showed the idea to be nonsense.

On a slightly related note, is this woman a jinx?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violet_Jessop
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Did the owner admit to having said "Pull it."?
 
Brattus said:
Who cares about the stupid ship and dead people.
The magic of the Titanic has always been the make believe love story done to a Celine Dion song.

The rest is just boring junk.
I'll bet they sunk themselves so they could give James Cameron a good backdrop for the beautiful story of Jack and Rose.

You people need to get your facts right!
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No kidding. I love that movie. The sex I had after seeing it in the theater was amazing.
 
Spindrift said:
Caught a few minutes of a PBS show on Titanic last night. Apparently as the ship was sinking White Star fired everyone on board.
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Standard practice at the time, and for many years subsequently. It became such a bone of contention during the Second World War - with the shipping company stopping crew wages as soon as a torpedo slammed into the ship - that the government stepped in and created the national Merchant Navy Reserve Pool to co-ordinate and support the workforce.
 
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Pope130 said:
Four blades on the center prop, three on the outboards.
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That's what I've always thought, however, my roomate tells me there are no known photographs of her center prop. Is this true? I did a quick search and couldn't find anything. The often-circulated photograph of the men standing below a ship's (Titanic/Olympic ??) propellars are said to be of Titanic, however, the folks at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum (who own the original photograph) stated to me in a personal email that it's actually the Olympic in dry dock ten years after Titanic sank.
 
Information Analyst said:
Standard practice at the time, and for many years subsequently. It became such a bone of contention during the Second World War - with the shipping company stopping crew wages as soon as a torpedo slammed into the ship - that the government stepped in and created the national Merchant Navy Reserve Pool to co-ordinate and support the workforce.
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That was a common practice even before the age of steam. You fell from the rigging, the time of you hit the deck was noted.....your wages stopped
 
four elevener said:
That's what I've always thought, however, my roomate tells me there are no known photographs of her center prop. Is this true? I did a quick search and couldn't find anything. The often-circulated photograph of the men standing below a ship's (Titanic/Olympic ??) propellars are said to be of Titanic, however, the folks at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum (who own the original photograph) stated to me in a personal email that it's actually the Olympic in dry dock ten years after Titanic sank.
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Thats the only photo I have seen of the props. Didn't really matter because we know from the earlier incident the props were interchangable
 
four elevener said:
That's what I've always thought, however, my roomate tells me there are no known photographs of her center prop. Is this true? I did a quick search and couldn't find anything. The often-circulated photograph of the men standing below a ship's (Titanic/Olympic ??) propellars are said to be of Titanic, however, the folks at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum (who own the original photograph) stated to me in a personal email that it's actually the Olympic in dry dock ten years after Titanic sank.
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I was surprised to find that there is a controversy about this. On some basic searching I couldn't find an unambiguous photo of Titanic with the center prop clearly visible. I did find contemporary press reports, and the Board of Transport inspection that refers to the center prop being four bladed. Both the reporters, and the inspectors at the launching could be expected to mention if the ship was not as described, but that doesn't prove it.
I should have said, "To the best of my knowledge...".
 
Information Analyst said:
Standard practice at the time, and for many years subsequently. It became such a bone of contention during the Second World War - with the shipping company stopping crew wages as soon as a torpedo slammed into the ship - that the government stepped in and created the national Merchant Navy Reserve Pool to co-ordinate and support the workforce.
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In a recent documentary in the UK they interviewed the Grand Niece of one of the musicians in the band who hadn't paid for his band uniform before the ship sailed so they billed his family for the uniform, she produced the letter demanding the payment.
 
Baldric said:
In a recent documentary in the UK they interviewed the Grand Niece of one of the musicians in the band who hadn't paid for his band uniform before the ship sailed so they billed his family for the uniform, she produced the letter demanding the payment.
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The band members were actually employed by a contractor, C. W. & F. N. Black, except they each received one shilling a month directly from White Star so that they could legally be treated as crewmembers. The contractor sent the demand for payment. See here.
 
I never heard about this fire before ... true?

COAL BUNKER FIRE
The story regarding a fire in one of Titanic's massive coal bunkers is indeed true. The fire is believed to have been burning when Titanic left Belfast, and it was not until two or three days later that it was finally extinguished, this being done by teams of firemen and trimmers digging out almost all of the coal to enable the seat of the fire to be doused. Some Titanic scholars believe that the intense heat of the fire could have led to some parts of the hull to be seriously weakened, and actually assisted in the break-up and sinking of the vessel. source
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