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The Titanic Essay

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The Titanic - History of a Disaster On April 14,1912 a great ship called the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage. That night there were many warnings of icebergs from other ships. There seems to be a conflict on whether or not the warnings reached the bridge. We may never know the answer to this question. The greatest tragedy of all may be that there were not enough lifeboats for everyone on board. According to Walter Lord, author of The Night Lives On, the Titanic could have been saved in the very beginning of the crisis when the iceberg was first reported to the bridge. If First Officer Murdoch had steamed right at the iceberg instead of trying to avoid it, he might have saved the ship. The author feels there would have been a loud …show more content…

The Captain was going to have to make a choice as to who would be the first allowed on the lifeboats. Around 12:30 a.m. the bridge informed the crew that only women and children would be loaded on the lifeboats (Eaton,Haas,152). By 1:30 a.m., there was panic among some of the passengers. One example was on the port side of the boat. A group of passengers threatened to jump into a boat full of passengers. To scare them, one of the officers fired three shots on the ship's side. The warning proved to be successful. Nobody was injured and the passengers calmed down (Eaton and Haas 154). At the last moments with only forty seven available spaces on the last lifeboat, the crew instructed everyone to form a circle around the boat. Women and children were the only people permitted to pass through the circle. A little while after the last lifeboat left, the stern lifted clear out of the water with more than 1500 people still on board (Eaton and Haas 157-161). The climatic moment came at 2:20 a.m. The Titanic stood perpendicular to the water. As people in the lifeboats looked on, they noticed the ship stayed perpendicular for a minute and then disappeared to the bottom of the ocean (Lord, Lives on 137). Captain Rostron of the ship Carpathia determined the distance to the Titanic and quickly calculated the course to answer the Titanic's distress call

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