Secrets of the sinking of the "Titanic": hidden reasons for the strange behavior of passengers and crew during the tragedy

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

When the Titanic disappeared under the dark, icy waters of the North Atlantic in the early morning of April 15, 1912, it left many mysteries behind. Even now, a lot of questions are raised by the very strange behavior of passengers and crew. So many people on board and no panic. It will start later. At first everyone was calm, nevertheless, more than 1,500 of them had a few hours to live …

Where was the captain of the Titanic during the tragedy?

No one knows for sure where Captain Smith was at 11:40 pm on Sunday, April 14, 1912. Surviving crew members and other witnesses say he appeared on the Titanic's bridge just a couple of minutes later, after hitting an iceberg. Smith tried to find out from the crew what it was. "Iceberg, sir," First Officer William Murdoch replied.

Thus began the worst night in Edward John Smith's wonderful long life. The captain spent over forty years at sea. During this time, no special troubles happened to him. Now, however, he bears the grave responsibility for one of the worst naval disasters of all time. In a matter of hours, more than 1,500 passengers and crew members will die, including Smith himself.

The captain's body was never found. The last moments of his life remained a mystery, despite numerous conflicting reports. There was even a version that he jumped off the ship with the baby. As Vin Craig Wade wrote in Titanic: The End of a Dream, "Captain Smith died at least five times, sometimes heroically and sometimes shamefully." There were even rumors that he actually survived at all.

The earliest newspaper articles cited eyewitness accounts that the captain had shot himself with a pistol. Historians categorically reject this version. Surviving radio operator Harold Bride, a more reliable witness, said he saw Smith "jump off the ship into the sea." Others said that he was swept away by the wave or that he sailed back to the Titanic to meet his end.

Several people said they saw the captain in the water. A Titanic firefighter, Harry Senior, said that Smith jumped off the ship with "a baby he held tenderly to his chest." Then the captain allegedly swam to the nearest lifeboat, handed over the child and sailed back to the Titanic, saying: "I will follow the ship." Still others claimed that he made it to the overturned lifeboat, but could not resist and drowned.

But was he really dead?

Quite strange are the rumors that Captain Smith managed to survive. For example, some time after the disaster, in the summer of the same year, a resident of Baltimore named Peter Praial reported that he had met the captain in his city. Praial was not crazy. He was a highly respected local businessman. He said that he happened to serve under Smith several decades ago. Therefore, he would have recognized him under any circumstances, no matter how his appearance changed. In addition, Prayal's physician testified that he was "absolutely sane and did not suffer from hallucinations."

Peter said he saw Smith twice. Once on Wednesday and again next Saturday. Praial even walked up to him and talked. He supposedly recognized him and said that he was on a business trip. The former sailor followed Smith to the train station. He boarded the train to Washington and said to Praial, "Behave yourself, sailor, until we meet again."

The next message about the alleged surviving captain followed in 1940. Life magazine published a letter stating that the captain had ended his days as an outcast in Lima, Ohio. The locals knew him as "Silent Smith". Among the evidence indicated that this man arrived in the city three years after the disaster. He called himself Smith, was about the same age and height, and had tattoos typical of sailors. But, the editorial board of the magazine did not know the main thing. Silent Smith, immediately after his death in 1915, was identified as a certain Michael McKenna.

Captain Smith's verdict

Immediately after the disaster, the newspapers called Smith a hero, a brave captain who died along with his ship. The villain was J. Bruce Ismay, the head of the White Star. He escaped in one of the lifeboats. Ismay was accused of pushing Smith to maintain an unreasonable speed.

In the course of the British and American investigations that followed, a more complex picture emerged. Smith was accused of ignoring ice warnings from other ships and of failing to reduce the ship's speed to appropriate conditions. The British investigation, in fact, acquitted the captain, stating that he had not done what the other captains had not done. The American investigation was only slightly harsher. Michigan Senator William Alden Smith, who chaired the Senate Investigative Committee, said that "Captain Smith's indifference to danger was one of the direct causes of this unnecessary tragedy." But the senator also paid tribute to him for his "courageous behavior and gentle concern for the safety of women and young children," as well as his "willingness to die."

Why was there no panic at first

The fact is that people simply did not realize the full depth of the danger. When they were first called on deck around midnight on that clear, cloudless night, no one had any idea how it would end up. No one knew, for example, that the lifeboats were about half the size of what they needed. Or that a ship visible in the distance will not come to the rescue. Or that such a famous, giant ship would actually sink.

Certainly, when lifeboats became scarce, there was some panic. Then the ship began to roll noticeably, and everything that was not nailed to the floor turned into a high-speed projectile. But even despite this, there was no panic in the full sense of the word even then. Popular films and other reenactments of the disaster show occasional incidents of chaos and cowardice, but most survivors tell a very different story.

“There was no excitement, no panic, and no one looked particularly frightened,” first class passenger Eloise Smith said at a hearing in the US Senate about the disaster. "I didn't have the slightest suspicion about the shortage of lifeboats, otherwise I would never have left my husband."

“I watched the boats on the starboard side as they filled and lowered sequentially,” said Doctor Washington Dodge. “During this period, there was no panic, no signs of fear, no unusual anxiety. I have not seen women or children cry. There was no evidence of hysteria …"

Even the survivors who stayed on the Titanic after the last lifeboats sailed and soon found themselves in the icy water do not talk about hysteria or panic. Charles Lightoller, the highest-ranking member of the crew of the survivors, was responsible for loading the lifeboats on the port side. He said, "There was no crush or hustle." “All men behaved politely towards women and children. They could not have been quieter even if they were in church."

Disaster in slow motion

The calm, unhurried pace in which events unfolded in the final hours of the Titanic may provide a clue. The ship touched the fatal iceberg at 11:40 pm on April 14, and a series of holes formed below the waterline. Many of the passengers were in bed at the time, and the few survivors said they hadn't noticed anything special. It was only when the stewards began to wake the passengers, inviting them to get dressed and go on deck, that it became for people the first hint that something was wrong.

Only at 00:05 the crew members began to open the lifeboats. Another 40 minutes passed before the first of them was launched. At the same time, the crew began to launch rockets. People who travel often would consider this a serious distress signal, but less experienced people did not notice anything out of the ordinary here. The crew continued to load passengers into the lifeboats until the last of them was launched at 2:05. Fifteen minutes later, the Titanic disappeared into the depths …

Until the very end, people did not believe that what was happening was very serious. Maybe it seemed to them that this simply could not be true? After all, the Titanic was called unsinkable. Some kind of defensive reaction? The sinking of the Titanic remains to this day the largest maritime disaster in peacetime. This terrible tragedy continues to excite the consciousness of people. This topic constantly inspires new research, writing books, making films, plays and even musicals.

If you are interested in the history of the "unsinkable" giant, read our article on how to walk along the sunken "Titanic" and see the legendary ship with your own eyes.