Reasons Why I Can't Stop Thinking About the Titanic

I often find myself obsessing over obscure (yet compelling) historical events. Something will pop up on my YouTube feed, or I'll click on an ad on my web browser, and the next thing I know, I've spent 3 hours researching the fatalities of the Mont-Blanc tragedy (there were 1 950), or the amount of raincoats in the homemade raft of the infamous Alcatraz escapees (it was more than 50).

And although I know I can get overly obsessive about certain topics, there are some things that are definitely worth marveling at. 

We've all heard of the Titanic: the massive White Star Liner that came to an untimely end when it hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean on April 14 1912. The demise of the ship (which had been billed as "unsinkable") was received with such shock that the whole world couldn't stop thinking about it for a long, long time.

And when we finally recovered from our initial awe of the story, James Cameron brought it back to our attention with one of the highest grossing films of all time.

In fact in a way, the world's astonishment has begun to have an opposite effect: the story has become another mundane, commonplace event. The fascinating human element and historical significance is overlooked, and since we've thought about it for over a century, we haven't actually thought about it for years.

Well, maybe it's the enormity of the boat itself, or maybe it's the drastic impact it had on so many lives. But either way, the story has been on my mind for a few weeks now. So in honor of the 108th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, I thought I would share some of the stats and stories that I find the most fascinating.

The Physical Size

Although we now have cruise ships up to five times larger, the Titanic was the largest ship of its time, and was longer than its predecessor by more than 100 feet. Its size is especially remarkable because of the lack of machinery and technology during the time of its construction. 

There are so many statistics about its sheer immensity: 

• It costed about $7 500 000 to build. 
• It used 3 000 000 rivets (only 400 rivets could be completed during a full day of construction).
• It weighed 52 310 tons. 

And even though most of those numbers probably went in one ear and out the other, something that really illustrates the ship's enormity is that the anchor alone took a team of 20 horses to transport.

Wow.

Violet Jessop

White Star Line, the British shipping company that built the Titanic, constructed two sister ships alongside it, both of which met premature ends. The Britannic sank in the Aegean sea in 1916 due to an explosion of undetermined source, and the Olympic took major damage to its hull in 1911 when it collided with British cruiser HMS Hawke. 

Violet Jessop was an Irish stewardess and nurse who was onboard each of the liners during their respective collisions. Had I been on the Olympic, it would have taken years for me to step foot on another boat, and had I been on the Titanic, it would have taken decades. But she kept coming back because of her role as a Red Cross stewardess during the war, and she survived all three incidents.

Wow.

The Band

If you've seen the 1997 film "Titanic," you'll probably remember the string quartet that played music on deck to calm the passengers while the ship sank. But this part of the movie was actually based on the reports of real survivors. Wallace Hartley's band, which was expected to have memorized all of the White Star Line songbook's 352 pieces, assembled on deck immediately following the collision. They performed during the full 2 hours it took for the ship to submerge, and played until the very last minute. Survivors claim that the last sound heard that night, among the screams and cries of the victims, was the hymn "Nearer My God to Thee."

Wow.

Morgan Robertson

There are enough conspiracy theories about the Titanic to compose their own separate post, but my favourite is the theory of the novel: The Wreck of the Titan.

Published before even the designs of the Titanic were released to the public, The Wreck of the Titan is the fictional account of a ship called the Titan which hit an iceberg and lacked enough lifeboats to rescue its passengers. It was written in 1898 by Morgan Robertson, who claimed to be psychic.

The similarities between the Titanic and its fictional counterpart are indisputable. For instance, both ships:

• Sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in April
• Had been advertised as "unsinkable"
• Were equipped with less than half the required lifeboats
• Were approximately 400 miles from Terranova when they struck the ice

Wow.

******

And that's why I can't stop thinking about the Titanic. 

There's so much more information I could talk about (like how the ship's stern was raised to an almost vertical position above the water during the sinking), but it was such a titanic moment in history that the rest of these stories will have to wait.