Titanic 3 Essay, Research Paper

It was the largest ship in its day. It was labeled unsinkable. But on April 14 and 15, 1912, many people all around the wold found out that it wasn’t. The sinking of the Titanic was most likely the worst disaster ever to occur on the Atlantic Ocean. It sank because of many mistakes made by the builders, designer, and crew. A little over 1,500 people died because of many mistakes made by the crew and designer. In the following paragraphs are a few of the reasons why.

Many mistakes were made in the building of the ship. First of all, the Titanic was made from a brittle steel. If it had been made from better quality steel, it would have taken longer to sink, or maybe not have even sunk at all. Next, if Mr. Andrews made the ceilings on the watertight door compartments watertight, the ship would not have sunk. The rudder on the Titanic was too small for the size of the ship. If it was larger, the ship may not have even hit the iceberg.

The Titanic was traveling at a very high speed. It was going about 21 knots (26 miles per hour). Perhaps if it was going slower, it would have had more time to swing the turn before it hit the iceberg. The reason for going so fast was it was trying to break the Olympic’s world record time for crossing the Atlantic. Captain E.J. Smith had received many warnings from other ships about icebergs in the path of the Titanic. Even with all the warnings, Captain Smith did very little.

The Titanic’s lookout, Fred Fleet, did not have his binoculars that night. They had been either stolen or misplaced. If he had them, he may have been able to see the iceberg sooner and prevented the accident all together. The man in charge of the bridge at the time the Titanic struck the iceberg was First Officer Murdoch. If he had said to just turn the ship instead of also reversing the engines, the Titanic most likely wouldn’t have hit the iceberg. Even if they hit the iceberg straight on, it probably wouldn’t have sunk. It wouldn’t have because the damage would have only been to the first one or two watertight compartments.

So many of the people who died, should have survived. A few of the many reasons why have to deal with the lifeboats. First of all, there were only enough lifeboats for about half the people on board the ship. At first, the Titanic had 36 lifeboats. Mr. Ismay took some of them away because with them, the First Class passengers did not have a good view of the ocean. Anyway, everyone thought the Titanic was unsinkable.

Another reason is the lack of emergency preparation. They should have assigned certain people to certain lifeboats. Also, the crew members did not know how many people the lifeboats could hold. Officer Murdoch lowered boat #1, capacity about 45, with only twelve people in it. Only two of the twelve people on that lifeboat were women. Many others were lowered away with less than half of the people they could hold. When the boats were in the water, they wouldn’t pick people out of the water in fear that they would swamp the boat and tip it over. Only seven out of twenty lifeboats went back to help people.

There was a ship a lot closer to the Titanic than the Carpathia. It was the Californian. It was only about ten miles away. The Carpathia was 58 miles away. The Californian’s radio operator stopped listening to the radio about fifteen minutes before the Titanic sent the distress calls. When the Titanic fired the rockets, the Captain didn’t even try to find out why they were firing them. If it had come to the rescue, not nearly as many people would have died.

The families of the 1,502 casualties or the 705 survivors will never forget the sinking of the Titanic. None of the unfortunate ones will be forgotten, ever.