Laura Beth Gathman 1-14-04
TITANIC
“It's quite a sad story,” Mary said.
“Huh? What?” Marie asked.
“The Wreck of the Titan, I just finished reading it.”
“Oh yes, I've read that before. About the Titan ship going out to sea from England to New York, they called it unsinkable. Then...”
“ It hits an iceburg and starts to sink and theres not enough lifeboats for everyone on board.”
“ A lot of lives are lost.”
“ Yea, well, it will never happen in real life.”
The wreck of the Titan was a book written by Morgan Robertsan in 1898 14 years before the Titanic wreck. Some people wanted to make a real Titanic ship like in the book. The president of the White Star Line and and the chairman of the Harland & Wolf ship builders made plans to.
The finished boat was 882 ft. long, 92 ft. wide, 175 ft. tall from the keel to the top of the funnels and weighed 52,000 tons. (Or 116 millon pounds.) One of her anchors weighed 15 ½ tons and it took 22 tons of soap, grease and train oil to get it in the water.
On April 10th 1912 it set out from England headed to New York almost having a collision with another boat. A very bad omen was what some people said. The rest of the trip was a smooth one. Every one enjoyed their time on the floating palace. But on Sunday the 14th some things were abnormal.
On sunday the wireless operators got 7 iceburg warnings from other boats. But people weren't really worried. What could happen to an unsinkable boat? That night it was cold and foggy so it was hard to see. The captain, Captain Smith, was a little worried about that. Then a crew member saw an iceburg dead ahead.
The boat's wheel was turned as far as it would go and the engines were put in reverse, but the Titanic still scraped the ice burg opening up part of the ship allowing water in. At first no one thought anything was wrong. But about 20 minutes after the boat hit the iceburg the Captain knew the boat wasn't going to last very long.
He started loading the lifeboats, women and children first. The first lifeboat only had about 28 people when it could have had 65. Some people thought that the Titanic was safer than a small boat out in the cold sea. There were only 16 life boats and 4 collapsible boats because the regulations for life boats hadn't caught up with the size of the new ship and some thought they didn't need them.
In the Tintanic's last moments the end of the stern was straight up in the air. People were clinging to the railings to keep from falling into the sea. The people in the the lifeboats saw the boat snap in half and sink. The sound of people screaming rung in their ears for a minute then stopped.
The Titanic survivors were rescued by the Carpathia. Only about 700 people survived. and more than 1,500 died.
The boat is too far down to see it in a diving suit but some people have gone down in submarines to find out what happened exactly, and unveil the truth.
Bibliography
Kent, Deborah. The Titanic. Danbury, CT:
Childrens Press, Inc., 1993.
Tanaka, Shelly. On Board the Titanic. Toranto, Ontario Canada: Madison Press Books, 1996
Ballard, Robert D.. Exploring the Titanic. Toranto, Ontario Canada: Madison Press Books, 1988