On the bitterly cold night of April 14th, 1912, two men saw the impending disaster before everyone else.
Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee were the on-duty lookouts for the Titanic when an iceberg appeared on the horizon. Less than a minute later, the frozen hulk savagely cut its way into the ship’s side. Titanic was mortally wounded; the fate of most of those onboard was sealed. Within a few hours, more than 1,500 people would die. Another 711 sat huddled and horrified in the 20 lifeboats left behind.
More than a century later, the Titanic still fascinates people across the globe. Its sinking, along with the events that surrounded it, hold a unique power to capture imaginations. It’s easy to be swept up in the romantic trappings of the story: there’s hubris, adventure, terror… The sinking forced the world to change. And on top of it all, there’s a certain morbid allure in the idea of a doomed journey.
But a lot gets lost when we treat these events as some sort of historical adventure. It’s not just a story; real people died. The sinking of the Titanic reveals the best and the worst of humanity, and it holds vital lessons that are still relevant to this day.
This is a story that is not just about a naval disaster, it’s about how we as people face both life and death.
Context Clues
To understand the disaster, we need to understand what the world looked like in 1907.
That’s the year in which Bruce Ismay, head of the White Star Line, began planning the ship that would become the Titanic. At the time, airplanes were a dangerous novelty. Lindburgh wouldn’t fly across the Atlantic for another fifteen years. The fastest way across the ocean was via steamships. Now, before that, crossing the Atlantic was a dangerous journey which routinely took more than a month. However, by 1838, the first steamships dropped that to 16 days. They made the journey safer, faster, and cheaper. By 1905, crossing the Atlantic took less than a week.
This rapid advancement allowed trade and business between the Old World and the New to expand at a shocking pace. America was coming-of-age just when international trade was becoming more vital than ever, and America’s closest trading partner, England, leveraged its naval power to strengthen their bond.
The Industrial Revolution, meanwhile, had created previously-unthinkable levels of wealth to a privileged few, leading to the so-called Gilded Age. Names like Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Guggenheim became synonymous with power and prestige. The idea that these men would travel in the crowded, uncomfortable bowels of some steamer was unfathomable. They’d bought themselves every comfort imaginable, and their wealth inspired new comforts to cater to their tastes.
Trans-Atlantic ocean lines quickly became big business. By the early 1900s, the two biggest players were the Cunard Line and the White Star Line (in the English-speaking world, anyway. There were also major German rivals). The two companies were in a constant state of competition with one another. They wanted to have the largest, fastest, and most luxurious ships, because that was how they lured the wealthy elite to travel with them.
This is the world into which Titanic is born. The Cunard Line had launched the Lusitania the year before (whose own tragic fate is a story for another time). Titanic was to be the second of three sister ships, the Olympic coming first and the Britannic shortly thereafter. These ships large enough to inspire awe in even the most jaded of travelers. At least, that was the idea.
Laid down in Belfast, the sister ships were a massive, historic undertaking. Each ship took three years to build, which was a tremendously long time in the period when the craft of shipbuilding was at its peak. But the Titanic seemed worth it.
Of course, almost everyone knows what happened next. Rushing to make a new trans-Atlantic record, the Titanic struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage. Without any ships close enough to reach it in time, two-thirds of the people onboard died a violent, horrible d
eath. Hundreds of them died needlessly, as many lifeboats launched half-full. Bruce Ismay, the man who ran the company, leapt into a lifeboat rather than go down with the ship along with Captain Smith and the ship’s designer, Thomas Andrews. And of course, there weren’t even enough lifeboats for everyone on board.
Those are the things you know. But there are aspects to the story that aren’t frequently told. These facts reveal the true value in remembering this disaster, beyond our prurient interest.
Feeling Safe Isn’t Enough
Before going any further, let’s clear up a common myth. While the Titanic was advertised as being the safest ship in the world, the claims that it was “unsinkable” are mostly apocryphal. If the ship truly couldn’t sink, why have look-outs at all?
In truth, Titanic was safer than almost every ship in the world. But just because no one thought it was unsinkable didn’t mean that they ever really believed that it would sink. And it was this over-confidence in safety which blinded those in-charge to the real dangers they encountered. The perception of safety led to careless, short-sighted mistakes.
For example, why didn’t Fleet and Lee see the iceberg when it was further away? Several factors made it difficult to see, such as the moonless night and the lack of wind. But a major factor was that neither Fleet nor Lee had a pair of binoculars. Now, the Titanic actually had several sets of binoculars onboard, but they were kept in a locked case, and a last-minute crew change meant that no one on the ship had the key.
In hindsight, they should have broken the glass cover to the case and used the binoculars. However, the crew was confident that they would see an iceberg with enough time to turn out of its way. This turned out to be a fatal mistake.
Of course, even without binoculars, Fleet and Lee still might have given the bridge enough time if the Titanic hadn’t been going so fast. When it struck the iceberg, Titanic was traveling at a blistering 22 knots, barely below its maximum rated speed of 24. Inertia is a powerful thing, and a ship this large takes a long time to turn. Its sheer size made Titanic seem stronger and safer than it really was, while at the same time making it more difficult for the vessel to avoid obstacles. Furthermore, whether or not the rumors of Ismay trying to establish a new speed record are true or not, there was certainly pressure on the crew to reach New York as quickly as possible.
Captain Smith allowed himself to be reckless. Regardless of the pressure coming from Ismay, Captain Smith was the one in charge. He and his crew made numerous choices in the speed, in how far north they sailed, and in the unwillingness to provide their lookouts with the proper equipment, which would doom the passengers trusting him with their lives.
Even then, shortly after the ship began to sink, the crew initially had trouble convincing people to board the lifeboats. Leading the crew on the Starboard side, First Officer Murdoch took the more aggressive approach, ordering people to climb in. On the Port side, Second Office Lightoller hesitated to force anyone onto a lifeboat. All the lifeboats that were partially empty left from Lightoller’s side (despite having the same number of lifeboats, 62% of Titanic’s survivors evacuated on the starboard side).
It might seem absurd that so many people refused a place on a lifeboat. There are a few stories of wives refusing to leave their husbands, but how many people could that actually be?
The truth is, many of the people that refused to get into lifeboats were in denial about what was happening. There’d never been a disaster of this magnitude before. The privileged classes had been sold on Titanic’s massive size and waterproof compartments. Unlike the second and third class passengers who lived deeper below decks, the first class passengers were comforted into refusing reality.
To them, Titanic wasn’t a fragile ship, it was a luxury hotel. It was larger than most of the buildings in New York and London at the time, sturdy and reliable. The lifeboats, meanwhile, were small and flimsy by comparison. The passengers watched as the first boats rocked uncomfortably in the water. There were no lights, no smoking parlors... Meanwhile, the fact that Titanic was sinking so slowly meant that many people didn’t really believe what was happening until it was too late.
The first lesson is clear: take risks seriously. Panicking won’t help anyone, but refusing to accept facts won’t protect you from the consequences.
Penny-Wise and Pound-Foolish
It’s well-known that the Titanic was owned by the White Star Line. But who owned the White Star Line? The company was, in fact, wholly-owned by J.P. Morgan. And Morgan hadn’t gotten rich by spending money easily.
Remember how the lookouts were afraid to break the case to get at the binoculars? A higher-ranking officer could have ordered them to do it, or the officer could have done it themselves. But the culture of the White Star Line was to shower its wealthy passengers with luxury and try to save money everywhere else. Rather than break a 5-cent piece of glass, it was decided to wait until the ship reached New York. The White Star Line could provide spares there.
Instead of reaching New York, Titanic rests beneath two miles of water.
Next, we have the rivets. Many people suspect that the rivets used to on long stretches of the hull are partially to blame. A ship as large as the Titanic required lots of material. Many of the rivets were made of cheap iron to save money. Because of this, some suspect that these cheaper rivets sped up the sinking, as they’d be more prone to buckling under pressure. If only it’s first few compartments were flooded, the Titanic could have stayed afloat, but the iceberg made punctures too far down along the hull. Would the steel plates have held together better with sturdier rivets?
We’ll never know for certain. But it’s clear that this is one of many choices made along the way which needlessly increased the risk of a disaster. Business culture of the day tried to salvage every penny that it could, even when it came to the construction of their ships.
The next lesson is clear: greed blinds us, and saving money at the expense of unnecessary risk is a sure way to get people killed.
The Human Factor
You’ve almost certainly heard the phrase “women and children first” in regards to the Titanic disaster. However, there’s another story here that hides a far uglier truth. Of the 324 first class passengers, 202 survived the sinking (63%). Of the 709 passengers in third class, only 178 survived (25%). Of the 144 women in first class, only four perished (a 97% survival rate). Compare that to the 141 women and children who died in third class (a survival rate of barely 40%), and things look rather grim.
There’s something to be said here about wealth and privilege which shouldn’t be ignored. However, the reason that so many of these people died was because the ship and its systems were never designed to accommodate all of the passengers.
We might look back in horror at the idea of a ship not carrying enough lifeboats for all the people onboard, but that was standard practice. In fact, Titanic had more lifeboats than it was legally required to. The problem wasn’t just the White Star Line.
The cheapest first-class ticket on the Titanic cost £30, which is just shy of $3,800 today. Adjusted for inflation, some of its suites would cost north of $100,000. And that’s for a one-way trip. Consider the cost of airfare and a few night-stay at a hotel on your next vacation. The Titanic’s first class was reserved for high-rollers.
Third-class accommodations, meanwhile, were not exactly cheap (the £7 cost of a third-class ticket is worth nearly $900 today). Still, that was only a quarter of the cost of a first-class ticket, and by the standards of the day, its cramped, unforgiving confines were actually better than the third-class accommodations on competing ships. For people looking for a new life, the misery was worth it, much in the same way that modern travelers have yet to revolt against the airlines for the inhumane way passengers are treated today.
Which, of course, leads me to mention the recent issues that the Boeing 737-Max jets have suffered. Boeing used to be a company renowned for its safety. However, cost-cutting led it to make redundant sensors an optional add-on instead of a base-component of the aircraft. This is the same penny-pinching behavior discussed in the previous section, but it also brings us to a vital point:
In all of these cases, we’ve lost track of the human beings who are at the heart of everything. The White Star Line lavished wealthy guests with luxury, not because it cared for them, but because that was the best way to lure them from the competition. The people who couldn’t afford that weren’t given much comfort at all, and were told that they ought to feel lucky for being allowed to tag along.
This is partially a factor of money, but it’s also a factor of us looking at business as a means unto itself. As if business in itself is a worthy life pursuit.
It’s not.
We weren’t born to serve a company, nor are we alive because we make good customer or employees. Companies are meant to serve US, not the other way around.
We seem to keep forgetting that.
The people on Titanic were not numbers. They weren’t percentages, even though we often refer to them as so. They were human beings. When we lose sight of that, we also lose sight of the value of our own lives.
Take Catherine Buckley, for instance, who planned to move from Ireland to Boston to live with her sister Margaret. Being poor, Catherine was supposed to travel third class on a ship called the Cymric, using a ticket her sister purchased for her. But a massive coal shortage in 1912 led to the voyage being canceled. The Cymric’s passengers were given the chance to transfer to the Titanic instead.
Catherine was 23 years old when she drowned. Their parents blamed Margaret for what happened, disowning her later that year. Margaret herself died in the mid-1920s.
Mary Mullin and Dennis Lennon were in love. Her family ran a fairly-prosperous boarding house, and Dennis was one of the assistants. Her family opposed the union entirely. In secret, Mary and Dennis made plans to move to America and get married. They booked passage on the Titanic for £15. Mary’s brother chased them all the way from Galway with a gun in-hand, hoping to stop them from boarding. However, he wasn’t fast enough. By the time he arrived in Queenstown, the couple was already on board.
They, too, had originally booked passage on the Cymric. When they arrived on the Titanic, Mary lied about her name. The manifest lists her as Mary Lennon. Mary was 18 and Dennis was 20. They both drowned, and their bodies were never found.
Elin Braf came from Sweden, and was traveling to Chicago to meet her sister and her newborn niece, Mabel. She’d purchased a doll, which she eagerly showed to her traveling companion Helmina. Elin was an experienced traveler. That was the only reason the girls were allowed to travel together.
When the ship struck the iceberg, both girls rushed to get dressed. Elin grabbed the doll for her niece and carried it with her up onto the deck. Helmina managed to get onto a lifeboat, but she lost track of Elin in the crowd. She never saw her friend again.
Mabel's doll was one of the first pieces of wreckage found by Robert Ballard when he discovered the wreck. Only the head remains, the rest has rotted away. To this day, it lies near Titanic’s stern, more than two miles underwater.
These are just a few of the real stories from that night. There are thousands more. None of the 1,500 people who died had boarded the Titanic with any idea of what might happen. They were too busy making plans.
The iceberg changed everything.
This is most obvious for the people that died, but it’s true of the survivors as well. Many were haunted by the sinking for the rest of their lives. They described the terror of watching Titanic vanish beneath the waves, the agony of listening as hundreds of people screamed in the water, and how the screams gradually faded into a horrifying silence.
When I think back on the Titanic, I see many things. I see an avoidable disaster, driven by greed, hubris, and shortsightedness. I see the bravery of the band, playing their music to provide what little comfort they could to those trapped on deck. I see the love of people who preferred to die together rather than living on without their partner.
More than anything else, I see that we need to stop taking our lives for granted. We need to treasure the time we have and the people who matter. Sometimes, events larger than us will change things beyond our ability to control, a message that seems more important than ever in light of the recent Covid-19 epidemic.
For better or worse, everyone who was on the Titanic is gone now. The last survivor died in 2009, and she’d only been a baby when the ship sank. Every one of us is born with a finite amount of time, but no one knows just how much they have. Oftentimes, it’s out of our hands. But, we do have the ability to choose how we spend the time we have today. Think about that, and think about what really matters.
Spend your time wisely.
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