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110 years ago today, The RMS Titanic hit an iceberg and sank into the Atlantic ocean.
The liner was the biggest and most magnificent ship to ever be built at that time. It was even described as unsinkable. Four days into its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, the grave tragedy happened leading to about 1500 lives being lost.
History has described the catastrophe to have been preventable.
Even though hitting the iceberg was the core reason the Titanic sunk, there are many other factors combined that led to the devastating disaster and to thousands of lives being lost.
Let’s examine them.
The chairman’s needs
The chairman of the ship Bruce Ismay wanted to generate even more hype for the mighty Titanic.
According to some passengers, who had overheard him, Ismay had been pressuring the captain of the ship Captain Smith to increase the speed of the ship.
He wanted to arrive in New York ahead of schedule to generate some free press about the new liner.
Speeding ship
The Titanic was travelling at 22 knots. This was only two knots shy of her maximum speed.
When the lookouts spotted the iceberg and sent alerts, it was too late for the speeding ship to quickly and accurately change course.
Messages not relayed
The Titanic had received 6 messages from other ships warning them that they were about to navigate in icy waters.
Not all these messages were relayed to the captain or the management of the ship. The lookouts were also not aware that they were navigating in icy waters at first.
Corporate messaging company
The Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company was responsible for messages aboard the Titanic and on all liners.
Because of this, the focus of the employees was to relay messages to passengers. Picking up on weather reports was secondary. That’s why the operators did not relay all the messages about the ice warnings they had received to the Titanic’s bridge.
