Original drawing of the apparently "unsinkable" Titanic, image courtesy Lloyd's Register HORIZONs Magazine

-By Christopher Browne, Editor of Lloyd’s Register HORIZONs magazine

The message was brief and cryptic: “Struck an iceberg and sank in latitude 41.16 N, longitude 50.14 W”. It might have been just another daily entry in Lloyd’s Register’s Casualty Returns. But it hid perhaps the most infamous event in shipping history – the sinking of the Titanic.

That was 100 years ago – on 14 April 1912 to be precise. Since then a flurry of historians, scientists, investigators, conspiracy theorists and media pundits have pondered and puzzled over just why this great and ‘unsinkable’ vessel should founder on a lone iceberg.

A spectacular array of events are being held this year in the seven European and North American cities involved in the mighty ship’s last voyage. However behind the ritual and razzamatazz are some curious post-disaster stories including one about the role of Lloyd’s Register.

A few days after the incident, the national press wrote a series of reports suggesting the Titanic had been built ‘considerably in excess of the requirements’ of Lloyd’s Register. Although we had not classed the vessel, and the information was patently wrong, you could argue it was a form of faint praise by association. Although our Secretary at the time, Sir Andrew Scott, didn’t quite see it like that.

“I am directed to say that these statements are inaccurate. On the contrary, in important parts of her structure the vessel as built did not come up to the requirements of Lloyd’s Register for a vessel of her dimensions,” he wrote in a letter to The Times of London.

“I do not for a moment suggest that this circumstance had any bearing whatever upon the loss of the vessel and therefore, for obvious reasons, this letter has been delayed until after the close of the Inquiry (the Mersey Committee set up in the UK to investigate the loss). But in justice to this society and to those who rely upon its classification, it is felt to be only right to dispel the erroneous impression which might be created regarding the standard of classification of Lloyd’s Register for such vessels if the statements referred to remain uncontradicted.”

A pithy riposte indeed. As Andrew Scott points out, we were not involved in classing the Titanic, however we did approve her anchors which still lie intact on the seabed of the North Atlantic Ocean. We also classed the passenger liner Carpathia which arrived to assist the sinking ship a few hours later, saving 705 men, women and children from the Titanic’s lifeboats.

The tragedy with its disturbing death toll of 1,523 had an important sequel. In 1914, the impact of several inquiries in the UK and USA led to the set ting up of the fir st International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), its aim to improve maritime safety and help prevent any future catastrophes.

SOLAS’s principles – robust lifesaving appliances and lifeboats, improved vessel design and equipment, better fire protection, effective satellite communications, rescue planes and helicopters and properly trained personnel – have been the major safety code for the global marine industry ever since.

Christopher Brown edits HORIZONs magazine, a quarterly publication by the UK-based classification society, Lloyd’s Register. Mr. Browne’s accolades include: Winner of the 2006 Consumer Broadsheet Journalist of the Year in the BIBA Awards; nominated in 2007; shortlisted for journalism’s Oscars, the British Press Awards; nominated four times for the IBP Journalism awards.

A naval officer overlooks Ramsgate harbour as about 50 original
Operation Dynamo boats prepare to depart

A fleet of Little Ships that rescued Allied troops from Dunkirk in 1940 has set sail from Ramsgate to mark the 70th anniversary of the event. Fifty vessels headed to France to commemorate Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of 338,000 soldiers from Dunkirk’s beaches. The troops had been driven back to the French coast by the German army during the second world war

- Gallery on theguardian -

Mrs. Miniver (1942) – Directed by: William Wyler; Starring: Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon

Miss Monkey watched the old classic Mrs. Miniver the other night, and was inspired to make this week’s Maritime Monday about the Evacuation of Dunkirk.

Based on the fictional English housewife created by Jan Struther in 1937 for a series of newspaper columns, the film won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Director.

Mrs. Kay Miniver (Greer Garson) and her family live a comfortable life at a house called “Starlings” in a village outside London. The house has a large garden, with a private landing stage on the river Thames, and a motorboat. As World War II looms, Clem; together with other boat owners, volunteers to take his boat to assist in the Dunkirk evacuation.

Director William Wyler wrote and re-wrote the key sermon “the night before the sequence was to be shot.”  The speech “made such an impact that it was used in essence by President Roosevelt as a morale builder and part of it was the basis for leaflets printed in various languages and dropped over enemy and occupied territory.”

In 2009, it was named to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant and will be preserved for all time. Soon after filming, Richard Ney, who played Kay Miniver’s son and was 11 years her junior, married Garson.  –wikipedia

Well, that explains the conspicuously long on-the-mouth kisses they exchanged during the film.

Final outcome of the war being no where near certain by the film’s release in 1942, the studio wisely chose to omit any sweeping declarations about Victorious Britannia and the everlasting pluck of her peoples.

- Mrs Miniver on IMDb -

- Synopsis and Reviews on British Film Institute -

- Picture of Mrs. Miniver; see full size (600×1611) -

The Dunkirk evacuation, commonly known as the Miracle of Dunkirk, code-named Operation Dynamo by the British, was the evacuation of Allied soldiers from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk, France, between 26 May and the early hours of 3 June 1940. Operation Dynamo took its name from the dynamo room in the naval headquarters below Dover Castle.

The evacuation was ordered on 26 May. In a speech to the House of Commons, Winston Churchill called the events in France “a colossal military disaster”, saying that “the whole root and core and brain of the British Army” had been stranded at Dunkirk and seemed about to perish or be captured. In his We shall fight on the beaches speech on 4 June, he hailed their rescue as a “miracle of deliverance”.

NEWSREEL: British Dunkirk Evacuation Footage
(many more videos in sidebar)

Great Speeches: Winston Churchill “We Shall Fight on the Beaches” (text)
House of Commons; Following May 26, Operation Dynamo
Video of Churchill’s Speech

Battle of Dunkirk [hi rez video]

Fight them on the beaches … stranded troops

Operation Dynamo, The Evacuation from Dunkirk, 27 May-4 June 1940

About 338,000 men were saved in about 11 days. About 215,000 were British, 123,000 were French — of whom 102,250 escaped in British ships.

- map showing the shrinking BEF perimeter at Dunkirk -

BBC Archive remembers Dunkirk

A new online collection from BBC Archive released today commemorates the heroes of Dunkirk and reveals the personal stories behind the event which has become synonymous with the true spirit of British wartime defiance.

Julie Rowbotham, Executive Producer, BBC Archive said:

“These archive programmes offer us a glimpse of the trauma of Dunkirk, but also provide us with an account of the many heroic deeds carried out during those few desperate days of the evacuation.”

Other highlights include: an interview with Charles Herbert Lightoller, famous as the most senior surviving officer from the Titanic, describing the hazards he faced when he took his yacht to the beaches.

This collection is the latest in a series of archive collection to be released online and which explore the cultural and political developments that shaped the 20th century. WWII – Dunkirk Evacuation is available online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/dunkirk/

- see also: Knowles, David J. “The Miracle of Dunkirk, BBC News -

An appeal for boating skills…

L: Members of Royal Ulster Rifles waiting on improvised pier of lorries to evacuate Dunkirk
during low tide R: British soldiers being evacuated from a Dunkirk beach (The Telegraph)

Small ships including pleasure craft were used to
evacuate allied troops from Dunkirk. Here, being towed

The Telegraph: Dunkirk evacuation:Operation Dynamo in pictures

Although the events at Dunkirk gave a great boost to British morale, they also left the remaining French to stand alone against a renewed German assault southward. German troops entered Paris on 14 June and accepted the French surrender on 22 June.

HMS Whitehall D94

Destroyers loaded with soldiers of the British expeditionary force, evacuated after fighting from Dunkirk during operation Dynamo, moor to berth when they return to England. Ship number D-94 in the background the Destroyer HMS Whitehall on 1st June 1940 during the operation, was damaged by German bombers. 

- full size -

Abandoned weapons on the beach

BBC VIDEO: Three soldiers, Harry Garrett, Arthur Waterhouse and Alfred Smith, all rescued from the Dunkirk beaches in 1940, tell their stories

• Dunkirk veterans mark 70th anniversary of evacuation
• Dunkirk rescue 70th anniversary

A beached French coastal patrol craft and a British Universal Carrier abandoned
at Dunkirk hours after the evacuation

The loss of materiel on the beaches was huge. The British Army left enough equipment behind to equip about eight to ten divisions. Left behind in France were, among huge supplies of ammunition, 880 field guns, 310 guns of large calibre, some 500 anti-aircraft guns, about 850 anti-tanks guns, 11,000 machine guns, nearly 700 tanks, 20,000 motorcycles and 45,000 motor cars and lorries.

The shortage of army vehicles after Dunkirk was so severe that the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) was reduced to retrieving and refurbishing numbers of obsolete bus and coach models from British scrapyards to press them into use as troop transports. Some of these antique workhorses were still in use as late as the North African campaign of 1942.

British ships Dunkirk Harbour

Lockheed Hudson of RAF Coastal Command approaching the beaches of Dunkirk,
with “little ships” in action below – see also: Spitfires Join the Fighting

Little ships of Dunkirk

On 27 May, the small-craft section of the British Ministry of Shipping telephoned boat builders around the coast, asking them to collect all boats with “shallow draft” that could navigate the shallow waters. Attention was directed to the pleasure boats, private yachts and launches moored on the River Thames and along the south and east coasts.

The term Little Ship applies to all craft that were originally privately owned and includes private yachts, barges, British, French, Belgian and Dutch fishing vessels and pleasure steamers, but the Association does include some ex-Service vessels, which are now privately owned, and ex-Lifeboats.

–Naval Jacks of the UK

In nine days, 192,226 British and 139,000 French soldiers — 331,226 in all — were rescued by the 700 little ships and around 220 warships. The rescue operation turned a military disaster into a story of heroism which served to raise the morale of the British.

Dunkirk (1958) Movie Poster – posted by The Kent Film Office (see full size)

Dunkirk is a 1958 British war film directed by Leslie Norman and starring John Mills, Richard Attenborough and Bernard Lee. It was based on two novels: Elleston Trevor’s The Big Pick-Up and Lt. Col. Ewan Hunter and Maj. J. S. Bradford’s Dunkirk.

The film relates the story of Operation Dynamo, principally from the viewpoints of two people: a newspaper reporter and a soldier.

• Dunkirk (film) on wikipedia
• Dunkirk at the IMDb

WEEKEND AT DUNKIRK poster

Weekend at Dunkirk (French: Week-end à Zuydcoote) is a 1964 drama film directed by Henri Verneuil and starring Jean-Paul Belmondo.[1] It is based on the 1949 Prix Goncourt winning novel Week-end at Zuydcoote (French: Week-end à Zuydcoote) by Robert Merle. Music by  Maurice Jarre.

Week-end à Zuydcoote on IMDb

Hilfranor; A Dunkirk Little Ship – read the story of her restoration

Some of them were taken with the owners’ permission — and with the owners insisting they would sail them — while others were requisitioned by the government with no time for the owners to be contacted. The boats were checked to make sure they were seaworthy, fueled, and taken to Ramsgate to set sail for Dunkirk. They were manned by Naval Officers, Ratings and experienced volunteers. Very few owners manned their own vessels, apart from fishermen and one or two others.

British propaganda later exploited the successful evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940, and particularly the role of the “Dunkirk little ships”, very effectively. Many of the “little ships” were private vessels such as fishing boats and pleasure cruisers, but commercial vessels such as ferries also contributed to the force, including a number from as far away as the Isle of Man and Glasgow.

These smaller vessels—guided by naval craft across the Channel from the Thames Estuary and from Dover—assisted in the official evacuation. Being able to reach much closer in the beachfront shallows than larger craft, the “little ships” acted as shuttles to and from the larger craft, lifting troops who were queuing in the water, many waiting shoulder-deep in water for hours. The term “Dunkirk Spirit” still refers to a popular belief in the solidarity of the British people in times of adversity.

- Little ships of Dunkirk on wikipedia -

Regal Lady – photo by Whipper snapper (full size)

Regal Lady and the Coronia

Some of the rescued were sailed back to ports like Ramsgate or Dover, others were only carried out a short distance and then transferred to larger ships so that the little ships could turn towards the hostile shore and make another run.

The Woolwich ferries, yachts, motor cruisers, RNLI lifeboats, pleasure boats, a Thames fire boat and even Thames sailing barges were pressed into service for the evacuation which eventually saved more than a third of a million men.

One story is told that a group of soldiers found an abandoned Thames sailing barge of about 90 tons stranded on the Dunkirk beach. Without any sailing experience the soldiers re-floated the barge and sailed it back to Britain themselves.

- see also -

MV Royal Daffodil

The 465 ton, 152′ long SS Royal Daffodil leaving Southend

Royal Daffodil

The River Mersey ferry evacuated 7,461 service personnel from Dunkirk in five trips between 28 May and 2 June, among them the French historian Marc Bloch, who served as a captain in the campaign. This was the largest number evacuated by a single passenger vessel in the operation. On 2 June, she was attacked by six German aircraft. A bomb dropped by one of them penetrated two of her decks and blew a hole below the water line, but she managed to limp back to port.

Dunkirk and beaches with Paddle Steamer in background by Ivan Barryman

Painting of HMS Medway Queen, Heroine of Dunkirk

Medway Queen

The paddle steamer made the most round trips — seven — rescuing 7,000 men and earning herself the nickname “Heroine of Dunkirk”.  –website

All hands … steamer sent to evacuate – The Sun.UK

The Sundowner is a 58 foot (18m) motor yacht at the Ramsgate Maritime Museum in England.

Sundowner

Owned by Charles Lightoller, former second officer of the Titanic, was requisitioned by the Admiralty on 30 May. Lightoller insisted that, if anyone was going to take her to Dunkirk, it would be him and his eldest son, Roger, together with Sea Scout Gerald Ashcroft. The men transported 130 soldiers back to Ramsgate, reportedly packed together like sardines, almost capsizing when they reached the shore.

- more -

52′ Express Cruiser Breda back home at Ramsgate

miniature Bluebird of Chelsea on Solent Radio Control Model Boat page

Bluebird of Chelsea: the yacht originally built for Sir Malcolm Campbell, made two round trips to Kent, carrying hundreds of men.

She had three further owners before being requisitioned by the Admiralty at the outbreak of World War II. Soon she was on her way with the flotilla of “little ships” to Dunkirk. Not without two false starts though, first due to engine trouble and then over-crowding. Her return from Dunkirk was even more fraught: after first refilling the fuel tanks with water, then fouling her screws on debris, she returned under tow.

- more -

Tamzine

A fishing boat less than 15 feet (4.6 m) in length; the smallest boat to take part in the evacuation and now preserved by the Imperial War Museum.

image: The Flotilla and The Fleet

Named after the eighteen-year-old wife of a sailing skipper, who was drowned off the Isles of Scilly in an eighteenth century shipwreck and is said to be buried in the churchyard at St. Mary’s, Tamzine is the smallest surviving open fishing boat to take part in Operation Dynamo. She is less than 15ft. long, clinker built, light yet strongly made and was designed for year-round fishing off the shore at Birchington in Kent.

Mona’s Isle (IV) on simplonPC

Isle of Man Steam Packet Company 

from wikipedia:

In the Second World War, ten of the fleet of sixteen ships were commandeered for active duty, four of which were lost. The Dunkirk evacuation was perhaps the company’s finest hour, with Mona’s Isle (IV) being the first to leave Dover and the first to complete the round trip during the evacuation.

Eight company ships took part in this mission, rescuing a total of 24,699 British troops – one in fourteen of those evacuated from Dunkirk.The anchor from Mona’s Queen (III) was raised as part of the 70th anniversary commemoration of Operation Dynamo at Dunkirk. It is to be sited at Kallow Point in Port St Mary as a memorial to the company’s crew who took part in the war

By the end of operations, the fleet had rescued a total of 24,699, 1 in 14 of those evacuated from Dunkirk

- Isle of Man Steam Packet Company (website) -

The Endeavour - a Leigh cockle boat and Dunkirk veteran, restored by a local charitable trust: see here
She’s the last survivor of the five Leigh cocklers that answered the call  (see full size – and another)

Commander JH Allison, HMS Worcester and the last daylight ship evacuation from Dunkirk

Association of Dunkirk Little Ships

Sea Scout Boat Minotaur

Aboard the Devonia (Flickr photo posted by gt_hawk63)

Batten Photo, The Capstone, Ilfracombe. An RPPC found in an Eastbourne antique shop. The Devonia survived until 30 May, 1940 when she was sunk while taking part in the Dunkirk evacuation.  more: paddlesteamers.awardspace.com/Devonia.htm

Lancastria – (1924-40) – ex-Tyrrhenia  on simplonPC

The evacuation of British troops and civilians from France in 1940 did not end with Dunkirk.   Several weeks later,   on June 17, 1940, the British Cunard liner Lancastria was loaded to capacity with troops and civilians off the French port of St. Nazaire, when she was struck by three direct hits from a German Junkers 88 bomber.  As many as 6,500 men, women and children were lost when the ship sank. 

It was the worst maritime disaster in British history. The sinking claimed more lives than the combined losses of Titanic and Lusitania.  News of the disaster was covered up. Churchill said that, “The newspapers have got quite enough disaster for today, at least…”

- keep reading on Old Salt Blog -

- Lancastria: Britain’s forgotten disaster on BBC -

- Lancastria enters the war on Lancastria.org -

- Radio review: The Sinking of the Lancastria on The Guardian -

The Dunkirk Jack

The St George’s Cross defaced with the arms of Dunkirk flown from the jack staff is known as the Dunkirk jack and is only flown by civilian ships and boats of all sizes that took part in the Dunkirk rescue operation in 1940.  The only other ships permitted to fly the George’s Cross flag at the bow are those with a Royal Navy Admiral on board.

“Permission was given by the Admiralty, the College of Heralds and the City of Dunkirk for the Cross of St. George (the flag of Admiralty) to be defaced with the Arms of Dunkirk for use as the Association’s House Flag. This can be worn by Member Ships at any time when the owner is aboard. In addition, when in company, we fly the undefaced Cross of St. George at the bow.

“To avoid any possible confusion with barges wearing an Admiral’s flag, the Dunkirk Little Ships must wear the Red Ensign when flying the undefaced Flag of St. George at the bows…”

–source: Jacks of the UK

above right: St George’s Cross
below right: Blason ville fr Dunkerque:

“A lion sable passant armed and langued gules, argent a dolphin azure naiant embowed finned and langued gules. In other words, picturing a (former) Flemish city and harbour.”

The Flag of England is the St George’s Cross. The red cross appeared as an emblem of England in the Middle Ages, specifically during the Crusades (although the original symbol used to represent English crusaders was a white cross on a red background) and is one of the earliest known emblems representing England. It also represents the official arms of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, and it achieved status as the national flag of England during the sixteenth century.

The flag used by the British Royal Navy (the White Ensign) is also based on the flag of England, consisting of the St George’s Cross and a Union Flag in the canton. In addition to the UK, several countries in the Commonwealth of Nations also have variants of the White Ensign with their own national flags in the canton, with the St George’s Cross sometimes being replaced by a naval badge.

more: History of the Union Jack on wikipedia

‘Little Ships’ Rerun Finds Its Own Dunkirk

DOVER, England — Few moments in modern British history are more iconic than the evacuation of the British expeditionary force of nearly 340,000 troops in the spring of 1940 from the beaches of Dunkirk, 22 miles across the Channel from the white chalk cliffs that overlook this ancient port town. At the time, Winston Churchill called it “a miracle of deliverance.”

This time, the effort centered on a group of men in a flotilla of inflatable speedboats who set out from Dover to ferry some of their stranded compatriots home from the rail and ferry chaos created by the cloud of volcanic ash that has shut down much of Europe’s air traffic.

- keep reading on NY Times -

The Sun: A FLOTILLA of old boats set sail for Dunkirk today to commemorate the
70th anniversary of the famous allied WWII rescue mission.

video: Dramatic Dunkirk evacuation anniversary on The Telegraph

Veterans Charles Searle, 92, 3rd Canadian Medical Corps, and Lionel Tucker, 93, Ox & Bucks Light Infantry, salute on board a ferry bound for Dunkirk, France, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Operation Dynamo

- The Telegraph (11 images) -

Dunkirk war memorial – photo by murky

“this memorial wall are in the Dunkirk harbor and are made with old paving stones of the pier, used by the passage of allied soldiers (French and British) who waiting for a evacuation to the Great Britain.”

- Site officiel du mémorial du souvenir de Dunkerque -

Dunkirk harbour wall at sunset – photo by orlando72

Dunkirk beach today – photo by Ruud Welten

Monkey Fist

Monkey Fist is a smack-talking, potty mouthed, Yankee hating, Red Sox fan in Baltimore, Maryland. In addition to compiling Maritime Monday, she blogs about nautical art, history, and marine science on Adventures of the Blackgang.

Submit story ideas, news links, photographs, or items of interest to her at MM@gcaptain.com. She can also out-belch any man.

Third-class tea cup china used by passengers and the crew, is shown as part of the artifacts
collection at a warehouse in Atlanta, in this Aug 15, 2008 file photo. (AP Photo/Stanley Leary, File)

Just As The Ship Went Down
Words by Edith Maida Lessing ; Music by Bernie Adler & Sidney Gibson

A cold dark night, a sea of ice… (sheet  music viewable here)

Lead Belly – The Titanic

Edited version of a song by Huddy Ledbetter aka Leadbelly. Recorded by Alan Lomax in 1948.
(“Aint haulin no coal…” reference to race laws prohibiting black folk passage on the great boat)

- click link above please; embedding has been disabled -

- The Titanic under construction -

RMS stands for Royal Mail Ship, indicating that the Titanic was contracted to carry mail. The Titanic had a Post Office and Mail Room deep in the ship on decks F and G, the blue prints of which are held by the BPMA. The five postal workers were tasked with sorting much of the mail which had been brought on board the ship, 3,364 bags in total, as well as dealing with any letters which were posted on the ship by passengers and crew.

When the ship struck the iceberg, the postal workers were celebrating (an employee’s) 44th birthday. However, they soon realised that the Mail Room was flooding and so attempted to move 200 sacks of registered mail to the upper decks in the hope of saving them. They press-ganged several stewards into helping them, one of whom later recalled:

“I urged them to leave their work. They shook their heads and continued at their work. It might have been an inrush of water later that cut off their escape, or it may have been the explosion. I saw them no more…”

- The Post Office aboard the Titanic on Cruising the Past -
- image: The Royal Mail (1935) -

- RMS Titanic running the vessel SS New York off her moorings and almost colliding with her -

- Rotterdam Maritiem Museum; Titanic Tableware -

- see also: dinner plate – porcelein

‘Titanic’: ‘Downton Abbey’ Creator Julian Fellowes Brings The Titanic To Life In New ABC Special

7 to 10 p.m. Saturday and 8 to 9 p.m. Sunday on ABC

“Titanic,” a four-part miniseries written by “Downton Abbey” creator Julian Fellowes, will attempt to tell the whole story of what really happened on that fateful night in 1912 like you’ve never seen it done before.

“This is a portrait of a ship in a way that other versions haven’t been,” Fellowes told The Daily Mail at the press launch of the miniseries at the London Film Museum. “’A Night to Remember’ is a wonderful film but its mainly about the officers. James Cameron’s was another wonderful film, but that is a love story set against the sinking of the Titanic… We, right from the start, set out to tell the story of the whole ship.”

• keep reading on Huffington Post (slideshow)
• View Gallery
• Julian Fellowes Titanic Promo 2012 – YouTube

a week of titanica
on transpress nz

Titanic Wreck Site Gets UNESCO Protection

The wreck of the Titanic will come under UNESCO protection as the 100th anniversary of its sinking passes on 15 April, the United Nations cultural body said.

Since the British liner sank in international waters, “no State has exclusive jurisdiction over the wreckage area,” the Paris-based Unesco said in a statement.

For this reason, the wreck, as well as other vessels that sank in international waters at least 100 years ago, will fall under the cover of the 2001 UNESCO convention on the protection of underwater cultural heritage.

- more on Discovery News -

Asleep in the Deep
Words by A.J. Lamb ; Music by H.W. Petrie

Loudly the bell in the old tower rings, biding us list to the warning it brings…

As sung with success by Harry Tanner (inset photo)
On a stormy night, the lighthouse bell can be heard; on a ship are two lovers, unaware of the danger they face; the following day the sun shines, the wreckage lies on the shore, and the two lovers now rest in peace.

- Sheet music, 1897; The New York Public Library -

The Titanic is Doomed and Sinking
- Words by Owen Lynch, Music by Wm. H. Farrell (1912) -

Neil deGrasse Tyson Should Get an Editor’s Credit on the Titanic Re-Release

Seeing a popular motion picture reappear in theaters years after its initial release is not a new thing. However, as technical advances continue to speed exponentially forward, a film’s re-issue gives a filmmaker the opportunity to make strategic changes to the content of the film – alter digital effects, add new scenes, swap out one object for another.

Typically, if a director makes a change, it’s something that can be readily noticed and, hopefully, adds something new to the film.
Sometimes, though, you make a change just because a really cool astrophysicist asks you to do so – such as is the case with the re-release of James Cameron’s film Titanic. While Cameron went to notorious lengths to recreate the Titanic itself, he forgot to recreate everything else above it.

The Telegraph has revealed that while viewing the epic film, the brilliant Neil deGrasse Tyson was so bothered by the portrayal of the night sky on the evening of the Titanic’s sinking, he badgered Cameron to correct the mistake…

- keep reading on Mental Floss -

Duncan’s Cigarette cards; Evolution of the Steamship; SS Titanic
(see entire set)

How did Titanic really break up?
By Richard Woytowich | April 9, 2012

I’m a member of the Marine Forensics Committee, and author or co-author of three peer-reviewed papers on the “Titanic”. My most recent paper, “The Breakup Of Titanic – A Re-Examination of Survivor Accounts”, was presented at the First International Marine Forensics Symposium on April 4.

Working with Roy Mengot (with whom I co-authored one paper), I’ve been gathering evidence to support a reconstruction of the breakup of the “Titanic” that differs somewhat from the one you may have seen in movies or in other publications. The most important stages in our reconstruction are illustrated here

In our reconstruction, the failure began in the ship’s bottom structure, when the ship was at an angle of about 17 degrees. The failure spread across the breadth of the ship, then upward; it also spread forward and aft, probably along lightly riveted longitudinal seams, forming two separate pieces of the double bottom…

According to an article on the History Channel website, our work will be challenged in a documentary to be aired on the anniversary of the sinking.

- keep reading on Scientific American -

- Titanic Museum is situated in COBH near Cork, Ireland, the last port visited by the Titanic -

- White Star Tenders; vintage postcard -

Two of the tenders that ferried passengers out to the Titanic when she stopped at Queenstown

A Titanic Timeline, 1909-2012

From the great ocean liner’s construction to its sinking to its discovery on the ocean floor, the key moments in the Titanic‘s history. See our full centenary coverage here

For more on the Titanic, read our In-Depth Report:
The Titanic: 100 Years Later
A look back at one of the biggest moments in steamship history, including how Scientific American covered it.

For her maiden voyage, Titanic carried a total of 20 lifeboats of three different varieties:

• Lifeboats 1 and 2: emergency wooden cutters: 25 ft (7.62 m) 2 in long by 7 ft (2.13 m) 2 in wide by 3 ft (0.91 m) 2 in deep; capacity 326.6 cubic feet (9.25 m3) or 40 people.
• Lifeboats 3 to 16: wooden lifeboats: 30′ long by 9’1″ wide by 4′ deep; capacity 655.2 cubic feet (18.55 m3) or 65 people.
• Lifeboats A, B, C and D: Englehardt collapsible lifeboats: 27’5″ long by 8′ wide by 3′ deep; capacity 376.6 cubic feet (10.66 m3) or 47 people.

Boats on the starboard side were odd-numbered 1–15 from bow to stern, while those on the port side were even-numbered 2–16 from bow to stern. Lifeboats 1 and 2, the “emergency cutters”, were kept swung out, hanging from the davits, ready for immediate use while collapsible lifeboats C and D were stowed on the boat deck immediately in-board of boats 1 and 2 respectively.

Collapsible lifeboats A and B were stored on the roof of the officers’ quarters, on either side of number 1 funnel. However there were no davits mounted on the officers’ quarters to lower collapsibles A and B, and they weighed a considerable amount empty.

During the sinking, lowering collapsibles A and B proved difficult as it was first necessary to slide the boats on timbers and/or oars down to the boat deck. During this procedure, collapsible B capsized and subsequently floated off the ship upside down.

- more on Rare Titanic photos and letters -

The cry of “women and children first” during ship disasters
turns out to be more of a myth than reality.

Women More Likely to Die in Ship Disasters than Men

Mikael Elinder and Oscar Erixson of Uppsala University studied 18 passenger ship disasters that took place between 1852 and 2011, and the fate of more than 15,000 passengers and crew on the ships. 

Their study began with the 1852 sinking of the HMS Birkenhead because it is considered to be the source of the expression “women and children first.” The last known example of a captain actually giving the order that women and children should go first was the sinking of the RMS Lusitania in 1915.

In the case of the Titanic, 73% of women were saved, but only 21% of men. However, the Birkenhead and the Titanic turn out to be the only two of the 18 disasters in which women really did have a survival advantage. In 11 cases, men were more likely to survive and in five cases there was no gender difference…

- image source -

- keep reading -

Titanic (1943) on I Shoot The Pictures

This is a version of Titanic done by Nazi Germany that was completed in 1943. By the late 1930?s films in Nazi Germany became nasty and very anti-Semitic… However, this movie is a breed apart from those films and that’s why Turner Classic Movies showed it and I recorded it.
Before I talk about the film there is a little back story. The film was originally being directed by Herbert Selpin until he made some comments that he shouldn’t have. He was taken away and later found dead in a prison cell. Werner Klingler was brought in to finish the film, which he did.

Goebbels, the head of propaganda in Nazi Germany, realized that maybe it wasn’t the smartest idea to release a film about a bunch of people dying considering this was Nazi Germany and it was 1943. I mean it’s not exactly a morale booster. So the film was shelved and presumed lost until it was found fairly recently…

keep reading

see also: Titanic (1943 film) – Wikipedia

_ _ _

In a recent lecture, Norman Brouwer said it is easy to tell the difference between the Olympic and the Titanic: the 1st class passenger promenade is open in Olympic, in the Titanic, it was closed off.

Also, fewer lifeboats (namely, twenty for 1,178 people) were on the Titanic as “the seagoing public unquestionably thoroughly appreciates the advantage presented by clear deck space as well as unrestricted view.” This quote was found by Conrad Milster in an 1910 engineering journal…

- keep reading on Bowsprite -

New Images Released By “National Geographic” Magazine

In a tricked-out trailer on a back lot of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), William Lange stands over a blown-up sonar survey map of the Titanic site—a meticulously stitched-together mosaic that has taken months to construct. At first look the ghostly image resembles the surface of the moon, with innumerable striations in the seabed, as well as craters caused by boulders dropped over millennia from melting icebergs.

On closer inspection, though, the site appears to be littered with man-made detritus—a Jackson Pollock-like scattering of lines and spheres, scraps and shards. Lange turns to his computer and points to a portion of the map that has been brought to life by layering optical data onto the sonar image. He zooms in, and in, and in again. Now we can see the Titanic’s bow in gritty clarity, a gaping black hole where its forward funnel once sprouted, an ejected hatch cover resting in the mud a few hundred feet to the north. The image is rich in detail: In one frame we can even make out a white crab clawing at a railing…

- keep reading -

left: members of the Titanic orchestra — right: Titanic Crew Memorial

• Surviving Titanic crew members at Terminus Station on the 29th April, after travelling back from New York
• Surviving Titanic crew members In Plymouth after travelling back from New York
• More surviving Titanic crew members In Plymouth after travelling back from New York

In 1898, Morgan Robertson wrote Futility, a novella that tells the rise and the fall of the Titan, the greatest man-made boat of all time.

It was touted as unsinkable, and launched from northern England across to the United States. The ship sinks after crashing head-on into an iceberg, and several thousand people perish because of woefully inadequate life boats. Are you seeing the similarities?

The book was intended to be a scathing social criticism of the selfish goals of industrialization, lambasting the fatcat tycoons who championed “progress” while overlooking human suffering. But it’s not remembered that way at all. It is instead forever known as the book that preceded the sinking of the Titanic, with countless, eerie similarities.

The Titan was 800 feet, Titanic was 882. Titan had 24 lifeboats (less than half necessary) and lost 2500 passengers, Titanic had 16 lifeboats (also less than half) and lost 2207 passengers. They both crashed into icebergs in April about 400 miles from Newfoundland, traveling too fast at over 22 knots.

- keep reading on Scuttlefish -

The Wreck of the Titanic: A descriptive Piano Composition by Jeannette Forrest
- instrumental sheet music -

Gavin Bryars – Opening Part I
The Sinking of The Titanic

(click link above to listen) Richard Gavin Bryars (born 16 January 1943) is an English composer and double bassist. He has been active in, or has produced works in, a variety of styles of music, including jazz, free improvisation, minimalism, historicism, experimental music, avant-garde and neoclassicism.

Bryars’s first works as a composer owe much to the New York School of John Cage (with whom he briefly studied), Morton Feldman, Earle Brown and minimalism. One of his earliest pieces, The Sinking of the Titanic (1969), is an indeterminist work which allows the performers to take a number of sound sources related to the sinking of the RMS Titanic and make them into a piece of music.  The first recording of this piece appeared on Brian Eno‘s Obscure Records in 1975. The 1994 recording of this piece was remixed by Aphex Twin as Raising the Titanic (later collected on the 26 Mixes for Cash album).

- more -

* Go log into itunes or Amazon or whatever musical teet-from-which-you-suck and download this.  It’s cool and will impress the chicks.

- The Titanic sinking by Ken Marschall; mini gallery here -

Marine Artist Ken Marschall Sails the Titanic into “Household-Namedom”

Ken Marschall (born October 28, 1950) is best known as the world’s foremost creator of Titanic artwork. Accomplished in photo-realistic rendering of anything from architecture to nature, it is Ken’s splendid, evocative Titanic paintings that are his legacy.

His minutely detailed portrayals of famous liners, naval vessels, airships and shipwrecks are admired for their realism, drama, historical accuracy, use of light and color, subtlety of detail and smoothness of line… they go where a camera cannot.

Renowned for bringing Titanic back to life with his paintbrush, Ken’s haunting portraits of the celebrated liner, often copied by others, are iconic images that have become part of Titanic’s history itself.

“… his paintings almost seemed to be stills from a movie that hadn’t yet been made. And I thought to myself… I can make these paintings live. It became my goal to accomplish on film what Ken had done on canvas, to will the Titanic back to life.”
James Cameron

• The Art of Ken Marschall; official website
• Trans-Atlantic Designs, Inc.;
  exclusive source for the largest collection of Titanic prints and posters by Ken Marschall
• Favorite/Least Favorite Ken Marschall Titanic Painting?;
  on encyclopedia titanica discussion board

- Meet the Titanic Experts on National Geographic -

see also: Titanic Art by Ken Marschall

Titanic Trivia:
After the sinking, J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line, was so vilified for taking a seat in a lifeboat that the towns of Ismay, Texas, and Ismay, Montana, wanted to change their names.

- Sur les traces du RMS TITANIC -

Book publishers are releasing Titanic titles by the score. John Williams, of the New York Times, “Art Beat” recently wrote:

“The centennial anniversary of the Titanic disaster is April 14, and publishers appear to be hoping that readers maintain an almost infinite appetite for it. Viewed as a group, the number of Titanic-related books that have crossed my desk in recent weeks borders on the comical. But to dip into almost any one of them in particular is to be riveted by a story that remains deeply eerie, dramatic and heartbreaking…”

According to Williams, Titanic, First Accounts is “the loveliest of the bunch” and I trust him because he’s read them all, or so it seems. He also offers a short, but sweet analysis of the Titanic ”cottage industry.”

- Titanic — T-minus 24 on Ships on the Shore -

March 6, 1912:
Titanic (right) had to be moved out of drydock so her sister Olympic, which had lost a propeller, could have it replaced – see full size

The emergency signals were so strong from Titanic’s radio room, that they
reached the mainland United States and Greenland’s base station.

Wireless Could Have Saved Lives on Titanic

“Come at once. We have struck a berg.” The Titanic’s radio engineers sent this emergency message and many like it in Morse code, wirelessly, to anyone listening.

Two employees of Marconi, the company that made the system, operated the radio. It was the most powerful system of its kind, and the clear night helped the signal go far.

Many ships did receive the call. So did land-based stations in the United States and Greenland. Radio operators at the time were also skilled at transmitting messages quickly in code — 80 to 100 words per minute. With such capabilities, what went wrong?

For starters, Titanic’s communications system had its limits…

• keep reading on Discovery News
• History of Marconi House
• Marconi Company on wikipedia
• MarconiGraph’s Titanic Pages

Passengers on the deck of the Titanic taking a stroll. The price of a ticket was $4,400
USD in 1912, which is $80,000 dollars, at today’s rate of inflation

A uniform button belonging to William Murdoch, the bridge officer aboard the Titanic, is seen on
display before an exhibition opens to the public Tuesday, April 3, 2012, in Atlanta.

From the pitch-black depths 2½ miles beneath the North Atlantic, salvagers of the Titanic made a notable discovery when they located the personal effects of Murdoch, the bridge officer who tried in vain to keep the doomed ship from colliding with an iceberg.

The artifacts, including a shoe brush, straight razor and pipe, are the first (that belonged) specifically to Murdoch, a central figure in the disaster who gained added notoriety after James Cameron’s polemical portrayal of him in the 1997 blockbuster movie “Titanic.” (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Photo Galleries » RMS Titanic

see also: Recovered Items From the Famed Shipwreck on ABC News

LAS VEGAS (FOX5 VIDEO) - A candlelight vigil at Las Vegas’ Titanic exhibit commemorated
the 100 year anniversary of the ship’s maiden voyage Wednesday.

In new exhibit, ‘Titanic’ artifacts are still telling stories on accessATLANTA

- The gymnasium: Father Browne’s Titanic Album –
HOW TO BE A RETRONAUT

Newsreel that ran after the Titanic sank in 1912

To commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking, British Pathe has released the original newsreel that ran following the maritime disaster (the music is a new addition). Witness survivors arriving in New York City and long-distance radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi receiving accolades for inventing such a life-saving device.

You can find further footage from the aftermath at the British Pathe’s archives.

Seven Famous People Who Missed the Titanic

Theodore Dreiser

The novelist, then 40, considered returning from his first European holiday aboard the Titanic; an English publisher talked him out of the plan, persuading the writer that taking another ship would be less expensive.

Dreiser was at sea aboard the liner Kroonland when he heard the news. He recalled his reaction the following year in his memoir, A Traveler at Forty: “To think of a ship as immense as the Titanic, new and bright, sinking in endless fathoms of water. And the two thousand passengers routed like rats from their berths only to float helplessly in miles of water, praying and crying!”

Guglielmo Marconi

The Italian inventor, wireless telegraphy pioneer and winner of the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics was offered free passage on Titanic but had taken the Lusitania three days earlier.

Although Marconi was later grilled by a Senate committee over allegations that his company’s wireless operators had withheld news from the public in order to sell information to the New York Times, he emerged from the disaster as one of its heroes, his invention credited with saving more than 700 lives.
Three years later, Marconi would narrowly escape another famous maritime disaster. He was on board the Lusitania in April 1915 on the voyage immediately before it was sunk by a German U-boat in May.

- See full article on Smithsonian -

Der naser keiver oder Churbon Titanic (The Titanic’s disaster)
Sheet Music; c. 1912 – Arrangement for Piano

The Kosher Deli Born of a Shipwreck – J.A.Hyman (Titanics) Ltd of Manchester

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Rick Spilman

This story is so unlikely that it must be true…

When the Collapsible Lifeboat C from the RMS Titanic was picked up by the Carpathia, of the 41 aboard, there were two very different men, though their names, by virtue of alphabetization are adjacent to each other on the list of survivors –  Joseph Abraham Hyman, 34, a third class passenger, and Joseph Bruce Ismay, the chairman of the White Star Line, traveling in first class.  Despite their difference in social standing, both reportedly help row the lifeboat.

The sinking of the Titanic ruined Ismay.  Joseph Hyman did somewhat better. He was traveling to visit his brother in in New Jersey to start a new life.

After arriving in America, however, Joseph Hyman decided to return to Britain. (It is said, understandably, that he required a sizable quantity of alcohol before he could bring himself to board another ship.)  On his return, he decided to set up a kosher delicatessen like the ones that he had seen in New York.  And that is exactly what he did. In 1913 he established J.A.Hyman – Kosher Butcher and Deli in Manchester, England.

Of course, it was never known as J.A.Hyman’s.  It was always called by its customers, Titanics…

- Keep reading on Old Salt Blog -

A photograph released by Henry Aldridge & Son/Ho Auction House in Wiltshire, Britain, 18 April 2008, shows an extremely rare Titanic passenger ticket. They were the auctioneers handling the complete collection of the last American Titanic Survivor Miss Lillian Asplund. The collection was comprised of a number of significant items including a pocket watch, one of only a handful of remaining tickets for the Titanic’s maiden voyage and the only example of a forward emigration order for the Titanic thought to exist. Lillian Asplund was a very private person and because of the terrible events she witnessed that cold April night in 1912 rarely spoke about the tragedy which claimed the lives of her father and three brothers. (Henry Aldridge & Son/Ho) #

Titanic at 100 years: The Big Picture on Boston.com

- TITANIC Belfast museum -

Titanic Belfast is a visitor attraction and a monument to Belfast’s maritime heritage on the site of the former Harland and Wolff shipyard in the city’s Titanic Quarter.

• Inside Titanic Belfast, BBC News 14 March 2012
• Titanic Belfast website

Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News
Published April 6, 2012

Titanic at 100: Be Among the Last to Dive to Wreck Site?

With increased access, ship’s survival is in jeopardy, advocates warn.

“I think one thing that captures people is a direct link to this almost mythological maritime character, the Titanic,” said Rob McCallum of Deep Ocean Expeditions, which holds exclusive charter for Titanic dives.

But summer 2012 is the first season since 2005 that Deep Ocean Expeditions has taken people to the Titanic—and it could be the last.

“For a variety of reasons, these are the last dives that the Deep Ocean Expeditions is going to do on Titanic,” said McCallum, whose company began diving to the Titanic in 1998. The outfitter also takes tourists to the Bismarck shipwreck, the North Pole, deep-sea hydrothermal vents, and other extreme sites.

“Our support ship is going into retirement soon, and the submersibles are going to go back into government work.”

keep reading

The Big Picture — Titanic’s port bow rail, chains and an auxiliary anchor boom. Dr. Robert Ballard, the man who found the remains of the Titanic nearly two decades ago, returned to the site and lamented damage done by visitors and souvenir hunters. (Institute for Archaeological Oceanography & Institute for Exploration/University of Rhode Island Grad. School of Oceanography) #

The Band Played “Nearer My God to Thee” As the Ship Went Down
Words by Mark Beam; Music by Harold Jones
for voice and piano, 1912

A few months ago, my girlfriend and I sat down to watch the best movie ever made about the Titanic – and no, I’m not referring to the one rereleased this past weekend in 3D.

I think the world is divided into two camps: those who love James Cameron’s Hollywood epic, and those who never want to hear the word Titanic again because of it…

• keep reading
• A Night to Remember (1958) on IMDb
• The TITANIC Movies – Complete List – From the Cinema to TV

Danish passenger liner SS Norge (wikipedia)

Leith Built Ships: April 2012; Titanic 100 years on

The ship was a converted livestock carrier carrying mostly Scandinavian’s but no famous or wealthy people on this vessel. The bit that really got to me about this story was the fact that after the disaster, J.B.Ismay, (chairman of the White Star Line) sent the owners of the Norge a telegraph to commiserate with them on the loss of the ship –  one ship owner to another — with no mention at all made of the huge loss of life…

Before the Titanic, this was the deadliest civilian maritime disaster on record. Danish passenger ship Norge (built 1891) left Copenhagen for New York City, but crashed into a reef near Rockall, an uninhabited island northwest of Scotland. Because its lifeboats could hold only a fraction of the nearly 800 passengers on board, more than 600 died. The 160 who did make it into lifeboats were afloat for a week before being rescued. (text source)

Titanic Museum; Pigeon Forge, Sevier County, TN

The Titanic Pigeon Forge is the world’s largest permanent Titanic Museum Attraction. There are over 400 personal and private artifacts on display that can be viewed during the 2 hour self-guided tour. The collection is valued at over four and a half million dollars.

Each visitor is given a boarding pass with the name of an actual Titanic passenger or crew member. At the end of the tour you will learn of your passenger’s fate.

- official web site -
- photo by Jerry Jaynes –

Titanic life vest fetches £43,000

One of the Titanic’s few remaining lifejackets has been sold to a private collector for £43,000 ($80,000).

The auction at Devizes in Wiltshire also featured dozens of letters sent by some of the 1,500 people who died when the ship sank in the Atlantic in 1912.

Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said most items sold for more than expected to collectors from around the world.

One letter, in which passenger Edward Colley wrote of an earlier near-miss with a liner, made £18,000, he said.

The Irish aristocrat who died on his 37th birthday, had poked fun at the service on board the ship in the letter.

The company did not want souvenir hunters, so a lot of things, including clothing, were put in big piles and burned…
Alan Aldridge, auctioneer

“He mentioned, for instance, that the ordinary grub in first class was quite good – but if you wanted anything better you had to pay for it,” said Mr Aldridge, who conducted the sale in south-west England…

- keep reading on encyclopedia titanica –
- image via pinterest -

Margaret Brown (right) giving Captain Arthur Henry Rostron an
award for his service in the rescue of the Titanic‘s survivors

The 13,564 ton RMS Carpathia was three days out of New York, heading for Gibraltar and a Mediterranean cruise when her radio operator picked up the Titanic’s distress calls.

The sinking liner’s position was fifty-eight miles to the north west of the Carpathia. With a top speed of fourteen knots, it would take the Carpathia four hours to reach the scene. Captain Arthur H. Rostron guided his ship at night through ice and reached the Titanic’s last reported position at 4.00 am. It had taken three-and-a-half hours – thirty minutes quicker than estimated.

As day broke, he saw the Titanic’s lifeboats scattered over a four-mile area of sea. The Carpathia returned to New York on 18th April with all the survivors.

Tributes were heaped on Captain Rostron – scrolls, loving cups, testimonial dinners – and a medal honouring him was struck by the U. S. Congress. But the strangest ‘thank you’ gift of all came from Margaret Brown; an item that remained in the possession of Captain Rostron until his death in 1940.

- Servant of the Deep: The mystery of the Titanic Shabti -

Jaime Brockett & The Legend Of The Titanic

An interesting piece from 1968. Bizarre, humorous, almost psychotic at times…

Jaime Brockett (pronounced “Jamie”) is a memorable and uniquely stylish New England folksinger. As the Boston Globe described him, Jaime is a “hard-core, unregenerated folkie.”

His popularity soared, as a recording artist and performer, starting in the 1960s, when his version of Legend of the USS Titanic became an overnight classic.

Despite the song’s length — over three minutes, an extraordinarily long recording for that era — radio stations made time to play it anyway…

read more

You Tube: 1970 Capitol reissue of the Oracle Records release

- “Damn, I knew we forgot something” -

- House flag, White Star Line; National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London -

Some more misc. stuff:

• Crane at Harland and Wolf
• Souvenir image of the launching of the RMS Titanic
• titanicrecounts’s Blog
• http://www.titanicuniverse.com/

Monkey Fist

Monkey Fist is a smack-talking, potty mouthed, Yankee hating, Red Sox fan in Baltimore, Maryland. In addition to compiling Maritime Monday, she blogs about nautical art, history, and marine science on Adventures of the Blackgang.

Submit story ideas, news links, photographs, or items of interest to her at MM@gcaptain.com. She can also out-belch any man.

1862: Civil War ironclads stage the first sea battle in naval history between armor-plated vessels.

By Tony Long

The battle took place at Hampton Roads, Virginia, where a day earlier the CSS Virginia (known popularly as the Merrimack, her name when she had been a frigate in the pre-war U.S. fleet) savaged the Union blockade squadron anchored there. The Union guns proved ineffective against the armor plating protecting the Confederate marauder, allowing the ironclad to move in close and even ram and sink a ship. The Virginia was returning at daybreak to finish off the Union fleet when the ungainly looking USS Monitor showed up to engage it.

- keep reading -

Battle of Lissa (1866)

(sometimes called Battle of Vis) took place on 20 July 1866 in the Adriatic Sea near the Dalmatian island of Lissa (“Vis” in Croatian) and was a decisive victory for an outnumbered Austrian Empire force over a superior Italian force.

It was the first major sea battle between ironclads and one of the last to involve deliberate ramming. (wiki)

right: postcard of memorial commemorating the Battle of Lissa

In a dramatically simplified lithograph by Kapp, Ferdinand Max watches close by as the
Re d’Italia up-ends into the blue Adriatic. super enlarged view

- image source; above and below -

Contemporary painting by Eduard Nezbeda shows the Kaiser ramming the Re di Portogallo. The wooden ship lost her foremast and funnel to raking fire from the U.S.-built Italian ship.

With the Austrian two-decker’s figurehead still embedded in her hull, the Italian managed to escape in the smoke while the Kaiser backed off for another go. The Portogallo retreated to Ancona with the rest of the Italian fleet and resumed duty after repairs.

Another veteran of Lissa, the 1,724-ton wooden screw corvette Erzherzog Friedrich was launched in April 1857. With her light draft she was able to operate close in to shore or in shoal waters anywhere. This proved helpful in her later career as a scientific exploration ship of the Austrian Navy. This photo was taken in 1873, seven years after the battle. -source

Battle of Lissa, painting by Anton Romako, 1880
Full resolution‎ (1,576 × 2,017 pixels)

On July 20, 1866, near the island of Vis (Lissa) in the Adriatic, the Austrian fleet, under the command of Rear-Admiral Wilhelm von Tegetthoff, made its name in the modern era at the Battle of Lissa during the Third Italian War of Independence. The battle pitted Austrian naval forces against the naval forces of the newly created Kingdom of Italy. It was a decisive victory for an outnumbered Austrians over a superior Italian force, and was the first major European sea battle involving ships using iron and steam, and one of the last to involve large wooden battleships. more on wiki

- more: Full Statistics on the Ships that Fought at Lissa -

- more: Essay on the Evolution of the Ram in Steam Navies -

also: Faces of 150-year-old sailors reconstructed

Forensic anthropologists have reconstructed the faces of two sailors whose skulls were recovered from the USS Monitor which sank 150 years ago.

Originally discovered by Navy divers during the recovery of the gun turret from the ocean floor in 2002, the remains were retrieved by archaeologist Eric Emery of the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii during the excavation.

- above: photo from a friend who sampled ICEBERG from Titanic Brewery in England -

As we approach the one hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, your humble author has noticed a good amount of Titanic-related news on the web this week.  Included below, a sampling — in no particular order.

Images of sunken Titanic released for first time

Kirk Wolfinger, top left, Rushmore DeNooyer, and Tony Bacon of the Lone Wolf Documentary Group, pose at an editing station Thursday, March 8, 2010, in South Portland, Maine.

The editors are putting the final touches on a History Channel documentary about the mapping of the 3-by-5-mile debris field of the Titanic on the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean.

(AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

This composite image, released by RMS Titanic Inc., and made from sonar and more than 100,000 photos taken in 2010 from by unmanned, underwater robots, shows a small portion of a comprehensive map of the 3-by-5-mile debris field surrounding the stern of the Titanic on the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean.

- more -

Did the Moon Conspire to Bring Down the Titanic?

It will be 100 years next month since its tragic sinking on April 14, 1912, but the Titanic continues to haunt us and definitely still has the mojo to get people buzzing. The latest news comes courtesy of the April 2012 issue of Sky & Telescope, in which our favorite “forensic astronomer,” Texas State University, San Marcos’ Donald Olson, presents his hypothesis on how the moon might have contributed to the ocean liner’s demise…

So what does the moon have to with all this? It all comes down to tides and the moon’s influence thereof. Specifically, on Jan. 4, 1912, there was a rare alignment of the moon and sun, such that the two bodies’ gravitational pulls added together to produce a “spring tide” — abnormally high tides.

It’s a hypothesis first predicted by the late oceanographer Fergus J. Wood, according to the TSU press release; Olson and his team finally determined how this might have come about. Specifically, the moon was at its closet to the Earth in some 1,400 years (the perigee), an effect that was exacerbated because the Earth had also been at its closest approach to the sun the day before.

Olson figured it wouldn’t be helpful to check to see if the higher tides led to more glacial caving in Greenland, the source of most of the icebergs in that region. The icebergs needed time to float down to the shipping lanes and get in the direct path of the Titanic…

- more -

Why the Titanic Still Fascinates Us
By Andrew Wilson

As the Carpathia sailed into New York—on the stormy night of Thursday, April 18—it was surrounded by a mass of tiny vessels, all chartered by news corporations desperate to break what would be one of the biggest stories of modern times. From their tugs, reporters shouted through megaphones offering terrific sums of money for information and exclusives, but Captain Rostron said he would shoot any pressmen who dared venture aboard his ship.

However, one of his original passengers, Carlos F. Hurd, was a veteran journalist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and over the course of the past four days he had spoken to many survivors, amassing enough information for a 5,000-word story. Hurd’s only problem was how to get the report off the ship.

- See Full Article -
- Explore more photos from the story -

Pints and Pubs; from beer to eternity; Titanic Brewery

I recently had a drop of Titanic Iceberg at The Shroppie Fly, on the banks of the Shropshire Canal at Audlem. A fantastic canal-side pub, with half of a barge forming the bar, and a fantastic beer 4.1%, bubbling with cascade hoppiness…

more

rt: Brewery boss Keith Bott

Managing director Keith Bott bought Titanic with his brother Dave from the receivers in 1988.

It now employs 20 people at Callender Place and a further 130 at its six North Staffordshire pubs. Production has risen from just seven barrels a week to around 2.3 million pints of beer a year.

“In the last three years our workforce has gone from 30 or 40 to 150, and we’ve taken on three more people at the brewery this year.”

Keith bought Titanic Brewery at the age of 21, having worked for the previous owner, John Pazio.

As recently as 2007, Titanic had just one pub but has now opened its sixth, the Roebuck Hotel in Leek. Its other venues are the Bulls Head, in Burslem, the Greyhound, in Newcastle, the White Star, in Stoke, the Royal Exchange, in Stone, and the Sun Inn, Stafford.

- more on This is Stafforshire -

- Titanic Brewery on wikipedia -

- Titanic Brewery at Stoke-on-Trent (website) -

left: MARCO POLO – Orient Lines — right: BALMORAL (Fred Olsen Line)

Atlantique-nord
has a post about some special events planned to commemorate the anniversary

For the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS TITANIC various things are planned:

- A cruise of the passenger ship BALMORAL of the company Fred Olsen Line from Southampton will make 100 years after the wreck exactly the same route

- At the same moment another cruise will take place aboard the passenger ship MARCO POLO of the company Orient Lines leaving Tilbury (London) for Southampton, Liverpool and Belfast

- Without forgetting the opening to the Museum Cité_de_ la_ Mer in Cherbourg of a new space dedicated to ” RMS TITANIC ” and to transatlantic migrants….

- The movie ” Titanic ” made by James Cameron who knew an exceptional world success is going to be on screen again in 3D for the anniversary of the sinking…

- more -

Titanic has just left Southampton and is sailing in front of Isle of Wight – 1912 april 8th

Titanic enters port of Cherbourg 1912 april 8th

House flag, White Star Line; National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

It’s been 70 years since Japan attacked the U.S. military base at Pearl Harbor, the single catastrophic event that launched the United States into World War II.  Today we remember December 7th, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy.

"Damaged ships after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The USS Cassin (DD-372) and the USS Downes (DD-375) in drydock no.1", image courtesy U.S. Naval Academy Museum Collection

"Divers are shown here removing powder from magazines of the battleship Arizona. The Arizona was damaged in the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.", image courtesy U.S. Naval Academy Museum Collection

RIP shipmates.

Today marks the 36th anniversary of the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, the Great Lakes freighter that sank in a strong gale on eastern Lake Superior resulting in the loss of all 29 of its crew.  Today, the November 10, 1975 sinking remains the Great Lakes regions most famous and mysterious maritime disaster.  To learn more about her story, just listen above to the lyrics in Gordon Lightfoot’s famous song, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Another good writeup can be found at failure magazine, HERE.

Do any Great Lakes guys remember her sinking?  We’d like to hear your stories in the comments section below.

Some of you may remember a cartoon which appeared during World War I, a drawing showing an inquisitive stranger talking with the gateman at a railway crossing. The gate was painted with the usual black and white stripes, and lying on the river beyond the tracks was a steamer painted with similar markings. The stranger asked, “Why do they paint the stripes on the gate?” And the gateman answered, “Oh, that’s to make them more visible.”

And then the stranger asked, “Well, why do they paint the stripes on the vessel out there?” And the gateman replied, “Oh, that’s to make the ship less visible.”

-Everett Warner [paraphrased from his lecture notes]

A ships in costume, gCaptain brings you Razzle Dazzle; history’s most unusually painted ship. What is Razzle Dazzle? GoTouring.com tells us;

During World War I, the British and Americans faced a serious threat from German U-boats. All attempts to camouflage ships at sea had failed, as the appearance of the sea and sky are always changing.  Any color scheme that was concealing in one situation was conspicuous in others. A British artist and naval officer, Norman Wilkinson, promoted a new camouflage scheme that was derived from the artistic fashions of the time, particularly cubism. Instead of trying to conceal the ship, it simply broke up its lines and made it more difficult for the U-boat captain to determine the ship’s course. The British called this camouflage scheme “Dazzle Painting.” The Americans called it “Razzle Dazzle.”

Artists were enlisted to draw up the camouflage designs. Early in the war, designs were drawn for individual ships, with each ship having its own distinctive pattern. As the war progressed, standard patterns were devised and applied to large numbers of ships. Even the great passenger liners were camouflaged for the duration of the War.

It is unfortunate that there are no color photographs of these WWI ships. People who witnessed convoys of dazzle painted ships reported that the scene was quite dramatic. Imagine sailing across the North Atlantic surrounded by dozens of brightly painted ships, each in different colors and patterns. If you compare the colored drawing with the black and white photograph of the ship “War Clover”, you can get an idea of how much we are missing. Read More…

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The problem confronting a submarine, once his prey has been sighted, resolves itself solely into estimating course and speed of the target, in order to determine how the approach to torpedo fire position should be made. The “dazzle” system of painting is based on this one consideration and that is, of rendering the problem confronting a submarine more difficult, confusing him as to how his approach shall be made and thereby adding in some degree to the safety of the vessel attacked.

U.S. Admiral William S. Sims (1917)

Camopedia has this amazing information on the World War I design team assigned to the project;

ONE METHOD camoufleurs might have used (but did not, apparently) to generate a large number of unique dazzle schemes is the stencil method.

It is indebted to American artist Abbott Handerson Thayer (1849-1921), sometimes called “the father of camouflage,” who (circa 1909) devised a clever, easy way for individuals to design their own camouflage, using cut-out silhouettes.

Whatever the surrounding, said Thayer, a person “has only to cut out a stencil of the soldier, ship, cannon or whatever figure he wishes to conceal, and look through this stencil from the viewpoint under consideration, to learn just what costume from that viewpoint would most tend to conceal this figure.” However, the purpose of dazzle camouflage was confusion, not concealment, so, in the examples below, we have used the silhouette as a mask with which to “find” valuable dazzle designs in an abstract, geometric plan. In studies of human vision, Gestalt psychologists and others have investigated embedded figures or “puzzle pictures” (Wolfgang Köhler called them “camouflaged figures”) in which a simple shape has been adroitly hidden within a larger, more complex surrounding.

In pre-computer days, one could make arbitrary compositions in art by overlapping “systems” on layers of tracing paper, viewed on a light table. Today, it is ever so easy to do the same thing (and much more) by using the “layers” function in software such as Adobe Photoshop. This could have been useful as a way to generate dazzle designs, had all that been available in World War I.

If you are looking for more information on this topic be sure to read things magazine‘s extensive ship camouflage links section.

Technicans navigate the ROV around the sunken World War II tanker S.S. Montebello, Oct. 12, 2011. Photo by NOAA Robert Schwemmer

After 11 days of survey and sampling using both the latest in technology and physical sampling, no oil remains were found on the sunken World War II tanker, SS Montebello.

An on-scene assessment conducted by the Coast Guard and California Department of Fish and Game’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response of the tanker, which happens to be located just miles from gCaptain’s hometown of Morro Bay, California, has determined that there is no substantial oil threat from the Montebello to the surrounding waters and shorelines.

The S.S. Montebello sank after a Japanese submarine torpedoed the large oil tanker on December 23, 1941. The vessel broke apart landing upright with her bow separated from the majority of the wreckage. At the time of sinking no release of the 3.2 million gallon cargo was observed.

Over the past few days Global Diving & Salvage, working under the direction of the unified command , has assessed cargo and fuel tanks as well as collected ocean floor sediment samples. “Our number one objective for this mission was to determine what threat, if any, the Montebello poses to the waters and shorelines of California,” said Coast Guard Capt. Roger Laferriere. “After careful evaluation of the data, we have concluded with a high level of confidence that there is no oil threat from the S.S. Montebello.”

With the assistance of its Cougar XT ROV Global combined visual and sonar imaginary into 3D models of the vessel. These models where then combined with data from thickness gauging, backscatter tooling, samples of the tank contents  and nearby sediment to determine the results.

“Knowing that this wreck does not pose a significant pollution threat is great news”, says Devon Grennan, President of Global Diving & Salvage, Inc. “The combination of the latest technology, sound planning and project management, excellent collaboration between Federal, State and private enterprise shows the possibilities in investigating these deep water wrecks and the ability to determine the pollution potential.

“This is a new era of prevention,” said DFG OSPR Capt. Chris Graff. “This has been a cooperative partnership using cutting-edge technology and surgical precision. The procedures and techniques used could help conduct threat assessments on other sunken vessels.”

Solitude at Sea

Three years, 30,000 miles

Reviewed by John Rousmaniere, edited by Gene Epstein, Barrons

Anybody hoping for a happier second act in life will find inspiration—as well as caution—in the story of Captain Joshua Slocum (1844-1908). Praised by Theodore Roosevelt as the hero “who takes his little boat, without any crew but himself, all around the world,” Slocum stimulated thousands to change their lives with his 1900 book, Sailing Alone Around the World, which recounts that adventure.

That Geoffrey Wolff tells this story knowledgably and sympathetically should be no surprise. He is, after all, the author of The Duke of Deception, Black Sun and other books about tipping points in the male ego. Wolff is also a fine writer who understands how another fine writer could produce one of the very best books ever about going to sea.

Slocum initially went to sea not for romance, but to escape his father’s beatings and the tiny Nova Scotia island of his childhood. For years he thrived as a captain of commercial sailing ships. But by his fortieth birthday, steam was supplanting sail, so he lost his livelihood. Then he lost his wife—the only person who ever loved and understood him. At 50 years old, the former clipper-ship captain was working on shore as a carpenter when a friend offered him an ancient and decrepit 37-foot fishing sloop. As Slocum rebuilt Spray, he devised a daring plan.

Ever since Magellan, large crews of sailors had been sailing around the world for cash. Slocum, already the accomplished author of short pieces, would make the trip alone and sell his words about it. This scheme led to a great voyage and a masterpiece of maritime writing.

Before setting out, Slocum faced two crucial questions: Was Spray up to the job? Was he? Without another sailor, Spray would have to steer itself for days on end. Unsure that this was possible, Slocum kept delaying his departure. After he finally got under way, in July 1895, Spray showed a wondrous ability to steer any course without his hand on the wheel. Modern boats are as flighty as butterflies; Spray was as steady as a whale.

But could her skipper cope with the loneliness? He confessed that loneliness first got to him when he dreamed up the ghost of an old seaman who identified himself as a pilot of Columbus and assured Slocum that all was well. After that, wrote Slocum, “The acute pain of solitude experienced at first never returned.” He was a contented man as he sailed through the Straits of Magellan to Australia, and then to South Africa and home. Like so many solitary men, Slocum found it a little too easy to cross the line from the social world to the lonely world. Loneliness was his identity. He credited it for his fame and success, bragging that his navigation was precise because he had no shipmate to distract him.

After three years and 30,000 miles, Slocum’s journey was over. But he loved solitude too much to be at home on land. Happy only at sea, unable to resume domesticity with his second wife, he sold himself cheap as a sideshow exhibit at the Buffalo World’s Fair and spent his winters in the West Indies, collecting conch shells to sell to American yachtsmen. He reached bottom when a scandal involving a girl ended with a term in a New Jersey jail.

Ironically, as Slocum the man declined, his reputation only grew. Even after the sex scandal, President Roosevelt sent his son Archie off sailing with Slocum in Spray for a tutorial in heroic manliness.

Yet that one word, alone, at the heart of his reputation, also undermined him for keeps. In 1908, lonelier than ever, he sailed off in Spray and vanished in the Atlantic.

JOHN ROUSMANIERE’s maritime books include Fastnet, Force 10, After the Storm and The Annapolis Book of Seamanship.