TheBoySaunders.com

The Titanic Was Retarded

Titanic

The news that the last Titanic survivor with actual memories of the sinking died last week made me think. And thinking normally makes me angry.

Why, instead of sitting back and drinking cognac whilst the band played on, didn’t the passengers simply make rafts? They only had to hold together for a couple of hours before The Lusitania rocked up and saved everybody. The Titanic was a ship. A ruddy big one, granted, but that probably means it contained even more things that float!

According to the Encylopedia Titanica there was a two hour, forty minute gap between the iceberg hitting the ship and it’s eventual sinking. Surely almost three hours is long enough to lash a couple of tables together with lifejackets and make serviceable rafts for lots of people? Also, take into account the fact that The Titanic was crammed full of engineers, ship-builders, millionaires and so-on and so-forth… surely one of them would have had the common sense to try and save their own lives instead of humming along to ‘Nearer My God to Thee?’

Maybe this way we’d have been spared that God-awful Celine Dion song?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006 at 5:56 am and is filed under Stuff What Angers the Blood. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “The Titanic Was Retarded”

Graham Says:
May 24th, 2006 at 12:05 am
Have you ever tried to make a raft, monkey boy? Doubt it!
JC Says:
July 4th, 2006 at 10:26 am
To be incredibly anal about it the problem so much is not building the raft but firstly launching it then reaching it once its launched then avoiding the suction from all the water rushing in after the ship has sunk then surviving in the icy cold water and conditions. As you can see its not just the case of lashing together a few cases and sitting on it.
Phil Saunders Says:
July 4th, 2006 at 11:06 am
And to be equally anal:

* As seen in the film ‘Titanic’ (which, I’m told by a mildly obsessed friend, is extremely accurate), the Titanic lay very low in the water for quite some time. There would have been ample opportunity to launch boats and get clear of the suction. In fact, according to Wikipedia “the last two lifeboats floated right off the deck, collapsible lifeboat B upside down, and collapsible lifeboat A half-filled with water”. Survivors then climbed aboard these lifeboats and survived.

* Again, according to Wikipedia “The majority of deaths were caused by victims succumbing to hypothermia in the 28 °F (−2 °C) water”. Thus, the suction (described “not severe”) can’t have posed too much of a danger.

* The first lifeboat was picked up 1 hour and 50 minutes after the Titanic sunk. The only recorded fatalities in this time were of people who had been picked up after long exposure to the water.

I reiterate: The Titanic was retarded.

The Titanic Was Retarded

3 Responses to “The Titanic Was Retarded”

Leave a Reply