Nikole Stewart
The Titanic is a well-known and heartbreaking event in history. Thanks to the beloved classic movie and a lot of conspiracy theories surrounding the incident, a lot of facts are known about the disaster; however, there are a few chilling facts about the Titanic disaster that you might not be aware of. Here’s a bit more detail about the tragic event.
5. Potential Rescue
The SS Californian has constantly been up for debate on whether it could have helped the Titanic. The ship was just 20 miles away and stopped to avoid the ice. When he saw the Titanic’s flares, he ignored them, thinking that they were “company rockets.” The SOS signals wouldn’t be received until the next morning, when the radio operator had gone to sleep. But even still, the Californian could only carry 219 people in total, which is extremely less than the 2,200 people on the Titanic.
4. Most Bodies Were Never Found
Out of the over 2,000 people on the Titanic, it’s said that about 1,000 passengers were never found. In fact, only about 300 bodies were able to be recovered after the disaster. One of the biggest things that was noticed when retrieving bodies was that first-class passengers were more likely to survive, or at least have their bodies recovered, than the rest of the passengers. But when trying to find the other passengers, many believe they’re still inside the ship. And while 190 of the retrieved bodies were brought to Halifax for burial, many were buried at sea.
3. Author’s Prediction
A 1898 author, Morgan Robertson, published Futility, later retitled The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futility, a novella that tells the story of the Titan, a fictional British passenger liner that was boasted to be “unsinkable,” but hits an iceberg and sinks, leaving only 13 survivors. And in 1912, the Titanic seems eerily familiar. One of the most chilling facts about the Titanic is that the situation was actually predicted about 15 years before. Robertson would later be called clairvoyant, which he rejected.
2. Most Children Didn’t Survive
While women and children were the first on many lifeboats, the outcome for children wasn’t good. The Titanic carried about 128 children 14 and under, and unfortunately, 61 died during the disaster, most of them being third-class passengers. The only first-class child to die was Lorraine Allison, who died while her family was searching for her, since she was placed in a lifeboat by their nursemaid. Sidney Goodwin was one of the youngest children and was known as the “Unknown Child” for decades until the invention of modern DNA testing in 2007.
1. Misinterpreted Policy
The biggest, most chilling fact about the Titanic disaster was that during the evacuation. There were so many things happening that made the situation much worse. For instance, the policy of women and children first meant that a lot of men were refused on the lifeboat, even when there was still room. The policy was implemented to ensure women and children were made a priority, not to refuse men a chance at surviving. Because of this, lifeboats often had leftover room. This caused over 1,400 men to die during the event.