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I have always been intrigued by the Titanic, but my interest boomed with the recent development in how the side of the ship was damaged. I was amazed that instead of causing a gaping wound, as was previously believed, the iceberg that Titanic hit merely caused a series of small rips in the side of the ship. Sonar was used to determine that the side of the ship had six small slits that were no bigger than a single hand (web). This research amazed me because of the amount of water that passed through the small slits in the hull. I was always interested in ships, but the mystery that surrounded the Titanic sinking caused me to choose it for my senior project. At our first meeting (May 29, 1997), Mrs.
Ferguson mentioned that I should try to incorporate my creative writing abilities into the project. Together, we came up with writing fictional diary entries for real passengers. My intent was to bring the people of the doomed liner to life through their thoughts throughout the trip. I chose which passengers diaries I would write and then heavily researched each of these individuals.
The craze from the movie Titanic made getting information difficult but I was able to gather the facts I needed from the Internet as well as books and documents from the library. After researching the people, I adapted their personas and attempted to write a close facsimile to what I believe their diaries would have resembled. RMS Titanic was the last grand dream of the Gilded Age. It was designed to be the greatest achievement of an era of prosperity, confidence, and propriety. The old presumptions about class, morals, and gender-roles were about to be shattered. If the concept of Titanic was the climax of the age, then perhaps its sinking was the curtain that marked the end of the old drama and the start of a new one.
The intensely competitive transatlantic steamship business had seen recent major advances in ship design, size and speed. White Star Line, one of the leaders, was determined to focus on size and elegance rather than pure speed. In 1907, White Star Line's managing director, J. Bruce Ismay, and Lord James Pierre, a partner in Harland & Wolff, conceived of a vision of three magnificent steam ships which would set a new standard for comfort, elegance, and safety. The first two were to be named Olympic and Titanic, the latter name chosen by Ismay to convey a sense of overwhelming size and strength. It took one year to design the two ships.
Construction of Olympic started in December, 1908, followed by Titanic in March, 1909. The Belfast shipyards of Harland & Wolff had to be re-designed to accommodate the immense projects while White Star's pier in New York had to be lengthened to enable the ships to dock. During the two years it took to complete Titanic's hull, the press was loaded with publicity about the ship's magnificence, making Titanic virtually a legend before her launch. The "launch" of the completed steel in May, 1911, was a heavily publicized spectacle. Tickets were sold to benefit a local children's hospital. Titanic was then taken for "fitting out" which involved the construction of the ship's many facilities and systems, her elaborate woodwork and fine decor.
As the date of her maiden voyage approached, the completed Olympic suffered a collision and required extensive repairs, increasing the workload at Harland & Wolff, which was already struggling to complete Titanic on schedule. Titanic's maiden voyage was delayed from March 20 to April 10. Titanic was 883 feet long (1 / 6 of a mile), 92 feet wide, and weighed 46, 328 tons. She was 104 feet tall from keel to bridge, almost 35 feet of which were below the waterline. There were three real smoke-stacks; a fourth, dummy stack was added largely to increase the impression of her gargantuan size and power and to vent smoke from her numerous kitchens and galleys. She was the largest movable object ever made by man.
She was designed to be a marvel of modern safety technology. She had a double-hull of one-inch thick steel plates and a heavily publicized system of sixteen water-tight compartments, sealed by massive doors which could be instantly triggered by a single electric switch on the bridge or even automatically triggered by electric water-sensors. The press branded her "unsinkable" (Spignesi, Stephen). Her accommodations were the most modern and luxurious on any ocean and included electric light and heat in every room, electric elevators, a swimming pool, a squash court, a Turkish Bath, a gymnasium with a mechanical horse and mechanical camel to keep riders fit, and staterooms and first class facilities to rival the best hotels on the Continent (Spignesi, Stephen).
First class passengers would glide down a six-story, glass-domed grand staircase to enjoy haute cuisine in the sumptuous first class dining saloon that filled the width of the ship on D Deck. For those who desired a more intimate atmosphere, Titanic also offered a stately la carte restaurant, the chic Palm Court and Verandah restaurant, and the festive Cafe Parisian. She offered two musical ensembles of the best musicians on the Atlantic, many of them lured from rival liners. There were two libraries, first- and second-class. Even the third class cabins were more luxurious than the first class cabins on some lesser steamships and boasted amenities that some of Titanic's immigrant passengers had not enjoyed in their own homes (Spignesi, Stephen). The original design called for 32 lifeboats.
However, White Star management felt that the boat-deck would look cluttered, and reduced the number to 20, for a total life-boat capacity of 1178. This actually exceeded the regulations of the time, even though Titanic was capable of carrying over 3500 people (passengers and crew). The maiden voyage lured the "very best people: British nobility, American industrialists, the very cream of New York and Philadelphia society. It also attracted many poor immigrants, hoping to start a new life in America or Canada. The journey began at Southampton on Wednesday, April 10, 1912, at noon. By sundown, Titanic had stopped in Cherbourg, France to pick up additional passengers.
That evening she sailed for Queenstown, Ireland, and at 1: 30 PM on Thursday, April 11, she headed out into the Atlantic. The weather was pleasant and clear, and the water temperature was about 55 degrees Fahrenheit. The winter of 1912 had been unusually mild, and unprecedented amounts of ice had broken loose from the arctic regions. Titanic was equipped with Marconi's new wireless telegraph system and her two Marconi operators kept the wireless room running 24 hours a day.
On Sunday, April 14, the fifth day at sea, Titanic received five different ice-warnings, but the captain was not overly concerned. The ship steamed ahead at 22 knots, and the line's Managing Director J. Bruce Ismay relished the idea of arriving in New York a day ahead of schedule. On the night of April 14, wireless operator Phillips was very busy sending chatty passengers messages to Cape Race, Newfoundland. He received a sixth ice-warning that night but did not realize how close Titanic was to the position of the warning, and he put that message under a paperweight at his elbow. It never reached Captain Smith or the officer on the bridge.
The sea was unusually calm and flat, "like glass" said many survivors. The lack of waves made it even more difficult to spot icebergs, since there was no telltale white water breaking at the edges of the bergs. At 11: 40, a lookout in the crow's nest spotted an iceberg dead ahead. He notified the bridge and First Officer Murdoch ordered the ship turned hard to port.
He signaled the engine room to reverse direction, full astern. The ship turned slightly, but it was too large, moving too fast, and the iceberg was too close. Thirty-seven seconds later, the greatest maritime disaster in history began. During that night of heroism, terror and tragedy, 705 lives were saved, 1502 lives were lost, and many legends were born (Spignesi, Stephen). Late on April 14, 1912, in the icy Atlantic, RMS Titanic hit an iceberg and sank, resulting in the loss of more than one thousand five hundred lives. RMS Titanic had been deemed unsinkable by the newspapers, and many said that God himself could not sink the Titanic.
As though she were doomed from the beginning, she was appropriately named Titanic. The titans dared to challenge the gods, and for their arrogance, they were cast down into hell. Much like the titans, Harland and Wolff, the builders, dared to challenge Mother Nature. After the tragic loss of more than one thousand lives, all ships traveling the seas were forced to carry enough lifeboats for all passengers and crew on board.
However, it was too late for the majority on the Titanic. The steerage, also known as the third class, were the largest percentage of passengers and were in the lower decks, furthest from the lifeboats. They were the bulk of those lost, but every life aboard the RMS Titanic was permanently altered in the moment the majestic ocean liner skidded past an iceberg. Most passengers did not live to tell what they experienced in the days at sea preceding the collision, the atmosphere of panic that surrounded the ship when it was realized that the Titanic would founder, or the feeling of one thousand bodies hitting icy water at two a. m. Circumstances allowed Joseph Groves Boxhall, Margaret Molly Tobin Brown, Lawrence Beesley, and Anna McGowan to survive the sinking and the exposure to the cold (Hyslop et al. ).
Joseph Groves Boxhall was born in Hull, Yorkshire in 1884 and had been at sea for thirteen years prior to joining the Titanic, five of which had been with the White Star Line (web). Boxhall was the fourth officer on the Titanic, and one of his duties on board was to chart the ships position (Kuntz 129). He was on duty at the time of the collision with the iceberg, and Captain Smith ordered him to inspect the ship for damage. Boxhall went as low as possible in the passenger sections and found no damage. However, when he found the carpenter, he was notified that the ship was taking on water and that the mail room was flooding. After inspecting the rest of the ship with Captain Smith, Mr.
Andrews, the architect from Harland & Wolff, and Officer Wilde, Boxhall recalculated the position of the ship. The position he calculated was based on sights and estimated speed. The Titanic's position was 41 degrees 46 north, 50 degrees 14 west. Boxhall then waited impatiently for Quartermaster Rowe to come with rockets so they could begin shooting them off the bridge as a signal (Lynch). He and Rowe began pulling out socket signals and the mortars from where they were fired.
Just before 1 AM he sent the last distress signal 600 ft. into the air. He commented that upon reaching the top of its trajectory, it exploded and a dozen white stars drifted downward (Garrison 162). It was Boxhall who spotted the mysterious ship in the distance, also known as the California. He saw a boat about five to ten miles away and tried to contact it with Morse code but got no response.
During the US Senate inquiries into the Titanic tragedy, Boxhall testified that he did not see much reluctance to get in the lifeboats or anxiety on the ship. He was put in charge of Lifeboat Two which was one of the last lifeboats to leave the doomed ship. While still aboard the Titanic, Boxhall talked to Bruce Ismay, who asked him why he was not getting people into the boats and leaving. Boxhall responded that the boats crew was ready and could go into the water but that they had to wait for the captains orders.
Lifeboat Two was pretty full and because of their late departure, they were only about half a mile away from Titanic when it sank. Boxhall testified that there was a little suction but that he did not see the Titanic go under. After the sinking, he pulled around to where the ships stern was because he thought he could take three more people but was unable to find anyone in the water. During the hours between the sinking and the arrival of the Carpithia it was Boxhall's duty to continue showing a green pyrotechnic light so that the lifeboats could stay together and so that the rescue ship would be able to find them (Kuntz). Once the Carpithia arrived, Lifeboat Two was the first to be picked up.
Once aboard the Carpithia, Boxhall was taken to the bridge and, when asked if the ship had gone down, told Rostron, the captain of the Carpithia, Yes... She went down about 2: 30 He quickly began detailing what happened until Rostron interrupted, Were many people left on aboard when she sank? Hundreds and hundreds! Perhaps a thousand! Perhaps more! Boxhall burst out emotionally.
My God, sir, Theyve gone down with her. They couldnt live in this icy cold water (Lynch 150). After arriving in New York, Boxhall joined the Royal Navy and retired from the sea in 1940. In 1958 he acted as a technical advisor on A Night to Remember, a movie adaptation of Walter Lords book about the sinking of the Titanic.
Boxhall died in 1967 whereupon his ashes were spread in the area Titanic sank (Lynch 222). Margaret Tobin was born July 18, 1867, in Hannibal, Missouri. She was the daughter of a poor Irish immigrant, John Tobin, who immigrated to America in 1823, finally settling in Hannibal, Missouri. She met her future husband, JJ, in 1886, and, after a brief courtship, they were married on September 1, 1886. Molly was nineteen, twelve years his junior. They lived in Leadville in a small, two-room log cabin, and the following year Molly gave birth to her first child Lawrence Palmer Brown.
Two years after that birth Molly gave birth to her second and last child, Catherine Ellen. A few years later, JJ Brown started mining to search for more silver deposits. After a year of mining JJ made a great deal of money. In 1894 they moved to Denver and bought a $ 30, 000 mansion in Denver's wealthy Capitol Hill neighborhood.
Brown was 27 -years-old, and she found herself unsatisfied just being Mrs. JJ Brown, mother of two. She wanted to be a society woman of stature. Molly wore the most expensive clothes in Denver.
Most were designed for her in Paris. Molly and JJ had their own box at the opera, and when the Browns arrived at the theater, the entire audience looked up toward their box. They were also noted for the lavish parties they gave at their home and their lengthy trips to Europe. JJ grew tired of all this social climbing, but Molly continued to climb the social ladder without him. This began their estrangement which continued until JJ's death.
In 1912, Brown was on one of her many European tours when she received word that her grandson was ill...
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