98 years ago today....

[Vassili Zaitzev]

At 11:45 PM on April 14th, the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg sailing to New York in the North Atlantic. The ship sank 2 1/2 hours later, at 2:20 AM on April 15th. Approxmitaley 1500 people died during the disaster, while close to 705 survived. While not the most horrific shipwreck, she is certainly the most famous, and led to a number of changes in ship safety.

To all those lost that terrible night.

 

[beaupower32]

 

[Ferdinand Foch]

Nice job VZ.

 

[RabidAlien]

 

[Trebor]

whoa, I had forgotten about this.

 

[Aaron Brooks Wolters]

 

[Vassili Zaitzev]

Almost slipped my mind too Trebor.

 

[wheelsup_cavu]

Wheels

 

[Njaco]

A Night to Remember. One of the most important changes was the introduction of the S.O.S. code.

 

[imalko]

Watched the documentary about the sinking last night on History channel. They said that out of 1500 people lost only 328 bodies were recovered and buried in Canada. Many of them were never identified, so their grave stones are marked with numbers only. Last living survivor of Titanic disaster is an old lady which was 10 months old baby at the time. Her father died that night, but she and her mother were saved. They were third class passengers.

 

[Pong]

 

[Lucky13]

 

[Gnomey]

 

[wheelsup_cavu]

Watched the documentary about the sinking last night on History channel. They said that out of 1500 people lost only 328 bodies were recovered and buried in Canada. Many of them were never identified, so their grave stones are marked with numbers only. Last living survivor of Titanic disaster is an old lady which was 10 months old baby at the time. Her father died that night, but she and her mother were saved. They were third class passengers.

Millvina Dean passed away last year.
Millvina Dean - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Wheels

 

[Wayne Little]

 

[Henk]

still one of my fav history things. I will never forget the date.

 

[Vassili Zaitzev]

Yeah Henk, I was a big Titanic nerd when I was a kid. I think I'll create threads that will commerate events such as this, to keep the memory alive.

 

[imalko]

I was (and still am) also very interested in Titanic for a long time now. Wonder if there will be some appropriate commemoration organized in 2012 for the 100th anniversary of the sinking.

The stories of Titanic sister ships are very interesting too. RMS Olympic distinguished herself by sinking a German U-boat in the Great War, while HMHS Britannic served as a hospital ship and was sunk in the Aegean.

 

[vikingBerserker]

Did not know that about the RMS Olympic - very cool!

 

[imalko]

Yes, it was quite an achievement and unique one at that. Here's the description of the incident:

In the early hours of 12 May 1918, while en route for France with US troops under the command of Captain Bertram Fox Hayes, Olympic sighted a surfaced U-boat 500 m ahead. Her gunners opened fire at once, and she turned to ram the submarine, which immediately crash dived to 30 m and turned to a parallel course. Almost immediately afterwards Olympic struck the submarine just aft of her conning tower and her port propeller sliced through U-103's pressure hull. The crew of U-103 blew her ballast tanks and scuttled and abandoned the submarine. This is the only known incident in World War I in which a merchant vessel sank an enemy warship. Olympic returned to Southampton with at least two hull plates dented and her prow twisted to one side, but not breached.

Olympic did not stop, but continued on to Cherbourg. The USS Davis sighted a distress flare and picked up 31 survivors from U-103. It was discovered that U-103 had been preparing to torpedo the Olympic when she was sighted, but the crew could not flood the two stern torpedo tubes.

During the war, Olympic is reported to have carried up to 201,000 troops and other personnel, burning 347,000 tons of coal and traveling about 184,000 miles. Her impressive World War I service earned her the nickname Old Reliable.

While serving as a troopship in the Great War Olympic was repainted in interesting camouflage scheme: