15 Raw Facts About The Sinking Of The Titanic That Will Give You Chills

13. One Of Titanic’s Four Funnels Was Just For Show (And Crushed Many To Death)

Other than the slow reaction time of crew members spotting the iceberg, another fatal flaw that night ultimately came down to the ship’s design. The Titanic was the biggest luxury cruise liner in the world at the time, and since it was to embark on its first voyage ever, expectations were high. The most expensive First Class ticket to New York was $4,350 (nearly $70,000 in today’s money!). Unsurprisingly, the ship’s designers wanted to go all-out to make the ship look good.

What the crew didn’t anticipate was that something that was added for pure spectacle rather than function would later come back to haunt them as it ended up killing passengers. The four iconic cream and black-tipped funnels on the Titanic were an impressive feature of the sip. Only three of the four worked—the fourth was added purely for show. For the sake of looking symmetrical, however, many people were crushed by the falling funnels, when the ship eventually split in two.

14. If The Course Had Been Changed 30 Seconds Earlier, The Iceberg Wouldn’t Have Struck

Timing is everything and in Titanic’s case, just 30 seconds could have made the difference in saving thousands of lives and keeping the ship’s “unsinkable” reputation afloat. When the lookout crew first made out the shape of a distant iceberg, they immediately warned the officers on the bridge. The men then had just 37 seconds until the fateful iceberg hit the hull of the ship. It was in this brief moment that the course was slightly delayed by First Officer William Murdoch, and this decision sealed the fate of everyone on board.

As Officer Murdoch looked out at the approaching iceberg, he foolishly waited half a minute before deciding to change course. At first, he thought the ship may be able to pass by safely with no harm done, but by the time he realized that this wasn’t the case, his orders for the ship to turn “hard a starboard” turned the ship left. Murdoch also ordered the engines to stop, but halting a ship this size in such little time would have been impossible.

15. There Weren’t Enough Lifeboats For HALF The People On Board

In the wake of the tragedy, a fatal flaw that people jumped on immediately were the insufficient number of lifeboats and how they were used. The 20 lifeboats Titanic carried could only hold 1,178 people, despite there being a total of 2,224 people on board. The lack of lifeboats was supposedly down to the fact that the deck would have been too cluttered. As well as the lack of lifeboats, many lives were doomed by the fact that the lifeboats that were used were never filled up fully.

In James Cameron’s 1997 retelling, many lifeboats are sent down carrying only a third of the passengers it had the capacity to carry (65). In the movie, the ship’s architect, Thomas Andrews, tells the lifeboat crew that the boats held the weight of 70 men in Belfast where Titanic was built. As a result, only 712 people were rescued by lifeboat, when near to 2,000 people could have been saved if they were filled properly.

Credits: therichest.com

Share this story on Facebook with your friends.