| Some other details: The captain had a remarkably good record of safety. This likely both helped cause the accident (it is believed he didn't react quickly enough) and helped make it shocking that it happened at all. It was a civilian ship, so we likely have a fuller picture of what happened helping to make the story interesting. Military vessels often cannot have their full story told for reasons of national security. The most compelling details may be classified, removing juicy tidbits from the public record. Enough people survived to tell the tale in substantial detail, giving us compelling tidbits like "the band played on." One survivor was a socialite who became known as The Unsinkable Molly Brown and her life inspired both plays and films. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Brown Some people see the sinking as an act of God, punishment for hubris because they bragged it was unsinkable. For people who want to believe in a spiritual view of things or karma, it's psychologically and emotionally compelling that they made the brag and then not only did it sink, it did so on the ship's maiden voyage. It's like a story a hack author would write to promote ideas like "Don't be a braggart, you foolish fool!" only it really happened. |
Smith was born in 1850. Back then 52,000 tonne displacement ships were pretty rare (rocking horse shit rare).
I contend that the likes of Titanic were too complicated and too big and unsafe by design. Nowadays we have far bigger ships. I've sailed on a monster cruise ship into NOLA from the Gulf of Mexico - we overtook a tanker on the way upstream and the manoeuver took about 30 minutes. The really mad thing was that we all had to park up for several hours in a herringbone formation before entering port.
Huge stockpiles of coal means that you have loads of dust which is easy to ignite. We know she set sail with at least one fire on board.
The Captain (Smith) didn't stand a chance, in retrospect and in my opinion. There was way too much going on.