h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Great article! Just a hint ... break it up! (I forgot how to do this, check out the GuideML help) if your're going to add more!

Some interesting facts -
- Some people suspect the sinking of the Titanic was part of a "revenge of the pharoahs" - an Egyptian mummy was being carried on board her. Since it was so valuable, it was carried in a special room behind the bridge - the some bridge in which sailors made mistakes in judgement, resulting in the sinking of the ship.
- It sent the first SOS message in history ... before the Titanic, the international "help" code was CQD (as mentioned in the article).
- In 1892, William Stead, famed journalist, wrote a short story describing his vision of a mighty liner sinking in the northern waters with the loss of hundreds of lives. Stead later drowned with the Titanic.
- In 1898, a book, written by Morgan Robertson, told the story of the biggest and most luxurious liner ever built ... of how it set out from Southampton to New York on its maiden voyage ... of how it hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic ... of how its hull was torn open beneath the water line ... of how it sank with an appaling loss of life because it failed to carry enough lifeboats. This ship was named the "Titan".

It is broken up!! Didn't you see the headers? The bulleted lists? The paragraphs?

The mummy's curse is one of many legends surrounding the Titanic disaster. The fact is that there was no mummy, and is only a wild claim completely unsubstantiated by any survivor's accounts or the cargo manifest. A couple other legends:

- Captain Smith dove off the top of the bridge to rescue a drowning child as his last act. The truth is that he was last seen in the bridge, when he relieved the radio operators. The way the movie portrays him retiring to the helm to spend his last moments is the likeliest occurance.

- A very loyal dog assisted a lifeboat by towing it toward the Carpathia when it showed up. The water was so cold that any warm-blooded mammal would have frozen to death in 15 minutes, and that includes dogs.

I think that SOS thing may be an exaggeration. I haven't uncovered anything about an SOS in my research, but they certainly did send CQD messages.

I hadn't heard about Stead's article and his death aboard Titanic... this is the first time I've heard his name. I think he's worth further research, though. Thanks a bunch.

The Robertson book I've heard of. It was very prophetic, but I think he saw the writing on the wall, and not much else. The trend towards larger ships was continuing unabated, and his name "Titan" was one meant to recall size, just as the name "Titanic." International laws were lagging wayyy behind the industry. How far? BOT regulations for lifeboat capacities were based on the size of the boat, as I said in the article. Titanic displaced over 40,000 tons. The highest category by BOT regulations was for ships displacing over 10,000 tons. Clearly this sort of accident was bound to occur.

How prophetic was he? Apart from the name similarity, his Titan was also roughly the same dimensions as Titanic, with roughly the same maximum passenger and crew capacity (around 3600) but sailing with a much smaller number which was also comparable (about 2200 for Robertson) and hit the iceberg at the same time of year (not suprising there, early spring was the danger time for bergs in the North Atlantic) along the starboard bow.

There's a new section now, if you're interested, on the story of how Titanic was discovered, and some of the results from researching the wreck.

BTW it was built at Harland and Wolffe shipyard in Belfast. One of the few reamining shipyards left in the UK that are capable of producing cruise ships still today. It also stopped off at La Harve and Cork before heading out into the Atlantic on that fateful maiden voyage.

Yeah, I probably should have mentioned Belfast, and I didn't find any references to La Harve or Cork in my research. Still, I couldn't add any more information if I wanted to... seems that Netscape can handle only so much information in a text box, and this article is at the limit.

Titanic was in Belfast 1098 days, there were up to 15,000 workers in the Shipyard. Most people talk about the four days and forget about the three years in Belfast.