Titanic The Unsinkable Essay, Research Paper
The Titanic was and still is considered one of the biggest disasters of
the century. The ship that was proclaimed to be “unsinkable” proved that
wrong. The if-onlys start to come in when you get to see all of the reasons
why the Titanic shouldn’t have sank even after it hit the iceberg, that is
what is so ironic.
The boat was supposed to have enough lifeboats for all of the passengers
on board but only had enough for 700 of the 2,200 passengers on board. If
only the Titanic had enough lifeboats, the sinking of the ship would not have
been so tragic.
The Titanic also has the unfortunate if-only of the Californian. The
Californian was a ship that was approximately 15 to 20 miles away from the
Titanic when it struck the iceberg. When the Titanic radioed the Californian
for assistance, the captain of the Californian had already gone to bed and no
one was there to receive the distress call. Stanley Lord, the captain of the
Californian has since been indirectly blamed for the deaths of the Titanic
passengers because his ignorence cost people their lives. If only the
Californian had been awake to meet the Titanic many hundreds of lives could
have been saved.
If only the lookouts had binocularsthen the Titanic could have been able
to spot the iceberg from as far as a mile back rather than 37 feet to
respond. The look out tower only contained men which have the eyesight at
night of around 250 to 750 feet. They didn’t not spot the iceberg until about
100 feet and didn’t react until over 60 feet later.
Another if-only is that the Titanic hitting the iceberg head-on. At the
time this would have seemed illogical so the crew is not blamed for trying to
turn. If only the Titanic would have struck the iceberg head-on a few rooms
of the bottom level would have been flooded, but would not have been enough
to sink it. The attempt to turn the Titanic out of the way of the iceberg
only caused the side of the boat to be scraped off leading to massive amounts
of flooding and eventually its sinking.
Lastly, the if only that the mystery boat in between the Titanic could
also have come to the rescue. Although the attempt to discover a mystery boat
is still on going, the possibility of a Norweagan vessel is a very good
possibility. If only the vessel would have stopped to help the Titanic rather
than not get caught for illegally harvesting elements, the Titanic disaster
could have easily been avoided.