Titanic: 14 April 1912

By David Ross

On 14 April 1912, less than a week into a transatlantic trip from Southampton to New York, the largest luxury cruise liner in the world struck an iceberg off the coast of Labrador, causing the hull to buckle. The massive 50,000 ton ship hailed as ‘unsinkable’ was soon slipping into the cold Atlantic Ocean, the crew and passengers scrambling to launch lifeboats before being sucked into the deep. Of the 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, more than 1,500 died, making the sinking one of the deadliest for a single ship up to that time. The sinking has captured the public imagination ever since, in part because of the scale of the tragedy, but also because the ship represented in microcosm Edwardian society, with the super-rich sharing the vessel with poor migrants seeking a new life in North America. Other factors, such as why there were only enough lifeboats to hold half the passengers, also caused controversy and led to changes in maritime safety. In later years many survivors told their stories to the press, and Titanic celebrates these accounts. A final chapter examines the shipwreck today, which has been visited underwater by explorers, scientists and film-makers, and many artifacts recovered as the old liner steadily disintegrates. Titanic offers a compact, insightful photographic history of the sinking and its aftermath in 180 authentic photographs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amber Books Ltd
• Release date: Nov 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781838864200

David Ross

David Ross has written numerous books on aspects of Scottish history and culture, some serious and some less so. His most recent is The Killing Time, a study of Scotland between the Covenant of 1638 and the Union of 1707. Scottish humour is a particular interest, and he is compiler and editor of the best-selling Awa' an' Bile Yer Heid, an anthology of choice Scottish insults.

Book preview

BACKGROUND TO A TRAGEDY

Up until the late 1850s, few people crossed the Atlantic Ocean unless driven by necessity or force. From the European and British explorers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, to the venturesome colonists of the seventeenth and eighteenth (and the infamous slave traffic that followed), human movement westward across the Atlantic grew steadily. By the 1840s, emigrants to the USA were being numbered in hundreds of thousands. Many of the migrants were desperately poor and, on most ships, had to provide or buy their own food.

The small ships of the early nineteenth century were slow, overcrowded, insanitary and disease-ridden. But for emigrants from European countries, the USA promised a new start in a democratic republic. It was the New World, rich in opportunity.

JOURNEY’S END

Immigrants get their first view of the Statue of Liberty as their ship reaches New York harbour, circa 1910. Many wept.

RISING DEMAND, IMPROVED COMFORT

Conditions for migrants improved from the 1850s with the advent of larger, faster ships, together with greater regulation of conditions on board. By the end of the century, though many migrants were still almost destitute, a degree of order had been introduced. Charities and friendly societies often helped with passage costs, and established immigrant communities could provide assistance on arrival.

Another factor also changed the situation. As wealth grew in the industrialized nations and communications improved (the Atlantic telegraph cable was laid in 1858), shipping lines began to cater for an increasing demand from wealthier travellers, who expected and paid for standards similar to those of good hotels. Migrants were the bread and butter of the shipping lines, but first- and second-class passengers provided highly desirable jam.

Iron screw-propelled ships were introduced in 1850 by the Inman Line. Faster, roomier and safer, they were soon imitated by Cunard and other companies.

LAND OF PROMISE

For many immigrants who had left hutted villages in the European or Irish countryside, the sight of the Manhattan skyline seemed almost unreal.

FRESH AIR

Steerage passengers on the well deck of the German liner Pretoria, built in 1898. At 11,975 tonnes (13,200 tons), the ship packed in 2600 passengers – more than Titanic.

A MUSICAL TRIBUTE

Cover of the music for a march composed in honour of the Inman Line’s founder (1825–81), who gave a free transatlantic passage to the band of the Grenadier Guards for the ‘World Peace Jubilee’ celebrated in Boston in 1872. City of Brussels sank in 1883 with the loss of 10 lives.

The White Star Line was a comparative latecomer to the Atlantic. Formed in 1845, its routes were to China and Australia. By 1867, it was part of the Liverpool, Melbourne & Oriental Steam Navigation Company, which went bankrupt that year. Its assets were acquired for £1000 by Thomas Henry Ismay (1837–99), a Liverpool-based shipbroker, who reformed it as the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company in 1869, but retained the White Star trading name.

FAMILY CONCERNS

In many ways, the Titanic story is bound in with close family ties. Cousins, brothers-in-law, sons and nephews collaborated in a relationship of reciprocal value between two large companies involved in separate aspects of the maritime industry. A wealthy Liverpool merchant, Gustav Christian Schwabe (1813–97), was the link. He had helped Ismay to acquire White Star’s assets and restore its fortunes, and was also a partner in the Bibby shipping line. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, it was he who encouraged Ismay to enter the Atlantic trade.

THOMAS HENRY ISMAY (1837–99)

Born in Maryport, Cumbria, to a ship-owning family, he acquired the bankrupt White Star Line in 1867 and built it up into a major shipping company on the Oriental and North Atlantic routes. He was also the first to provide proper family accommodation for steerage passengers.

EASTBOUND CROSSING

An American poster produced for the International Mercantile Marine Corporation in 1911. Like almost all publicity pictures for the White Star giants, it shows Olympic, though the name is obscured.

GUSTAV CHRISTIAN SCHWABE (1813–97)

Schwabe’s business acumen was such that he became one of the richest men in England. A keen chess player, he appears to have moved companies about with equal skill. It is likely that the varied shipping interests left on his death contributed to the formation of the International Mercantile Maritime Corporation.

Ismay needed little encouragement: the North Atlantic route was lucrative and growing, and he wanted not merely a share of the traffic, but to dominate it. However, as a prudent businessman, he realized his new company had to have something special to offer. Gustav Schwabe provided the answer. Mrs Schwabe had a young cousin, Edward Harland, born in Scarborough in 1831, who showed a flair for mechanics and engineering. With Schwabe as his patron, Harland got a thorough training in shipbuilding at Glasgow and Liverpool.

In 1854, he crossed to Belfast as manager of Hickson’s shipyard, a struggling enterprise. His tough, efficient management turned the business around and in 1858 he bought the yard from Hickson and renamed it Edward James Harland & Co. The year before, he had taken on Schwabe’s nephew, Gustav Wolff, as his assistant. Schwabe was convinced that Belfast, just across the Irish Sea from Liverpool, could prosper as a shipbuilding centre. The new company was set on its way with an order for three ships from the Bibby Line, followed by a further six in 1860. In 1861, Wolff was made a partner, and Harland & Wolff was established.

MANAGERS AND PARTNERS

This photograph, from the early 1890s, shows (left to right) Gustav Wolff, Walter H. Wilson (then managing director), William Pirrie and Edward Harland. By this time, executive management was very much with Wilson and Pirrie. Wolff said jokingly, ‘Sir Edward builds the ships, Mr Pirrie makes the speeches, and as for me, I smoke the cigars.’

Pirrie was born in Quebec, Canada, and brought up in Belfast. He joined Harland & Wolff in 1862, became a partner in 1874, and chairman after Edward Harland’s death. A prostate operation prevented him from joining Ismay and Andrews on the Titanic. Harland’s father was a doctor, and a friend of George Stephenson, the ‘father of railways’. Harland himself was apprenticed to Robert Stephenson’s engineering works at Newcastle.

LONG, NARROW IRON BOX

If old-fashioned nepotism had helped set it up, there was nothing old-fashioned about its approach. The typical Harland & Wolff ship was in effect a long, narrow iron box, compared by some to a giant box girder, and with a flat bottom. This of course was an excellent arrangement for the stowage of cargo. The Bibby ships, distinctive in appearance, were half-derisively known as ‘Bibby’s coffins’, but the design was a success and its successors still sail today as car-carriers and container ships.

Harland & Wolff was flourishing by 1869, and with Gustav Schwabe as a godfather to both, it is no surprise that the revived White Star Line should look to Belfast for its ships. From the beginning, there was a special relationship, with new ships being priced at an agreed construction cost plus an extra percentage (usually 4 per cent) so that both sides knew exactly what would be provided and what it would cost.

Ismay’s special offer was his ships. His first liner was Oceanic (1870) whose ‘ic’ suffix set the pattern for naming all successors. Powered by steam and sail, its gross tonnage was 3766 tonnes (3706 tons). Built to the standard Harland & Wolff box pattern, it carried 166 ‘saloon’ passengers and 1000 emigrants, housed mostly at the stern (the ‘steerage’).

Oceanic embodied Ismay’s