cerning the Titanic. Accounts from survivors and rescue ships on the site began making news the world over. The ship was carrying 2,207 people, equipped with lifeboats for approximately half that number (Tuite 1998). Women and children in first-class, then second-class, and then third-class were put in what lifeboats were available. In the freezing cold water, many who could not be placed in lifeboats drowned in the water. Less than one and a half hour, after hitting an iceberg in the middle of an ice field, the ship labeled ôunsinkableö sank to the ocean floor. In his first-hand account of surviving the disaster, Dr. Washington Dodge, in an interview printed in the Apr 19, 1912, edition of the San Francisco Assessor, relates, ôSome of the passengers fought with such desperation to get into the lifeboats that the officers shot them, and their bodies fell into the oceanö (1).
At 11:40 pm, Apr 14, 1912, the British Steamship H.M.S. Titanic struck ice near Latitude 410 46Æ N., Longitude 500 14Æ W., in the North Atlantic Ocean (Anesi 1997, 1). The ship sideswiped and iceberg and ground her way along a giant mountain of ice on its starboard side. Due to the widespread press that the ship was ôunsinkableö, passengers or the confident Captain, Edward J. Smith, felt there was anything to worry about. In Dr. WashingtonÆs (1912) account of the story, he tells us, ôThe starboard side of the Titanic struck the big berg and the ice was piled up on the deck. None of us had the slightest realization that the ship had received its death woundö (1).
The Titanic was allegedly crafted in such a manner that few believed it could ever sink. Even if it were torn in two, because of its airtight compartmentalization, many argued it would continue to stay adrift. Of all the people who believed in its invulnerability, Captain Smith was first in line. In a conversation Smith exchanged with another seaman, about a recent accident of...