Tag Archives: Titanic

The Many Myths of the Titanic?

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On April 15, 1912, the RMS Titanic slammed into an iceberg and sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean. Since that time, a whole mythology has sprung up around the Titanic, much of it questionable or downright false. What are some of the many myths of the Titanic?

The Many Myths of the Titanic?

In the 1997 film Titanic, the movie portrayed third-class passengers, including Leonardo DiCaprio, being locked below deck to keep them from reaching the lifeboats. There’s just one problem with that scenario…there’s no evidence such a thing ever happened. Here’s more from BBC News on other Titanic myths:

In Cameron’s Titanic, the heroine’s mother looks up at the ship from the dock in Southampton and remarks: “So, this is the ship they say is unsinkable.”

But this is perhaps the biggest myth surrounding the Titanic, says Richard Howells, from Kings College London. “It is not true that everyone thought this. It’s a retrospective myth, and it makes a better story. If a man in his pride builds an unsinkable ship like Prometheus stealing the fire from the gods… it makes perfect mythical sense that God would be so angry at such an affront that he would sink the ship on its maiden outing.”

Contrary to the popular interpretation the White Star Line never made any substantive claims that the Titanic was unsinkable – and nobody really talked about the ship’s unsinkability until after the event, argues Howells.

Although the sinking of the Titanic happened around 15 years after the birth of cinema, and the disaster featured heavily in the silent newsreels of the day, there was very little footage of the ship itself. This was because the Titanic was not big news before it sank…”History turned into myth within hours and certainly days of the sinking,” agrees Richard Howells.

(See BBC News for more on the myths surrounding the Titanic)

Did an Optical Illusion sink the Titanic?

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Back in 1912, the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean, taking over 1,500 lives in the process. But how did this happen?

Did an Optical Illusion sink the Titanic?

Recently, we wrote about how lunar tides may have caused the iceberg to end up in the Titanic’s path. However, this doesn’t explain how the crew managed to miss it. One intriguing possibility is that the lookouts were thrown off by an optical illusion. According to British historian Tim Maltin, the iceberg may have been shielded by a phenomenon known as super refraction. In other words, a thermal inversion caused light waves to bend in strange ways, effectively creating a false horizon from the Titanic’s point of view. Here’s more on whether or not an optical illusion sunk the Titanic from Popsci:

The Titanic may have struck an iceberg and sank helplessly because of a strange atmosphere-caused optical illusion, a new book argues. British historian Tim Maltin says super refraction, an extraordinary bending of light that causes mirages, prevented the Titanic’s crew from seeing the fateful iceberg…

…This abnormal bending of light waves would have created a false horizon, and the iceberg lay beneath it, out of view of the ship’s lookouts…

(See Popsci for more on whether or not an optical illusion sunk the Titanic)

Did Lunar Tides Sink the Titanic?

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On April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean, taking 1,517 people to a watery grave. But how did it happen?

Did Lunar Tides Sink the Titanic?

The fate of the Titanic is well known. In 1912, it crashed into an iceberg and sank sank in the North Atlantic Ocean. Over 1,500 people died in the process. But how did that particular iceberg enter the Titanic’s shipping lane in the first place?

According to modern astronomers, the answer might lie in the tides…the lunar tides. Here’s more on the Titanic and lunar tides from The Daily Mail:

‘The event January 4 was the closest approach of the Moon to the Earth in more than 1,400 years, and it maximized the Moon’s tide-raising forces on Earth’s oceans. That’s remarkable,’ said Texas State physics faculty member Donald Olson…

All these factors contributed to abnormally high sea levels which helped dislodge grounded icebergs and send them into the shipping lanes of the North Atlantic, it is claimed…

‘That could explain the abundant icebergs in the spring of 1912. We don’t claim to know exactly where the Titanic iceberg was in January 1912 – nobody can know that – but this is a plausible scenario.’

(See The Daily Mail for more on the Titanic and lunar tides)