The Titanic

The book I read to research this post was The Titanic for Dummies by Stephen Spignesi which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. When they were building the titanic the older workers used to amuse themselves by telling the younger workers stories about workers who were trapped inside the hull & claimed if you listened carefully you could hear them tapping the inside of the hull. Obviously a complete lie. There's also a conspiracy theory that the ship that sunk wasn't the titanic but was one of her sister ships which was already badly damaged & the owners claimed the insurance. According to the author there isn't a shred of evidence to back up this fanciful story. After the titanic sank her sister ships had to have major upgrades because of the bad publicity which meant that people didn't want to sail on them because they thought they were unsafe. The titanic lies under 2 miles of water. One thing they have discovered is that the composition of the rivets made them a bit fragile because it was incorrect & this could have resulted in the iceberg doing more damage than it otherwise would have. The lookouts didn't have binoculars & also there weren't any on the bow only in the crows nest which probably resulted in them spotting the iceberg too late. Also the titanic was going too fast which was probably because if they got to New York early they would get in the local newspapers giving them free publicity. The titanic was supposedly unsinkable & even though it had insufficient lifeboats many of them were launched half full. They told the passengers it was a precaution & many opted to stop on the ship. Harland & Wolff are currently building a ship which is almost identical to the titanic which will do cruises & there expecting it to be quite popular. Harland & Wolff who built the original titanic were different to other shipyards in that they didn't just build the hull they also had a mechanical division which built things like the engine. In them days they specialized in ocean liners but mowadays they have expanded into doing things like oil tankers & oil drilling platforms among other things.