"It was sad when the great ship went down . . ."

XV

 

The iceberg that sank the Titanic. This photo was taken by a ship in the same vicinity on the afternoon of April 15, 1912. The dark areas are red hull paint

 

As the Titanic settled into the ooze 2500 fathoms below the surface and the fish began to feast, Anglo-American society was thrown off its axis. Things that had been impossible on the morning of April 14th seemed inevitable on the morning of April 15th, and the possible and the certain became questionable. 

Immediately after the sinking, the British and American governments stepped in to regulate their North Atlantic Ferry service and were joined by the French and the Germans. Smaller countries demanded protections for their emigres, who were, after all, still their nationals. 

After hearing nothing from the Titanic for 12 hours, New York Times editor Carr Van Anda took a calculated risk and announced that Titanic had sunk. It was the greatest journalistic scoop ever to that time and it established the Times as a preeminent world newspaper. But what if it had been wrong?

When it was discovered that more Third Class women drowned on the Titanic than First Class men everybody went looking for a scapegoat. They found one in the imperious paper tiger J. Bruce Ismay, the Chairman of White Star who had done the cowardly thing and taken a woman's (or an innocent child's) place in a lifeboat. Some newspapers had him wearing a woman's shawl as camouflage (American papers had said the same thing about Confederate President Jefferson Davis at the end of the Civil War).

Boots on the seabed, found in 1985, when the wreck was discovered. Fish and sea creatures ate the flesh of the dead, and their bones dissolved in the seawater. But artifacts like tanned leather, dishes, brass, and porcelain remain intact in the lightless abyss where Titanic lies

Ismay was hounded from public life, and died, a recluse, in western Ireland in 1937. 

J. Bruce Ismay. The Chairman of the White Star line was imperious to a fault, but was a man of decidedly weak character who'd been pushed around by J.P. Morgan and his White Star partners. Facing death on the Titanic, he jumped into a lifeboat but lived to regret it when all the world branded him a coward for not going down with his ship. Ismay lived the rest of his life in isolation

J.P. Morgan died (some said from shock) in 1913, and the rest of the men who might have fended off heavy government regulation had died on the Titanic.

A postcard of the R.M.S. Britannic, nee Gigantic, showing its immense lifeboat davits and a plethora of lifeboats. Her modifications made her significantly larger than either Titanic or Olympic

The shipping lines were forced to pull older, unsafe ships from service, and had to retrofit newer ships with adequate lifeboats. Ships a-building on the ways had their blueprints trashed and redrawn with mazes of watertight compartments and scores of lifeboats. Strict speed regulations were enforced, routes were changed, an International Ice Patrol of iceberg hunters was established, and 24 hour wireless became the rule. International Mercantile Marine's rate war ended.

The price of tickets went up, putting a sizeable dent in the immigrant traffic particularly. Some marginal lines went out of business. IMM was dissolved by the Taft Administration, the only great Trust of the era to lose money.

White Star took a pounding from which it never really recovered. Whispers about its competence remained common. In order to counteract them, the line redesigned the Gigantic --- the third of the giant liners it had planned to build --- calling it Britannic instead, and adding giant lifeboat davits like huge lobster claws to the ship, aesthetics be damned.

  

The Britannic as a hospital ship in World War I

Britannic never sailed as a passenger ship. When World War I began, she was requisitioned as a hospital ship (H.M.H.S.), and in 1916 struck a mine in the Aegean Sea, sinking, but fortunately taking only 30 lives. She remains the largest wreck on the ocean floor.

The Britannic sank after striking a mine off the island of Kea, Greece in 1916. Her skipper tried to beach her (note the headland at left) but couldn't manage it. She sank in shallow water, taking only 30 lives out of the 3,000 aboard

Britannic on the sea floor. The immense hole in her hull is due to the mine

World War I put an effective end to the Great Migration and to the Great Age of The Steamship s well. In 1914, the Germans converted their Blue Riband-winning liner Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse into a warship. 

A monument to the rococo tastes of Wilhelmine Germany, the vessel had fierce lines --- if a steamship ever looked like it was spoiling for a fight this was the ship --- and the big guns added to the deck did nothing but make her meaner looking. Unfortunately for the big girl, real warships are tougher, and she was sunk in combat in August 1914, just a few weeks into the Great War.

 

Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse (Emperor William The Great) was a North German Lloyd liner owned by IMM that was launched in 1897, had won the Blue Riband, and was converted to a warship in 1914

(Top) The First Class Dining Saloon on Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse

(Bottom) Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse sinking in August 1914. Her captain claimed he scuttled her to keep her out of British hands; the British claimed they sank her. Either way, she was gone, the first (and only) major liner to be converted to a big-gun warship in The Great War

With a chip on its shoulder, the German Navy went looking for revenge and it found it when a U-boat sank the R.M.S. Lusitania in 1915. Still in civilian service at the time, 1,198 passengers died, including 128 Americans among whom was a scion of the Vanderbilt family. War drums began to sound in America.

 

(Top) R.M.S. Lusitania after being torpedoed. She sank in eleven minutes. Note the dangling lifeboats. Her sinking spurred the United States to side with the British in the Great War

(Bottom) R.MS. Mauretania

The Germans claimed Lusitania was a warship, and hence fair game. And everybody knew that Cunard's ships were in the Royal Naval Reserve and carried war material, so they had a point. Although the Germans tried to sink Mauretania as well, the Lusitania's running mate was bigger and faster and acting as a troopship. Stripped of tons of its fancy fittings, the Mauretania, which held the Blue Riband for two consecutive unbroken decades, was untouchable.

The First Class Grand Dining Saloon on R.M.S. Mauretania

After the war, it was expected that the immigrant traffic would resume, but it was slow to do so, and the United States, long the land of an Open Door policy but now in the grip of isolationism, began to put restrictive rules in place, culminating in really draconan quota systems in 1924. Immigrant traffic, once a torrent, then a flood, was reduced to a slow stream.

The big carriers sent many of their vessels to the breakers' yards. Steamships were still the only way to cross the oceans for most people, so a few remained in service.

Titanic's older, luckier sister.  R.M.S. Olympic in 1922 after a refit. The two ships were very similar but can be told apart by the arrangement of windows on "A" Deck. People liked Olympic, and amateur historians felt that they were having a "Titanic" experience while on board. Note the many lifeboats

A White Star ad for Olympic, dated 1931. The Britannic mentioned in the ad was a replacement for the vessel lost in wartime. The name IMM remained, but the Trust had been busted

 

Olympic's sad end at the breaker's yard in 1937

The Olympic, Titanic's sister ship, was popular (and people were fascinated to ride on the near-Titanic), but the Great Depression forced the merger of White Star and Cunard in 1934. "White Star" became a level of luxury service at sea.

The North Atlantic Ferry dwindled (but never died) not just because of war and public policy and economics, but because a new form of competition challenged the maritime tradition.

Olympic (left) and Titanic (right) in 1912 at Harland & Wolff shipyards. A painting made from a photograph, the only one showing the two sisters side by side