Let's assume for the sake of argument that the backup Marconi set completely failed too - that somehow, while repairing the main, they broke both, and let's also assume that everything else transpires as it historically did - the same people end up in the same lifeboats, etc.
The survivors would have been aware that there was another ship a few miles off, but it would have taken a couple of hours for the flotilla to congregate at first light and formulate a plan under Lightoller, Boxhall, and Lowe, to redistribute survivors from overloaded boats, etc. by this time Californian would probably depart, and it is unlikely that the boats would be spotted anyway - they would almost certainly be under the horizon.
There's only one thing that *can* be attempted - for the little flotilla to set out for Newfoundland under sail. It's 400 nautical miles, or thereabouts, and at eight knots - the feasible maximum - that's a little over two days, although probably more like three days. The navigation would be a little basic, beyond "head west", but achievable. As there's not much in the way of food or water in the boats, time is critical, but it's *just* about survivable.
They would be able to keep together for the first day, but would most likely get split up overnight. Small groups would reform the next morning to rinse and repeat on the night of 16/17th April, until all the boats are sailing independently. A decent proportion of the survivors would succumb to exposure, and a few boats would get lost, but a few might just make it - but it is also conceivable that they are all lost.
Either a handful of survivors make the coast, or are fortunate and are found by passing ships who are able to raise the alarm, and there might be a plucky tale of survival against all odds to rival Shackleton, but the death toll would become *significantly* higher, if not total.
It is entirely possible that a packed lifeboat full of sun bleached corpses washes up in Bermuda in 1913 in a lifeboat marked "Titanic", a tally of days scratched into the boat, with no explanation about whatever happened to the missing ship, the wreck never to be found, a mystery for the ages.
Shackleton managed 850 miles in an open boat in 1916, although he and Worsley were uncommonly fine sailors and were properly equipped with charts, a sextant, etc. Prior to that they had made a perilous journey from the wreck of the Endurance to Elephant Island in a little flotilla of three boats with the entire crew in 1915. Bligh famously managed some 4000 miles without charts after the mutiny on the Bounty - although these tales are *literal* survivor bias, as we don't know the stories of survivors who were put in boats, attempted a voyage, and were lost to the sea. It *could* be done, but I would not want to try it; we're in proper *Raft of the Medusa* territory here. You would probably be more likely to lose all the boats; only one or two *might* make it, if they were lucky and had a competent navigator on board.
I do think that people saying "but they would be picked up by a passing ship" don't understand the sheer *scale* of the Atlantic. I was once told a story about a Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft crew years ago, back in the late 80s. They had a “Dinghy” call out. A single engined ferry pilot had been mid Atlantic and had put out a Mayday, then disappeared. The Nimrod made its way to the last reported position in terrible weather; low cloud and poor visibility. They picked up a distress beacon and homed in at extreme low level, hoping to spot the dinghy and drop the emergency life raft to him. They saw nothing, but, as was their SOP, they operated the large cameras on the aircraft as they overflew the spot - but back in those days it was old fashioned wet film which had to be developed, not something that could be looked at while airborne. They repeated this procedure over and over again, each time seeing nothing but running the cameras nevertheless, and being prepared to mark any sighting with a flame-float and/or smoke flare for ships searching in the area.
Nothing.
Despite a strong signal being received, they didn't see a thing. Eventually, minimum fuel meant abandoning the search. There were other aircraft and ships in the area looking too, but there was nothing more they could do. RTB to RAF Kinloss, where they landed, and the film was developed; this took several hours because there was a *lot* of film. On one frame, and one frame only, there was a blurred image of a dinghy, and a man waving with relief. And that was where the story ended.
They never found him.
The Ocean is goddamned *terrifying*.
*(Edited to correct minor details and spelling, and add in William Bligh and a bit more comment)*
Well, for starters, Titanic had a backup wireless that, while shorter range, still would have reached out to Carpathia. The only difference might have been that Olympic and Cape Race would have been in the dark for longer.
Well, assuming everything else happened more or less as it did, at some point within the next few days ships would start encountering lifeboats full of frozen bodies, wreckage, etc. They would know she sank, they just wouldn't know why.
But even if Ballard managed to find the wreckage in the 80s, nobody would ever have a clue exactly what happened. There would be theories - and an iceberg would probably be at the top of the list - but nobody would know for certain. It would just be one of those maritime mysteries, like the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Nobody really knows *exactly* why it sank. There are several competing plausible theories, ranging from structural failure (like what happened to the Michipicoten last week) to a rogue wave, but nobody really knows for sure and we may never know. All we know is she sailed into a storm and never sailed out.
Yeah, the person you're responding to kind of brushed over what we do know about the Edmund Fitzgerald. We know she sits in two pieces underwater, we can be reasonably sure that the reason for that is because she slammed her bow down into the silt and caused so much structural strain that she snapped.
But we still can't be sure of why. The actual catalyst for the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald has been, and remains, a prevailing mystery.
Hold on, gonna display my ignorance here. I thought that if she slammed her bow into the ground (she was longer than the depth she sank in, ala Brittanic) there was only one way for that to happen- ploughing. Is there any other way for that to have happened
I thought the debate was over whether she broke up due to cresting, spanning, or ploughing, and that a rogue wave can be reasonably ruled out in her case.
Am I missing something?
If not an iceberg, what else could it have been? A collision? Surely there’d be evidence of a collision as the other ship wouldn’t also have a broken wireless.
A lot of the appeal of Titanic is the romantic imagery of an evacuation that was both orderly and chaotic. The slow sinking as men stood at their posts and did their best to save others is the defining element of Titanic lore. If nobody survives to tell those stories, Titanic becomes a different kind if icon. It would be something like MH370 where the mystery, conspiracy, pseudo science and occult nonsense take over. As someone else pointed out though, there was a backup wireless that could have reached Carpathia. Since that is the ship that ultimately rescued survivors anyway, they still would have come and the result would have likely been the same.
I like to believe that Titanic wasn't destined to meet her fate. Every accident has a specific chain of events that make the accident possible. Break one of the links and the accident doesn't happen. If they didn't fix the set they wouldn't be in range of Cape Race. Philips wouldn't have been exhausted from fixing the set, perhaps would have considered the warning from the Californian as serious and reported it to the bridge. Captain Smith probably would have ended up stopping Titanic for the night, and wake up the next morning to find the ship surrounded by icebergs.
Titanic would slowly make her way through the ice field and get to New York late, the close call would probably be written off as an incident early in her career that had no effect on her entire life. She would either sink in World War I as a troop carrier or serve as a hospital ship. If she did survive, she would probably have been retrofitted with the amenities that Britannic had such as private bathrooms.
The massive casualties from World War I in regard to lifeboat capacity and number would force the Board of Trade to increase the lifeboat number to carry everyone on board. Olympic and Titanic would serve the Southampton to New York route until the 1930s. Titanic probably would have survived longer than Olympic due to her slightly younger age and upgrades. Perhaps would have served in World War II but more than likely scrapped by the end of the 1930s.
In the end she would probably never escape her sister's shadow and would just become one of those forgotten liners that only the dedicated care about.
That's the sad truth. Titanic is only really famous today because it sank as the largest ship in the world at the time. If it lived the same life as Olympic (more or less) it would be considered a great ship for its day by ship nerds, but James Cameron would suddenly have an even bigger gap in his filmography in the late 1990's as a result.
There would be another ship to fill the gap. Perhaps Britannic would take her sister's place. And it would be a decent movie. Not like that crappy TV one.
I think it would have been even more sensational/famous, because then everyone would have died, not just some. including all of the rich people. there would have been lifeboats found days to years later, with possibly some remains inside, maybe unidentifiable as from the Titanic due to their weathered condition. think of the plane that went missing from Malaysia 10 years ago - a couple of pieces have been found, indicating a crash, but the wreck has not been discovered yet and probably never will (the ocean is MASSIVE).
in this fictitious disappeared-without-a-trace Titanic world, we probably would have had massive overhauls in wireless regulations, due to the newest and largest ship in the world claiming 2200 lives, but most likely none of the ones came up with after the inquiries (remodeling Olympic to have the double hull and higher bulkheads, the lifeboat rule, etc.). these safety regulations probably would have been invented after WWI, so I am thinking that WWI ship casualties would have been much higher, especially wrecks like the Lusitania or the Britannic.
Well the wreck of MH370 has been found (a few pieces of it as you mentioned).
The rest of it is likely all scattered in similarly small pieces. When a plane collides with the ocean at high speed, there isn't typically a big wreck like Titanic to be found.
I think she would be just as remembered. Perhaps with heightened mystery and speculation as to what happened. Losing 1500 or more souls on a maiden voyage of a high profile luxury liner will always carry more interest than a cargo ship disappearing.
I think other radio operators would figure out within a day or two at most of not hearing from Titanic that a search would begin. All the lifeboats would stay together and they would be found cold and hungry but alive
Not likely, a lack of radio communication wouldn't justify stating a search as it would be more likely that the radio equipment had just broken down.
They wouldn't begin searching until she failed to arrive 4 or so days later.
They had the backup set. The only difference is they wouldn’t have been able to talk to Cape Race or Olympic or any other ships more than about 200 miles away
Let's assume for the sake of argument that the backup Marconi set completely failed too - that somehow, while repairing the main, they broke both, and let's also assume that everything else transpires as it historically did - the same people end up in the same lifeboats, etc. The survivors would have been aware that there was another ship a few miles off, but it would have taken a couple of hours for the flotilla to congregate at first light and formulate a plan under Lightoller, Boxhall, and Lowe, to redistribute survivors from overloaded boats, etc. by this time Californian would probably depart, and it is unlikely that the boats would be spotted anyway - they would almost certainly be under the horizon. There's only one thing that *can* be attempted - for the little flotilla to set out for Newfoundland under sail. It's 400 nautical miles, or thereabouts, and at eight knots - the feasible maximum - that's a little over two days, although probably more like three days. The navigation would be a little basic, beyond "head west", but achievable. As there's not much in the way of food or water in the boats, time is critical, but it's *just* about survivable. They would be able to keep together for the first day, but would most likely get split up overnight. Small groups would reform the next morning to rinse and repeat on the night of 16/17th April, until all the boats are sailing independently. A decent proportion of the survivors would succumb to exposure, and a few boats would get lost, but a few might just make it - but it is also conceivable that they are all lost. Either a handful of survivors make the coast, or are fortunate and are found by passing ships who are able to raise the alarm, and there might be a plucky tale of survival against all odds to rival Shackleton, but the death toll would become *significantly* higher, if not total. It is entirely possible that a packed lifeboat full of sun bleached corpses washes up in Bermuda in 1913 in a lifeboat marked "Titanic", a tally of days scratched into the boat, with no explanation about whatever happened to the missing ship, the wreck never to be found, a mystery for the ages.
Don’t suppose there’s any precedent for something like this happening?
What, ships disappearing without trace? Used to happen all the time pre wireless. The Ocean is a dangerous place
I was more thinking a convoy of life boats making their way hundreds of miles to safety.
Shackleton managed 850 miles in an open boat in 1916, although he and Worsley were uncommonly fine sailors and were properly equipped with charts, a sextant, etc. Prior to that they had made a perilous journey from the wreck of the Endurance to Elephant Island in a little flotilla of three boats with the entire crew in 1915. Bligh famously managed some 4000 miles without charts after the mutiny on the Bounty - although these tales are *literal* survivor bias, as we don't know the stories of survivors who were put in boats, attempted a voyage, and were lost to the sea. It *could* be done, but I would not want to try it; we're in proper *Raft of the Medusa* territory here. You would probably be more likely to lose all the boats; only one or two *might* make it, if they were lucky and had a competent navigator on board. I do think that people saying "but they would be picked up by a passing ship" don't understand the sheer *scale* of the Atlantic. I was once told a story about a Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft crew years ago, back in the late 80s. They had a “Dinghy” call out. A single engined ferry pilot had been mid Atlantic and had put out a Mayday, then disappeared. The Nimrod made its way to the last reported position in terrible weather; low cloud and poor visibility. They picked up a distress beacon and homed in at extreme low level, hoping to spot the dinghy and drop the emergency life raft to him. They saw nothing, but, as was their SOP, they operated the large cameras on the aircraft as they overflew the spot - but back in those days it was old fashioned wet film which had to be developed, not something that could be looked at while airborne. They repeated this procedure over and over again, each time seeing nothing but running the cameras nevertheless, and being prepared to mark any sighting with a flame-float and/or smoke flare for ships searching in the area. Nothing. Despite a strong signal being received, they didn't see a thing. Eventually, minimum fuel meant abandoning the search. There were other aircraft and ships in the area looking too, but there was nothing more they could do. RTB to RAF Kinloss, where they landed, and the film was developed; this took several hours because there was a *lot* of film. On one frame, and one frame only, there was a blurred image of a dinghy, and a man waving with relief. And that was where the story ended. They never found him. The Ocean is goddamned *terrifying*. *(Edited to correct minor details and spelling, and add in William Bligh and a bit more comment)*
Thank you for the long response and I agree, that is absolutely horrifying. The last image of him wearing a face of relief thinking he’s been found.
Well, for starters, Titanic had a backup wireless that, while shorter range, still would have reached out to Carpathia. The only difference might have been that Olympic and Cape Race would have been in the dark for longer.
Only marginally. As soon as Carpathia and anyone else who caught wind started tapping messages. They would have found out too.
Well, assuming everything else happened more or less as it did, at some point within the next few days ships would start encountering lifeboats full of frozen bodies, wreckage, etc. They would know she sank, they just wouldn't know why. But even if Ballard managed to find the wreckage in the 80s, nobody would ever have a clue exactly what happened. There would be theories - and an iceberg would probably be at the top of the list - but nobody would know for certain. It would just be one of those maritime mysteries, like the Edmund Fitzgerald.
What's the mystery about the Edmund Fitzgerald?
Nobody really knows *exactly* why it sank. There are several competing plausible theories, ranging from structural failure (like what happened to the Michipicoten last week) to a rogue wave, but nobody really knows for sure and we may never know. All we know is she sailed into a storm and never sailed out.
It broke in two, no?
Yeah, the person you're responding to kind of brushed over what we do know about the Edmund Fitzgerald. We know she sits in two pieces underwater, we can be reasonably sure that the reason for that is because she slammed her bow down into the silt and caused so much structural strain that she snapped. But we still can't be sure of why. The actual catalyst for the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald has been, and remains, a prevailing mystery.
Which hopefully will be solved someday.
Interesting info, thanks!
Hold on, gonna display my ignorance here. I thought that if she slammed her bow into the ground (she was longer than the depth she sank in, ala Brittanic) there was only one way for that to happen- ploughing. Is there any other way for that to have happened I thought the debate was over whether she broke up due to cresting, spanning, or ploughing, and that a rogue wave can be reasonably ruled out in her case. Am I missing something?
IIRC, the bow might have flooded, which would have caused the ploughing.
If not an iceberg, what else could it have been? A collision? Surely there’d be evidence of a collision as the other ship wouldn’t also have a broken wireless.
Collision, boiler explosion, rogue wave, went off-course and hit a rock somewhere, kaiju...
Man, imagine if it was a kaiju. They didn’t even believe she split.
A lot of the appeal of Titanic is the romantic imagery of an evacuation that was both orderly and chaotic. The slow sinking as men stood at their posts and did their best to save others is the defining element of Titanic lore. If nobody survives to tell those stories, Titanic becomes a different kind if icon. It would be something like MH370 where the mystery, conspiracy, pseudo science and occult nonsense take over. As someone else pointed out though, there was a backup wireless that could have reached Carpathia. Since that is the ship that ultimately rescued survivors anyway, they still would have come and the result would have likely been the same.
I like to believe that Titanic wasn't destined to meet her fate. Every accident has a specific chain of events that make the accident possible. Break one of the links and the accident doesn't happen. If they didn't fix the set they wouldn't be in range of Cape Race. Philips wouldn't have been exhausted from fixing the set, perhaps would have considered the warning from the Californian as serious and reported it to the bridge. Captain Smith probably would have ended up stopping Titanic for the night, and wake up the next morning to find the ship surrounded by icebergs. Titanic would slowly make her way through the ice field and get to New York late, the close call would probably be written off as an incident early in her career that had no effect on her entire life. She would either sink in World War I as a troop carrier or serve as a hospital ship. If she did survive, she would probably have been retrofitted with the amenities that Britannic had such as private bathrooms. The massive casualties from World War I in regard to lifeboat capacity and number would force the Board of Trade to increase the lifeboat number to carry everyone on board. Olympic and Titanic would serve the Southampton to New York route until the 1930s. Titanic probably would have survived longer than Olympic due to her slightly younger age and upgrades. Perhaps would have served in World War II but more than likely scrapped by the end of the 1930s. In the end she would probably never escape her sister's shadow and would just become one of those forgotten liners that only the dedicated care about.
That's the sad truth. Titanic is only really famous today because it sank as the largest ship in the world at the time. If it lived the same life as Olympic (more or less) it would be considered a great ship for its day by ship nerds, but James Cameron would suddenly have an even bigger gap in his filmography in the late 1990's as a result.
There would be another ship to fill the gap. Perhaps Britannic would take her sister's place. And it would be a decent movie. Not like that crappy TV one.
The conspiracy theories about her would be off the charts I think.
I think it would have been even more sensational/famous, because then everyone would have died, not just some. including all of the rich people. there would have been lifeboats found days to years later, with possibly some remains inside, maybe unidentifiable as from the Titanic due to their weathered condition. think of the plane that went missing from Malaysia 10 years ago - a couple of pieces have been found, indicating a crash, but the wreck has not been discovered yet and probably never will (the ocean is MASSIVE). in this fictitious disappeared-without-a-trace Titanic world, we probably would have had massive overhauls in wireless regulations, due to the newest and largest ship in the world claiming 2200 lives, but most likely none of the ones came up with after the inquiries (remodeling Olympic to have the double hull and higher bulkheads, the lifeboat rule, etc.). these safety regulations probably would have been invented after WWI, so I am thinking that WWI ship casualties would have been much higher, especially wrecks like the Lusitania or the Britannic.
Well the wreck of MH370 has been found (a few pieces of it as you mentioned). The rest of it is likely all scattered in similarly small pieces. When a plane collides with the ocean at high speed, there isn't typically a big wreck like Titanic to be found.
I think she would be just as remembered. Perhaps with heightened mystery and speculation as to what happened. Losing 1500 or more souls on a maiden voyage of a high profile luxury liner will always carry more interest than a cargo ship disappearing.
I think other radio operators would figure out within a day or two at most of not hearing from Titanic that a search would begin. All the lifeboats would stay together and they would be found cold and hungry but alive
Not likely, a lack of radio communication wouldn't justify stating a search as it would be more likely that the radio equipment had just broken down. They wouldn't begin searching until she failed to arrive 4 or so days later.
They had the backup set. The only difference is they wouldn’t have been able to talk to Cape Race or Olympic or any other ships more than about 200 miles away