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Did the captain of the titanic die6/10/2023 ![]() Wiping his frosted eyes he stared again, and this time the object appeared much larger and more towering. Lookout Frederick Fleet suddenly caught sight of a dark shadow in the distance. For now, there was nothing to do but chat idly and pass the time. Once back in Philadelphia, he would be a busy man, a man in a hurry. Stretching, he wondered aloud how long it would take it unload their new 25-horsepower Renault motorcar he had bought in Europe and had had stowed in the ship’s hold. Carter, who was traveling with his wife, two children, maid, manservant and chauffeur. Next to Moore sat Pennsylvania mining baron and Main Liner William (Billy) E. Across the table, the prominent Washington sportsman Clarence Moore, now the proud owner of 50 pairs of English foxhounds he had just bought for the Loudoun Hunt back home, had finished telling a story. To his left was Harry Widener, son of Philadelphia streetcar magnate George D. Dealing cards at one table near the white marble fireplace was Major Archibald Butt, President Taft’s military aide, returning now from an assignment to the Vatican. The room itself was emblematic of this voyage and this ship: “opulent” is the only word to describe it, just as “elite” is the word that best captures the status of the voyagers. Also field ice.” But the wireless operator was so busy that he shoved the message under a paperweight, and there it sat.Īlthough most of the American passengers traveling in First Class had left the Louis XV lounge on A Deck and retired to the warmth of their stateroom, a few gentlemen dressed in formal dinner attire lingered over snifters of brandy and cigars, chatting, reading or playing the last hands of auction bridge in the majestic Georgian smoking room. Mesaba up ahead: “Saw heavy pack ice and a great number large icebergs. Earlier in the evening, a communication had come up into the Marconi shack from S.S. On the clear and frigid night of April 14, 1912, the sound of seven bells marked 11:30 as R.M.S Titanic, the world’s newest, largest and most luxurious ocean liner, cut her way through the cold North Atlantic at 22 ½ knots on her highly publicized maiden voyage from Southampton to New York. According to the Encyclopedia Titanica: “He was last seen staring into space by the painting in the first class smoking room, his lifebelt discarded.This article first appeared in the April 1992 issue of Town & Country. “A steward was the last person to see him,” writes the BBC. “No one was better qualified to know.” In the end, only just over 700 people survived the ship's sinking, writes Flayhart, and the lifeboats had been rowed away while not at capacity because people chose not to get in. “We could hardly believe it, and yet if he said so, it must be true,” he wrote. His chief concern safety of everyone but himself.”Ī young survivor of the sinking confirmed in a memoir many years later that he remembered Andrews telling him and his parents that the ship would sink in an hour. In the shortened telegram language, it confirms his attention: “When last seen, officers say was throwing deck chairs, other objects, to people in water. Many people were skeptical that the “unsinkable” ship had been seriously damaged, it reads, but Andrews convinced them to leave. After the accident, he looked at the damage and advised passengers to get into heavy clothing and prepare to leave the ship, it reads. One of the final telegrams sent by the ship described his actions, according to a different BBC article. When the ship struck an iceberg, it was Andrews who evaluated the damage it had caused and went to tell the captain, the BBC writes. This “guarantee group” was there to look for any issues with the ship and help iron out kinks, writes the BBC. Among that number were Thomas Andrews and a group of men who had worked on the ship at his naval design firm. The result: the Titanic infamously set sail with only enough lifeboat room for 1178 people out of the more than 2200 on board. His proposal would have resulted in there being enough lifeboats for everyone on the ship, he writes, but the president of the White Star Line, Bruce Ismay, “protested that they already had more than the legally required number of lifeboats (16) and the extra boats simply would clutter up the beautiful open expanse of the upper deck, where first-class passengers would want to stroll.” Andrews had argued for the ship having more lifeboats and for other safety measures, writes William Henry Flayhart III for Scientific American. Today the Titanic’s sinking is the poster-child for human hubris, but it’s also a cautionary tale about the need for emergency preparedness to be built into design. He died in 1912, when the ship he had designed sank, after encouraging the Titanic’s passengers to get off the ship if they could. Thomas Andrews was born on this day in 1873.
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