The Titanic Sinking: A New Look After 100 Years

In August 2010, Samuel Halperin and 10 other researchers of  the Titanic began an intensive re-look at the tragedy using modern technology and new information that has surfaced during the 100 years since the initial investigations into the sinking of the ship after it struck an iceberg in the chilly waters of the Atlantic Ocean .

The group planned to publish their findings in a book patterned after the 15-chapter report issued immediately following the 1912 Titanic probes in American and England.

"We wondered if they knew then what we know now 100 years later, how would that report be different," Halperin said. "We modernized our effort, making use of technology and all the information we now know."

Those updated finding were indeed compiled in a book entitled Report into the Loss of the S.S. Titanic: A Centennial Reappraisal and Halperin appeared at the National Archives today to discuss the recently released work.

So what did the new group find?

The most tragic finding was a reinforcement of the fact that not only were there too few lifeboats on board, but those that were used for passengers to escape the doomed ship were not filled to capacity.  "The average lifeboat was only filled to a 61% capacity," Halperin said, noting, for example that the group found one lifeboat ferrying only 35 people when it could have held 57.

The new verified outcome of passengers stands at 1,496 lost and only 712 saved. One of the major problems with rescue was that the number of required lifeboats was based on "woefully inadequate" rules from the 1880s which never envisioned the increased passenger capacity of early 20th Century cruise ships. "Clearly, there was never enough lifeboats and life rafts for the passengers and the crew," Halperin said.

"One of the major tragedies of the disaster was that not all classes were treated equally," he added. The poorer passengers in 3rd class died in disproportionate numbers to those in 1st and 2nd class. Halperin said that while only 6.4% of the higher paying passengers did not survive, that percentage was 52.9 in steerage. The main reasons for the discrepancy were locked gates and guards who refused to let the steerage passengers come up on deck.

Other new or revised findings included:

• there were actually 55 seconds between the 1st lookout report of the iceberg and the striking, not the 30 seconds initially reported
•  the ship was filled with water as the result of 5 broken seams, not a 300-foot gash as was originally thought.
• the ship did indeed break into 2 parts before sinking
• the ship would have survived if only 4 compartments had been filled with water; it was unable to handle 5 filled compartments
• the ship was not weak structurally and was not thought by its builders to be unsinkable. "They knew there was no such thing as an unsinkable ship," Halperin said. "Nobody could ever imagine something that would open up 5 compartments."

Tales, Tidbits, and Tips
Halperin's talk, which was accompanied by a host of detailed slides, photos and animations, was only the 1st of a series of programs at the Archives dealing with the Titanic. On April 13,  Julie Hedgepeth Williams will discuss her book: A Rare Titanic Family: The Caldwells' Story of Survival." The following day, there will be a free showing of the classic film A Night to Remember based on the sinking. The Archives is also featuring a collection of artifacts from The Titanic collected as part of the 1912 hearings in Washington about the sinking.