Titanic and Social Media

I remember this text from my school book that described the sinking of the Titanic. From what little I remember, it seemed to be more about the human angle of the sinking (remember, this was before everyone knew the story thanks to Leonardo di Caprio and Kate Winslet) than the why’s behind the sinking.

The only “why” my school book mentioned was the obvious one: the collision with the iceberg. But as anyone who has watched Air Craft Investigations can tell you, such accidents never involve just one cause. It is usually a succession of multiple events, mistakes and bad luck that collectively results in disaster.

Like this narrative. The events it mentions include there being more icebergs than usual; the ship going too fast since the captain wanted to beat the record; the ignoring of warnings that icebergs lay in the area; the steersman turned the ship in the wrong direction (the direction to turn the “rudder” is the opposite for sail ships and steam ships; and the world was still transitioning from one to the other); the order to reverse thrust reduced the ship’s maneuverability; the iron rivets were weak; and of course, too few lifeboats because the ship was considered “unsinkable”.

Sounds like an Air Craft Investigations episode, right? Sounds more believable too. The one reason that stuck out to me was why ignore the warnings about icebergs? The one word answer: (the) telegraph!

Now for the longer version. Radio back then was the Twitter and Facebook equivalent of today. Except that to send out a message, everyone had to go through someone who had a radio transmitter. On a ship, this was the same equipment that could receive messages about, I don’t know, nearby icebergs! As it turns out, the senior radio operator did receive a specific warning about nearby icebergs but did not convey it to the Captain because:
1)      The warning did not carry the prefix that conveyed urgency;
2)     And he was busy transmitting messages from the passengers!
It gets worse. The operator even yelled at the nearby ship to get off the air and stop blocking his messages from being transmitted! So that ship, the Caledonian, switched off its radio. And so, the nearest ship never heard the distress signals either…
(All this eventually led to the standardization of distress frequencies, and the requirement that the radio be manned at all times. But that was a learning after the event. So like Air Craft Investigations).

So the next time you curse people on their smartphones being addicted to social networks, remember this: at least, they didn’t sink the Titanic!

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