26Lifeboats on Titanic
While the Titanic only had enough lifeboats to hold 1/3 of the passengers, she was actually carrying more lifeboats than were legally required. That's because lifeboats were intended to ferry survivors from a sinking ship to a rescuing ship-not keep all the passengers afloat.
27. During the Titanic's sinking, Lucile Carter and her children were separated from her husband, William. When she met him again on the rescue ship Carpathia, "All he said was that he had had a jolly good breakfast and that he never thought I would make it." They divorced less than two years later.
28. During the sinking of the Titanic, an order to evacuate women and children first by Captain Smith was misinterpreted to mean women and children only. As a result, men were prevented from entering lifeboats even when they had empty seats. Only 20% of the men survived.
29. Frank Prentice, a survivor of the Titanic, stated that the scent of the iceberg was detectable before the collision occurred.
30. American tennis player Richard Norris Williams survived the Titanic's sinking but spent too much time in freezing water. The rescue doctor recommended amputation of both his legs. He refused and proceeded to win his first tennis tournament a few months later, becoming Wimbledon doubles champion in 1920.
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31Charles Joughin
During the sinking of the Titanic, a drunken baker helped load women and children into the lifeboats, refused a seat for himself, threw deck chairs overboard for passengers to use as flotation devices, and somehow survived hours swimming in the freezing water until he was rescued at dawn.
32. It's thought that the Titanic could have missed the iceberg by just a few feet if the ship's engines had not been reversed, as the lack of a reverse turbine for the central propeller caused the rudder to work ineffectively when compared to forward speed.
33. All 700 third-class passengers on the Titanic only had two bathtubs between them, one for men and one for women.
34. The Titanic's engines burned 600 tons of coal per day. 176 men worked around the clock to shovel it in by hand. 100 tons of ash was also ejected into the sea each day.
35. The Titanic's coal stores had been burning for weeks before she set sail, damaging the ship's starboard side where the iceberg hit. They attempted to shovel the burning coal into the ovens, but one of the bulkheads overheated and spread the fire to the other side, where there was more coal. There was not only a cover-up but evidence that the fire damaged the hull enough to be a large contributing factor to why the iceberg caused such damage.
