Wasnt Californians boilers turned off when she stoped or was that Carpathias?
Titanic Rescued by the RMS Californian
- Thread starter redlightning
- Start date
Wasnt Californians boilers turned off when she stoped or was that Carpathias?
Well, yeah...
If the Titanic doesn't sink then James Cameron is never born.
The long term depends on how many people are saved. If a significantly higher fraction are it may not become apparent as soon that ships need far more lifeboats, remember the titanic was actually carrying MORE than the law required. It might take another big disaster to force legislation through.
Vexacus
Banned
Bliss..... but getting back to the topic at hand, if Titanic was saved by the Californian, what disaster WOULD it take to get the law changed?
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Just the effort of moving survivors from the sinking ship would show up shortage of boats and be mentioned in officers reports and in the sinking investigation afterwards.
If the lifeboats were able to take one trip to the Californian and had time to get most of the remaining people in them they could stay in the life boats until the Carpathia arrived.
The Titanic. Just because the death toll would be much lower (under 1000? under 500?), doesn't mean that the damn thing isn't a disaster.
Just a maybe-hair-brined scheme, how close could the Californian safely get to the titanic? Close enough that you could rig lines between the two for people to slide down?
I'll write a mini-timeline below, based on the article I linked above. I'm trying to make this basically the best case scenario.
Let's say that Captain Lord of the Californian gets notified about the first rocket spotted at 12.45, and immediately orders radio contact to be made to whichever ship launched it, and as well immediately orders preparations to be made to get the ship underway. It now takes about 30 minutes to clear the ice around the ship, as well as other necessary preparations, and then about 1 hour 10 minutes to reach the Titanic.
The time is now 2.25 a.m. The Californian would have to stop at a safe distance, not to hit the Titanic or to capsize the lifeboats in the water. Allow further 15 minutes for stopping, manning the winches and launching boats.
So at 2.40 a.m. the Californian would have her boats out and her winches manned. This would be 20 minutes after the Titanic disappered from view. The Californian's boats would start to gather survivors from the water, and the Titanic's lifeboats would move to the Californian so that the survivors could be taken to the deck.
Now, 2.40 is the time people in the water started to sink beneath because of the icy cold water - the crew of the Californian in its six lifeboats would have at most 25-30 minutes to save the people in the water. It is hard to see the six boats making more than one round trip to the site in this time, as when they get back to the Californian, all the winches would be occupied to raise the survivors in the Titanic's lifeboats on deck, stopping them to make another trip in time.
Let us also say that in this time, a handful of the Titanic's boats have been emptied and they can also return for swimmers - let's say four to six, maximum of one per winch. This gives us 10-12 boatloads of the people in the water saved by a single round trip by the Californian's six and Titanic's four to six boats before 3.10 a.m., by which most people in the cold water would be beyond help. Again optimistically, let us say each boat rescues 25 on average - and that a difficult feat under the conditions for the small crews of the boats.
So the final tally would be 250-300 people saved from the icy water - many of whom would still die from the cold before they even reach the deck of the Californian (or the Carpathia). Of course all emptied boats could try to return to the wreck site for more swimmers, but returning with survivors would be very rare and all those manning them would be very cold themselves.
And this would be how the situation would stand when the Carpathia arrives at 4 a.m. Even by the reckoning of this very optimistic course of events, assuming nothing goes wrong in the efforts of the Californian's crew and they even are very lucky, I can't see much more than 250 more survivors than IOTL making it to the safety of the Carpathia and the Californian.
Please correct if above has glaring mistakes.
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California would probably only arrive with minutes to spare before Titanic fully submerged. They could pull a couple hundred more people at most from the water before they freeze. You're still looking at 1,200-1,300 dead.
They might have been, but the real reason why the Californian didn't come to the Titanic's aid was because they didn't know about the sinking until after it was all over. The Californian's wireless operator had tried to break in with an ice warning while Jack Philips and Harold Bride were sending a backlog of personal messages to Cape Race. Philips and Bride basically told the Californian to piss off. The Californian's operator took the hint. He turned off his set and went to bed.
And that's the thing - the Californian being near wouldn't have got those lifeboats loaded quicker. What would have was better management of the emergency by Captain Smith and his crew, improved ship architecture (to make it easier for third class passengers to get on deck in an emergency situation), and the easing of US laws forbidding the mixing of steerage and higher class passengers - which is why the ship was deliberately designed to make it hard for the third class passengers to get on deck.
Also not being so cavalier about icebergs. That would have helped too.
A holy place is never empty.
Russian cult film 30s "Chapaev", ends with the death of the hero in the Ural River. What movie would be made the Vasiliev brothers, had there been no Russian Revolution and Civil War? Of course, "Titanic"!
Some people are misunderstanding how many lives could be saved.
Depending on exactly when the Californian arrives, the obvious course is to take on board as many as possible, while launching her own lifeboats.
There should then be enough boats to keep everyone out of the water, which is the big killer. A very uncomfortable night, but casualties would be small, more ships arriving in the morning to take people off the boats.
And you would be surprised how many people a ship her size can take. Uncomfortable, sure, but dry and relatively warm.
Depending on exactly when the Californian arrives, the obvious course is to take on board as many as possible, while launching her own lifeboats.
There should then be enough boats to keep everyone out of the water, which is the big killer. A very uncomfortable night, but casualties would be small, more ships arriving in the morning to take people off the boats.
And you would be surprised how many people a ship her size can take. Uncomfortable, sure, but dry and relatively warm.
Did you read the theoretical course of events I posted above? Even in the most optimistic circumstances, it is very hard to see the Californian arrive before the Titanic has already gone under. So a direct ship-to-ship transfer is quite unlikely - even if the Californian gets there while the Titanic is still afloat if it seems she is clearly sinking, Captain Lord of the Californian probably would not risk taking his ship alongside, but would keep a safe distance while the Californian is launching her own six boats.
The liferafts might have headed in the wrong directions. Though if the captain of the California hadn't been sleeping or people decided to wake him after the flares were spotted they might have been able to tell some of the people to hold on or convince the lifeboats to go back. I believe that the lifeboats were only half loaded for a few reasons. The first was because some of the immigrant women they tried to get into the lifeboats early on jumped out of them to go back inside. Two, they didn't know that the liferafts could be lowered at full capacity. Three, the lifeboats all rowed away when they were supposed to stay as people lowered other passengers down. Apparently there was a fear of suction pulling the boats down (think of the movie and how people where dragged throw broken window), which doesn't really excuse the early people. Also, my own two cents. I agree with a suggestion once heard that it would be better if the Titanic ONLY had the liferafts legally required. They might have filled them up that way.
I never said ship-ship.
Boat -> ship, plus more boats to get everyone out of the water.
Even if they only reduce time in water, it saves lives. Just seeing another ship approaching saves lies, people have hope and hang on just that bit longer.
There is a bottleneck, though - getting people to the deck of the Californian in time to free up boats to return to get more survivors from the sea. I already factored this in to my scenario. The Californian only has six winches/davits, and it will be very slow going. In the mean time, only a small number of the Titanic's and/or the Californian's boats can return to pick people from the water, and they would have well under an hour, even under thirty minutes to do that before the cold water makes survival very unlikely. Also getting people from the water to the boats is hard work, and it gets tougher all the time as the boat fills up.