2.4 Titanic's final moments w/ Violet

2.4  Titanic’s final moments w/ Violet Jessup

Now we go back to the actual sinking of the Titanic during its final moments.  A number of survivors recalled hearing a tremendous roar go up as the ship went under (including Violet).  Some have explained the “roar” having been caused by equipment (i.e. boilers) breaking loose and cascading down a vertical or nearly vertical hull destroying bulkheads in the process.  This will be discussed later.  One survivor sketched a view showing both the bow and stern pointing upward with the majority of the hull under water.  Other survivors remembered the stern portion first sinking then falling back to the surface giving them some hope for refuge, only to see it seemly pulled down almost vertically as depicted in the movie “Titanic”  These witness accounts will be addressed later.  Here is what Violet remembered as she wrote her memoir years later.  The following is her account of the initial impact:

”Crash!....Then a low, rending, crunching, ripping sound, as Titanic shivered a trifle and the sound of her engines gently ceased”; (page 125 of John’s book).

The accounts of what happened during and after the crash by other survivors differ in detail from Violet’s recollection she had years later.

 Next we have her remembrances aboard lifeboat #16:

“…… I sat paralyzed with cold and misery, as I watched Titanic give a lurch forward.  One of the huge funnels toppled off like a cardboard model, falling into the water with a fearful roar.  A few cries came to us across the water, then silence, as the ship seemed to right itself like a hurt animal with a broken back.  She settled for a few moments, but one more deck of lighted ports [portholes] disappeared.  Then she went down by the head with a thundering roar of underwater explosions, our proud ship, our beautiful Titanic gone to her doom.” (page 133 in John’s book).

Author Maxtone-Graham inserts an additional detail on page 140 of his book—(ref. 1): but first some remembrances by Violet that triggers his detail.

“It is only when something is over, when your mind is detached from immediate surroundings, that you visualize actual details. One of these surviving officers had gone down with the ship and then been blown up with the explosion; he somehow managed to get clear and was picked up by one of the boats. “

Maxtonel-Graham then inserts the following comment:

“This was, of course, Second Officer Herbert "Lights" Lightoller who, struggling in the water near the sinking ship, had been drawn down and affixed atop an engine room grating as sea water flooded into it. But that same flow of water proved the instrument of his salvation. It apparently struck a still-hot boiler, fracturing it. The ensuing explosion miraculously blew Lightoller clear of the wreck and he managed to clamber aboard an overturned Englehardt collapsible lifeboat that had been launched inverted when Titanic went down. His subsequent leadership throughout the night on that overturned boat with thirty precarious survivors standing atop it remains one of the most heroic sagas of the wreck.”

There you have it—a seasoned veteran of the seas using the words explosion(s) and an authoritarian naval historian backing her up with the same words.  These passages triggered my return to writing of this disaster and subsequent re-analysis based on the explosion premise.  It is ironic that it was Lightoller’s testimony during the hearings that the Titanic sank intact, and this is what I think led to the dismissal of boiler explosions being involved in the sinking.  I find it remarkable, perhaps even incredible, that the other technological experts, and there are many involved, refrain, for reasons best known to them, from even considering boiler explosions in their forensic analysis of the Titanic disaster.