Misconceptions about the Titanic

To this day the sinking of the Titanic is still the maritime disaster (and, perhaps, any disaster of any kind) that's most remembered and most prominent in media and the collective world-wide culture.

Unsurprisingly, given how much the event is talked about, there are tons and tons of misconceptions and false claims made about it. Here is a list of some of them

"White Star Line was too arrogant claiming that the ship was unsinkable, making false promises."

While there isn't actually any direct advertisement or piece of media where the company claims the ship to be unsinkable, it was nevertheless considered virtually unsinkable, and in some contexts stated as such.

Was this just sheer arrogance based on ignorance, or was there actually some basis to this claim?

There actually was. Most people have heard of the "watertight bulkheads" and how as long as four or less of them get flooded, the ship wouldn't sink. This was actually quite true (barring some kind of malfunction in the watertight doors or the like.)

The thing is, the four-compartment safety measure actually did cover pretty much every single accident scenario that was reasonable and there was precedent of. The ship would not sink if it collided with another ship (even one of the same size), or caused by a direct hit with an iceberg, or scraping rocks at the bottom of the sea, or any other realistic scenario that could compromise the integrity of the ship's hull (such as a boiler exploding). These were all types of accidents that had happened many times before during the history of ocean liners, and the four-compartment safety measure did indeed cover all of them.

However, the one thing that they did not account for was what actually happened: An iceberg scraping the side of the ship for tens of meters, making the hull plates bulge and rivets snap. (There is, in fact, evidence based on ship engineering that shows that if the ship had collided with the iceberg head-on, it would have not sunk. It might have caused some hundreds of deaths, mostly of those on the front of the ship, but it would not have sunk.)

So considering the ship virtually unsinkable wasn't actually completely unrealistic. The scenarios where it would be damaged so badly were so unlikely that it was reasonable to make the claim. Of course now we know that Murphy's Law unfortunately kicks in at the most unfortunate moments.

"There were lifeboats for just half the passengers. White Star Line compromised on the number of lifeboats because of arrogance and as a greedy saving measure."

This decision is actually also more justifiable in light of the previous point: It was highly unlikely for the ship to sink, so in the case of an accident the lifeboats would just be used to transport passengers to rescue ships, going back and forth to get more passengers.

In fact, the Titanic had more lifeboats than was required by law at the time. (The law was lagging behind, of course, but you can't blame the company for fulfilling and even surpassing the requirements of the law.)

There's also the quite widespread notion that lifeboats are somehow a guarantee of survival, or at least that they increase the chances by orders of magnitude. This isn't actually the case, especially back then. In fact, lifeboats, especially in those days, were almost a certain death sentence, and were only used as a desperate measure of last resort, when there was no other way. There are, in fact, dozens and dozens of examples of ship disasters where lifeboat deaths were even more numerous than of those who stayed in the ship, waiting to be rescued. Lifeboats are extremely rickety and haphazard, especially in bad weather conditions (which tends to be the case in most seaship disasters), get flooded very easily, capsize very easily...

When thinking about whether Titanic had "enough lifeboats" one should disabuse oneself of the notion that lifeboats were somehow a guarantee of survival. They were anything but, especially back then. (Although in the case of the Titanic the survivors were extraordinarily lucky in that the sea was completely calm, so in this particular case the lifeboats were in fact lifesavers. But this was highly unusual and up to chance. If the weather had been rougher, it's very possible that all of them would have perished. It took the Carpathia too long to reach them, if the weather conditions had been bad.)

"The third class of the ship was deplorable."

Mostly because of its depiction in the different movies, especially the James Cameron one, the third class of the Titanic has quite a bad reputation, being considered pretty much in essence what was previously known as "steerage" class (where passengers in this class would live in quite inhumane conditions in the ship, only in slightly better conditions than cattle).

This is quite an unfair and false picture of the situation, though. Even third-class passengers had cabins for two-to-four people (something that was unheard of in the previous era of the "steerage" class where "cabins" of 10 to 20 people were common), families could get their own cabins for themselves, women traveling alone could get their own private rooms shared with one or two other women, the third class was offered many services that were rare at the time, such as a smoking room and a promenade of their own, and the food service was quite adequate considering the time.

Indeed, it was very common in previous decades for passenger ships to not offer even eating utensils for third-class passengers (they were supposed to bring their own). In fact, some ships didn't offer any food at all (again, the passengers were supposed to bring their own). Not only did the Titanic third class offer dining rooms and eating utensils for third class, but the food was quite decent (in fact much better than most third-class passengers were accustomed to). Perhaps not a gourmet feast, but very decent.

"Joseph Bruce Ismay was a dirty opportunistic coward."

Joseph Bruce Ismay was the chairman and director of White Star Line, who was aboard the ship when it sunk. Famously he survived the sinking, as one of the few men who did.

His depiction in media, especially the two biggest Titanic movies, however, paint him as a stupid clueless dirty opportunistic coward who entered one of the lifeboats without permission, only allowed to do so because the crew didn't dare to say anything.

The thing is: This depiction of the man is 100% fictitious. There's literally zero evidence that he was like this. In fact, some survivor testimony states that he helped people enter lifeboats, and entered one himself only when there was nobody else left in that part of the ship, possibly at the suggestion of crew members. There's no evidence that he was a coward and an opportunist.

Incidentally, in this case we know exactly where this slanderous picture of him comes from: From one William Randolph Hearst, a businessman and media mogul, owner of several American news organizations. Indeed, Ismay and Hearst had become enemies in the past because of some financial disputes, and Hearst took the opportunity after the sinking of the Titanic to start a massive smearing campaign against Ismay, inventing all those stories and character traits out of thin air.

And Hearst was extremely successful. Ismay's reputation was destroyed, it never recovered, and history came to know about the "fact" of his cowardice and shameful actions during the sinking... even though there's literally no evidence of any of it. No survivor testimonies, nothing. The only source for these claims are the smearing campaign articles in the newspapers owned by Hearst.

While Ismay's reputation has partially recovered during the last few decades, very long after his death, it will probably never fully do so, and people may well still think of him as a dirty coward for the foreseeable future. Films like Cameron's Titanic don't exactly help.