1912: A first-class RMS Titanic passenger awaits her carriage to the ship.
Atop the roof of a 13-storey building recently, with the wind blowing stiffly, wet and cold, experiencing acrophobia, I thought, this is some small part of the sensation confronting those aboard, those who were unlucky enough not to make it into a lifeboat, who had had to jump.
The largest passenger vessel afloat!
A century has passed since the ill-fated maiden voyage and inconceivable sinking of the White Star Line’s flag ship RMS Titanic, the largest and most luxurious ocean liner then yet launched. Built using the finest materials, with the most skilled workmanship, boasting the most technological advanced equipment, replete with a super-redundancy of water-tight compartments forming an inner hull with bulkheads that could be closed with the flip of an electric switch, she was said to be virtually unsinkable. But, just 4 days out, colliding with an iceberg, resulting in a 220-245 foot-long gash, on April 15, 1912, at 11:40, over the course of two hours, with lights still blazing and the band playing on, she did sink. All the brilliant machinery, all the carefully conceived splendor, along with 1,509 people, 69 % of those on board, sank to an icy oblivion having experienced a gruesome end and needless death.
Full steam ahead!
These figures are courtesy of Mr. John R. Henderson, on the staff of the Ithaca College Library. He maintains a blog devoted to all sorts of fascinating statistics related to the Titanic disaster. For instance, like all ships, the Titanic turned more quickly, the greater her forward motion. Had the Titanic proceeded ahead and turned, it’s very likely that she would have avoided hitting the iceberg all together. Imagine also, if the ship had stopped overnight as it approached the ice field, or even slowed down. The worst then would certainly have been avoided. Surely the unfathomable extended cut, almost the length of a football field, half the length of the nave of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, would not have occurred.
Deckchairs on the Titanic.
Alas, the much vaunted "watertight" compartments of the Titanic's hull were not actually watertight. They were open at the tops, which actually aided in the vessel’s demise. The 882 foot long ship could have stayed afloat had only four compartments flooded. But spilling over, just as water does when one fills an ice tray, from one compartment, to the next, five flooded instead.
A veteran of manny crossings, Titanic's commander, Captain Edward John Smith, had started his career in 1880. Such wide experience, along with Captain Smith's kindly, grandfather-like countenance and courteous manner, only added to the ship's allure as "unsinkable". Titanic's maiden run, was to have been Smith's final assignment before retirement.
Apart from all these unintended prescriptions for doom, Henderson stresses the class biases in effect which helped to seal the fate of so many. “Numbers make it all too clear that a rule of first-class first, far outweighed any guiding principle of women and children first.” He explains. Legal regulations based on a ships passenger tally, required seats for 962 in the lifeboats. Instead, lifeboats with 1,178 seats were carried aboard 'virtually unsinkable' Titanic. To accommodate all on board, boats with a capacity of 2,208 seats were needed.
Titanic, the only way to cross. Seven-year-old Douglas Spedden spinning a top. New Yorkers with houses in Tuxedo Park and at Bar Harbor, Maine, the Speddens, Daisy and Frederic, were journeying home with their only child and two servant after a holiday in Algiers and Monte Carlo. All five members of their party were rescued. Unable as a toddler to pronounce nanny, Margaret Burns' name, Douglas had called her 'Muddie Boons', which at 7 he continued out of affection.
And yes, it’s too true what Henderson says. In first-class 97 % of women passengers survived. In second-class, it was 86% of the women, while in steerage, slightly less than half of the women emigrating for a new life here were saved. Of the men traveling first-class, 34% lived, versus 13% of men traveling in steerage.
1914: Not long after this picture was taken, nine year-old Titanic survivor Douglas Spedden, summering with his parents in Maine, ran after a ball, was hit by a car and died.
This tragic record of discrimination, based on class and ethnicity notwithstanding, what most compels one contemplating the Titanic’s downfall, are all the rich passengers progressing unawares, cosseted by unprecedented comfort. Partly, this must be seen an indictment, concerning our own prejudicial corruption. What makes it so strong, is the ironic plausibility of the beguiling delusion under which so many among them engaged life.
It is attendant to the same heedless quest for more once one is already amply endowed with riches, that force that drove Bernard Madoff and caused him to flourish. It is comparable too, to the blind arrogance leading to the worldwide economic downturn. This outlook is what makes some think that the world’s resources are infinite, that they may drill for oil, foul the water and air at will and forever, if not entirely without consequence, with no significant consequence to themselves and to their privilege, at least. 'We are', they reason, 'God’s elect! We are, all in our group, so very clever, so righteous, so well connected, so rich, that nothing can touch us. We can defy even nature itself, including injury and death. Our hedge fund cannot fail! This ship is unsinkable!'
The columned, domed grand staircase in 'First-Class.'
A focal point of Titanic's fore staircase was a clock on the landing supported by allegorical figures of "Honour and Glory crowning Time", carved from quartered oak.
A lamp on the newel post.
Titanic's bronze lamp standard, in the form of cupid, salvaged in 1987.
A parcel-gilt wrought-iron Louis Seize balustrade gleams below a glass and iron dome.
Helping to place the Titanic's stratafied social hierarchy into the proper economic context Henderson's data outlines ticket prices for passage on the great liner. First Class tickets had a broad range, from £30 for a berth to £870 for a luxury suite with 2 staterooms, 2 dressing rooms, a private sitting room, bath and a 50 foot long promenade deck. At $5 to the pound that amounts to $150-$4,350. New York's heath commissioner, had a starting salary of just $5,000 per-annum and the most expensive first-class fare was comperable in price to what a Brewster-bodied Rolls-Royce would have cost.
By contrast, second class ticket could be purchased for as little as £12, or $60 and steerage faress ran from £3 to £8, or from $15 to $40. As little as this sounds today, in 1912 the cheapest ticket would have required a clerk, typist, or shipyard worker's entire wage, for an entire month.
First-class women and children were about 6% of those aboard the Titanic, but constituted 20% of the survivors. Steerage passengers, a third of all aboard, only amounted to one fourth of all those saved.
The Lounge.
A pleasant corner in which to play bridge.
The Georgian Revival Writing Room.
The Smoking Room.
Above Titanic's Smoking Room's marble fireplace mantel, was Norman Wilkinson's painting 'Approach to the New World', which depicted New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty. Because the 4 illustrations above show elements salvaged from Titanic's sister ship, RMS Olympic, they show a diferent Wilkinson seascape. Mahogany paneled, otherwise, the sister smoking rooms were nearly identical.
The Ivy hung trelliaged Veranda Café.
The Reception Room. On the day before yesterday, during an era before cocktail bars, this was the favored spot where passangers forgathered prior to dinner to meet friends for an aperitief.
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Dinner is served!
Titanic's Jacobean Dining Saloon, with leaded windows, paneled walls and a molded strap-work ceiling.
Even the glassware was etched with tme White Star Line's insignia.
Chinaware used for breakfast and lunch.
Spode dinnerware.
In addition to taking meals in the main dining saloon, first-class passengers could make reservations in the deluxe À la Carte Restaurant. It located aft on the Bridge Deck. What had started as a small, 25-table deluxe restaurant on the Olympic had expanded into a 140 seat private club on Titanicjust a year later. The addition of this exclusive and expensive dining room accidentally created wahat one Titanic scholat has characterized as a "First-Class, First-Class!"
Informed observers noted, “The introduction of the restaurant appears to be creating a new class of passenger, who assumes an air of superiority and holds aloof from the ordinary saloon diner.”
Ordinarily, the cost of one's meals for all classes on Titanic were included in the the passage price. First-class diners selected their meals from a generous seclection of two or three choices from a fixed menu. In the À la Carte Restaurant, one was provided with a far wider rage of choices for every course. The selection available there was was much more varied and more extravagagant too, than the fare offered in the main dining saloon.
Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon, internationally known as the couturier Lucile, traveling with her husband, Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon, wrote of their delight, "Fancy strawberries in April, and in mid ocean. The whole thing is positively uncanny. Why, you would think you were at the Ritz." And some passengers did indeed refer to this dining room as "The Ritz."
Bay garlanded Spode from the À la Carte Restaurant.
A blue and gold rimmed Spode dinner plate from the À la Carte Restaurant.
Such sybriatic luxury did not come inexpensively. Passengers had to pay for their meals just as in any restaurant on shore and were presented with a bill from a waiter's pad upon which their menu selections had been written. So long as one made exclusive use of the À la Carte Restaurant the steamship company deducted £3 to £5 off the cost of the passage ticket. Given the high cost of the restaurant's menu though, it was likely that one could be expected to far exceed that amount on "The Ritz’s" lavish meals. "The Ritz’s" salubrious surroundings, not unlike the actual Paris and London Ritz Hotels', were decorated in the refined Louis XVI style. Golden Gout Grec ornament, garlands, ribbon bound bundled columns and wreaths of laurel adorned a room paneled in walnut marquerty. The same motifs reoccurred in the plaster ceiling, the silken chair covers and even on the special Spode chinaware that was used nowhere else on the the ship. Small festooned chandeliers hung overhead, but with a subtle difference from those on shore. To make Titanic's gentle sway less noticeable to diners, these fixtures had been constructed to hang from the ceiling rigidly.
A louis XVI stlye wall sconce recovered from the wreckage of Titanic's À la Carte Restaurant.
Another new feature on Titanic was the "Café Parisien" adjacent to the À la Carte Restaurant. Passengers seated here could choose meals from the À la Carte menu, but in the café large picture windows afforded a view of the sea while dining--something that had never been done on a British ship before. This room also had its own distinctive china
If the weather cooperated, the windows could be rolled down and passengers could dine al fresco - another Titanic first. On her first and only voyage, the Café Parisien proved to be particularly popular with the younger people traveling in first-class.
Trelliage was again employed for Titanic's "Café Parisien".
The Gymnasium.
Titanic's heated pool was a shipboard first!
The Turkish Bath.
A suite's Louis Quinze style sittingroom.
A suite's Adamesque sittingroom.
A Directoire style stateroom.
Wood panneled and velvet hung.
Brocaded walls.
'A date with fate, lay in wait!' To be continued...
Thanks for this very informative blog! I love all the pictures. What a splendid interior!
“Numbers make it all too clear that a rule of first-class first, far outweighed any guiding principle of women and children first.” -Henderson
If this is the case, then how come a higher percentage of third class women survived than first class men (49% vs. 34%)? Would you rather be a rich man or a poor woman on the Titanic? Also, interestingly, third class men had a higher survival rate than second class men (13% versus 8%). This is coming from Henderson's site http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/titanic.html#pass
Posted by: A Facebook User | 04/16/2012 at 06:44 AM
Class distinctions even governed how the passengers if their bodies were recovered were treated after death:
https://kevinbrownhistorian.wordpress.com/2022/01/05/class-distinction-among-titanic-victims-defined-by-clothing/
If you were first class, you were embalmed and placed in a coffin, if you were in second or third you were placed in a sack and if you were crew thrown in with the ice in the hold. Clothes and possessions were used to identify victims and also to assign them to a class if unidentified at first. Priority was given to the return of the corpses of first class passengers to land so their deaths could be properly certified as property and wealth could be at stake. The problems of not having a corpse were shown by the widow of the wealthy Spaniard Victor Penasco who had to claim an unidentifiable corpse as her husband, last seen resplendent in his tuxedo, to prove his death for inheritance purposes. Less affluent passengers were buried at sea. Confusion was caused by crew borrowing the warmer, obviously expensive suits and coats of First Class passengers.
Posted by: Phil | 04/23/2023 at 06:08 AM