"Titanic" - at the beginning of the XX century, the largest passenger ship, which belonged to the British postal and passenger steamship company "White Star Line" - was built in 1911. With a displacement of 46328 tons, a length of 269 m, a speed of 25 knots. Making her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York on the night of April 14-15, 1912, the Titanic collided with an iceberg and sank 800 km southeast of Newfoundland Island. The death toll, according to various sources, ranged from 1400 to 1517 people (there were about 2200 people on board in total). Insurance companies paid more than £ 14 million to the relatives of the victims of the disaster, an astronomical amount at the time. The sinking of the Titanic is one of the greatest sea disasters of the 20th century.
1985, September 1 - three members of the underwater expedition, led by Professor Robert Ballard, descended in the Albin bathyscaphe to a depth of more than 4 km and for the first time 73 years after the disaster saw the Titanic's hull split into two parts on the seabed. But his examination not only did not clarify some of the mysterious circumstances of the sinking of the Titanic, but also raised many new questions.
So, throughout all these years, it was believed that the Titanic sank because, in a collision, an iceberg ripped its starboard skin below the waterline to a length of about 60 meters. However, Ballard's expedition found only 6 relatively small breaks in the hull skin, the edges of which were turned outward. Such damage could, for example, result from an explosion (or explosions) inside the liner hull. But why could these explosions have occurred and how are they related to the impact on the iceberg?
Maybe events developed like this. The iceberg broke through the side skins below the engine room waterline, and cold sea water poured into it, which had a temperature of 2 degrees Celsius. When she began to fill the steam boilers, colossal stresses arose in their hot walls due to the sharp temperature difference. The metal could not stand it, the walls burst, and the boilers, the steam pressure in which reached 150 atmospheres, began to explode. The explosions increased the size of the holes obtained in the collision and created new ones, turning their torn edges outward …
The fact that the Titanic collided with an iceberg is beyond doubt. Numerous passengers and crew members who were lucky enough to stay alive testified to this. But why, again, according to eyewitnesses, neither the passengers nor the crew members felt anything except a slight shudder of the hull and, as it were, the echo of a distant explosion? But a body weighing 66,000 tons, moving at a speed of 40 km / h, hit a giant ice block, which had the hardness of a rock!
Perhaps the Titanic did not collide with the iceberg at all, but only slightly touched it? Did he encounter something completely different? Or did this "something" deliberately collide with the liner, using the iceberg as a "screen" and becoming the true culprit in the loss of the ship?
Well, if the culprit is an iceberg, then why did such a collision occur at all? How could it happen that in clear, calm weather and the complete absence of rough seas - a phenomenon surprising for these latitudes and this time of the year - the officers and sailors of the watch failed to notice the danger in time and take measures to avoid a catastrophe? Moreover, as it turned out later, the fatal iceberg was the only one within a radius of several tens of miles on the Titanic's route.
The strange carelessness of Captain Smith and his two watchmates, Murdoch and Lightoller, defies explanation. At one time, clear weather and complete calm at sea were recognized as its cause. This carelessness manifested itself, in particular, in the fact that the observer sailors in the "crow's nest" on the mast were not even equipped with binoculars. They monitored their surroundings with the naked eye! There was no watch-looking ship on the bow either. When the inevitability of a collision with an iceberg became apparent, a fatal and unforgivable mistake for a professional was made by the captain's mate William Murdock. If at that moment he gave the command “Full back! The steering wheel is straight!”, The Titanic would stay afloat. Calculations showed that in this case, in a collision, two forward watertight compartments would have been broken, the ship would have received a bow trim,which could be easily eliminated by filling two aft compartments with seawater. The remaining twelve whole compartments would have provided the Titanic with buoyancy, and if at the same time it could not reach New York on its own, then at least all passengers and crew members would have been saved.
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Unfortunately, Murdoch commanded differently: “Full back! To the left of the rudder!”, Putting the entire starboard side of the liner under the blow of the iceberg. The result of this fatal mistake of the most experienced naval officer is known …
The commission, which investigated the circumstances of the sinking of the Titanic, came to the conclusion that the steamer "Californien" was the closest to the crash site - the only ship that, according to the commission, could come to the aid of the dying giant liner, especially since both of them were one from another within line of sight. The Commission of Inquiry has identified Stanley Lord, the captain of the steamer Californien, as one of the perpetrators of the deaths of more than 1,500 people on board the Titanic. The accusation of deliberate failure to provide assistance to people in distress at sea is so grave for any seaman, and moreover for the captain of a ship, that it puts an end to his professional reputation and further maritime career.
For many years, the conclusion of the commission was not questioned, and only in 1968 the American Association of Merchant Marine Captains, after re-examining the circumstances of the sinking of the Titanic, came to the conclusion that the charge brought against Captain Stanley Lord more than 50 years ago was erroneous … The Californien was too far away to see the sinking Titanic. It has been proven that the distance between the two vessels was so great that it was impossible for them to even see each other's navigation lights. But at the same time it turned out that between the sinking Titanic and the Californian, which was drifting, there was another ship, while from the Titanic it was mistaken for the Californien, and from the Californien - for the Titanic. The name and identity of this ghost ship remains a mystery to this day. The nature of the maneuvers of the mysterious ship (let's call it "X") was able to very accurately establish from the records in the logbook "Californien" and from the testimony of members of its crew, as well as people who escaped from the Titanic. These maneuvers seem rather strange.
"X", heading from the north-east to the south-west, falls into the field of view of the watchmen on both vessels mentioned at about the same time - at 22.25. Exactly at 23.40, that is, at the moment when the Titanic collides with the iceberg, the X stops the cars and drifts, and then … turns 180 degrees, as if intending to go the opposite course! But he does not do this, and until 02.05 he continues to drift, as if from a distance - from a distance of about 6 nautical miles - watching the development of the Titanic tragedy. After that, "X" starts the cars, again turns 180 degrees and goes to the southwest. At 02.40, its running lights disappear from the view of the watchkeepers on the Californien.
Who was this "X" and why was he acting so strange? And if from him for more than two hours they indifferently watched the Titanic die, was he not involved in the death of the liner? Or maybe "X" was not a ship at all?
(Material by V. Ilyin). Nikolai Nepomniachtchi