The beginning of the XX century. Fierce rivalry between the shipping companies of Scandinavia, Germany, France, Britain and the USA. Each of them tried to increase the volume of passenger traffic between Europe and North America. The winner in the competition was the one who was able to reduce tariffs and keep the comfort level at a high level. The American financier Pierpont Morgan also had his own plan to conquer the maritime transport market: he proposed creating an international trust under the full control of American capital, and European and small American shipping companies would then be forced to submit to the trust's management in everything and provide it with the necessary profit.
In March 1909, construction of the Titanic began at a shipyard near Belfast. His twin brother Olympic was almost built there. Two years later, when the Olympic set off on its maiden voyage, the Titanic was launched. It was believed that the "Titanic" was not only designed by the best designers, but also made of the highest quality materials using the advanced technologies of the time. It was staffed by an experienced crew and equipped with everything necessary for a long voyage.
An advertising campaign was carried out in advance and very professionally, aimed at drawing attention to the "Titanic". The owners of the ship generously paid for the services of newsmen, who did not hesitate to praise the ship. The newspapers were filled with descriptions of the beautiful floating palace, ten stories high, 269 meters long and 28.2 meters wide. The promenade decks, corridors and all 762 passenger cabins were described with admiration. On board were equipped with a tennis court, Turkish baths, a hospital with an operating room and a heated pool.
The unsinkability of the Titanic was particularly praised. For the first flight, 44 tons of meat, 40 tons of potatoes, 35 thousand eggs, 5 tons of sugar and 27 thousand bottles of beer were purchased. The usual dinner menu at the restaurant included oysters, stewed salmon, beef fillet, lamb in mint sauce, chocolate eclairs, pudding, etc.
The status of the flight was supported by the information that there will be 10 millionaires on board carrying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of jewelry and gold in special safes. The ship's owner, the British company White Star Line, hoped to make huge profits from the operation of the Titanic. The ship had a printing house that allowed the publication of a daily newspaper, which featured news, stock quotes and menus of the ship's restaurants. There was an eight-person orchestra on board.
On April 10, the Titanic set off on her first and, as it turned out, her last voyage. On the fourth day of the voyage, the ship's radio operator began to receive numerous messages from other ships about the danger: there were too many icebergs around. The Titanic was advised to slow down. But the ship's captain, Edward Smith, did not accept these recommendations, ordering only the lookouts to be more attentive.
The result of numerous erroneous orders of the captain was a collision with an iceberg and the death of one and a half thousand people. Only a few survived this disaster. Much has been written about this. But some facts and actions of the captain remained unexplained. So, for example, with the highest technical equipment of the ship, the lookouts did not even have binoculars, and there was also no powerful searchlight on the bow of the ship. It is unclear how an experienced ship captain gave the order "forward middle" in a collision. And then, instead of supervising the work of the rescue services and ordering the radio operators to give an SOS signal, he went to the cabin of one of the richest passengers with an offer to take a seat in the boat. In addition, the following fact is perplexing: the ship was designed for 3300 passengers,but the capacity of all available boats was only 1178 people.
There is a well-founded opinion that the conditions for a tragedy were created. In one of the books by Western authors "The Riddle of the Titanic" the following event is described. Just before the departure of the Titanic, American millionaire and ship owner Pearson Morgan, referring to a sudden illness, abandoned the intention to sail on the ship. And a couple of days after the tragedy, he was seen at one of the French resorts, and he was completely healthy and well. By the way, about 50 passengers refused to sail, who, as it turned out, were Morgan's friends and business partners. In addition, it was planned that a unique collection of paintings would be transported on the Titanic, but it was not loaded on board either (now it can be seen in one of New York's museums).
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A very interesting version is that the owner of the ship substituted the Titanic for his twin brother, the Olympic ship. Just before the shipment, all the inscriptions on the ship were changed, and officially it was not the Titanic that went to sea, but the Olympic under his name. What was the reason?
There is information that earlier the real "Olympic" had an accident: he collided with a British cruiser. And the captain at that time on the Olympic was John Smith, who later took the Titanic on its last voyage. The company, the owner of the Olympic, had to pay a huge fine for the accident. It was then, perhaps, that the plan was ripe, to send the damaged ship instead of the Titanic, and the order to the captain was unambiguous: to move as fast as possible, despite the presence of a huge number of icebergs.
The Titanic was headed towards its death, driven by Edward J. Smith, who, judging by the orders, was carrying out the instructions of the owners. So, a few hours before the tragedy, he took the binoculars from the observers, and just before the collision he turned the ship sideways in the direction of the iceberg. Given this behavior of the captain, then he did his best to ensure the disaster! The owners, who had planned the sinking of the Titanic, even foreseen the dispatch of a "rescue vessel", but it left the port a week after the departure of the Titanic and, of course, came to the crash site only three days after the tragedy.
Additional confirmation of the version of the planned catastrophe of the "Titanic-Olympic" can be the fact that on more than four thousand objects raised from the bottom of the ocean from the sunken ship, not a single one is marked "Titanic". Most likely, the real "Titanic" itself sailed the world's waters for many years and in 1935 was decommissioned. Objectively, this is only one of the versions, since no one knows the true cause of the sinking of the Titanic.
Broken into three parts, "Titanic" lies in the Atlantic Ocean at a depth of 3800 meters. Everyone who went down in bathyscaphes to the lost ship claims that in a large area from the ship, the bottom resembles a giant fair from the numerous objects scattered around. Rumor has it that the ship's safes are still stocked with treasures, including the famous Blue Tavernier diamond. This diamond had a long history and a reputation as a fatal stone, because it brought only misfortune to its owners - almost all of them died over time.
Some items raised from the bottom are on display in the American Titanic Museum. Among the exhibits of this museum are a flag from a boat, a ship's bell, postcards, letters, a menu from a restaurant and much more. In 2006, a violin belonging to the orchestra leader, who died with his musicians, was put up for auction at Henry Aldrige & Son, and its starting price reached half a million dollars. But the keys to the ship's mail were sold in 2007 at an auction for one hundred thousand pounds.
The cost of creating the famous film about the sinking of the Titanic was 2.5 times higher than all the costs of building the Titanic itself and amounted to $ 200 million.
Until now, "Titanic" is associated with a lot of strange and mystical events. For example, in December 1992, in the North Atlantic, Norwegian fishermen saw a huge ship suddenly surfaced, frightened people rushing about on the decks, some of them jumping overboard. A few minutes later, the ship also quickly went under water. 13 people were raised from the water. Then this story was classified at the direction of the Pentagon. The expert on marine disasters F. Starnes states that “Perhaps in this case there was a movement of people in time and their transition to another dimension. A special group of researchers is engaged in the analysis of the incident. I can only confirm that on December 14, 1992, the Titanic surfaced and there were living people on board."
In April 1972, the radio operator of the American warship Theodore Roosevelt received an SOS signal, and the Morse code called for help from the Titanic, which collided with an iceberg. On a request to the command, he received an unambiguous order: "do not respond to the SOS signal, follow the same course." The radio operator became interested in the story of the sinking of the Titanic. In the archives he managed to find reports from other radio operators, who also received radiograms from the Titanic. And I realized that such events took place strictly in a certain period - six years (1930, 1936, 1945). In 1978, the radio operator was specifically waiting for the signal. It is not known whether he succeeded or not, but in April 1996 the signal from the Titanic was again received by the radio operator of the Canadian ship Quebec.
Another mystical coincidence: in 1896 (16 years before the Titanic disaster), Morgan Robertson's book Futility was published in England, in which the author described in detail the death of a passenger liner en route from England to America. The time of the event was also indicated - 1912, and the name of the ship - "Titan".
The tragedy of the passenger liner "Titanic" is still considered the largest maritime disaster that occurred in peacetime. And all the events related to the sinking of the ship are still shrouded in mystery.
