Ever have a bad day? It could be worse...1912 (Example 1)

We've all had days that just couldn't get worse, at least in our minds. We're just minding our own business, and bam, something happens. Then another thing. You're umbrella blew inside out, then you get soaking wet and trying to make a mad dash for  your car, you run through a puddle that splashes on your pants, drop the keys in the pooling muddy water next to the car door. Could it get any worse? We ask ourselves.

The answer is a definite yes.

At this exact moment, 99 years ago, two men who didn't even have a pair of binoculars (budget cuts; that costs money) and saw a looming black shadow in the water from the "crow's nest" high atop a pole on floating ship that was on it's first voyage. "Iceberg ahead!" the crewman called out. The captain had gone to bed, as the Titanic sailed into a field of icebergs on the moonless night. Surely this was no threat to the ship that was deemed "practically unsinkable" due to it's bulkheads. Imagine an icetray, that's what the interior hull looked like. Any four consecutive ones could be damaged and the ship would stay afloat.

The crew using it's natural instinct to avoid the collision ordered to turn the ship hard astarboard, but it was on top of the iceberg, and still rammed into the solid ice. Unfortunately, steel wasn't quite up to par, and the metal was more "iron" in composition, meaning it was more fragile, especially in the freezing cold waters of the Atlantic (recovered pieces of the wreck were tested by being struck at the same speed of the collision and simply sliced in half).

This was okay, right? Four compartments, no problem. The ship's designer was on board and went to assess the damage. Four compartments were damaged; and a fifth slightly. The iceberg did not gash the ship, but rather banged into the Titanc like dots and dashes from Morse code. The ship was doomed.

Captain Smith, on his retirement voyage to deliver the ship to New York knew what all of this meant. Half of the passengers would be dead in hours because there weren't enough lifeboats (those cost money too, and who needs them on a ship that can't sink?). If the Titanic would have driven straight into the iceberg, it would have survived, but crippled the ship. Many of the officers would have been killed instantly, leaving the ship afloat to receive help, but human instinct was to get the ship out of the way. What a bad day.

The day was uneventful until they entered the iceberg field. Poor foresight led to the doom of the ship and over 1200 people would be dead by morning. If you were lucky enough (good day or bad day?), you might be able to get onto a lifeboat. Kind of scary, but the scale of what was happening didn't seem too obvious at first as the ship took a long time to start rising from the bow. When your lifeboat would get away from the sinking ship, of which many people didn't believe was really sinking, did the horror sink in. This is what you would see in the pitch dark; the only lights for miles: the crippled Titanic.

A little after 2 AM, on the 15th, everything went dark. The boilers were no longer accessible to fuel. The angle of the ship was more dramatic and items slid to the front of the bow from dishes, to boilers, to people. Panic begins to set in to the people remaining on board; the lifeboats were gone by 2:15. People started screaming and a large, unworldly sound reverberated throughout the area for miles. The ship was not built for the stress of being raised at somewhere around a 45 degree angle. The hull snapped the Titanic in two and the bow started to disappear below the water for good. People were clinging to the bow hoping it would somehow buoy, but (again later tests from underwater showed) part of the keel of the boat was still attached between the two sections which had torn between the third and fourth funnels. The sheer force ripped the two pieces and the bow sank at such a rapid rate that it plowed into the mud 2 1/2 miles below the surface.

Lifeboats struggled to stay away from the suction, which killed many, but most people died of hypothermia in the freezing cold waters. All the gentile ways of the Gilded Age were destroyed as the stern filled up and started sinking as well. People knowing what they were facing, ran over each other and jumped, hoping they'd somehow survive (and a few did this way, including the assistant wireless operator who sent out the signal SOS).

At 2:22 AM, the stern disappeared under the ocean's surface and would land by the bow, the two pieces facing opposite directions. Any bodies that went down were crushed immediately. The pressure at this depth was 6,000 pounds per square inch.

The screaming and terror made survivors wonder if the people who went down with the ship, including the captain, got the better end of the deal. It would be hours before the Carpathia, that had to turn around to come back to the disaster site (about four).

I had chance to meet someone that was on the Carpathia. More will follow tomorrow about him, but seven year old Maurice Hardgrove couldn't sleep on this night 99 years ago. He stepped out of the stateroom and saw two crew members talking. He felt something wasn't right, like the ship was turning as if to head back to Europe, not New York. He heard something about a rescue. Then one of the men shooed him back to his room.

Now, hundreds sat in the dark, praying, mourning and wondering what would happen next. The officers that survived tried to keep order and as the biggest threat, the people in the water that threatened to overturn the lifeboats, tragically faded away into the darkness as their lives were extinguished just like the lights on the Titanic. Hopefully the Carpathia would make it, but it was going to be a long night.

Talk about a bad day.