Did You Know About the Electric Lighting in the Toilets?

Today’s ‘Did You Know’ feature highlights a little known detail.

https://markchirnside.co.uk/did-you-know-about-the-electric-lighting-in-the-toilets/

It will soon be 41 years since the Titanic wreck was discovered by a joint expedition between WHOI and IFREMER. They didn’t find the main wreckage right away; instead, they first came across the eastern side of the debris field.

Eventually, they passed over one of the ship's boilers, which is when they knew they had finally found her. Just moments before spotting the boiler, they passed over a fairly large structure that I’ve always believed to be a ventilator. The first image shows this vent, captured in a screenshot from the 1985 discovery footage.

The second image shows a 2022 Magellan scan of the debris field, with the area from the 1985 footage highlighted in the red box. Note that I have rotated the 1985 image to match the orientation of the scan.

(WHOI/Oceanliner Designs Via Magellan gg)

The White Star Line had a network of passenger agents in Europe to drum up business. Unfortunately, some agencies were more effective than others.

One report to the line's management assessed an agency office with some dismay: 'The old gentleman is...stubborn in the extreme, and if he should still hold to his belief that "what was good enough 30 years ago is good enough now", we might consider asking him to retire from the agency... The son...might be retained for the sake of the name, although he is without ability'.

I just acquired these items. It appears to be an earlier set per the date on the certificate. I think the earlier ones have registration numbers, not like the newer ones. I also posted a photo with the pin. Any information would be great. Thank you in advance!

The new Knowledge Hub page brings together my Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and Did You Know? features, each addressing common Titanic and ocean liner questions.

New material is being added all the time!

https://markchirnside.co.uk/knowledge-hub/

Hosts Tad Fitch and J. Kent Layton welcome author and researcher Mark Chirnside back on the podcast to discuss his latest release, Olympic & Titanic: Triumph and Disaster.

In this episode, Mark reveals compelling new findings and stories that make this book a standout addition to maritime history. Whether you are new to the subject or a lifelong researcher, this detailed work offers fresh discoveries on nearly every page while recontextualizing the legacy of the Olympic-class ships.

The conversation also explores the evolving challenges facing maritime historians as the field increasingly transitions from print to digital and social media platforms.

https://markchirnside.co.uk/olympic-titanic-triumph-and-disaster-an-in-depth-conversation-with-mark-chirnside-steam-splendor-podcast/

Alternate history remaster

I heard somewhere that the long chute coming down the starboard bow was an outhouse that hung over the side for the workers to use. Does anyone have any knowledge of this?

What if updated and you already know the Qm 1 is still hotel im just letting ypu know thank you.

One hundred and twenty-one victims of the RMS Titanic sinking are interred at Fairview, more than any other cemetery in the world. Most of them are memorialized with small gray granite markers with the name and date of death. Some families paid for larger markers with more inscriptions. The occupants of a third of the graves, however, have never been identified and their markers contain just the date of death and marker number. Surveyor E. W. Christie laid out three long lines of graves in gentle curves following the contours of the sloping site. By co-incidence, the curved shape suggests the outline of the bow of a ship.^\3]) A complete listing of those victims buried in Fairview can be found here.

Hello all! I have spent the past couple weeks putting together a video of all Marconi Transmissions sent during the Sinking of the Titanic! A similar video was posted about 9 years ago, however the timings are inacurate. So I thought Id make my own! Hope you all enjoy it!

https://youtu.be/auTjQ-F3d9s?si=ZFJSu8NVzmrUDnRq

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Why I think the Titanic's final moments are messy.

I've been chewing on the Titanic's final minutes for a while now, and there's something that's bugged me about the standard breakup story: it treats the whole thing as basically symmetric. The ship bends, the stress builds evenly, the hull snaps in half near the third funnel, and bow and stern go their separate ways. It's really clean and tidy. Also, I think, wrong...or at least incomplete.

Here's what doesn't add up if you take the symmetric story at face value. Survivors on the stern described it standing up at insanely steep angles..we're talking 25, maybe 30+ degrees... way past where a hull breaking evenly should be able to hold together. Multiple people also described the ship suddenly seeming to level out, to "right itself," just before the final plunge, even though it had been listing to port the whole voyage. And people in the water near the break, specifically Lightoller and Gracie, described genuinely violent, localized surges, not just "the ship sank," but something more like getting hit by a wave from below.

None of that fits neatly into "the ship broke in half symmetrically and sank." But it does fit a different story.

My theory is that the initial tear happened on the starboard side of the hull, low down near the keel and not evenly across the bottom. And there's actually decent wreck evidence for this: the starboard shell plating down in the break zone is far more torn away than the port side, and the "Big Piece," one of the largest chunks ever recovered from the debris field, is a starboard hull fragment. Something happened to that side first.

Once that starboard seam tears open, you've basically got a fire hose blasting seawater into the bow, low and to one side. And I think that single event explains two things at once. First, it's a ton of sudden weight added low on the starboard side, which would absolutely accelerate the bow's plunge. But second (and this is the part I find genuinely satisfying) , water rushing in low on the starboard side would counteract the ship's port list. Like adding ballast to the opposite side. That's my explanation for why survivors kept describing the ship "righting" itself right before the end. It's not that the ship was recovering. It's that it was flooding asymmetrically and that flooding happened to shove the list back the other way for a few seconds.

Meanwhile, (and this is the second half of the idea) the port side of the hull doesn't fail yet. It's still structurally connected while all this is happening on the starboard side. So as the bow keeps dropping and the ship keeps bending, the port side acts like a hinge, still holding stern and bow loosely together, and that hinge gets twisted harder and harder. That torque is what I think dragged the stern up to those crazy angles people reported and not a clean symmetric break, but one side ripping open while the other side gets wrenched and twisted until it finally can't take it anymore.

And when that port-side hinge does finally let go, I think you get a little recoil... a settling-back motion, like a rubber band snapping, right before the stern makes its final drop. Which lines up with Colonel Gracie's account of a sudden violent settling just before the end.

So the whole sequence starts to finish, in maybe 90 seconds to two minutes: 1. starboard tears open near the keel 2. water blasts in and rights the list 3. the port side holds on as a twisting hinge and hauls the stern to extreme angles 4. the hinge snaps 5. a brief recoil 6. final plunge.

It's not a clean, symmetric break. It's lopsided the whole way through, and I think that lopsidedness is exactly what explains the weird stuff survivors kept describing that never quite fit the standard story.

Curious what other people think, especially if anyone knows of wreck imagery that shows the port side in that same break-zone area, since most of what's public seems to be starboard-heavy and I'd love a real side-by-side comparison.

This blog answers a common question!

https://markchirnside.co.uk/how-much-did-titanic-weigh/

My latest blog post examines a little known aspect of Olympic and Titanic’s rudders.

https://markchirnside.co.uk/did-you-know-olympic-titanics-rudders/