Most people are familiar with the tragic loss of the Titanic and most of its passengers, but it is, surprisingly, not the worst maritime disaster in history – in fact it only ranks as number 5 (based on death toll). This is a list of the most disastrous catastrophes involving ships. This list is ranked from least to most deaths.
Death Toll: 400
The Mary Rose was an English Tudor carrack warship and one of the first to be able to fire a full broadside of cannons. She was one of the earliest purpose-built warships to serve in the Royal Navy; it is thought that she never served as a merchant ship. In 1545 King Francis I of France launched an invasion of England with 30,000 soldiers in more than 200 ships. Against this invasion fleet—larger than the Spanish Armada forty-three years later—the English had about 80 ships and 12,000 soldiers, with the Mary Rose the flagship of Vice Admiral Sir George Carew. On July 19th, 1545, the two sides fought a fairly inconsequential battle (the Battle of Solent) with little damage being done to either side. Next day, toward evening, a breeze sprang up and as Mary Rose advanced to battle she capsized and sank with the loss of all but 35 of her crew. There were sources that said that the ship had fired from the port side and made a sharp turn so she could fire from the starboard side. The turn was so sharp that the ship heeled sufficiently to submerge the open gun ports, allowing enough water to enter to sink the ship. At the time, many sailors did not know how to swim as they considered this “tempting fate”. Pictured above is the hull of the Mary Rose – recovered in the 21st century. [Source]
Death Toll: 460
HMS Birkenhead, also referred to as HM Troopship Birkenhead or steam frigate Birkenhead, was one of the first iron-hulled ships built for the Royal Navy. She was initially designed as a frigate, but was converted to a troopship before being commissioned. On 26 February 1852, while transporting troops primarily of the 73rd Regiment of Foot to Algoa Bay, she was wrecked at Gansbaai near Cape Town, South Africa. There were not enough serviceable lifeboats on board for all the passengers – however the soldiers famously stood firm, thereby allowing the women and children to board the boats safely. Only 193 of the 643 people onboard survived, the soldiers’ chivalry gave rise to the “women and children first” protocol during the procedure of abandoning ship, while the “Birkenhead Drill” of Rudyard Kipling’s poem came to describe courage in face of hopeless circumstances. [Source]
Death Toll: 845
The S.S. Eastland was a passenger ship based in Chicago and used for tours. On July 24, 1915, the Eastland and two other Great Lakes passenger steamers, the Theodore Roosevelt and the Petoskey, were chartered to take employees from Chicago’s Western Electric Company to a picnic in Michigan City, Indiana. This was a major event in the lives of the workers, many of whom could not take holidays. Due to a recent act passed by Woodrow Wilson, the ship was carrying so many lifeboats that it became top-heavy and unstable. On the fateful morning, passengers began boarding the Eastland on the south bank of the Chicago River between Clark and LaSalle Streets around 6.30 a.m., and by 7:10, the ship had reached its capacity of 2752 passengers. The ship was packed, with many passengers standing on the open upper decks, and began to list slightly to the port side (away from the wharf). Sometime in the next 15 minutes a number of passengers rushed to the port side, and at 7:28, the Eastland lurched sharply to port and then rolled completely onto its side, coming to rest on the river bottom, which was only 20 feet below the surface. Many other passengers had already moved below decks on this relatively cool and damp morning to warm up before the departure. Consequently, hundreds were trapped inside by the water and the sudden rollover; others were crushed by heavy furniture, including pianos, bookcases, and tables. Although the ship was only 20 feet from the wharf, and in spite of the quick response by the crew of a nearby vessel, the Kenosha, which came alongside the hull to allow those stranded on the capsized vessel to leap to safety, a total of 841 passengers and four crew members died in the disaster. Many were young women and children. [Source]
Death Toll: 852
MS Estonia, previously MS Viking Sally (–1990), MS Silja Star (–1991), and MS Wasa King (–1993), was a cruise ferry built in 1979 at the German shipyard Meyer Werft in Papenburg. The Estonia disaster occurred on September 28, 1994 between about 00:55 to 01:50 (UTC+2) as the ship was crossing the Baltic Sea, en route from Tallinn, Estonia, to Stockholm, Sweden. She was carrying 989 passengers and crew. The first sign of trouble was a strange sound of metal against metal heard around 01:00, when the ship was on the outskirts of the Turku archipelago; but an investigation of the bow visor showed no obvious damage. At about 01:15, the visor separated and the ship took on a heavy starboard list. At about 01:20 a weak female voice called “Häire, häire, laeval on häire”, the Estonian words for “Alarm, alarm, there is alarm on the ship”, over the public address system. Just a moment later an internal alarm for the crew was transmitted over the public address system. Soon after this the general lifeboat alarm was given and then the vessel lurched some 30 to 40 degrees to starboard, making it practically impossible to move about safely inside the ship. Doors and hallways became deadly pits. Those who were going to survive were already on-deck by then. A Mayday was communicated by the ship’s crew at 01:22, but did not follow international formats. Due to loss of power, she could not give her position, which delayed rescue operations somewhat. Out of a total of 989 passengers and crew on board 137 were saved. [Source]
Death Toll: 1,012
RMS Empress of Ireland was an ocean liner built in 1905-1906 by Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering at Govan on the Clyde in Scotland for Canadian Pacific Steamships (CP). The Empress of Ireland departed Quebec City for Liverpool at 16:30 local time on May 28, 1914 with 1,477 passengers and crew. Henry George Kendall had just been promoted to captain of the Empress at the beginning of the month; and it was his first trip down the Saint Lawrence River in command of the vessel. Early the next morning on May 29, 1914, the ship was proceeding down the channel near Pointe-au-Père, Quebec (eastern district of the town of Rimouski) in heavy fog. At 02:00 local time, the Norwegian collier Storstad crashed into the side of the Empress of Ireland. The Storstad did not sink, but Empress of Ireland, with severe damage to her starboard side, rapidly shipping water, rolled over and sank within 14 minutes, claiming 1012 passengers and crewmen.
There were only 465 survivors, out of which only four were children (the other 134 children were lost) and 42 were women (the other 279 women were lost). Amongst the dead were the English dramatist and novelist Laurence Irving. Amongst the survivors, “Lucky” Tower is improbably said to have been one of the few crewmen who survived this shipwreck and the sinking of the Titanic and the sinking of the Lusitania. [Source]
Death Toll: 1,517
RMS Titanic was an Olympic-class passenger liner owned by the White Star Line and built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland. On the night of 14 April 1912, during her maiden voyage, Titanic struck an iceberg, and sank two hours and forty minutes later, early on 15 April 1912. At the time of her launching in 1912, she was the largest passenger steamship in the world. The sinking resulted in the deaths of 1,517 people, ranking it as one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters in history and by far the most infamous. The Titanic used some of the most advanced technology available at the time and was popularly believed to be “unsinkable” – indeed, in a 1910 White Star Line brochure advertising the Titanic; it was claimed that she was “designed to be unsinkable”. It was a great shock to many that despite the advanced technology and experienced crew; the Titanic still sank with a great loss of life. The media frenzy about Titanic’s famous victims, the legends about what happened on board the ship, the resulting changes to maritime law, and the discovery of the wreck in 1985 by a team led by Robert Ballard have made Titanic persistently famous in the years since. [Source]
Death Toll: 1800
The steamboat Sultana was a Mississippi River paddlewheeler destroyed in an explosion on 27 April 1865. This resulted in the greatest maritime disaster in United States history. An estimated 1,800 of the 2,400 passengers were killed when one of the ship’s four boilers exploded and the Sultana sank not far from Memphis, Tennessee. This disaster received somewhat diminished attention as it took place soon after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln and during the closing weeks of the Civil War. Most of the new passengers were Union soldiers, chiefly from Ohio and just released from Confederate prison camps such as Cahawba and Andersonville. The US government had contracted with the Sultana to transport these former prisoners of war back to their homes. The cause of the explosion was a leaky and poorly repaired steam boiler. The boiler (or “boilers”) gave way when the steamer was about 7 to 9 miles north of Memphis at 2:00 A.M. in a terrific explosion that sent some of the passengers on deck into the water and destroyed a good portion of the ship. Hot coals scattered by the explosion soon turned the remaining superstructure into an inferno, the glare of which could be seen in Memphis. [Source]
Death Toll: 1,863
MV Le Joola was a Senegalese government-owned ferry that capsized off the coast of Gambia on September 26, 2002. The disaster resulted in the deaths of at least 1,863 people. On September 26, 2002, the ferry Joola set sail from Ziguinchor in the Casamance region on one of its frequent trips between southern Senegal and the country’s capital Dakar. It was about 1:30 p.m. At the time of voyage the ship was designed to carry approximately 580 passengers. In all, almost 2,000 passengers are believed to have been on board. The last call from the ferry staff broadcast to a maritime security center in Dakar was at 10 p.m. and reported good travel conditions. In Titanic-culture style, people were dancing and drinking inside the ship to the sound of a live band playing. At around 11 p.m., the ship sailed into a storm off the coast of Gambia. As a result of the rough seas and wind, the ferry quickly capsized, throwing passengers and cargo into the sea. Detailed reports indicate that this happened in less than five minutes. Only one lifeboat was deployed and was able to transport 25 people. Government rescue teams did not arrive at the scene until the morning following the accident, although local fishermen rescued some survivors from the sea several hours before. [Source]
Death Toll: 1,950
The Halifax Explosion occurred on Thursday, December 6, 1917, when the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, was devastated by the huge detonation of a French cargo ship, fully loaded with wartime explosives, that had accidentally collided with a Norwegian ship in “The Narrows” section of the Halifax Harbour. Approximately 2,000 people (mostly Canadians) were killed by debris, fires, or collapsed buildings and it is estimated that over 9,000 people were injured. This is still one of the world’s largest man-made, conventional explosions to date. At 8:40 in the morning, Mont-Blanc, a French cargo ship that was chartered by the French government to carry munitions, collided with the unloaded Norwegian ship Imo (pronounced E-mo); chartered by the Commission for Relief in Belgium to carry relief supplies. Mont-Blanc caught fire ten minutes after the collision and exploded about twenty-five minutes later (at 9:04:35 AM). All buildings and structures covering nearly two square kilometres along the adjacent shore of the exploded ship were obliterated, including those in the neighbouring communities of Richmond and Dartmouth. The explosion caused a tsunami in the harbour, and a pressure wave of air that snapped trees, bent iron rails, demolished buildings, grounded vessels, and carried fragments of the Mont-Blanc for kilometres. Pictured above is the Imo after the explosion. [Source]
Death Toll: 4,375
The Doña Paz was a passenger ferry that sank after colliding with the oil tanker Vector on December 20, 1987. The Doña Paz was en route from Catbalogan, on Samar Island, Philippines, to Manila when, while it was in the Tablas Strait, between the islands of Mindoro and Tablas, it collided with a small oil tanker, the Vector, which was carrying 8,800 barrels of petroleum products. The Vector’s cargo ignited and caused a fire that rapidly spread onto the Doña Paz, which sank within minutes. Two of the 13 crewmembers aboard the Vector survived but all 58 crew of the Doña Paz died. The official death toll on the ferry is 1,565 although some reports claim that the ferry was overcrowded and that the true death toll was at least 4,341. The ships would put the death toll at 4,375 although admitting that only 1,568 were on the manifest (still more than the licensed maximum of 1,518). The 21 (or 24) survivors from the ferry had to swim, as there was no time to launch lifeboats. An inquiry later revealed that the crew of the Vector was under-qualified and that the boat’s license had expired. It is the worst ferry disaster and the worst peacetime maritime disaster in history. [Source]
This article is licensed under the GFDL because it contains quotations from the Wikipedia articles cited above.
i had no idea there were this many famous shipwrecks
Many more too! This is only the most infamous ones…
It’s all really interesting history. Down near the coast where I live (along the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, Austalis [I live in Melbourne]) there have been some amazing shipwrecks, such as the RMS Lochard… Where a young sailor saved the life of Eva Carmichael, who was some famous businessman’s daughter… Quite the romantic tale!
btw, how do two huge boats collide? don’t they see each other coming at relatively slow speeds from miles away?
that means greetings
Aha! The infamous “shipwreck list.” And a great one, too.
Cool list, I like!
Regarding number 8, I wonder what it was that caused so many passengers to rush to one side of the ship?
Also (maybe a case of me being either picky or just plain wrong!), isn’t a shipwreck different from a catastrophe involving a ship in that a shipwreck is where a ship wrecks itself upon something?
Me neither. I only heard about Titanic and Estonia. I don’t know why, at least the more recent shipwrecks, hasn’t been more metioned in the media? Or perhaps I just havn’t payed enough attonition towards it!
It’s terrible.
I belive that when the ships collide, they probably are so big, that when they spot each other, it takes too long for them to turn away? Like Titanic was too slow to turn away from the iceberg? Just an idea:-)
Actually, I think I was just being weird and taking the ‘wreck’ (verb) part of the word ‘shipwreck’ too literally
There’s a more recent boat disaster here in the Philippines (MV Princess of the Stars).
I knew about number one but I never really realized that it was the worst ship disaster in history.
Yeah, water is a tricky thing. It can’t be easy to turn let alone halt thousands of tons of stuff.
Interesting list! I didn’t know most of them and really thought Titanic would take the cake.
Could there be a list of shipwrecks, where things like Exxon Waldez would take a place?
What fascinates me about the Titanic is despite the state-of-the-art technology on board and “no expense spared” furnishings, they still cut corners in its design. Perhaps the biggest flaw was building the hull out of a metal that becomes brittle in cold temperatures – perfect for a ship sailing through icebergs!
Also, according to TV show QI, all the crew on board the Titanic had their wages stopped the minute the ship sank, as it was no longer property of the company and the crew were deemed to be absent from work. Or something.
ahh.. why isn’t MV Princess of the Stars not on the list? It’s quite recent and the death toll is from 700-800…
In January 1945 the German Navy ship “Wilhelm Gustloff”, overloaden with refugees, was torpedoed and sunk in the Baltic Sea, according to Wikipedia forcing 9,343 casualties
Which is the shipwreck they talk about in that Seinfeld episode where George tries to get an apartment but initially fails because another applicant was a survivor of a shipwreck…?
Andrea Doria. Death toll, a whopping 46, which was the crux of the whole episode.
Interesting list loved reading it.
martin: even more interesting!
Damn, the soviets did it! Josif Visarionovich has said – no people, no problems, yes? Though – what refugees? Better get hit by torpedo than end up in Auswitz…
I’ve done a lot of reading about the SS Eastland, probably because I had a great-granddad who was there that day (not on the ship, but helped in the rescue effort).
She sank for two reasons; First, a poorly designed ballast tank system combined with a high center of gravity. This caused the ship to have several instances of instability earlier in her career. Second, after the sinking of Titanic there was public pressure to have “boats for all” on every ship. When the extra weight of many more lifeboats was added to her uppermost deck, she became critically unstable and on the first day thereafter on which she was carrying a maximum passenger load, she capsized.
Not the first time in history when today’s solution became tomorrow’s problem! There has never been a sinking of a major passenger ship when all her boats were used to rescue all her passengers. Either the ship went down so fast that lifeboats were irrelevant (Lusitania, Empress of Ireland) or so slowly (Andrea Doria) that other ships with their own boats were on the scene in plenty of time.
The wreck of the Titanic was also extremely important as a political event; it served to catalyze and give creedence to the emergence of class oppression in America. During the sinking of the Titanic, more First Class men got onto lifeboats first and were saved, than all of the lower class women and children combined. In general, they considered the lower classes, poorer and often immigrants, to be unworthy of sacrificing themselves to save, even if it were children, and took spots on the lifeboats for themselves.
When the public became aware of this, it became the catalyst for outrage that had been long suppressed and the social issue was finally addressed in the media and in public.
A very good book on the sinking of the Titanic is called ‘A Night To Remember’ by Walter Lord. Sadly, there were very few ‘gentleman’ or ‘heroes’ in the real life situation.
No Wilhelm Gustloff on the list?
martin:
I don’t think ships that are sunk in war qualify as “shipwrecks,” per se.
I have to agree. Shipwrecks are due to faulty craftsmanship, poor navigation, hurricanes, icebergs, sandbars, even mermaids…but not war.
I think the Wilheilm should be on this list since there are so many factors as to why the death toll was so high. It was a overloaded refugee ship sank by torpedos. I think of it more of like a Titanic hit by a torpedo. Civilian/political mix.
I suspect that Jamie intended this to be a list of non-wartime disasters, else the Gustloff would be here with all the other wartime losses that would take over the list (Lusitania, HMS Hood and many others)
BTW the Gustloff was carrying (mostly) German civilian refugees who were trying to get out of East Prussia, which had been cut off from the rest of Germany by the Russian army.
I think there were a good few notable cases, John Jacob Astor IV, John Thayer, Thomas Andrews, Benjamin Guggenheim (“We’ve dressed up in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.”) et al… and far more than there would be in a similar situation in the present day, I fancy.
Damn… my last post was in response to Mr Graves. I didn’t make that clear.
Gotta admit, I still would have the Lusitania on here, as it wasn’t a warship, and there is so much controversy over why it sunk so fast. But good list, this stuff is amazingly interestingly to me.
This is not really a “shipwreck”, but the greatest loss of life in maritime history was when Russians torpedoed the German troop ship Wilhelm Gustloff in WWII, killing 9,343.
11 – Martin
I came here to discuss the same thing… a lot of folks don’t know about the Wilhelm Gustloff, and others attempt to overlook the sinking as the ship was full of members of the Nazi party; what they don’t know is that those people were mostly women and children.
Read about it at http://www.wilhelmgustloff.com/
19 – ohrmets
If that’s true then #s 9 & 10 are disqualified.
Furthermore, the Gustloff was full of war refugees; it wasn’t a warship.
Clarification: the Gustloff wasn’t a fighting ship.
In 1890, a Turkish freighter called Ertuğrul set sail from Japan but unfortunately never reached the homeland. This accident causes over 120 death and 70 wounded. Today there is a memorial in Japan about the ship and his crew.
In 1953, a Turkish submarine called Dumlupınar collided with a sweden freighter. This resulted with death of 60 crew members, the other 21 were survived but submarine was stucked in the depths of bosporus. All attempts to rescue failed and those men choked to death. Last words of the crew were “Say love to our families and (roughly translation) long live the homeland.”
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I know these examples arent great in numbers but they hold a meaning in our hearts.
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By the way, a great list because it’s about interesting facts!
The picture from #3 reminds me of the final scene in the newest poisiden remake. Great list! These are the lists that make me come back to this site
disasters, mysteries, things that make you go “wow”. No offence but all the movie/music/Tv lists just aren’t as interesting…still good reads but not as awesome as these types of lists. And why isn’t there a survivor toll for each item? Just wondering.
I might suggest removing #2 from this list. The horrific death toll resulted from the explosion of the munitions aboard , not from the shipwreck itself. Absent the explosion, the death toll would only have included the crew of the ship.
Since this list does include warships, it should probably also include all ships lost during wartime. Therefore any any discussion of Wilhelm Gustloff must also include mention of Cap Arcona, Goya, and Junyo Maru, among many others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Cap_Arcona
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goya_(ship)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juny%C5%8D_Maru
The Mary Rose was was recovered in the 20th century not the 21st. (1982)? I remember watching it on the tv and thinking ‘big deal it’s just a load of old wood’!
Interesting list.
Fine list.
This subject holds such fascination, it would probably be worth doing a related one on famous wartime catastrophes with Lusitania, Bismark, HMS Hood, and including others mentioned here, as candidates. Also perhaps ecological disasters (if enough): Torrey Canyon, Exxon Valdes, etc.
I had Norwegian relatives aboard the Estonia only 1 of the members of the family survived
My cousin was also the youngest survivor of the wreck.
This is another truly educational list. Although I had known something of a few of them, this prompts me to go deeper into the entire history of maritime disasters. Amazon will have several books on the history of maritime disasters, both peacetime and in time of war. As is this list, I’ll begin with the peacetime disasters.
In an odd way, I really should have a more personal interest in the subject anyway, for two reasons:
1 – My mothers first husband was an Australian Naval Officer, serving on the HMS Sydney, which was sunk, with all hands, during WWII. No wreakage was ever recovered.
2 – Having been on a ship caught up in a terrifying cyclone while making the crossing from America to Australia I know, firsthand, the utter terror of looking out the side of the ship and seeing nothing but water. I may have been only 4 at the time, but the memories are crystal clear.
Excellent list Jamie; Exactly what I’ve come to expect from Listverse – well written with comprehensive, full descriptions. Great job.
Mr. Graves – Wonderful of you to point out the social significance of the Titanic Disaster.
Chickensoup – I would certainly hope that today there would be more not less adult men willing to give up there life-boat positions for children, whatever their socio-economic station in life.
I agree with fishing4monkeys, real life happenings make much more interesting lists. I’ve always been fascinated with Titanic, I don’t think you could find a bigger Titanic freak than me.
One of the reasons why it sank faster was because there was coal bunker fire which weakened it. Makes you wonder if more people could have been saved.
Awesome and terrifing list.
In Cadiz in 1947 was an explotion similar to Halifax one but not as many people perished there.
Shipwrecks in wartime were terrible but were in the aim of destroying fleets or killing people. They wrecked because someone wanted to. Those in that list were accidental (MS Estonia maybe not. It’s said to be an aerial raid due terrorist stuff in the ship). That’s what is so terrible. Think about those people, having a peacful travel that ends in this kind of tragedy without nobody wanting it.
Thank you Jamie…wonderful.
And only yesterday I was talking with a friend about taking a freighter trip to Europe.
Segue:
The HMAS Sydney (sunk November 1941) was found earlier this year:
http://presspass.findingsydney.com/blogs/search_reports/archive/2008/03/16/discovery-of-hmas-sydney-ii.aspx
THE TITANIC HAD OVER TWO THOUSAND FLOCK MATERESS ON BOARD THAT COULD HAVE BEEN USED AS A COLLISION MAT.BELIEVE ME IF YOU WANT TO PLUG A HOLE, YOU CANNOT BEAT A FLOCK MATTERESS, THE PUMPS WERE ALLMOST KEEPING UP ANYHOW.
great list, only knew of the Estonia and Titanic myself.
5. Louise
the titanic sank cuz they put it in reverse thus hindering its turning ability
Very interesting and informative list.
But as I have a life long fear of drowning, I believe you have just convinced me never to get on a large ship.
Or, to be honest, any ship.
The Es***** was quite fascinating. It was the inspiration for Moby Dick.
Very interesting list! I’ve learned a lot from it!
But I have a question: if the Titanic wasn’t the worst shipwreck in history, then why is it the most popular?
Is it because of the people that were on it? Or simply the popularity it gathered after its shipwreck was discovered by Robert Ballard (who called it “the holy grail of shipwrecks” or something along those lines), which probably led to the filming of Titanic (since Ballard and James Cameron began working closely together for the film)?
Also, how is it that we heard so little about far more recent tragedies like the MV Joola, MS Estonia, and MV Doña Paz? It’s unbelievable how little we know of these bigger and more recent tragedies than we know about the Titanic!
Would they get the remembrance they deserve if movies were made of them?
Wow, that would be pretty depressing. Is cashing in on a tragedy the only way to make such tragedy significant these days? *shudder*
(again wishing for an edit button) In other words, I’m not sure the Titanic should be as popular even with the explanation given up there, considering all these other shipwrecks which sadly most of us never even heard of.
wow. That’s really sad.
I had done a large report in fifth grade on the Titanic, so I knew it was going to be on here, but I didn’t know anything about any of the other ships.
“Due to a recent act passed by Woodrow Wilson, the ship was carrying so many lifeboats that it became top-heavy and unstable.” I-ron-eee!
(WARNING! LOOOOOONG COMMENT AHEAD!)
KMac- I’ll challenge you for the “world’s biggest Titanic nut” title! I’m sure if the developers of this site felt like, they could come up with several Titanic themes lists (ie: 10 richest/most famous people on the Titanic; 10 wrong decisions that doomed the ship; Top 10 recovered artefacts; Top 5 urvivor’s accounts, etc.)
Kreachure- in response to your query of why the Titanic is still so famous today, whilst many other maritime tragedies are mainly footnotes in history, there are several reasons.
One of them is indeed what you alluded to, that there were many rich and famous people on board that fateful night.
Another reason has also been alluded to in the comments list, that it glaringly points out the social inequities of the era, in that Third Class passengers were literally locked in their quarters on the lower decks and not allowed to get to the lifeboats until much later. Interestingly, in court proceedings after the sinking, surviving Third Class passengers stated that they did not feel discriminated againt- one theory is that they simply didn’t expect to be treated much better than they were.
And finally, many people are fascinated with this tragedy simply because of all the what-ifs ….if the bulkheads were built one deck higher…if there were more lifeboats….if that boat on the horizon (The Californian) had not turned off their wireless for the night and heard the distress calls….if the Titanic’s crew had listened to the numerous warnings of icebergs and slowed down, rather than plowing full speed ahead into the night….if they’d spotted the iceberg a minute or two sooner….and if one in a million other decisions had been made differently, more people would have survived, and perhaps there would have been no wreck at all.
I apologize for the length of this post, but at least hopefully you see how so many books have been written on this topic!
somebody wanna tell Frank about the all caps thing. i’m tired.
*insert rollz eyes smilie*
Jessy: If you ask me, I think we’re pretty much used to, and actually fond of, long posts like yours. So thanks!
The facts and what-ifs you mention are pretty compelling. So to me it seems that Titanic is popular not because of the tragedy itself, but because of the whole thread of consequences, stories and legends that emerged from the tragedy. Still, I think as a shipwreck alone it may be overrated nowadays (and that’s just something I realized after reading this list!)
A terrible tragedy, without a doubt, but not as overshadowing when compared to these other tragedies.
What? No Gordon Lightfoot music to accompany the list?! “The legend lives on, from the Chippewa on down…”
Hello, I’m one of those long time readers, but I’ve never posted before people.
Great list! I’m kinda thrilled to see the Halifax Explosion on this list. Halifax is my hometown, and I’m as fascinated by the events from the disaster as some are by the Titanic. I didn’t know about a lot of these it was a great read.
These are the kind of lists that got me addicted to lists when as a kid.
Great list! Thanks for posting it.
Mark #31: very good point. And even though sunk during wartime, Wilhelm Gustloff, Cap Arcona (and Thielbek), Goya and Junyo Maru carried mostly civilians or prisoners.
What is it with Norwegian ships colliding with ships in Canadian waters?
Add up number 6 and number 2, that’s 2962 people killed from wrecks caused by collisions with Norwegian vessels.
Maybe Canadian coast guards should start keeping an eye on thos Norwegian Sunday drivers :p
When i started working at air nz they showed us a video of some of the worst airline crashes, i wonder if they do the same for cruise ship employees.
in response to 2. The same way a two planes can collide in mid air, i suppose it like that thing people do when they walk into each other no matter how much they try to get out of each others way.
MV al-Salam Boccaccio 98
around 1000 passangers (and crew members) lost their lives
here’s a link for the wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_al-Salam_Boccaccio_98