Invisible Iceberg by Dr. Joel N. Myers

Author:Dr. Joel N. Myers
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510776647
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2024-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 32

Invisible Iceberg—A Mirage Sinks the Titanic

It was called the “Ship of Dreams.” At the time of its maiden voyage on April 15, 1912, it was not only the largest passenger ship, but it was also the largest man-made moving object on Earth. The story of its collision with an iceberg and the plight of its passengers is one of the most familiar stories in history. More than five hundred books have been written on the subject and more than a dozen films, including James Cameron’s Oscar-winning 1997 blockbuster, have been made. The name Titanic is said to be the third most widely recognized word in the world, after “God” and “Coca-Cola.”1

The sinking of the Titanic captures our imagination as the end of a romantic era, as a metaphor for technological hubris, and as a great human drama. Stephen D. Cox, author of a book on the Titanic, explained the enduring fascination with the tragedy. “The Titanic sank in two hours and 40 minutes,” he wrote, “the length of a classic play. Its cast of characters included people of every rank and station and personality. The cast was large enough to represent the human race, yet small enough to form a self-contained society, in which individuals could see what other individuals were doing, and think carefully about their own responses. The Titanic had what every great drama needs: a relentless focus on the supreme choices of individual lives.”2

The stage for this grand drama was set years before the ill-fated ship was ever launched with a series of warm years in the Arctic that increased the rate of melting of glaciers in Greenland. North Atlantic icebergs travel from the western coast of Greenland. Every year chunks of ice cleave from the glaciers and are transported by the West Greenland Current. Most of the ice travels north, but some is diverted into the Labrador Current along the Canadian coast into a part of the Atlantic known as “iceberg alley.”

In an average year, few make it all the way down to a latitude of 48°N, which takes them into the important shipping corridors. But in a warm period, more cracks appear in the ice and the meltwater at the base of glaciers acts as a lubricant, allowing the ice to slip into the sea more quickly. This means more icebergs form and move. The more icebergs there are, the more likely it is that a few will float into the most important shipping lanes. While normally only a few hundred icebergs migrate south of 48°N, in 1912 more than 1,038 did, four hundred of them in April 1912. As the Titanic embarked from Southampton on April 10, 1912 with New York City as its planned destination, an iceberg was making its way to latitude 41°N, the same latitude as New York City.

On board the ship was a cross-section of British and American society. A Minnesota salesman named Alexander Holverson wrote a letter to his mother describing an encounter with the man who was then the wealthiest in the world.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.