JUST GIVE ME THE FACTS M’AM: Let’s stop feeding reality the comfort food of false hope
Tim Murray, Population Media Center
July 25th, 2010
In her book, “Titanic”, author Stephanie Barcszewski described the exchange between Captain John Smith and the ship’s designer Thomas Andrew just over ten minutes after the collision with the lethal iceberg.
“Smith asked Andrews how long the Titanic had left and Andrews did some quick calculations: An hour and a half, possibly two. Not much longer.” That quick calculation was not far off. The ship sank two hours and forty minutes after it hit the iceberg, or roughly two hours and twenty minutes after Andrews made that grim pronouncement.
As there was no PA system on board the ship, Captain Smith issued immediate instructions to his crew to have passengers board the lifeboats, beginning with 1st class passengers of course. The Titanic was, after all, a microcosm of Edwardian society and 70% of third class people never saw a lifeboat that night. But then again, 40% in 1st class did not survive either, and I suspect that is a much lower percentage than that will perish in the imminent sinking of RMS Affluent Society. Rich ticket-holders will evidently launch off the first lifeboats half empty because they don’t believe in the fallibility of the ship.
But the point is, Captain John Smith sought an honest assessment of his ship’s condition, accepted it, and took whatever action he could to mitigate the scale of the disaster.
