The Titanic:
AAP 1995
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SUBJECT: US-TITANIC TITANIC SANK AFTER TRAVELLING TOO FAST FOR ICY WATERS, RESEARCH
DATE: 12:02 02-Mar-95
By Kristin Vaughan of Knight-Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON, March 1 KRT _ More than 80 years after the "unsinkable" Titanic sank, a team of top American naval architects and marine engineers is endorsing previous Canadian findings about the cause of the tragedy, asserting the case can now be closed.

The luxury liner, which sank on its maiden voyage in 1912 with 2,222 passengers on board after striking an iceberg, was built with unsafe metals, had faulty rivets, was running on a rudder too small to propel it safely and was travelling too fast for icy waters, the team's report found.

The report even pointed a finger at the news media for some of the Titanic's bad image. It said that in writings about the famous ship, the press dropped "practically" from quotes of Thomas Andrews, a managing director of the company that built the ship. In fact, Andrews had declared: "The Titanic is practically unsinkable."

These are the conclusions scheduled for release in Arlington, Virginia, tomorrow by the five-member team of researchers who studied the tragic sinkings of the Titanic and the Lusitania, which went down in 1915 after being hit by a German torpedo. The group, which included David K. Brown, a top British naval historian and naval architect, will release A Final Forensic Analysis to the Chesapeake section of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers.

"The two ocean liners are most notorious ocean wrecks of the 20th century. Each has a story of its own," said William Garzke, Jr, the principal author of the report and a naval engineer. But America had yet to develop its own findings on the luxury ships' demises, according to Garzke, whose group used reports, forensic evidence and photographs of the wreckage.

The Titanic gained widespread attention and was filled with celebrities and members of high society when it departed on its maiden voyage from England to New York. When it struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean, 643.6 km east of Newfoundland, the world's largest passenger liner at the time went under in two-and-a-half hours, killing 1,517 passengers and leaving 705 survivors, mostly children. Two child survivors, including seven-year-old Eva Hart, now the oldest survivor, told investigators that the ship actually split in half at the surface before it went under. However, reports from older survivors at the time contended the ship sank intact, an idea upheld by Great Britain's investigative team, the Mersey Commission, in 1912-13.

But Canadian researchers reopened the inquiry in 1991, and Garzke's group soon followed. Garzke said his group's review of the past decade's research on the Titanic and separate testing vindicates Hart's claim. "Eva Hart is correct," said Garzke. "She always felt that the ship broke apart at the surface. Everybody that read our findings said 'it makes the most sense'," said Garzke. "The response has been that this is probably the best explanation that we have to date."
KRT jn

SUBJECT: US-TITANIC NEW THEORY OFFERED ON WHY TITANIC SANK
DATE: 09:00 04-Mar-95
By Jeanne King of Reuters

NEW YORK, March 3 Reuter _ Nearly 83 years after the Titanic sank, a British television documentary has come up with a new theory to explain why a fire in a coal bunker was responsible for one of the great sea disasters of all time. And that fire began before the mighty ship ever set sail from Southampton, England. "An uncontrollable fire started in a coal bunker (coal storage bin) before the Titanic sailed that was not extinguished, forced the chairman of the liner to ignore iceberg warnings and to order a faster course to New York," George Tulloch, chairman of RMS Titanic said on Friday.

RMS Titanic, a New York-based company, has exclusive rights to the wreck site and has recovered over 4,000 artifacts from the Titanic. In "Explorers of the Titanic," the television documentary to be broadcast on Sunday in Britain, two surviving witnesses offered differing accounts as to what occurred in boiler room 6, Tulloch said. During the British Parliamentary Inquiry held soon after th, April 13, 1912, at 1pm. The other fireman, John Dilly of Southampton, told a New York reporter in a report published in a copyrighted 1912 book, "The Sinking of the Titanic" by L.T. Myers, that the fire wasn't extinguished until the ship sank. "Crew members were told not to report this for fear of claims from passengers," Tulloch said. "They were instructed by officials to keep their mouth shut for insurance purposes. Dilly said it was the ocean that put the fire out."

The Titanic hit the iceberg at 11.40pm on April 14, 1912, taking two hours and 40 minutes to sink and causing the loss of over 1,500 lives. "The big question is _ when was the fire put out," Tulloch said. "The answer could very well clear Captain Edward Smith's name," he added. Smith went down with the ship that day and has been seen as responsible, in the public's eye, for the disaster. Tulloch said that during the voyage, White Star Chairman Bruce Ismay repeatedly asked the ship's chief engineer _ Joseph Bell to light more boilers and to add more speed each day as they headed for New York.

Eleven hours before the Titanic hit the iceberg, Tulloch said, Ismay had been warned in a telegram, handed to him by Smith, that the ship was heading into a large icefield. Smith was later found guilty of excessive speed and negligence by two inquiry boards that investigated the disaster. "Was the fire still blazing as they sped into the icefield or was it out and this tragedy just a case of negligence as both the US and British inquiries determined?" Tulloch asked. "Did Ismay order more boilers to burn coal to speed up the New York arrival so firefighters could douse the blaze in darkness before the official arrival ceremonies?" he added.

Tulloch said the truth may show that Ismay, while surviving, was guilty of negligence and Smith, who went down with his ship, was both innocent and the tragic hero of this great maritime disaster. Among those who drowned was John Jacob Astor, Isidor Strauss, owner of Macy's department store and Benjamin Guggenheim of the mining family.
REUTER dep/

SUBJECT: UK-TITANIC UK: TITANIC SURVIVOR TO OPEN MEMORIAL
DATE: 10:10 15-Apr-95
GREENWICH, England, April 14

The oldest living survivor of the Titanic came to Greenwich today to see a memorial to those who died when the liner sank in the North Atlantic 83 years ago. Edith Haisman, 98, will officially open the Titanic Memorial Garden at the National Maritime Museum tomorrow.

The garden is London's first permanent tribute to the 1,523 passengers and crew who perished in 1912 and coincides with an exhibition of artifacts from the wreck on display at the museum. Mrs Haisman, from Southampton, was 15 when she accompanied her parents on the luxury liner to start a new life in Seattle. "At first there was no panic because everybody was so stunned by what had happened. They didn't realise the Titanic was sinking. Nobody did," she said. "In the last minutes everybody was standing to get off the ship as they started to realise something was wrong."

Recalling the harrowing view from the lifeboat, she remembered: "Most of the men jumped overboard into the sea. "Those who could swim swam and those who could not swim sank. There was no hope for anyone. Everybody just panicked and they disappeared in the sea."

Mrs Haisman described the small garden and specially commissioned granite monument as a "beautiful" tribute to the vessel's dead, including her father.
AP pjw

SUBJECT: US-COAL US: TITANIC COAL ON SALE
DATE: 13:22 07-Nov-95

Pieces of coal from the Titanic have gone on sale -- the first items recovered from the wreckage of the luxury liner have been made available to the public. The pieces of coal, about the size of half a golf ball, can be bought for $A33 each from RMS Titanic Inc, the company that plans a worldwide exhibition of artifacts from the ship.

The British liner, said to be unsinkable when it was built, collided with an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland on the night of April 14, 1912. The Titanic went down with the drowning of at least 1,500 of the 2,200 people who had paid for its maiden voyage from Britain to the United States.

In 1985, a team of researchers from the United States and France found the wreckage on the ocean bottom of South Newfoundland. Two years later, salvagers using a remote-controlled robot, began bringing up objects from the ship.
REUTER RTV jl/msk/jlw

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