H.M.S. TITANIC
Location: Nearly inaccessible at almost 2.5 miles below the sea, the ruins of the once fine ship rest 800 miles off the coast of Nova Scotia. The site is marked by a transponder.
Description of Place: Eight hundred and eighty-two feet long, about the length of four city blocks, and comprising nine decks, about the height of an 11-story building, the HMS Titanic was built to be a floating palace. If placed upright, it would have dwarfed many of the buildings of its day; yet, it would have fit inside the shell of the modern Queen Mary. She had four large funnels wide enough to drive two trains through, three enormous anchors weighing a total of thirty-one tons, twenty-nine boilers and 16 water-tight compartments. Her engines could generate 15,000 horsepower at 75 revolutions a minute for two propellers. She had enough room for 2500 passengers and a full crew of 900, but only enough collapsible rafts for 1178 total. Her furnishings were lavish and grand, the most famously was the first-class grand staircase in 17th Century William-And-Mary style with a contemporary Louis 14th balustrade paneled in oak and topped with a glass skylight located between the first two funnels.
From Shipbuilder magazine: "The first-class public rooms include the dining saloon, reception room, restaurant, lounge, reading and writing room, smoking room and the veranda cafes and palm courts. Other novel features are the gymnasium, squash racket court, Turkish and electric baths and the swimming bath. Magnificent suites of rooms and cabins of size and style sufficiently diverse to suit the likes and dislikes of any passenger are provided. There is also a barber's shop, a dark room for photographers, a clothes-pressing room, a special dining room for maids and valets, a lending library, a telephone system and a wireless telegraphy installation. Indeed, everything has been done in regard to the furniture and fittings to make the first-class accommodation more than equal to that provided in the finest hotels on the shore."
Today, the ship is a rusted and ruined ship covered in rusticles eating away the metal. The funnels are gone along with all wooden parts and the deck ends at a mass of jagged metal, separated by almost 2000 feet from the stern littered by everything from lumps of coal, machine parts, wrought-iron benches, statuaries, furnishings and lost fine china. In several more years, the ship will be no more, eaten away completely by the seawater. The pressure at this depth is 6,000 ponds per square inch.
Ghostly Manifestations: In 1972, a Canadian trawler on the North Atlantic made a note about hearing screaming voices from out of of the still night over the placid sea. Fourteen years later, a steamer from Nova Scotia reported the sight of "vague balls of bright light dancing on the horizon behind them as if from a ship in trouble." In April of 1989, fifty-seven witnesses on a British passenger ship described nearly the same thing, "the ghostly spectacle of a vast ship concealed in an unearthly fog just a mile off starboard." The following year, an American historian in Strasburg found the 1943 diary of a Nazi U-Boat commander who fired on a suspicious ship in the North Atlantic that vanished.
It is a given concept that ghosts are often linked to events of extreme emotion and turmoil, such as battlefields and locations of historical significance. If so, the Titanic could be the most famous ghost ship next to the Mary Celeste or the Antonio Graza. Since its rediscovery in 1986, there have been at least twenty-five explorations and each of them have had private experiences that for reasons untold are rarely documented. Could it be that the Titanic is such a sacred subject that even serious historians refuse to sully it with ghost stories?
In addition to several open air sightings, there have been whispers of incidents that were quickly hushed by intellectual scholars trying to preserve the sanctity of the disaster. Sailors and engineers have whispered things about voices in submersibles that didn't belong to known crew or scientists. An oceanographer sitting in a sub on the deck of the Titanic briefly commented on a shadow racing between the on-deck structures, later denying it and calling it a figment of shadow. In one ascent from the depths, music similar to "Nearer My God To Thee" was reverberating in another submersible as it rose to the surface and stopped only when it popped from the sea.
There have been a variety of phenomenon recorded on ships in the area collected by the Collinsport Ghost Society and the Massachusetts Paranormal Agency. At one time, it was believed these occurrences were linked to the ships, but in recent years, it's been realized all these modern ships were linked by area where the survivors were found by the Carpathia. In 1972, a young lady saw the ghost of a boy in odd clothes clutching at the railing of the SS Hitchcock and crying toward the open ocean. That same night, a couple were greeted by an old couple in period dress traversing their ship. Their description echoes the likenesses of Isidor and Ida Strauss. However, as the couple looked back, the couple was gone.
In 1977, Second Officer Leonard Bishop for the SS Winterhaven was asked by a seemingly visiting British captain for a tour of his ship. Bishop happily obliged taking the beaded gentlemen through the bridge and down to the engine room, but when he was asked to resume his duties, he turned to apologize to his guest who had all but vanished. Crew searched the engine room for the elderly man, thinking he had wandered off, but no one was ever found. In reflection, Bishop only recalled the man's passive worn voice and his attention to detail. Years later, he recognized a picture of Captain Edward J. Smith from the Titanic as his guest.
Crews and passengers have experienced several sounds from the vicinity. Old band music and calls of distress come out of the night and crackling over radios and transmission devices. In 1982, the radio system of the Queen Elizabeth reportedly shorted out in the area and as their radio officer tried to fix it, he heard the sounds of people screaming and shrieks of desperation trying to interrupt the static. Trying to fix the ship's radio, he brought it no attention, but upon nearing New York City, the radio again crackled to life and was in perfect working order again. In 1986, actress Kate Winslet on an ocean cruise heard a voice on her cruise ship calling the name, "Rose." At the time, she and her husband were returning to England on nearly the same path the Titanic would have taken on its return.
That same year, interest in the Titanic hit the general public after the re-discovery of the ship resting on the ocean floor, but not so much in the vague sightings of the Titanic's ghost. Just how an inanimate object can have a ghost has never been revealed, but it would still be a several years before the scattered stories of mystery liners, ocean-born voices and lights and apparitions of the Titanic's lost souls would be linked to a single manifestation. Finally, in 1989, dock-workers on a particularly foggy night saw a strange sight at New York's Pier 34. Harbor manager Tony Marin saw the sizable spectacle of a vast ship docked near his pier with a mighty hole in her bow, it's shadow outlined by the foggy night against the dark sky, and several shadowy figures in period dress wandering and striding past his window. Otherworldly voices laughing and talking from somewhere in the night as they advanced on the old shell of a structure where the White Star Line offices once rested. The sounds of countless steps ringing and clambering over the docks. Scared for his life, he calls the police department with a vague message:
"The Titanic just arrived!"
One of Marin's men tried to get a Polaroid of the haunting, but the picture reveals nothing but a washed out image of a slight window pane. Skeptics were quick to point out that the Titanic did not have a hole in her; her side had been pushed in, water gushing in through exposed seams. However, as Spiritualist and psychic Dawn Rochner points out: "The people on the Titanic believed the iceberg had poked a hole in her. It is from their collective group consciousness that they can form an ethereal reconstruction of a ship. Ghosts are ethereal; they conjure clothes and objects from out of ectoplasm because they recall how they looked in life. The Titanic took enough people into the ocean to more than ethereally conjure her twice over. They believed she had received a hole punched into her side from the iceberg and they unconsciously conjured that hole with her as part of their surroundings."
But why did she appear at Pier 34 over Pier 59 where she was expected to arrive? Marin rationalizes that it's because Pier 34 was never widened for her arrival after all. Pier 59 is the only modern pier for a ship the size of the Titanic. Born of Hispanic-Native American descent, Marin lost his position because of that alleged sighting, blamed on drinking on the job. He later took a job with New York Central Paranormal Investigations.
However, could the re-discovery of the Titanic have woken up her spirits into becoming more active?
On April 14, 1990, pilot Brian Hackett from Nantucket, Massachusetts was flying for Maine to take friends home. His passengers included CGS Field Manager William Collins, his wife, Ally and lawyers William and Georgia Thomas. The trip was uneventful, but on the trip back, Brian dozed off for a second and for a few minutes was aiming out over the North Atlantic. As he came to, gathered his bearings and adjusted his headings, he swung low out of the clouds on a strange sight: a large ocean liner drifting without lights in the ocean. Upon a closer look, he saw cadaverous and weary passengers and crew clinging to the railings and empty divots. Her decks were awash with damage as if turned over by a storm, her funnels silent and drifting on a vague course. The apparitions barely acknowledged his existence. Hackett had a long glance upon the sight before leaving it behind, but he did radio the sight and location in his FAA log. The record was erased a week later, but he still repeats the story...
The sighting occurred almost 250 miles off the Titanic's original prescribed route.
History: The Titanic was built by J. Bruce Ismay, the managing director of the White Star Line, which he had inherited from his father. Designed by Thomas Andrews, it was constructed at the Harland and Wolff Shipyard in Belfast, Ireland where three docks were converted to two in order to hold the massive ship. The second of three sister ships, the keel was laid March 31, 1909; her sister ships being the R.M.S. Gigantic (later renamed the Britannic) and the R.M.S. Olympic. It took 11,300 workers to build the ship with only eight workers dying out of 240 incidents. According to White star line custom, her empty hull was launched unchristened on May 31, 1911 using 23 tons of soap, grease and train oil to free her keel. All machinery including her engines, boilers and funnels were then installed by cranes. Towed to a fitting-out berth, the ship's interior took ten months to finish.
The ship finally launched April 2, 1912 from Southampton, England; her wash so powerful that it caused another ship, The New York, to break her moorings and pull her straight into the path of the Titanic. Captain Edward J. Smith, a seasoned captain since 1904, used swift action to avoid disaster. It is a bad omen of future events. Smith's captaincy of the Titanic on its maiden voyage was supposed to be his last voyage before retirement. At 54, he is looking to retire once he returns to England from America. The Titanic's first stop is Cherbourg, France where the majority of its wealthiest passengers disembark. After Queenstown, Ireland, the incredible liner is on its way to the open sea for Pier 59 in New York City where dock managers fear the Titanic won't fit their American piers. Unfortunately, they never have to reach an answer for their problem. Three days after departing Queenstown, the Titanic scrapes along the side of an iceberg, popping several steel sections and flooding more than four watertight compartments in under twenty minutes before midnight. Captain Smith had received six iceberg warnings during the day, but he is not alarmed. He has dealt with icebergs before, but not with a ship the size of the Titanic which has a short rudder and can't turn with the speed of the ships he is used to in his career. Later historians speculate ramming the iceberg would have saved the Titanic with far less expenditure of life aboard. Modern metallurgists debate the structural integrity and composition of the steel used to comprise the plates and rivets. Debate continues that the Titanic was defective when it left port, even down to an expansion joint built specifically for the large liners.
After the collision, Smith receives damage estimates and Andrews on board reveals the Titanic cannot stay afloat with more than three flooded compartments. Passengers are required to respond to lifeboats, but they are oblivious of the danger at first, staying inside the ship out of the cold and waiting to return to their state rooms. However, as the deck starts dropping at an angle, the bow of the ship descends into the waves and lower decks start flooding, it presses the anxiety level of the crew to maintain order and decorum. The rich and elite are given priority by class over third class passengers still trapped in the ship. Rumors are of a few men trying to escape the ship wearing dresses in accordance of the "women and children first" rule, but this is unconfirmed. Gradually, the ship starts sinking into the waters, her mighty keel rising up out of the water like a great mechanical serpent from the depths. Her immense weight is unable to take the stress and she tears along the expansion joint in the ship, designed to support her size on the open waves. As the bow sinks below, the stern rises up from the ocean into the night, before plunging into the ocean depths. From a raft, artist John B. Thayer sketches the stages of the ship breaking in two and sinking, but it will be years before the fact that the ship has broken in half is revealed. The Carpathia is the first ship of several to find and rescue passengers from the ocean.
In the aftermath, survivor Molly Brown, later the "Unsinkable" Molly Brown," formed the first list of survivors. The thirteen lifeboats picked up by the Carpathia and left at Pier 54 were stripped of their flags and nameplates, leaving them vulnerable to theft by local seamen. The American Government petitions J. Bruce Ismay from the rescued for a Federal inquiry, and he very nearly escapes the country to avoid the inquiry, but his attitude and that of crew members are a deterrent to getting satisfactory answers. It is first held at the Waldorff-Astoria in New York City, later moved to Washington D.C. The inquiry is formed to investigate the death of Major Archibald Butt, military aide to the President, but in England, the British court system is slightly more forgiving, but Ismay never recoups his loss from the sinking. Relatives of the deceased passengers and crew begin lawsuits; the son of John Jacob Astor plans the first salvage attempt to retrieve the body of his father, but he cancels plans when his father's body is found by the MacKay-Bennett. Myths and legends start appearing. The disaster is compared to a nearly identical sinking described in the 1898 novel, "Futility." Rumors of the sinking are blamed on the curse of a mummy which may or may not have been contained in the sunken hold. The names of men named Phineus Bogg, Doug Phillips and Jack Dawson are suspiciously missing from passenger manifests, but no one knows who they were. None of the surviving officers of the Titanic ever received command of their own ship. Among them, Fourth Officer J.G. Boxhall would have his ashes scattered in the area where the Titanic was lost after his death.
In 1986, oceanographer and marine archaeologist Robert D. Ballard re-ignited passion and interest in the ship by searching for the Titanic's remains. Starting from it's last reported location and sweeping toward the area the lifeboats were picked up, he swept the sea with sonar, basically related akin to trying to find a paper clip with a magnet from a third floor room. On September 1, 1986, they came across the debris field, the wake of remains lost from the shattered ship as it sunk into the depths. Gradually, their underwater sweep reached the bow of the lost liner, and the interest of the world was piqued.
Identity of Ghosts: Of the passengers on board, 1513 died when the Titanic sank, leaving only 705 survivors. Prominent passengers included John Jacob Astor, Molly Brown, Colonel Archibald Gracie, Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon, Benjamin Guggenheim, the Countess of Rothes and Isidor and Ida Strauss. Some members of the crew survived with the exception of anyone from the engine room. Only twenty lifeboats filled to less than full capacity rescued less than half of the passengers. Those who did not reach the lifeboats were either trapped in the ship or froze to death in the frozen waters. Of the bodies lost at sea, the Mackay-Bennett recovered 306 bodies, 116 were buried at sea while 190 were taken to Halifax where they were identified and buried by glass or religious conviction. Only 328 of the more than 1500 that perished were recovered.
Source/Comments: Ghosts of the Abyss (2003)/Titanic (1997)/Ghostbusters II (1989) - Accounts loosely based on the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California, the legend of the "Flying Dutchman" and several various tabloid news nonsense....
Titanic history and facts culled from Exploring the Titanic by Robert D. Ballard, Why You Wouldn't Want To Sail On The Titanic by David Stewart, Strange Stories and Amazing Facts by the Editors of Reader's Digest and Titanic Trivia by David Downs and Ken Beck.