Tad Fitch and his colleagues Kent Leyton & Bill Wormstedt co-authored the best book so far on the disaster itself. It is called On A Sea of Glass and is a must buy book. Very well researched and written; a deliberate slow read to take in all the details, meant for a genuine Titanic enthusiast and not a shallow and 'novelized' commercially orientated work like Titanic: An Illustrated History. Ken Marschall's excellent paintings were the only really good thing about that latter book.
I know what you mean, but that's just for convenience and orientation. Most of us human beings live by the clock and if you think about it, are too "five minute orientated". If I asked 10 different people to meet me at exactly 11:45 am, not one of them would think there was anything odd about it. But if I had said 11:42 am instead, just about all of them would have raised their eyebrows at the very least.
I am sure there must be information somewhere about how long it took to fill Titanic type lifeboats during boat drills. But on the actual night of the sinking, would have thought it would be rather difficult quantify. There was a good deal of hesitation among passengers to board early lifeboats like #7, #5 and #8 so much so that even Murdoch was forced to lower a few only partially filled - and that after allowing willing men to board and making up numbers with crew. But after about 01:00 am the seriousness of the situation started to dawn on everyone and so loading would have been more rapid.
Ok, what you and Mr. Halpern wrote does make sense about why times might be listed as they were. Kind of like the one Mt. Everest survey only the opposite but done for a reason. Survey showed exactly 29,000ft high but they thought people might think they rounded off so they added 2 feet to it. Or so the story goes.
Yes you are right about that. But since the mid 1800's there have been many surveys of Everest and they had all came away with different values. Most were very close to each other..20 feet or so. A few were way off because of the instruments at the time. The latest one done last year that I know of came in at 29,032'. With snow and ice it probably changes a few feet every year. But with all the people that have been up there now they might have a GPS receiver there now. Not sure about that. A lot like Titanic and other subjects. 2 different people looking at it and you'll get 2 different conclusions.
That's right. That would mean that several variables plated their part.
There might have been several reasons. Onboard the Titanic the lifeboats were fastened in place, ready for use as necessary. But when the Carpathia arrived, the boats were on the ocean surface, loaded with people and somewhat scattered. Then I am not sure if they had to improvise a bit with gear used to haul lifeboats out of the water on board the Carpathia. Most importantly, I would have thought the process of attaching falls to boats already on the sea and hauling them up was a more precarious process.
The Table shows 18 boats being loaded and launched within a period of 90 minutes - one every 5 minutess - a remarkable acheivement given the numbers and conditions.
Actually, there isn't any problem. For those following, the conversion from Titanic time, which was used in the article throughout, to GMT is to add 2 hours and 58 minutes. I'll respond to some of you issues Jim when I get the chance, but I have more pressing things to do today which finally looks and feels like Spring instead of Winter at 41° 57'N, 87° 41'W.
Off topic comment be me:...I hear you. I'm so ready for Winter to be over. The cold sucks. One of the reasons why I sympathize with the people on Titanic. But back to the subject matter. After looking at the times I can see why they are listed as they are. There's no way one could be exact about it and a minute here or there doesn't change the story at all IMO. It's not like today with people taking selfies where you can extract the metadata and get the time down to the second.
