Veracity of Andrews and Ismay Quotes

[A. Gabriel]

Browsing the capacious depths of the Internet, I come across certain quotes attributed to Thomas Andrews and Bruce Ismay that strike me as... for want of a better word, spurious. Attempting to search for their original sources leads me to no definitive answer, so I figured I would lay my cards on the table and inquire here as to whether these quotes are legitimate or not, and if they are legit, where they came from.

"Control your Irish passions, Thomas. Your uncle here tells me you proposed 64 lifeboats and he had to pull your arm to get you down to 32. Now, I will remind you just as I reminded him these are my ships. And, according to our contract, I have final say on the design. I’ll not have so many little boats, as you call them, cluttering up my decks and putting fear into my passengers." --J. Bruce Ismay, allegedly

"Let the Truth be known, no ship is unsinkable. The bigger the ship, the easier it is to sink her. I learned long ago that if you design how a ship’ll sink, you can keep her afloat. I proposed all the watertight compartments and the double hull to slow these ships from sinking. In that way, you get everyone off. There’s time for help to arrive, and the ship’s less likely to break apart and kill someone while she’s going down." --Thomas Andrews Jr, allegedly

 

[Ioannis Georgiou]

Sounds like taken form one of the "shows" during the anniversary. Not quite sure might be from the 2012 mini series from Fellowes. (Blood & Steel has too some of those nonsense discussions as well as some others too.)

 

[Kas01]

Charitably, the Ismay quote sounds like BS. There were barely enough crew to manage one lift, in any case, and for better or worse, Andrews, Pirrie, et al, were expecting a collision similar to the one sinking Republic, not hitting an iceberg in the middle of the ocean. The Andrews quote sounds more likely, but only marginally so.

 

[Steven Christian]

Sounds like taken form one of the "shows" during the anniversary. Not quite sure might be from the 2012 mini series from Fellowes. (Blood & Steel has too some of those nonsense discussions as well as some others too.)

.Yes those definantly sound like a movie/tv script. Who would write a quote like that down? Did Ismay and Andrews have journals/diaries where they wrote quotes like these? Where else would a quote like that come from?

 

[Thomas Krom]

.Yes those definantly sound like a movie/tv script. Who would write a quote like that down? Did Ismay and Andrews have journals/diaries where they wrote quotes like these? Where else would a quote like that come from?

The quotes came from the book "I built the Titanic" by William C Barnes (his pen-name). Mr. Barnes is a person who believed he was Thomas Andrews Jr in his past life, however Mr. Barnes made some absurd and incorrect claims in his book(see my posts at Inaccuracies in Andrews' testimony) that do not match eyewitness reports and dare I say, the personality of the real Thomas Andrews. In my opnion (among with a large part of the Titanic comunity) I think that William Barnes could impossibly be Thomas Andrews Jr. It is just another anti-Mr. Ismay story that tries to put the blame of the sinking on Mr. Ismay.


Yours sincerely,

Thomas