{"id":3709,"date":"2010-09-25T11:37:34","date_gmt":"2010-09-25T10:37:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=3709"},"modified":"2010-09-25T11:47:14","modified_gmt":"2010-09-25T10:47:14","slug":"why-did-the-titantic-sink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=3709","title":{"rendered":"Why did the &#8220;Titantic&#8221; sink?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was 10 years old when the film <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0051994\/\">&#8220;A Night To Remember&#8221;<\/a> &#8211; about the sinking of the &#8220;Titantic&#8221; &#8211; was released in 1958.\u00a0 In a lifetime passion for movies, this was one of the first that I remember seeing and made an indelible impression on my young mind. Indeed, when many decades later I wrote a biography of a night fighter ace, I entitled one of the chapters &#8220;A Night To Remember&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>But why did the &#8216;unsinkable&#8217; &#8220;Titantic&#8221; manage to hit a huge\u00a0 iceberg on a clear night on its maiden voyage? This week, the granddaughter of the officer depicted in the film by Kenneth More revealed that Second Officer Charles Lightoller kept a secret. A simple &#8211; but understandable &#8211; confusion between practices in sailing ships and steam ships meant that the liner actually turned<em> into<\/em> the iceberg rather than away from it.\u00a0 I find this explanation as credible as it is tragic.<\/p>\n<p>You can read more in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/2010\/sep\/25\/ian-jack-titanic-tragedy-evidence\">this article<\/a>. As for why the liner sank so quickly with such appalling loss of life, see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2010\/sep\/22\/titanic-secrets-criminal-decision-officers\">this piece<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was 10 years old when the film &#8220;A Night To Remember&#8221; &#8211; about the sinking of the &#8220;Titantic&#8221; &#8211; was released in 1958.\u00a0 In a lifetime passion for movies, this was one of the first that I remember seeing and made an indelible impression on my young mind. Indeed, when many decades later I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3709"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3717,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3709\/revisions\/3717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}