Titanic II

[lpetrich]

 Titanic II
Welcome to the home of Titanic II
Titanic II News – The nets biggest resource, by Malcolm Oliver

Australian billionaire Clive Palmer wants to build an imitation of the RMS Titanic, that ill-fated ocean liner.

That project was paused a few years ago from lack of financing, and it's now being restarted.

This new ship will not be an exact duplicate of the original, for obvious reasons. It will have an additional deck with modern lifeboats and likely a lot of shops, much like present-day cruise ships. Many cruise-ship passengers go shopping while aboard their ships, while the most that the original Titanic had was its barbershop.

But the Titanic II will have enough lifeboat capacity for everybody, unlike the original one, which had only 1/3 of the capacity. That was because the ship's designers expected some other ship to be nearby to help out, but that's not what happened, and many of the people aboard that ship died when the ship sank.

The original Titanic was driven by coal-burning steam engines, while this new one will be driven by oil-burning diesel engines.

The Titanic II will have azimuth thrusters, which can be rotated to move the ship sideways. It will also have bow thrusters built into its hull, for additional sideways thrusting and greater maneuverability.

Not sure how much Titanic II will duplicate the original passenger accommodations, since the original Titanic had three passenger-accommodation classes, from the luxurious to somewhat cramped.

Like the original Titanic, the Titanic II will look rather small compared to the largest present-day cruise ships.

The original Titanic vs. the Oasis of the Seas:
[table="class:grid"]
[tr][th]What[/th][th]Titanic[/th][th]OotS[/th][/tr]
[tr][td]Length[/td][td]269.1 m[/td][td]360 m[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Beam[/td][td]28.2 m[/td][td]60.5 m[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Draft[/td][td]10.5 m[/td][td]9.322 m[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Height[/td][td]42.8 m[/td][td]72 m[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Decks[/td][td]9[/td][td]18[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Passengers[/td][td]2,435[/td][td]6,699[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Crew[/td][td]892[/td][td]2,181[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Total[/td][td]3,327[/td][td]8,880[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Speed[/td][td]21 kn[/td][td]24.5 kn[/td][/tr]
[/table]
Beam = width, draft = depth, height is above the waterline ("air draft")
Speed is in knots, nautical miles / hr. 1 nm = 1.853 km = 1 minute of arc on the Earth's surface
 Titanic -  Oasis of the Seas - Oasis of the Seas Fact Sheet | Royal Caribbean Press Center


The OotS is 1/3 longer and twice as wide as the Titanic. Its decks extend upward to a little above the tops of the Titanic's funnels.

 Panamax - The original Titanic could easily fit into the Suez and Panama Canals, but the OotS can't.


Another project has gotten farther along:  Romandisea Titanic at a resort in Sichuan Province, China, far inland. It won't go anywhere but will be a tourist destination. But then again, China has imitations of the Eiffel Tower and Hallstatt village in the Alps.

Unlike the Titanic II, its construction is proceeding.

 

[Tigers!]

So long as Titanic II avoids Iceberg II

If in Melbourne, Australia and you want to experience the feeling https://titanic.com.au/

 

[lpetrich]

Titled link: Titanic Theatre Restaurant & Bar – Titanic Theatre Restaurant & Bar

So long as Titanic II avoids Iceberg II

I think that they will be careful about that.

Titanic II Building Cost Doubles – Titanic II News - datelined June 2

Clive Palmer has hired ship-design firm Deltamarin, one that has done several large cruise ships. Senior Designer Fredrick Johansson of that company:

Titanic II is a smaller ship, but a rather complex project so it’s very difficult to say. We haven’t started a detailed cost analysis.

MR. Johansson said the most expensive aspect of the design would be making it an exact replica of the original Titanic and ensuring it was safe.

Mr Johansson also said that Mr Palmer had never missed a payment to the naval architects.

We haven’t had any problems with Blue Star Line. They have been very smooth in that respect. They have been a good client, he said.

Though CP has stiffed the workers in a failed mining venture.

 

[lpetrich]

It's interesting that the Titanic has gotten such celebrity.

If the Titanic had survived that iceberg, or had avoided it outright, it would never have gotten its celebrity. I think that it would likely have gone the way of its White Star sister ships,  HMHS Britannic or even the  RMS Olympic.

The Britannic went into service in 23 December 1915 in WWI, and when in the Aegean Sea, it hit a mine and sank in 21 November 1916.

The Olympic went into service in 14 June 1911, and it stayed in service until 5 April 1935, when it was scrapped. It served as a troopship in WWI, and it became nicknamed "Old Reliable".

The Olympic survived several collisions with other ships and submarines.

In 20 September 1911, it collided with the British cruiser HMS Hawke. The two ships were running parallel to each other, then the Olympic turned starboard and cut in front of the Hawke. The warship ran into the Olympic's stern, making two sizable holes and twisting that side's propeller shaft. Two of the ship's compartments flooded, but the ship made it to a nearby port on its own power. The Hawke's bow was flattened, and it nearly capsized. But nobody was seriously injured or killed.

For World War I, the ship was given some big guns and put into service as a troopship. It was painted a "dazzle" camouflage scheme to give it a confusing appearance.

Early in 12 May 1918, as the ship headed to France, its crew saw a German submarine, U-103, on the surface. The ships' gunners fired on the sub, and the ship's steersman turned the ship to ram the sub, but the sub dived. The ship's port propeller cut through the sub's hull, and the sub's crew scuttled their boat and abandoned it. The Olympic continued onward to Cherbourg, but the USS Davis picked up 31 survivors.

German submarines are often called U-boats, a half-translation of German U-boot, short for Unterseeboot, "undersea boat".

"During the war, Olympic is reported to have carried up to 201,000 troops and other personnel, burning 347,000 tons of coal and travelling about 184,000 miles (296,000 km)." And was nicknamed "Old Reliable".

After the war, the ship was returned to civilian duty and converted from coal burning to oil burning. "During the conversion work and drydocking, a dent with a crack at the centre was discovered below her waterline which was later concluded to have been caused by a torpedo that had failed to detonate."

During the 1920s, Olympic remained a popular and fashionable ship, and often attracted the rich and famous of the day; Marie Curie, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, and Prince Edward, then Prince of Wales, were among the celebrities that she carried.[106] Prince Edward and Captain Howarth were filmed on the bridge of Olympic for Pathé News.[107] According to his autobiography,[108] Cary Grant, then 16-year-old Archibald Leach, first set sail to New York on Olympic on 21 July 1920 on the same voyage on which Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford were celebrating their honeymoon. One of the attractions of Olympic was the fact that she was nearly identical to Titanic, and many passengers sailed on Olympic as a way of vicariously experiencing the voyage of Olympic's sister ship.[109]

On 22 March 1924, the Olympic collided with a smaller ocean liner, the Fort St. George, as it backed out of its berth in NYC's harbor. The Fort St. George suffered heavy damage, but the Olympic suffered much less, though more than it at first seemed. Its rudder frame needed a lot of repairs.

On 15 May 1934, the Olympic collided with yet another ship, the lightship LV-117 just south of the Nantucket Shoals off of Nantucket Island southeast of mainland Massachusetts. A lightship is a ship that acts as a lighthouse. The Olympic had been homing on on the Nantucket's radio beacon when it ran into some thick fog. As a precaution, it slowed down and changed course. But when the lightship became visible to the liner, it was dead ahead. The liner's crew turned the rudder to full port and the engines to full astern, and they closed the ship's bulkhead doors. But it was too late. The Olympic rammed the lightship.

The liner's passengers barely noticed the collision, but the lightship was heavily damaged and it soon sunk. The Olympic put out 3 lifeboats and recovered 7 of the lightship's 11 crewmembers, though 3 of those 7 died aboard the Olympic.

The Olympic suffered very minor damage, mostly some dented hull plates.

"By the time of her retirement, Olympic had completed 257 round trips across the Atlantic, transporting 430,000 passengers on her commercial voyages, travelling 1.8 million miles."

 

[DrZoidberg]

delete

 

[lpetrich]

The Titanic was one of three big ocean liners built by the British company White Star Line to compete for transatlantic passengers.

The Olympic, Titanic, and Britannic had very similar dimensions:

• Tonnage (volume): Olympic: 45,324, (1913) 46,358 (1920) 46,439, Titanic: 46,328, Britannic: 48,158 - Gross Register Tons - 128 K cubic meters
• Displacement (mass): Olympic: 52,067, Titanic 52,310, Britannic 53,200 - English-unit tons - 47 K metric tons
• Length: 882 ft 9 in - 269.0 m
• Beam (width): 94 ft - 28.7 m
• Height (keel to funnel tops): 175 ft - 53.4 m
• Draft (keel to waterline): 34 ft 7 in - 10.5 m
• Depth (keel to hull top): 64 ft 6 in - 19.7 m
• Decks: 9
• Capacity: roughly 3,300 people

Units: 1 Gross Register Ton = 100 ft^3 = 2.84 m^3

The White Star Line's biggest rival was the Cunard Line, and it also built some big ships back then, the Mauretania (1907-1934) the Lusitania (1907-1915), and the Aquitania (1914-1950). Notice the name theme: former western provinces of the Roman Empire: Algeria + Morocco, Portugal + W Spain, SW France.

• Tonnage (volume): Mauretania: 31,938, Lusitania: 31,550, Aquitania: 45,647 -- 90 K, 130 K m^3
• Displacement: Lusitania: 44,767 -- 41 K mt
• Length: Mauretania: 790 ft - 240.8 m, Lusitania: 787 ft - 239.9 m, Aquitania: 901 ft - 274.6 m
• Beam: Mauretania: 88 ft - 26.8 m, Lusitania: 87 ft - 26.5 m, Aquitania: 97 ft - 29.6 m
• Height (waterline to boat deck): Lusitania: 60 ft - 18.3 m
• Height (waterline to aerials): Lusitania: 165 ft - 60.3 m
• Draft: Mauretania: 33.5 ft - 10.1 m, Lusitania: 33.6 ft - 10.2 m, Aquitania: 36 ft - 11.0 m
• Depth (waterline to hull top): Mauretania 33.5 ft - 10.2 m
• Decks: Mauretania: 8, Lusitania: 9, Aquitania 10
• Capacity: Mauretania, Lusitania: roughly 3,000, Aquitania: roughly 4,100

The Mauretania was the biggest ship in the world before the launching of the Olympic and then the Titanic.

 

[lpetrich]

There was a SS France (1912-1936) run by the French company Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (CGT). Though the company's biggest ship for some decades, it was smaller than all six of the ships I'd mentioned earlier.

• Tonnage: 24,666 - 70 K m^3
• Length: 711 ft 11 in - 217 m
• Beam: 78 ft 4 in - 23.88 m

Germany also got into this race with its SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse (Kaiser Wilhelm the Great, 1897-1914), SS Kronprinz Wilhelm (Crown Prince Wilhelm, became USS von Steuben, 1901-1919), SS Kaiser Wilhelm II (became USS Agamemnon, 1903-1919), SS Kronprinzessin Cecilie (Crown Princess Cecile, because USS Mt. Vernon, 1906-1919), SS Imperator (Latin: "commander, emperor", became RMS Berengaria of the Cunard Line, 1913-1938), SS Vaterland ("fatherland", became SS Leviathan of the United States Lines, 1914-1933), SS Bismarck (became RMS Majestic of the White Star Line, 1922-1939). Several of these ships were seized as war reparations in World War I.

• Tonnage: KWdG: 14,349, KPW 14,908, KWII 19,361, KPC 19,400, Imperator 52,117, Vaterland 54,282, Bismarck 56,551
• Displacement: KWdG: 24,700, KPW 24,900, KWII 25,940
• Length: KWdG: 655 ft - 200 m, KPW 663.30 ft - 202.17 m, KWII 706 ft 3 in - 215.27 m, KPC 706 ft 4 in - 215.29 m, Imperator 906 ft - 276 m, Vaterland 950 ft - 289.6 m, Bismarck 956.0 ft - 291.4 m
• Beam: KWdG: 65 ft 9.6 in - 20.056 m, KPW 66 ft - 20 m, KWII 72 ft 3 in - 22.02 m, KPC 72 ft 2 in - 22.0 m, Imperator 98 ft 3 in - 29.95 m, Vaterland 100 ft 4 in - 30.6 m, Bismarck 110.1 ft - 30.5 m
• Draft: 27 ft 11 in - 8.51 m, KPW 28 ft - 8.5 m, KWII 29 ft 10 in - 9.09 m, KPC 31 ft 1 in - 9.47 m, Imperator 75 ft 2 in - 10.72 m, Vaterland 37 ft 9 in - 11.51 m, Bismarck 36 ft - 11.0 m
• Decks: Imperator: 11

When it went into service, the Imperator superseded the Olympic and the Titanic as the biggest ship in the world.

The White Star Line merged with the Cunard Line in 1934, and the Cunard Line was acquired by the Carnival Corporation in 1998, though the Cunard Line continues as a Carnival brand.

 

[lpetrich]

Here are some other notable passenger-ship disasters.

The White Star Line started with six Oceanic-class ocean liners: RMS Oceanic (1871-1895), SS Atlantic (1871-1873), SS Baltic (1871-1898), SS Adriatic (1872, 1899), SS Republic (1872-1910), SS Celtic (1872-1898)

All six ships ere very similar, being 4-mast steamer-sailers. The Oceanic's dimensions:

• Tonnage: 3,707 GRT - 11 K m^3
• Displacement (loaded); 7,940 tons - 7,200 mt
• Length: 420 ft 4 in - 128.12 m
• Beam: 40 ft 10 m - 12.45 m
• Draft: 31 ft 5 in - 9.58 m
• Decks (the Atlantic): 4
• Capacity: 1,300

From Wikipedia:

On March 20, 1873, Atlantic departed on her 19th voyage from Liverpool with 952 people on board,[1] of whom 835 were passengers, and 14 stowaways. En route, because of heavy seas and strong headwinds slowing their progress, Captain James Williams became concerned that they would run out of coal for the boilers before reaching New York.[1] They in fact had more than enough remaining fuel, but the ship's engineer had been purposefully under-reporting coal reserves to increase the margin for error in favor of safety. Thus convinced they were short of coal—and unable to hoist sail as a backup because of the strong headwind—the captain decided to divert to Halifax, Nova Scotia, to refuel.[1]

During the approach to Halifax on the evening of 31 March, the captain and third officer were on the bridge until midnight while Atlantic made her way through a storm, proceeding at 12 knots (22 km/h) for the entrance of Halifax harbour, experiencing intermittent visibility and heavy seas. Unbeknownst to the crew or passengers, winds and currents had put Atlantic approximately 12+1⁄2 miles (20.1 km) off-course to the west of Halifax Harbour. Because almost none of the crew had ever been to Halifax before, they were unaware of the dangers of the approach; no one took soundings, posted a masthead lookout, reduced speed, or woke the captain as they approached the unfamiliar coast. They did not spot the Sambro Lighthouse, the large landfall lighthouse which warns mariners of the rocky shoals to the west of the harbour entrance. As the night wore on without any sight of the lighthouse, the helmsman—the only crew member familiar with Halifax—became convinced that something was wrong, and relayed his concerns to the officers on duty, but was ultimately ignored.

At 3:15 a.m. local time on April 1, 1873, Atlantic struck an underwater rock ("Golden Rule Rock") off Marr's Head, Meagher's Island (now Mars Head, Mars Island), Nova Scotia.[5][6][7] All 10 lifeboats were lowered by the crew but were all washed away or smashed as the ship quickly filled with water and partially capsized. Survivors were forced to swim or climb ropes first to a wave-swept rock and then to a barren shore. Residents of the tiny fishing village of Lower Prospect and Terence Bay soon arrived to rescue and shelter the survivors, but at least 535 people died, leaving only 429 survivors.[8][9] The ship's manifest indicates that of the 952 aboard, 156 were women and 189 were children (including two who had been born during the voyage). All women and all children perished except for one twelve-year-old boy, John Hindley. Ten crew members were lost, while 131 survived.[10] This was the worst civilian loss of life in the North Atlantic until the wreck of La Bourgogne on 2 July 1898. The Canadian government inquiry concluded with the statement, "the conduct of Captain Williams in the management of his ship during the twelve or fourteen hours preceding the disaster, was so gravely at variance with what ought to have been the conduct of a man placed in his responsible position."

 

[lpetrich]

The White Star Line got a second ship named Republic in 1903, but it sank in 1909 after a collision with another ship, the SS Florida.

• Tonnage: 15,400 GRT
• Length: 570.0 ft - 173.7 m
• Beam: 67.8 ft - 20.7 m
• Draft: 34 ft 1 in - 10.39 m
• Capacity: 3,100

From Wikipedia,

In early morning of 23 January 1909, while sailing from New York City to Gibraltar and Mediterranean ports with 742 passengers and crew and Captain Inman Sealby (1862–1942) in command, Republic entered a thick fog off the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Taking standard precautions and maintaining her speed, the steamer regularly signaled her presence in the outbound shipping traffic lane by whistle. At 5:47 a.m., another whistle was heard and Republic's engines were ordered to full reverse, and the helm put "hard-a-port". Out of the fog, the Lloyd Italiano liner SS Florida appeared and hit Republic amidships on her portside, at about a right angle. Two passengers asleep in their cabins on Republic were killed when Florida's bow sliced into her, liquor wholesale manager Eugene Lynch's wife Mary and banker William J. Mooney. Eugene Lynch was critically injured and died as a result of his injuries at Long Island College Hospital, Brooklyn, 26 January. On Florida, three crewmen were also killed when the bow was crushed back to a collision bulkhead.[4] Six people died in total.

The engine and boiler rooms on Republic began to flood, and the ship listed. Captain Sealby led the crew in calmly organizing the passengers on deck for evacuation. Republic was equipped with the new Marconi wireless telegraph system, and became the first ship in history to issue a CQD distress signal, sent by John R. Binns.[5] Florida came about to rescue Republic's complement, and the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service cutter Gresham[6] responded to the distress signal as well. Passengers were distributed between the two ships, with Florida taking the bulk of them, but with 900 Italian immigrants already on board, this left the ship dangerously overloaded.

The White Star liner Baltic, commanded by Captain J. B. Ranson, also responded to the CQD call, but due to the persistent fog, it was not until the evening that Baltic was able to locate the drifting Republic. Once on-scene, the rescued passengers were transferred from Gresham and Florida to Baltic. Because of the damage to Florida, that ship's immigrant passengers were also transferred to Baltic, but a riot nearly broke out when they had to wait until first-class Republic passengers were transferred. Once everyone was on board, Baltic sailed for New York.

At the time, ships were not required to have enough lifeboats for all the passengers. It was expected that there would be some other ships nearby to assist a stricken ship, and that the lifeboats would be for ferrying passengers to some other ships. That scenario played out well for the Republic, and out of 742 people on board, only 3 died, and those people died as a result of the collision itself.

This scenario did not play out well for the Titanic, and nearby ships arrived too late. Of the roughly 2,200 people on board, only 710 survived.

 

[lpetrich]

Two years after the Titanic sank, the RMS Empress of Ireland (1906-1914) did so.

• Tonnage: 14,191 GRT
• Length: 570 ft - 170 m
• Beam: 65.7 ft - 20.0 m
• Draft: 36.7 ft - 11.2 m
• Capacity: 1,915

On 1914 May 18, the ship departed from Quebec City CA on its way to Liverpool UK. A little after midnight, the Empress of Ireland's crew saw a nearby ship, the Storstad, and that ship's crew did likewise. But a fog came in, and the ships' crews used their ships' horns to advertise their positions. But a bit before 2 am local time, the Storstad rammed the EoI amidships on its starboard side, and the ship quickly became flooded.

Adding to that trouble was that the EoI's compartments' bulkhead doors were left open, allowing water to flood the ship's compartments along the length of the ship. It was beneath the water in 15 minutes, and 1,012 of the 1,477 people on board died, with 465 survivors, about 1/3 of the ship's total.

This was comparable to the fraction that survived the sinking of the Titanic: 710 out of some 2,224, with some 1,514 dying. The EoI sank much faster than the Titanic, which took some 2 1/2 hours before it was completely underwater.

The Empress of Ireland had a sister ship, the Empress of Britain (1906-1930).

 

[lpetrich]

The RMS Lusitania (1907-1915) was sunk by a German submarine in WWI.

• Tonnage: 31,550 GRT
• Displacement: 44,767.0 tons - 40,600 mt
• Length: 787 ft - 239.9 m
• Beam: 87 ft - 26.5 m
• Height (boat deck): 60 ft - 18.3 m
• Height (aerials): 165 ft - 50.3 m
• Draft: 33.6 ft - 10.2 m
• Decks: 9
• Capacity: 3,000

In 1910, the Lusitania was hit by a rogue wave about 23 m / 75 ft height. The ship suffered some damage, but nobody was injured or killed, and the ship continued to NYC, arriving a few hours late.

Then on 1915 May 7, as it was near southern Ireland on its way from NYC to Liverpool, a German submarine launched a torpedo into it. When it hit, it exploded, and that explosion was followed by a second one. The ship sank in 18 minutes, and of the 1,960 people aboard, 1,193 died and 761 survived.

The sinking of that ship was an outrage in Britain and the US, but President Woodrow Wilson refused to get involved in the war. "There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right" he stated in a speech.

 

[lpetrich]

The HMHS Britannic (1915-1916) was a sister ship of the Olympic and the Titanic, and it served as a British hospital ship in WWII. It sank from running into a mine near the Greek island of Kea in the Aegean Sea. Of the 1,065 people on board, 1,035 survived and only 30 died.


Advancing to World War II, it had the greatest number of civilians killed in a maritime disaster, from the sinking of the cruise ship MV Wilhelm Gustloff (1938-1945)

• Tonnage: 25,484 GRT
• Length: 684 ft 1 in - 208.5 m
• Beam: 77 ft 5 in - 23.59 m
• Height: 183 ft 9 in - 56 m
• Draft: 21 ft 4 in - 6.5 m
• Decks: 5
• Capacity: some 1,900

It was sponsored by the Nazis' Strength through Joy (Kraft durch Freude) organization. It sponsored lots of leisure activities, and this ship would add cruise-ship excursions.

It was named after a Swiss Nazi leader who was murdered by a Jewish medical student in 1936. MV = motor vessel, a reference to the ship's diesel engines.

But during WWII, it was first a hospital ship then a barracks ship, and toward the end of the war, it was used to evacuate refugees from the easternmost parts of Germany. On 1945 Jan 30, the ship departed Danzig, now Gdansk, with some 10,500 people on board, well over its nominal capacity. It had four captains on board, and they disagreed on the best course of action. Like whether to keep the ship's navigation lights on or off. They decided on the lights on for a while, and that was enough to catch the attention of Soviet submarine crews. One submarine then sent three torpedoes into the WG, and the ship sank in 40 minutes. Of all the people on board, only 1,252 survived, picked up by nearby German ships.

Another ship used in this evacuation effort, the SS Cap Arcona (1927-1945), succeeded, but it was soon used as a prison ship for German concentration-camp inmates, and mistakenly sunk in May 1945 by the Royal Air Force, killing some 5,000 people. The RAF also attacked two nearby ships, killing an additional 2,000 people.

• Tonnage: 27,561 GRT
• Length: 678 ft 10 in - 206.90 m
• Beam: 84 ft 7 in - 25.78 m
• Draft: 28 ft 5 in - 8.67 m
• Depth: 46 ft 11 in - 14.30 m
• Decks: 5
• Capacity: 1,800

 

[lpetrich]

I now turn to the SS Andrea Doria (1953-1956). That ship was one of several Italian ships named after a 16th cy. admiral from Genoa, Andrea Doria. In Italy, Andrea is a man's name, from removing the final s in the original Greek form, Andreas. "For a country attempting to rebuild its shattered economy and reputation after World War II, Andrea Doria was an icon of Italian national pride. Of all Italy's ships at the time, Andrea Doria was the largest, fastest and supposedly safest."

• Tonnage: 29,083 GRT
• Length: 701 ft 5 in - 213.80 m
• Beam: 90ft 3 in - 27.50 m
• Capacity: 1,700

On 1956 July 25, the Andrea Doria was on its way from Cannes FR, Naples IT, and Gibraltar to New York City, and another ship, the Stockholm, half the size of the AD, was on its way from NYC to Gothenburg SE. The Stockholm was designed for traveling near the Arctic Ocean, and its bow was reinforced for icebreaking duty. But the Stockholm's crew decided to send that ship a bit north of where eastbound ships usually travel -- and into the path of westbound ships. Ships that included the Andrea Doria that day.

The Andrea Doria was traveling through some fog near Nantucket Island, and its crew had closed the watertight bulkhead doors as a precaution. But the Stockholm was only beginning to approach that fog. Both ships saw each other on their radars, and both attempted to avoid collision, though they did not try to make radio contact with each other. The Andrea Doria turned leftward and the Stockholm turned rightward, and the two ships ended up colliding around 11 pm local time.

The Stockholm broadsided the AD, and both ships took on water. The AD got a dangerous list, and the Stockholm lost about 10 m / 30 ft of its bow, but only the first of the Stockholm's compartments got flooded. The AD sent out distress messages, and some nearby ships moved in to assist, rescuing nearly all of the AD's passenger and crew. The AD's captain, Piero Calamai, stayed on board and he considered the possibility of towing the ship to shallow water. But it was evident that the ship was doomed, and the captain and remaining crew departed around 9 am. The ship capsized (tilted over) and sank bow first, disappearing at 10:09 am, 11 hours after the collision.

Out of the 1,704 people aboard the Andrea Doria, 1,660 survived and 46 died, mostly as a direct result of the collision. The Stockholm had 742 people on board, with 5 of them dying from the collision.

 

[lpetrich]

The MS Estonia (1980-1994) was a cruiseferry that operated in the Baltic Sea, carrying cars in its lower decks. It was a roll-on-roll-off (ro-ro) ferry, where one drives one's car onto it and then off of it. At the bow end of the ship was a "bow visor", a part of the ship on a horizontal hinge that could be moved upward and out of the way of the cars.

• Tonnage: 15,598 GT
• Length: 509 ft 11 in - 155.43 m
• Beam: 79 ft 5 in - 24.21 m
• Draft: 18 ft 4 in - 5.60 m
• Decks: 9
• Capacity: 2,000 passengers, 460 cars

On 27 Sep 1994, the Estonia departed Tallinn, Estonia for Stockholm, Sweden.

The ship suffered a bad storm, and on 1:00 am local time, the ship's people heard a metallic bang. This was followed by similar noises for the next 10 minutes. The visor came loose and water flooded into the car desk, making the ship have a bad list. By 1:30, it listed 60d, and by 1:50 90d. It soon sank.

Of the 989 people on board, 137 survived and 852 died, many of them trapped in the ship.

 

[lpetrich]

I'll conclude this series on passenger-ship disasters with the Costa Concordia (2006-2012), though I intend to discuss more general features.

• Tonnage: 114,147 GT
• Length: 952 ft 1 in - 290.20 m
• Beam: 116 ft 6 in - 35.50 m
• Draft: 26 ft 11 in - 8.20 m
• Depth: 46 ft 6 in - 14.18 m
• Decks: 13
• Capacity: 4,880

The ship was on a cruise from Civitavecchia on the west coast of Italia near Rome, and stopping off at Savonia NW Italy, Marseille S France, Barcelona NE Spain, Palma S Majorca island, Cagliari S Sardinia island, and Palermo N Sicily before returning to Civitavecchia. On its way out of Civitavecchia, the ship was to pass by Giglio Island ("JEElyo") a little off the coast.

On the way, Captain Francesco Schettino decided on a course very close to the island. He said later "I was navigating by sight, because I knew those seabeds well. I had done the move three, four times." He saw waves breaking off a nearby reef, and he tried to avoid it. But at 21:42 or 21:45 local time, the ship hit that reef and the reef tore a big gash in the ship's hull. Water poured in, and the engines and generators were knocked out, cutting out the ship's electricity.

Passengers heard a sudden, loud bang, and a crewmember called it an "electrical failure". Another one said afterward that "We told the guests everything was [okay] and under control and we tried to stop them panicking".

There is a bizarre claim about this ship disaster. That in a restaurant, this song was being played: Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On", the theme song from the 1997 film "Titanic".

The ship listed to port, and then to starboard, but at 22:12, a ship officer stated only that the ship had an electrical blackout. Then at 22:20, some crewmember told the passengers that "We have solved the problems we had and invite everyone to return to their cabins." A ship's cook claimed that Captain FS ordered dinner at 22:30.

At 22:26, FS told the port authorities at Livorno that the CC was taking on water, and he requested a tugboat. Port authorities were not alerted to the collision until 22:42, and the order to abandon ship was at 22:50. From Wiki

Staff or 2nd captain Roberto Bosio, is said to have coordinated some of the deck officers in much of the evacuation. He began to evacuate the ship before Schettino's order. Many junior officers and crew members who were aware of the severity of the situation also began readying lifeboats and moving passengers from their cabins before the abandon ship orders were given, a move that has been characterised as a "mutiny".

A third engineer officer from the ship's engine room also pointed out that "Unlike the captain, we were there until the end. We did all we could to avoid catastrophe."

Some people jumped overboard to try to swim to safety, but 3 drowned and 7 were critically injured.

The local fire chief said his men "plucked 100 people from the water and saved around 60 others who were trapped in the boat". Five helicopters from the Italian Coast Guard, Navy and Air Force took turns airlifting survivors still aboard and ferrying them to safety.

According to investigators, Schettino had left the ship by 23:30.

In one telephone call from the Coast Guard to Schettino, Captain Gregorio De Falco, a captain from Livorno, repeatedly ordered Schettino to return to the ship from his lifeboat and take charge of the ongoing passenger evacuation. At one point in the call, De Falco grew so angry at Schettino's stalling that he raised his voice and told Schettino, "Vada a bordo, cazzo!" (translated as "Get the fuck [back] on board!", "Get [back] on board, for fuck's sake!" or "Get on board, damn it!" depending on the source). One of these calls took place at 01:46.[80] Despite this, Schettino never returned to the ship from the lifeboat into which he claimed he had "fallen".

At 01:04, an Air Force officer who was lowered on board by helicopter reported that there were still 100 people on board. Father Raffaele Malena, the ship's priest, said he was among the last leaving the ship at around 01:30. The deputy-mayor of Isola del Giglio, Mario Pellegrini, who went on board as part of the rescue operations, praised the ship's doctor and a young Costa Concordia officer, Simone Canessa, the only officer he met on board, for their help. He and Canessa were "shoulder to shoulder" until 05:30. One of the missing crewmen, a waiter, was last seen helping passengers.

At 03:05, 600 passengers were evacuated to the mainland by ferry. At 03:44, the Air Force officer reported that 40 to 50 people were still on board. At 04:46, the evacuation was noted as "complete" on the Port of Livorno's Harbour Master log. The next day, the survivors were transported to Porto Santo Stefano, where the first center for coordination and assistance was established.

from  Costa Concordia disaster

The next day, rescue divers were sent into the ship to look for missing people, and they found some survivors as well as bodies of those who died.

Of the 4,252 people aboard the CC, 32 died in that accident.

A year and a half later, in the middle of 2014, the ship was salvaged by attaching giant floats to it, first on the ship's port side, interrupting to get the ship upright, and then on the ship's starboard side. The ship was then towed to Genoa for scrapping. That was started for the upper decks in 2015 May, and the floats were off by 2016 August. Most of the ship was gone by 2017 January, and it was all gone by July of that year.

 

[lpetrich]

Wikipedia has

•  List of maritime disasters
•  List of maritime disasters in the 18th century
•  List of maritime disasters in the 19th century
•  List of maritime disasters in the 20th century
•  List of maritime disasters in World War I
•  List of maritime disasters in World War II
•   List of maritime disasters in the 21st century

In the freak-coincidences department, in 1898, Morgan Robertson wrote a novella,  The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futility

The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futility is a novella written by Morgan Robertson and published as Futility in 1898, and revised as The Wreck of the Titan in 1912. It features a fictional British ocean liner Titan that sinks in the North Atlantic after striking an iceberg. Titan and its sinking are famous for similarities to the passenger ship RMS Titanic and its sinking 14 years later.

But was it a freak coincidence? The author having ESP?

Although the novel was written before RMS Titanic was even conceptualized, there are some uncanny similarities between the fictional and real-life versions. Like Titanic, the fictional ship sank in April in the North Atlantic, and there were not enough lifeboats for all the passengers. There are also similarities in size (800 ft [244 m] long for Titan versus 882 ft 9 in [269 m] long for the Titanic), speed, and life-saving equipment. After the Titanic's sinking, some people credited Robertson with precognition and clairvoyance, which he denied. Scholars attribute the similarities to Robertson's extensive knowledge of shipbuilding and maritime trends.

Even the name was appropriate for such a big ship.

 

[lpetrich]

In the late 1970's, Isaac Asimov wrote a science essay, "The Floating Crystal Palace", collected in "The Road to Infinity". IA had a regular science-essay column in Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine, and I have several collections of his essays for that publication.

Last month (as I write this) my wife, Janet, and I crossed the Atlantic on the Queen Elizabeth 2; then, after one day in Southampton, we crossed right back.

We did this for a number of reasons. I have a pair of talks each way, Janet is crazy about ships, and both of us found ourselves in an island of peace away from the cares of the workaday world. (Actually 1 managed to write a small book while on board, but that's another story.)

In one respect, though, was disenchanted on this particular voyage. It had always been my dim assumption that there was one word that is absolutely taboo on any liner. You might say something was "very large," "huge," "monstrous," "gigantic," but you would never say something was -- well, the adjective begins with a "t."

1 was wrong. One evening on the ship, a stand-up comedian said, "I hope you'll all be joining us at the big banquet tomorrow, folks. We're celebrating the anniversary of the Titanic."

1 was shocked! Hesven knows I've never been accused of good taste in my off-hand humor, but this, I thought, was going too far. Had I known he was going to say it, I might have tried to round up a committee for the feeding of poor, deserving sharks by throwing the comedian overboard.

Did others feel the same way?

No, sir! The remark was greeted with general laughter. with myself (as far as could tell) the only abstainer,

Why did they laugh? I thought about it., and an essay began to build itself in my mind. Here it is --

He then continued with explaining icebergs. A "floating crystal palace" was how St. Brendan (ca. 550 CE) or his chroniclers described them.

 

[lpetrich]

 Timeline of largest passenger ships - I looked up every ship in that list and got that ship's statistics.

The first in that list was the SS Royal William (1831-1860), credited with being one of the first ships to travel across the Atlantic Ocean mostly on engine power. Its crew used its sails only as a backup in case of engine maintenance. It was rather small by later standards, with a length of 49 meters and a beam of 13 meters. Its tonnage or internal volume was 1,370 GRT or 3,880 cubic meters.

There was a roughly exponential trajectory from there to the ca. 1914 German Imperator-class liners (Imperator/Berengaria, Vaterland/Leviathan, and Bismarck/Majestic). The White Star Olympic-class trio (Olympic, Titanic, Britannic) were not far behind.

The Titanic itself had a length of 269 m, a beam of 28 m, a draft of 10.5 m, a keel-to-funnel-top height of 53 m, a volume of 46,328 GRT or 131,000 m^3, and a displacement or mass of 53,158 metric tons.

The next record setters were some 20 years later, in the 1930's, with the Normandie and the Queen Mary. Their size records would not be beaten very much until the mega cruise ships of recent decades.

The Queen Mary: length 311 m, beam 36 m, draft 11.8 m, volume 80,774 GRT or 229,000 m^3, and mass 78,642 mt.

So the Titanic wasn't exactly one-of-a-kind, though it was still one of the largest passenger ships in the world for some decades.

 

[lpetrich]

Wikipedia has a page on  Largest ship (disambiguation)

In  Rogue wave and  List of rogue waves, "In February 1926 in the North Atlantic a massive wave hit the British passenger liner RMS Olympic, smashing four of the bridge's nine glass windows and doing some other damage." So the Olympic survived that one also, in addition to collisions with 3 ships and 1 submarine.

I looked in  List of longest wooden ships for size records for wooden ships. The champion is the Wyoming (1909-1924) (length 140 m, beam 15.3 m, draft 9.3 m). It was a 6-mast sailing ship, and it tended to bend enough in heavy seas to let water leak in. Its crew used steam pumps to pump that water out. It met its end in heavy seas, sinking with all its crew.

All of them more than 80 meters long were built in the early 19th cy. and later, with the exception of some barges from the Roman Empire. There are a few early-modern ships that were longer than 70 m, like the Adler von Lübeck and the HMS Sovereign of the Seas, but there are plenty of them that were 56 - 69 m long.