Titanic

Why did Titanic sink and why did so many people die as a result?  It seems a simple question with a simple answer.  In fact, it's a simple question with a lot of answers.  Take your pick from these:

When they saw the iceberg, they turned the ship.  They hoped they could steer away from it.  Titanic had a lot of strong, watertight compartments with walls called bulkheads.  If three of them flooded, the ship would still float.  So if a ship had hit them from the side or from the front, Titanic would not have sunk.  The iceberg made holes in five compartments.  If they had not turned the ship, it would have crashed into the iceberg.  Some people would have died but not everyone, and only one compartment would have flooded.  The ship would have been damaged but would have stayed there until rescue came.  If they had turned earlier, they would have missed the iceberg and continued on their journey.

There was another ship on the horizon.  It was called 'Californian'.  The radio operators sent their S.O.S. messages to all the ships in the area but nobody on the Californian heard them.  Why was this?  Well, the radio operator had switched the radio off not long before the crash.  Nobody on the ship knew anything about Titanic's problems.  That was not a surprise.  In those days ships did not have to keep a twenty-four hour radio watch.  If they had left the machine on, they could have come to Titanic to help.

Some have said that even if the Californian had answered, it would have taken too long to reach Titanic.  It probably would not have got there before Titanic sank, but it could have rescued the survivors earlier.  Experts still discuss this today.

And of course, what about the lifeboats?  Why did Titanic have so few?  Well nobody was breaking any laws.  The number of lifeboats was calculated by the space on the ship's decks.  Titanic had more than the legal number, even though they did not have enough for all the passengers.  But everyone knows that if they had had enough for everyone, they would have saved more people from the icy waters of the Atlantic.

All of this was discussed in two official investigations.  One of them was in America and the other in Britain.  They looked at all the things that could have been different on that fateful night.  There is one thing though that they did not talk about very much.  It's a strange thing to miss but it looks like they didn't like the idea of talking about it.  Captain Smith, who was the highest authority on Titanic, was simply taking the ship too fast into an area full of ice.  He knew it was full of ice because ships had sent warnings.  Even the Californian had sent one earlier.  It was going too fast and hit an iceberg.  If the ship had been going slower, it would never have sunk.

Glossary

to steer                        sterować

rescue                         ocalić

a deck                         pokład

icy                               lodowaty

fateful                         brzemienny w skutki

Puzzle

In the word grid there are fifteen types of ship or boat.  How many can you find?

Q Q N S H A Q R U S D B E M A

F A C O N T A I N E R S H I P

Y P Y X H T H U S B L L R N F

F R E L W A R T O I F C U E C

F W E D N U R B N T R H Y S M

E A Y H P O O E D A E G E W S

K R P H Y D R O F O I L R E D

L I F E B O A T T C G U Z E R

I V R T T A C Y A C H T U P T

C A T A M A R A N E T F Y E R

V C D V R U G G K I E E L R T

F Q C R X Q Z I E R R L B T G

J L I J Z G S I R K O C F S V

C E G U L D S Y Z F G P Z M Z

R B V L C Y Q U Y D J B Y Z K

KEY

lifeboat

ferry

barge

tanker

frigate

aircraft carrier

trawler     

hydrofoil

catamaran

yacht

liner

freighter

container ship

destroyer

minesweeper

Grammar note:

If the ship had not hit the iceberg, it would not have sunk.

If the ship had missed the iceberg, it would have continued on its journey.

Both of these sentences describe things in the past that did not happen.  The ship hit the iceberg and sank.  The ship didn't miss the iceberg and didn't continue on its journey.  This is sometimes called the Third Conditional.  See how many examples of it you can find in the text.

One of the sentences with 'if' is not in this form.  Which one?

KEY

If three of them flooded, the ship would still float.  This is Second Conditional.  See if you can work out why.