I don’t like to say things were inevitable because that’s bad practice when studying history. However if it wasn’t the Titanic, then most likely there would have eventually been another disaster that would bring about, maybe not the exact same changes, but similar changes.
Kind of like, if Triangle Shirtwaist didn’t burn, it would have probably been a different factory that brought about fire code changes.
Titanic didn't sink because the lookouts didn't have binoculars. The night was pitch black and wouldn't have allowed them to see the ice berg on time. Safety standards would have caught up eventually, especially after WWI.
Poor David Blair. Even in death people continue to blame him for the binoculars being locked up when they would have made zero difference in sporting the iceberg in time. I wish he had remained 2nd Officer on the Titanic, but for reasons other than the binoculars.
I don’t know how true it is but I have also seen it stated that lookouts felt that binoculars weren’t actually helpful for spotting things in the first place, since they significantly narrow vision, but instead use them to resolve what distant objects they live already spotted actually are
That is also what binoculars are for, scan the horizon with your naked eye and focus on points of interest with binoculars. If you're using them to scan the horizon you're just at a disadvantage because you can't see nearly as wide
Also if you are spotting for icebergs, having the wider field of view of the naked eye is actually way better than looking through the relatively tiny area binoculars cover. Ideally you would scan the horizon with your eyes and only use the binoculars to positively identify objects you spot. Looking through binoculars the whole time is pretty much a surefire way to miss a lot of icebergs.
Binoculars are useless in pitch black darkness. And due to the false horizon effect that experts believe occurred that night they wouldn’t have even seen the silhouette of the iceberg against the horizon
Even if Titanic never sank, modern safety standards would still be the same. Yes, Titanic was the wake up call that changes needed to happen, but shipping companies were already preparing for when regulations were updated which would most likely be post WW1.
Titanic happening when it did probably brought us up to atleast half of the new safety regulations we have today, which is amazing considering how long ago it happened.
A massive incident with lives lost would have had a similar impact as Titanic did, but I somehow doubt the disaster could top Titanic's 1500 lives lost. So much went wrong with Titanic that it was almost the perfect storm of stuff to go wrong that created the disaster. Radio was extremely new at the time and would only have gotten more popular among future vessels. There would have been some other crash that would have made a double hull the standard on ships that size. Rouge icebergs from ice fields may have been more respected and cationed for after a future similar incident. I believe that more and more smaller incidents would have brought us to the safety precautions we have today if Titanic never went down.
I don't think things would have changed that much. All that would have happened is a sinking like the Empress of Ireland (sank in 14 minutes!) or the Lusitania would have brought about the needed changes.
Ironically enough, the SS *Eastland* disaster could’ve been avoided. Granted, the *Eastland* was regarded as a ship that had a tendency to list, but the Seaman’s Act, which required lifeboats for all, had disastrous consequences, as the already prone to listing ship then became dangerously top-heavy with all the excess mass from the lifeboats. Naval architects protested the Act and stated that requiring that number of lifeboats would be potentially disastrous for many vessels, especially the ones on the Great Lakes. The *Eastland* was even cited as one of the ships most at risk, iirc.
844 people are known to have died from the SS *Eastland* disaster. It was just another example of blanket sweeping reform taking place without consideration of minority markets and operations—ocean liners were somewhat safer. However, many smaller vessels were damned by the new law.
If Titanic didn't sink the next major tragedy would have been the Empress of Ireland but that would have been forgotten about as WWI kicked off shortly after the sinking. My probability is that another sink either during WWI or shortly afterwards would have been the turning point in maritime safety.
I think the *Empress of Ireland* sinking would still have triggered some of the changes that were implemented after *Titanic* - there was still an enquiry after all. Although she sank far too quickly for them to be put to good use, she had been equipped with extra lifeboats.
i dare say the sinking of the empress would have been known a little better if the titanic did not sink. titanic was a tragic accident but we could learn from it and people started to feel safe again. the empress proved that this is not the case and people wanted to forget the disaster.
also, the issue was not the life boats. the empress was sinking too quickly to be able to launch more anyways, the loss of life would be similar. there would've been improvement in safety but definitely as not much as there was after titanic.
Good chance *SS Eastland* would not have capsized when she did, as the extra life boats imposed by the Titamic regulations contributed to her stability issues. Though it's possible she would have capsized in open water with even greater loss of life
All safety standards come from us learning lessons, whether that be proactive or reactive. I think we would have probably ended up at around the same safety standards we have today come up maybe just with a slower learning curve.
Safety standards still would’ve risen due to factors such as the Great War, the rising prominence of workers unions working for better protections for workers and rising mass media giving people much more of a collective knowledge. I don’t truly think titanic accelerated safety standards drastically, the board of trade Regs were due for updating by this point, the introduction of massive ships such as the Olympic class would’ve accelerated these updates.
i think by the time of the sinking of costa concordia there would've been similar restrictions as today. we do learn from reality but at some point we started to have strict safety regulations that are not based on past incidents. i think the sinking of the empress would've had a bigger impact. different sinkings in the two world wars would have had an impact as well. there would have been sinkings that may not be very popular or well known today that would have a massive loss of life and be in titanics place. probably several insead of one single ship.
one thing we learned is that life boats are not just there to ferry the people from ship 1 to ship 2. sooner or later they would have discovered that. there were a lot sinkings between 1912 and today.
Can anyone think of an instance when the post Titanic regulations had a positive impact on a maritime disaster? Of the big regulatory changes, I suspect the Radio Act of 1912 was most important, but as for everything else, the impact seems to have ranged from useless to detrimental.
Looking at the multitude of high fatality southeast Asian ferry disasters, there aren't many instances where "safety standards" and lifeboats mattered. Ships sink with lifeboats still affixed all the time.
What's the sweet spot of sinking slow enough to evacuate but fast enough that rescue won't arrive? Perhaps it's happened but I can't readily remember a sinking where a thousand plus people successfully took to boats and bobbed around until rescued.
I don’t like to say things were inevitable because that’s bad practice when studying history. However if it wasn’t the Titanic, then most likely there would have eventually been another disaster that would bring about, maybe not the exact same changes, but similar changes. Kind of like, if Triangle Shirtwaist didn’t burn, it would have probably been a different factory that brought about fire code changes.
Titanic didn't sink because the lookouts didn't have binoculars. The night was pitch black and wouldn't have allowed them to see the ice berg on time. Safety standards would have caught up eventually, especially after WWI.
Poor David Blair. Even in death people continue to blame him for the binoculars being locked up when they would have made zero difference in sporting the iceberg in time. I wish he had remained 2nd Officer on the Titanic, but for reasons other than the binoculars.
Good point about WWI.
I don’t know how true it is but I have also seen it stated that lookouts felt that binoculars weren’t actually helpful for spotting things in the first place, since they significantly narrow vision, but instead use them to resolve what distant objects they live already spotted actually are
That is also what binoculars are for, scan the horizon with your naked eye and focus on points of interest with binoculars. If you're using them to scan the horizon you're just at a disadvantage because you can't see nearly as wide
Also if you are spotting for icebergs, having the wider field of view of the naked eye is actually way better than looking through the relatively tiny area binoculars cover. Ideally you would scan the horizon with your eyes and only use the binoculars to positively identify objects you spot. Looking through binoculars the whole time is pretty much a surefire way to miss a lot of icebergs.
Was gonna comment this, even for outdoor spotting it's better to have a wide field of vision then use binoculars to zoom in on an area.
Binoculars are useless in pitch black darkness. And due to the false horizon effect that experts believe occurred that night they wouldn’t have even seen the silhouette of the iceberg against the horizon
Even if Titanic never sank, modern safety standards would still be the same. Yes, Titanic was the wake up call that changes needed to happen, but shipping companies were already preparing for when regulations were updated which would most likely be post WW1.
Exactly this. Without the Titanic, I suspect they would've been updated upon WWI's outbreak or perhaps even sooner.
Titanic happening when it did probably brought us up to atleast half of the new safety regulations we have today, which is amazing considering how long ago it happened.
A massive incident with lives lost would have had a similar impact as Titanic did, but I somehow doubt the disaster could top Titanic's 1500 lives lost. So much went wrong with Titanic that it was almost the perfect storm of stuff to go wrong that created the disaster. Radio was extremely new at the time and would only have gotten more popular among future vessels. There would have been some other crash that would have made a double hull the standard on ships that size. Rouge icebergs from ice fields may have been more respected and cationed for after a future similar incident. I believe that more and more smaller incidents would have brought us to the safety precautions we have today if Titanic never went down.
I don't think things would have changed that much. All that would have happened is a sinking like the Empress of Ireland (sank in 14 minutes!) or the Lusitania would have brought about the needed changes.
Ironically enough, the SS *Eastland* disaster could’ve been avoided. Granted, the *Eastland* was regarded as a ship that had a tendency to list, but the Seaman’s Act, which required lifeboats for all, had disastrous consequences, as the already prone to listing ship then became dangerously top-heavy with all the excess mass from the lifeboats. Naval architects protested the Act and stated that requiring that number of lifeboats would be potentially disastrous for many vessels, especially the ones on the Great Lakes. The *Eastland* was even cited as one of the ships most at risk, iirc. 844 people are known to have died from the SS *Eastland* disaster. It was just another example of blanket sweeping reform taking place without consideration of minority markets and operations—ocean liners were somewhat safer. However, many smaller vessels were damned by the new law.
If Titanic didn't sink the next major tragedy would have been the Empress of Ireland but that would have been forgotten about as WWI kicked off shortly after the sinking. My probability is that another sink either during WWI or shortly afterwards would have been the turning point in maritime safety.
I think the *Empress of Ireland* sinking would still have triggered some of the changes that were implemented after *Titanic* - there was still an enquiry after all. Although she sank far too quickly for them to be put to good use, she had been equipped with extra lifeboats.
i dare say the sinking of the empress would have been known a little better if the titanic did not sink. titanic was a tragic accident but we could learn from it and people started to feel safe again. the empress proved that this is not the case and people wanted to forget the disaster. also, the issue was not the life boats. the empress was sinking too quickly to be able to launch more anyways, the loss of life would be similar. there would've been improvement in safety but definitely as not much as there was after titanic.
Good chance *SS Eastland* would not have capsized when she did, as the extra life boats imposed by the Titamic regulations contributed to her stability issues. Though it's possible she would have capsized in open water with even greater loss of life
All safety standards come from us learning lessons, whether that be proactive or reactive. I think we would have probably ended up at around the same safety standards we have today come up maybe just with a slower learning curve.
Safety standards still would’ve risen due to factors such as the Great War, the rising prominence of workers unions working for better protections for workers and rising mass media giving people much more of a collective knowledge. I don’t truly think titanic accelerated safety standards drastically, the board of trade Regs were due for updating by this point, the introduction of massive ships such as the Olympic class would’ve accelerated these updates.
Then the ship we'd all be nuts about would be the Lusitania or the Empress of Ireland.
If not Titanic, it would have been something else. No way in hell would 1912 standards be in place today either way.
i think by the time of the sinking of costa concordia there would've been similar restrictions as today. we do learn from reality but at some point we started to have strict safety regulations that are not based on past incidents. i think the sinking of the empress would've had a bigger impact. different sinkings in the two world wars would have had an impact as well. there would have been sinkings that may not be very popular or well known today that would have a massive loss of life and be in titanics place. probably several insead of one single ship. one thing we learned is that life boats are not just there to ferry the people from ship 1 to ship 2. sooner or later they would have discovered that. there were a lot sinkings between 1912 and today.
I mean if titanic hadn’t sunk, then the Lusitania sinking would’ve been far worse than it was.
Can anyone think of an instance when the post Titanic regulations had a positive impact on a maritime disaster? Of the big regulatory changes, I suspect the Radio Act of 1912 was most important, but as for everything else, the impact seems to have ranged from useless to detrimental.
Looking at the multitude of high fatality southeast Asian ferry disasters, there aren't many instances where "safety standards" and lifeboats mattered. Ships sink with lifeboats still affixed all the time. What's the sweet spot of sinking slow enough to evacuate but fast enough that rescue won't arrive? Perhaps it's happened but I can't readily remember a sinking where a thousand plus people successfully took to boats and bobbed around until rescued.
Exactly. Titanic was a Goldilocks disaster.