Titanic
J. Bruce Ismay was no ordinary survivor of the Titanic tragedy; his father had founded the White Star Line in Liverpool in 1845 and in 1899, following the old man’s death, Ismay became the Chairman of the company. In 1902 he sold it to JP Morgan and Co in return for becoming the President of the International Mercantile Marine Company, the holding company that controlled White Star and many other shipping lines.
In 1907 Ismay commissioned Harland & Wolff to build three luxury liners, the Olympic, the Titanic and the Britannic, in response to the competition posed by Cunard’s recently completed Lusitania and Mauretania. The Olympic was the first of the trio to be completed, her maiden voyage took place in June 1911. The Titanic was the second to be built in Harland & Wolff’s Belfast shipyard, it’s first (and of course last) voyage started on 10th April 1912 in Southampton. Ismay occasionally accompanied new White Star ships on their maiden voyages and took the fateful decision to be present at the launching of their latest and most magnificent vessel.
The story of that voyage is too well known for me to need to retell it here; the supposedly unsinkable ship met the iceberg on the night of 14th April and went down in less than 3 hours; 1500 people died because there were not enough lifeboats and the band played on until it sank beneath the icy waves of the north Atlantic.
Many thanks to David Bingham who kindly let me use the words in this video from his fascinating blog which can be found here:
thelondondead....
29 авг 2024
