The 1985 discovery (or rediscovery) opened up a whole new chapter in the history of Titanic, its visible and tangible contemporary underwater stage centered in maritime archaeology, artefact recovery, tourist and cinematic dives accompanied by endless academic and amateur disputes armed with an arsenal of new, previously unavailable empirical data; ‘steel does not lie’, as the Titanic’s forensic students and rivet counters used to say. Steel itself indeed cannot lie, but for as long as this key piece of material evidence, this very last ‘silent witness’ – another metaphorical name for the wreck – is being perceived by the human senses and analyzed and interpreted by the human mind, discord and controversy will continue to blaze. At this point, studying the wreck of Titanic grows into the sphere of philosophy and epistemology, marking the limits of our cognitive abilities.

Back to the history of deep-water exploration: after 1985, it became a kind of tradition to compare some of the most notable Titanic expeditions to that of Ballard/Michel in order to emphasize the importance of their successors’ achievements – but only a few of them did manage to get close to this high status of being just as important or next in importance after the US–French discovery mission.

The following post-1985 expeditions can be listed as the most science-intensive, productive and receiving the greatest coverage in the media and literature:

1. The 1986 WHOI expedition led by Ballard minus the French, but with the use of the Institution’s human-occupied submersible Alvin and the newly developed remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Jason Jr. Extensive photography and videography of the main features of the wreck site, including the largest portions of the ship’s hull and its scattered debris. The first manned dive to the wreck in Alvin (13 July 1986) that allowed human eyes to observe Titanic directly for the first time since 1912; plus, what can be called the first cautious and tentative penetration into some of the interiors.

In 2023, the WHOI released the 81-minute-long uncut wreck dive footage recorded in July 1986, with some parts of this batch video never shown to the public before:

According to Dr. Dana Yoerger, a Senior Scientist at the WHOI and a member of the 1985 Titanic discovery cruise, the 1986 expedition played a key role in transforming deep-sea exploration by showcasing the capabilities and potential of underwater imaging and navigation systems[1].

2. The first large scale systematic recovery of the Titanic artefacts – around 2,000 of them – carried out by a joint American (Titanic Ventures Limited Partnership[2]/Westgate) and French (IFREMER) team in 1987. Having missed the opportunity to gain salvor-in-possession rights for himself, Ballard took a sharply critical stance and has since been categorically against the retrieval of the artefacts.

3. The first and last joint American-Canadian-Soviet multi-tasking expedition of 1991 aimed primarily at filming an IMAX documentary Titanica (directed by Stephen Low). The Soviet-designed, Finnish-built twin Mir submersibles made their successful debut on Titanic this year. The scientific program of the expedition included hydrobiological and geological studies, sampling and examination of the Titanic’s steel and rust. The first 3D images of the wreck were also captured.

4. The two expeditions ran by RMS Titanic, Inc. in conjunction with IFREMER et al. in 1996 and 1998. They were distinguished by further metallurgical and microbiological research, the first sonar scanning and the first real-time broadcast from the deck of the sunken liner, the recovery of the largest hull chunk dubbed The Big Piece (from the second attempt in August 1998) and other achievements.

5. A series of penetration dives performed by James Cameron using a squad of compact ROVs[3] launched from the Mir submersibles in 2001 and 2005. The most thorough survey of the accessible internal spaces of the wreck, both public and private rooms, including the deepest exploration ever made inside Titanic.

6. Another expedition took place during what was apparently the busiest wreck dive season in the history of Titanic exploration, that is, in the summer of 2005: this one was led by David Concannon, Richie Kohler and John Chatterton, co-funded by Kirk Wolfinger of Lone Wolf Documentary Group, again utilizing the Mir submersibles in the work on The History Channel TV special. The two overturned sections of the double bottom plus the third funnel deckhouse remains spotted on the eastern edge of the debris field were carefully documented and provided important clues to understanding the process of the hull failure.

2005 was likely the last year of the Mirs diving to Titanic, despite some loud statements heard on the Russian internet.

7. Perhaps the most technology and science intensive of all the Titanic expeditions conducted up to that point, and admittedly the second most important one after 1985: a large-scale real archaeological mapping of the entire wreck site completed by a group of organizations under the scientific leadership of the WHOI and NOAA assembled and financed by RMS Titanic, Inc. in 2010. The execution of this monumental task was entrusted to advanced and much more sophisticated descendants of the devices used by Ballard and Michel 25 years earlier. Ideally, this type of mapping should have been done in previous decades, but the level of technology was not sufficient back then. Anyway, this allowed us to obtain for the first time a topographically precise bird’s eye (or God’s eye) view of the whole area of scattered wreckage, which subsequently led to a new look at the process of the archaeological site formation.

8. The work initiated by RMS Titanic, Inc. was continued and developed in 2022 by the British deep-sea mapping company Magellan Ltd in cooperation with a factual television production company Atlantic Productions (which was filming a documentary for the National Geographic Channel). The wreck site was thoroughly laser captured within the frames of the underwater scanning project billed as the largest of its kind in the history of deep-sea mapping. As a result, the most detailed full-sized virtual 3D model of the remains of Titanic was produced, labelled the Digital Twin. Sadly, as can be seen from the mentioned National Geographic documentary, not all of these minute details proved accurate.

It was proclaimed that the Digital Twin is created for the benefit of a wide public, but as of now, it is not available to all interested researchers – the situation will hopefully change in the future.

Data obtained by RMS Titanic, Inc. on their last to date expedition (in 2024) allows them to generate their own 3D model of the same or even better quality, so it is possible we will see another Digital Twin in due course.

In just 40 years, humanity has made a huge leap forward in the study of Titanic, both the wreck and the events that led to the current sad condition of the sunken vessel; from descriptive archaeology, extensive photographic and video documentation of exterior and interiors to microbiology of the ship’s metal structures, from artefact recovery shedding light on individual items and sometimes even on their former owners to a comprehensive forensic analysis of the entire wreck site.

While the present author has doubts about the possibility of any major or revolutionary ‘titanicological’ discoveries being made in the near future, it will nevertheless be interesting to see what else Titanic can bring us in the coming years. Its ability to surprise even after more than a century is one of the main factors fueling the interest of millions of people all over the world in this ‘Grand Old Lady’ of the deep.

The author wishes to express special gratitude to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and OceanGate Expeditions

Header image © 2021 OceanGate Expeditions

[1] Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution releases rare video footage from the first submersible dives to RMS Titanic. https://www.whoi.edu/press-room/news-release/woods-hole-oceanographic-institution-releases-rare-video-footage-from-the-first-submersible-dives-to-rms-titanic/

[2] The predecessor of RMS Titanic, Inc.

[3] One of the ‘X-bots’ was unfortunately lost in the cooling room of the Turkish Baths on F Deck.

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Several Cunarders were requisitioned to support Britain during the Crimean War (1853–56). A total of fourteen Cunard ships served in the campaign. Of those, Arabia transported all the horses used in the Charge of the Light Brigade.

During the American Civil War (1861–65), the Cunard liners Australasia and Persia transported British troops to reinforce the British and Canadian position of neutrality. Cunard ships also served in the first and second Boer wars.

The company’s ships were central to British naval strategy during the First World War. The liner Mauretania (launched 1906) started the war by making several voyages transporting British soldiers to fight in the Gallipoli campaign. Aquitania (launched 1913) also served as a troop ship, after which she became a hospital ship evacuating casualties from Gallipoli. Both ships finished the war serving on the North Atlantic, carrying American troops to Europe, while transporting fare-paying passengers on their westbound passages.

Cunard’s transatlantic liner Carmania (launched 1905) was requisitioned in August 1914. She was converted into an armed merchant cruiser and fitted with eight 4.7in guns for defensive purposes. Carmania was ordered to the Caribbean, where she made history by participating in the first, and so far only, liner-versus-liner naval battle. This was against the German ship Cap Trafalgar, which like Carmania had been converted to an armed merchant ship. The two armed liners encountered each other off the coast of Trinidad in September 1914. Carmania fired a warning shot across the German ship’s bow. Cap Trafalgar’s response was to open fire on the Cunarder. Carmania responded, aiming fire at the waterline of the German ship, causing severe flooding and leading the Cap Trafalgar to roll on her side.

The Cunarder Lusitania (launched 1906) held the prestigious Blue Riband in 1908 for the fastest Atlantic crossing. However, while under the command of Captain William T. Turner she was sunk by the German submarine U-20 (Kapitän Walther Schwieger), south of Ireland in May 1915. Her sinking led to the loss of nearly 1,200 lives, turning public opinion in North America against Germany and contributing to the USA entering the conflict in 1917.

Other Cunard losses during the First World War included Ivernia, Andania, Aurania, Caria, Folia, Feltria, Franconia, Alaunia and Lycia. One of the last Cunard ships sunk by a U-boat in the First World War was Carpathia, sunk by U-55 (Commander Wilhelm Werner). Carpathia had become famous in April 1912 as the ship which responded to the SOS telegraphed by White Star Line’s Titanic after she struck an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic on her maiden voyage.

In the Second World War, the two Cunard Queens of that era – Queen Mary (launched 1934) and Queen Elizabeth (launched 1938) – were requisitioned. The two Queens were much faster than any other troopships during the war. After being launched, Queen Elizabeth went straight into service as a troop carrier. In 1940, Queen Mary sailed to Sydney, Australia, where she was converted to carry troops. She then carried Australian troops to Scotland via Cape Town. Between them, the two Queens delivered some 80,000 Australian soldiers to Suez and the Middle East. A port that the two ships visited en route was Freetown, then part of British Sierra Leone.

Throughout the latter part of the Second World War, Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth plied the North Atlantic, bringing thousands of Canadian and American troops to the UK in preparation for the Normandy landings. ‘Mary’ and ‘Lizzie’, as they were affectionately known, made several transatlantic crossings, carrying as many as 15,000 troops on each eastbound voyage. On westbound crossings they carried wounded military personnel and civilian evacuees from the war in Europe.

German submarines were a constant threat during these crossings. Three Cunard ships were sunk by German U-boats during the Second World War. Two were torpedoed: Carinthia (launched 1925) and Andania (launched 1921). Laurentic (launched 1908) was sunk by a German mine. A fourth vessel, Lancastria (launched 1920) under the command of Captain Rudolph Sharp, was destroyed in June 1940 by Luftwaffe dive-bomber aircraft off the coast of St-Nazaire, France, while evacuating British troops and civilians. Estimates of total lives lost vary but number at least 6,000, the greatest loss of life on a single ship in British maritime history.

At war’s end, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary remained in service transporting troops, making westbound transatlantic crossings to return home some of the victorious troops to North America, and eastbound crossings to bring home British prisoners of war held captive by Japan as well as transporting fresh Canadian and American troops to garrison Germany.

Franconia (launched 1922) served as a troopship during the Second World War. In January 1945, she sailed to the Black Sea to serve as the base for the British delegation to the Yalta Conference between Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin. They met to discuss the final stages of the war and the post-war division of Europe. Meanwhile, Aquitania served on the North Atlantic, transporting troops from New York to the UK in preparation for D-Day. She was the only Cunarder to see service in both world wars.

Cunard suffered the loss of ships due to submarine attacks in the two world wars. In the Second World War, there was the additional risk of losing ships to aerial bombing. However, the two wars highlighted the significant strategic advantages that could be gained from using requisitioned ocean liners to transport troops to a theatre of war. At the end of the war, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, said:

The officers and men of the Merchant Marine by their dedication to duty in the face of enemy action as well as the natural dangers of the sea have brought to us the tools to finish the job. This contribution to Final
Victory will long be remembered.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower

Prime Minister Winston Churchill also spoke with great appreciation:

The Merchant Navy, with its Allied comrades, night and day, in weather fair or foul, faces not only the ordinary perils on the sea, but the sudden assaults of war from beneath the waters or from the sky. We feel confident that the proud tradition of our island will be upheld today, wherever the Ensign of a British Merchantman is flown.

Winston Churchill

After the Second World War, Churchill made several crossings on Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, which, he said, had helped shorten the war by at least a year.

Thirty-seven years after the end of the Second World War, there was no expectation that QE2 would become a troopship as so many Cunard ships had done earlier in the century.

Extracted from The QE2 in the Falklands War by Commodore Ronald W. Warwick OBE and David Humphreys

The post Cunard ships at war appeared first on The History Press.

The belief in the absence of the break-up as such should be recognised as the first and foremost of these striking distortions of reality. It gained wide popularity and took root in many people’s minds because it was championed not by some yellow press or amateurs but by a serious government body, the official British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry: its final report stated specifically that ‘The ship did not break in two; and she did eventually attain the perpendicular …’^[1]. Curiously enough, there are the whole two erroneous statements appear next to each other within this short quote: one denies the break-up (it’s hard to find someone for whom the incorrectness of such a denial would not be obvious today), while the other portrays the hull of the vessel in a nearly vertical position towards the end (the fight to revise this popular portrayal is still ongoing).

A deeper connection can be suggested between these two assertions. The emphatic denial of the break-up – at least at the official level – could have played a role in the way the sinking of the ship was thought of and visualised at the final stages; if the ship didn’t break apart, it was probably somewhat easier to imagine the stern of the steamer rising to a dizzying height above the water and then assuming an almost perpendicular position, like many witnesses have claimed. However, the application of the scientific method of collating different lines of evidence – critical analysis of written historical sources coupled with underwater archaeological data and modern computer modelling – has shown that not all survivor accounts should be taken at face value or perceived literally, regardless of their eloquence and multiplicity. The most ardent deniers of the Titanic’s break-up, including the highest-ranking surviving bridge officers, were eventually proven wrong. Mindful of this, we ought to treat the reports of the ship allegedly reaching a trim angle of 45 to 60 degrees and finally shooting up even higher, just like a duck going down for a dive^[2] or like ‘an enormous black finger against the sky’^[3], with caution and reasonable scepticism as well.

Establishing the Titanic’s trim angle with the greatest possible accuracy may seem like a minor matter – ‘not a big deal’ – but it is actually important for understanding the break-up and correctly assessing the stress distribution on the ship structure.

Another widespread old myth indirectly related to the break-up is that the boilers exploded. A large number of witnesses claimed they heard some loud noises that led them to believe that the ship’s steam boilers had burst when flooded with seawater. However, it should be taken into account that by the time of the events described, the temperature and pressure levels in the boilers were already insufficient for an explosion of any noticeable magnitude to occur – and that the boilers observed both in the wreck and out in a debris field bear no signs of explosion damage. In all likelihood, the explosive noises heard by survivors should be classified as sounds that accompanied the violent deformation and rupture of steel plates, decks and other components of ship framing during the break-up.

The confirmation of the fact of the break-up after the Ballard/Michel joint discovery in 1985^[4] put an end to an often-repeated fallacy that the mighty liner sank intact (amidships). ‘We didn’t want the Titanic to have broken up like this,’ James Cameron confessed from the pages of the National Geographic magazine in 2012. ‘We wanted her to have gone down in some kind of ghostly perfection.’^[5]

Finding a vessel at the bottom of the ocean brutally torn to pieces – two large ones and a considerable number of other fragments of various sizes^[6] – shattered the illusion of its integrity and the myth of ‘unbreakability’ (in a similar spirit to the ‘unsinkability’) that have dominated the public consciousness, artistic images, films and literature for decades. The shipbuilders of the era preferred not to admit openly that the amount of tension and physical forces involved in the breakdown of that seemingly perfect structure were truly colossal (or, as someone might say, titanic). This was only affirmed in recent years by using professional software for naval architects.

The main myth was successfully debunked, but it was just the beginning of a long and difficult journey towards clarifying the prerequisites and stages of a complex fracture process. In Breaking Titanic: Analysing RMS Titanic’s Hull Fracture, I have made every effort to describe in detail the twists and turns of that scientific journey.

_{[1] British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry Report (Titanic Inquiry Project) https://www.titanicinquiry.org/BOTInq/BOTReport/botRepFinEff.php}

_{[2] A figurative comparison from the newspaper accounr dictated by junior Marconi operator Harold Bride (‘Thrilling Story by Titanic‘s Surviving Wireless Man’. The New York Times, 19 April 1912, p.1). The authenticity of some parts of this account is seriously questionable.}

_{[3] ‘Loss of the Titanic. Lady Duff-Gordon’s Narrative’, The Townsville Daily Bulletin, 23 April 1912, p.5.}

_{[4] For more details on this, see chapters 2 and 3 of my book The Titanic Expeditions – Diving to the Queen of the Deep: 1985-2021 (The History Press, revised and expanded 2nd edition, 2022)}

_{[5] Quoted from: Sides, Hampton, ‘The lights are finally on’, National Geographic Magazine, Vol. 221, No. 4, April 2012, p.99}

_{[6] Among the latter, such key pieces of wreckage as the double bottom sections, the ‘tower’ debris and the Big Piece (recovered in 1998) should be mentioned.}

The post The break-up of Titanic: Surrounded by myths appeared first on The History Press.

Peter Drummond has roamed the coastlines and harbours of Scotland for over thirty years, always with his trusty camera in hand. Although the Scottish weather can make both photography and travelling a challenge, Peter has accepted the challenge enthusiastically, battling mist, downpours and all manner of trials to produce some of the most beautiful photography of vessels that give a small glimpse into a bygone age.

Fishing Boats Around Scotland: The Colour Album is a celebration of the very best days, from ring-netters in Ardrishaig to seiners in Whitehills and many more besides, all in vibrant, beautiful colour.

Highlights include:

• No black and white images in this book – 230 pictures, all colour.

• A variety of locations on the west coast of Scotland are featured, from Kirkcudbright to Kinlochbervie, and on the east coast from Pittenweem to Wick.

• A variety of different types of fishing vessel built between 1948 and 2023 are illustrated – former side trawlers and ring-net boats; stern trawlers; seiners; pelagic trawlers; purse seiners; beam trawlers; crabbers; scallop dredgers etc., sometimes with some of Scotland’s scenery in the background.

• Vessels from over eighty different boatbuilders and shipbuilders are on show.

• Brief histories of all vessels illustrated including name and number changes.

The post Scottish fishing boat pictures newly upgraded to colour appeared first on The History Press.

Yet the popular image of pirates gathering below decks to sing a shanty is not quite accurate. While sailors in those centuries probably sang rhythmic work songs of some kind, the shanties we know today were collected in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, even if some may have older origins. Modern representations often depict pirates playing the accordion (also featured in Sea of Thieves), but those instruments did not exist until the 1820s, long after the so-called ‘golden age’ of piracy.

So what were pirates and other plunderers singing at sea? Musicians could often be found aboard ships in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, from Francis Drake’s circumnavigation in 1577-80 to naval ships of the Napoleonic wars two centuries later. Trumpeters and drummers had an important job signaling orders to the crew or to other ships, but entertainment was no doubt a vital role as well. Bartholomew Roberts’ pirate code supposedly included the rule that ‘Musicians [are] to have Rest on the Sabbath Day, but the other six Days and Nights, none [i.e. no rest] without special Favour’. Roberts’ fearsome crew did indeed capture four musicians from other ships, forcing these prisoners to play for their amusement. The musicians got their revenge in the end, testifying against the pirates at their trial.

Perhaps those captive musicians performed some of the many ballads about sailors and pirates circulating in this period. When Woodes Rogers’ ship stopped off in Brazil during a round-the-world plundering trip, he recorded, the ship’s musicians entertained local dignitaries with ‘Hey Boys up go we!’, a dancing tune appearing in John Playford’s popular music books, along with ‘all manner of noisy paltry Tunes’. ‘Hey Boys up go we!’ was used in many ballads, including one about a 1692 naval victory, and another describing the various ‘wanton Girls of Graves-end Town’, a common point of departure on the Thames, who were ‘Maintained by the Seamen brave’. A particularly popular song about Scottish plunderer Andrew Barton remains a folky favourite under the transmogrified titles of Henry Martin or The Lofty Tall Ship.

Besides these cheerful and often obscene ditties, you might have heard psalms and religious songs. On merchant ships – aboard which many pirates originated – it was customary to gather for a prayer or psalm at the changing of the watch. Edward Coxere, a sailor who served aboard warships and merchant vessels during the 1650s and 1660s, recalled the same sailors singing both psalms and profane lyrics. Other plunderers took their religion more seriously. French missionary Jean-Baptiste Labat was once called upon to perform Mass for some flibustiers in the Caribbean, and when a crewmember misbehaved during the divine service the capitaine abruptly shot the miscreant.

Another possibility is that pirates played some form of banjo, a peculiarly Atlantic instrument, played among enslaved people in the Caribbean, later migrating with them to North America. Similar instruments, descended from a common musical tradition, are played in West Africa today, sometimes with techniques that resemble those found in America.

Travelers commented on these instruments, including Jean-Baptiste Labat and Hans Sloane, a doctor who visited Jamaica in the 1680s and whose collection of flora, fauna, and other objects formed the beginnings of the British Museum. Sadly, the ‘Jamaican strum strums’ he acquired have not survived, but his Voyage to the Islands printed the first ever musical notation of Caribbean enslaved peoples’ songs, written down for him by one Mr Baptiste, possibly a free person of colour from the French colonies.

I have no proof of this putative connection, beyond the fact that buccaneers and banjos existed in the Caribbean at the same time, but some people escaped slavery to join the buccaneers and it is possible that they brought musical traditions with them, or that buccaneers encountered this music ashore. Those traditions developed into jazz, blues, rock, calypso, reggae, gospel, and a host of other styles that profoundly shaped modern popular culture. It’s a curious connection between the musical exchanges of the early modern era and the later world of ‘pirate radio’ in the twentieth century.

The fact that this particular idea occurred to me shortly after acquiring an antique banjo of my own is, of course, pure coincidence.

The post Yo-Ho-Ho and a Bottle of Rum: The curious history of pirate music appeared first on The History Press.

After finding a potential victim, the gambler might engage his target in casual conversation, always taking care to ask about the man’s family. This was not only disarming, but it also helped the gambler to judge his victim’s standard of living and approximate worth.

A crossing of five or six days would give the sharp ample time to cultivate the good will of his intended victim, which was usually not too difficult. People always seemed to be less suspicious of strangers on board a ship than anywhere else, and it was this trusting, naïve attitude that brought more than one ocean traveller to the brink of financial ruin.

It did not take long for the shipping lines to realise that professional gamblers were present on their ships. Many lines tried to make their passengers aware of the problem by printing cautionary statements in their passenger lists as well as on signs posted in the smoking rooms. Many passengers enjoyed their card games too much to be deterred by these warnings, though, and many of these people eventually fell into the waiting hands of a sharper.

In regard to the gamblers who booked passage on his own White Star vessels, Captain Bertram Hayes once wrote:

‘It has always puzzled me why passengers, who are usually men of a certain amount of common sense, allow themselves to be fleeced by the professional gamblers who frequently cross in the large passenger steamers.’ 

He continued:

‘Most of these gentlemen carry the trademarks of their profession written all over their faces, and one would think that alone would prevent others from associating with them in any way, let alone from playing games of chance with them. There are exceptions, and I remember one man being pointed out to me who had the manners of the proverbial meek and mild curate, and dressed himself in a kind of a clerical costume to assist him in his business. For the first few days he played with the children on deck and so ingratiated himself with the parents, and I heard that he made a very good haul during the last day or so of the passage … Most of them are well-known to the office staff, and also to the ship’s people, and I should think it must be a little disconcerting to them to be greeted by the Second Steward when making application for their seats at table with the remark, “What name this time, sir?” as very often happens. The police on either side of the Atlantic, too, inform us when they know that any of them are crossing.’

Hayes went on to explain:

‘We cannot refuse to carry them, as steamship companies are what is known as ‘common carriers’, and by law are compelled to sell a ticket to anyone who has the money to pay for it and whose papers are in order, providing there is accommodation available in the ship … Short of actually pointing them out to each individual, every effort is made on the ship to protect their fellow passengers from them. Notices are printed in the passenger lists which everyone gets, and, in addition, notices are posted in the public rooms warning people not to play cards with people whom they don’t know, as professional gamblers are known to be on board. Yet they somehow manage to ingratiate themselves, and I have had many complaints from passengers who have been fleeced. They seldom, if ever, play for high stakes in the smoke room; that is usually done in their own staterooms or in those of their victims.’

Travelling first class on a great ocean liner was a mark of prestige for ‘people of quality’, and it was natural to assume that one’s fellow passengers were of the same respectable social standing as oneself. These people often welcomed the opportunity to spend much of the voyage engaged in a game of poker or bridge whist. It was a chance to relax with old friends and new acquaintances, enjoy good fellowship and conversation, and to test one’s skill at his favourite game of cards. Under circumstances like these, the thought of one player deliberately cheating the others rarely occurred to the average player until it was too late, but there was always a ready supply of card mechanics ready and willing to apply the shears to the sheep.

Extracted from Fate Deals a Hand by George Behe

The post Gamblers upon the high seas appeared first on The History Press.

This was carried out the same day by John Austin, a marine surveyor at Gibraltar, and Ricardo Portunato, a diver. Thomas Joseph Vecchio, Marshal of the Court, boarded the Mary Celeste with them and Queen’s Proctor Solly-Flood.

The results of that survey, together with a further ‘more minute examination [of the ship] for marks of violence’, conducted on 7 January 1873, were like the strain of a virus impregnated into Mr Solly-Flood’s fevered imagination about the most likely violent cause of, and ‘solution’ to, the Mary Celeste’s derelict condition.

At around this time, on 23 December, the Dei Gratia sailed for Genoa, where she arrived on 16 January 1873 to deliver her cargo of petroleum. Capt. Morehouse had put the ship under the command of mate Deveau. Capt. Morehouse himself stayed behind in Gibraltar as the representative of the owners in the salvage hearings.

Dei Gratia, it should be remembered, had been held up at Gibraltar for eleven days, since 12 December. She was running up costs. A delay in delivering her cargo would almost certainly incur penalty charges. And she had another consignment scheduled for her to pick up at Messina. There was some urgency, therefore, to get her on her way from Gibraltar. Capt. Morehouse would still be there to help with the court’s enquiries. Oliver Deveau himself was later recalled from Genoa to be cross-examined for a third time in the court, on 4 March 1873.

Mr Solly-Flood’s Survey

The survey of the Mary Celeste on 23 December 1872 and overseen by Surveyor John Austin comprised a comprehensive examination of the ship as found in the Bay of Gibraltar. It is important to note that it was carried out two and a half weeks after the Dei Gratia had found her derelict on the high seas, after she had been made shipshape for her run to Gibraltar, and ten days after her actual arrival at Gibraltar. The Mary Celeste’s condition at the time of the survey was therefore in many ways very different from how she was found as a derelict.

Nevertheless, amongst the more notable points of the survey were the following:

THE SPLINTERED BOWS AND A BLOODY SWORD

The report of Surveyor Austin’s inspection of the Mary Celeste noted that he found on the port bow of the vessel ‘between two and three feet above the water line’, cuts to her planking which were: to the depth of about three eighths of an inch or about one inch and a quarter wide for a length of about 6 or 7 feet. This injury had been sustained very recently and could not have been effected by the weather and was apparently done by a sharp cutting instrument continuously applied thro’ the whole length of the injury.

Austin reported a similar ‘injury’ on the starboard bow. What he was stating was that some of the wood planking around both of the Mary Celeste’s bows was splintered. What he was inferring was that this was deliberate, ‘done by a sharp cutting instrument’. And what that implied, but perhaps only to Mr Solly-Flood’s flaring imagination, was some manner of foul play.

None of the Dei Gratia crew who first or even subsequently went on board the Mary Celeste found anything damaged around her bows that might arouse suspicions of ‘injury’ inflicted there. Capt. Morehouse testified that, on the day the Dei Gratia encountered the derelict, through his telescope from a distance he ‘saw the marks or spalls on the bows of the Mary Celeste’. He otherwise found nothing particularly remarkable to add to that observation.

Amongst numerous other observations Austin made in the survey was that he found, ‘on a little bracket’, or shelf, in the mate’s cabin: a small phial of oil for a sewing machine in its proper perpendicular position, a reel of cotton for such a machine, and a thimble. If they had been there in bad weather then they would have been thrown down or carried away. The phial of sewing machine oil became a small but oft-repeated icon of Mary Celeste historiography. Later narratives placed its ‘perpendicular position’ on various surfaces, such as a table in the captain’s cabin.

This supposedly suggested that the ship had not weathered stormy conditions before the Dei Gratia found her; not stormy enough, by implication, to cause her to be abandoned. But not one of the Dei Gratia men in their court testimonies mentioned this article, or a thimble, on a table or bracket or anywhere else (apart from mate Deveau’s observation of various sewing paraphernalia in a bag in the captain’s cabin). They only emerged in Austin’s survey after the Mary Celeste had arrived at Gibraltar. And, whether she might have experienced stormy weather in the open Atlantic, she certainly had in the Straits of Gibraltar.

Sailors were traditionally wont to put a vessel in good order before arriving in port. It is more than likely that the Dei Gratia salvors, in tidying up the Mary Celeste, placed these articles on some flat surface soon before or just after the Mary Celeste anchored in the Bay of Gibraltar. They were, most likely, indicative of nothing more mysterious than sailors’ habitual good housekeeping. How the ‘small phial of oil for a sewing machine’ remained ‘perpendicular’ on a shelf, even in the relative calm of the Bay of Gibraltar but still subject to the occasional unsteadying influences of winter weather thereabouts, is a bit of a conundrum in itself.

More significant, in the subsequent suppositions of violence afoot on the Mary Celeste, was a sword in Capt. Briggs’ cabin: ‘I also observed in this cabin a Sword in its scabbard which the Marshall informed me he had noticed when he came on board for the purpose of arresting the vessel. It had not [been] affected by water but on drawing out the blade it appeared to me as if it had been smeared with blood and afterwards wiped.’

And towards the end of the report: ‘I found no wine or beer or spirits on board … & did not discover the slightest trace of there having been any explosion or any fire or of anything calculated to create an alarm of an explosion or fire. … I am wholly unable to discover any reason whatever why the said Vessel should have been abandoned.’

A bloody sword and deliberately inflicted ‘injury’ to the Mary Celeste’s bows was, nevertheless, more than enough kindling to stoke Mr Solly-Flood’s suspicions. On 22 January 1873, he wrote to the Marine Department of the Board of Trade in London, to keep them abreast of the case. In that letter he informed the Board that the ‘deliberate’ cuts to the bows and the ‘bloody’ sword (which ‘appeared to me to exhibit traces of blood and to have been wiped clean’) were grounds to conduct ‘a still more minute examination for marks of violence’. That inspection had been held two weeks before, on 7 January, when Mr Solly-Flood was accompanied by five Royal Naval officers and Marshal Vecchio, ‘all of whom agreed with me in opinion that the injury to the bows had been effected intentionally by a sharp instrument’.

The very first observation made in the visit by the seven men, recorded in Mr Solly-Flood’s report, was: ‘On examining the Starboard top-gallant rail, marks were discovered apparently of blood and a mark of a blow apparently of a sharp axe.’

This letter became infamous not only for the apparent confirmation of Mr Solly-Flood’s suspicions by the discovery of apparent signs of violence, but even more for his concluding remarks: ‘My object is to move the Bd. Of Trade to take such action as they may think fit to discover if possible the fate of the Master, his wife and child, and the crew of the derelict.’

And then the conjecture which the Queen’s Proctor advanced and became a pillar of subsequent Mary Celeste narratives:

‘My own theory or guess is that the Crew got at the alcohol and in the fury of drunkenness murdered the Master whose name was Briggs and wife and Child and the Chief Mate – that they then damaged the bows of the Vessel with the view of giving it the appearance of having struck on rocks or suffered from a collision so as to induce the Master of any Vessel wh. might pick them up if they saw her at some distance to think her not worth attempting to save and that they did sometime between the 25th November and the 5th December escape on board some vessel bound for some north or South American port or the West Indies.’

Extracted from The Mysterious Case of the Mary Celeste by Graham Faiella

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This limited edition collates some of the most moving and poignant letters to be sent by passengers from RMS Titanic, prior to and post her untimely sinking in the early hours of 15 April 1912.

Set and cast in ‘Monotype’ Imprint with Gill Sans Light and Caslon display. The Imprint typeface was designed in 1912, the year of Titanic’s fateful voyage. In the same spirit of pioneering technology, it was the first type to be designed specifically for machine composition and was to prove that new technology could be just as good as the traditional hand-composed type.

This edition has been letterpress-printed on 150gsm Bockingford mould-made paper and hand bound at the craft bindery of Blissetts, Royal Warrant Holders in London. Each copy contains a piece of letterpress printed ephemera, reproduced from original material.

• Letterpress-printed and hand bound at Blissetts, Royal Warrant Holders, London, with presentation box.

• Foreword by Bob Richardson, Library Manager at St Bride Library, London.

• 33 poignant letters, selected by George Behe, a past vice president of the Titanic Historical Society.

• With an introduction and fascinating mini-biographies of the letter writers featured.

• Includes 48 images (portraits, postcards and ephemera)

• For direct purchase only. Limited to 250 numbered copies.

Available now • £300 • 9781803990132 • 245 × 165 mm • 128 pages • 48 images • 12-page colour plate section

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE

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The defeat made front page news across Europe. It was the biggest story from the war to date; it shocked the British public; established the submarine as a major naval threat; threatened wartime morale and undermined confidence in the supposedly invincible Royal Navy. It also handed a priceless propaganda coup to Germany.

Forced to abandon ship, men desperately clung on to pieces of driftwood battling hyperthermia, as the frigid North Sea was turned inky black by the coal released from the ship’s bunkers. The incident claimed the lives of 1,459 men and boys, some as young as 15 years old. The death toll was higher than that at the Battle of Trafalgar or the sinking of the RMS Lusitania.

Many of those lost were professional mariners drawn from the Royal Naval Reserve and Royal Fleet Reserve. These tended to be mature family men so the impact on families and communities ashore was devastating.

The King expressed his disquiet, naval correspondents from the leading newspapers second-guessed the Admiralty’s strategy and questions were asked in Parliament.

Given the scale of the loss and its massive impact, it is curious that the events of 22 September 1914 were never designated an official action by the Royal Navy. The incident still doesn’t even have a proper name. Most official historical accounts relegate it to the margins, as a tragic anomaly that had little, or no bearing on the war at sea.

Thanks to the efforts of Dutch physics lecturer Henk van der Linden, more have heard of the incident, which is now sometimes referred to as the Broad Fourteens Disaster, or the Live Bait Squadron. He wrote a book on the subject in 2012 and initiated a major commemorative service at Chatham Historic Dockyard to mark the centenary of the event in 2014. Some are also familiar with the extraordinary story of Midshipman Wykeham-Musgrave of HMS Aboukir who was sunk three times before breakfast.

What was never understood was why one of the most significant wartime events in modern British naval history managed to retain such a low profile for so long.

My book – The Coal Black Sea: Winston Churchill and the Worst Naval Catastrophe of the First World War – seeks to tell the extraordinary story as a non-fiction narrative from the decks of the three cruisers and the men who served there and explore the dusty corridors of Whitehall for an answer to this question.

Eight years of research revealed compelling evidence that the incident was deliberately played down and that facts were covered up as part of a political conspiracy orchestrated at the very top of the Admiralty to protect both wartime morale and personal reputations.

In 1914, the political boss of the Royal Navy, the First Lord of the Admiralty was a highly ambitious, energetic, 39-year-old celebrity politician by the name of Winston Churchill.

When Churchill was appointed to this prestigious post in 1911 by Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, few questioned his qualifications for the job. He had already held two cabinet posts and witnessed several wars as a correspondent and as a junior army officer. He had the Midas touch and the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, offered him the opportunity to write his name in history.

The British public expected a latter-day Battle of Trafalgar when the invincible Royal Navy inspired by Churchill would crush the upstart German fleet and secure the empire in time for Christmas. The loss of the three cruisers and the ignominious defeat it represented, was simply not part of the script.

What was worse, it followed a series of embarrassing naval blunders, minor losses and defeats that had shaken confidence in the Admiralty and in Churchill too.

“There was our little army fighting for its life and playing to British eyes almost as large a part as all the armies of France and meanwhile our great Navy, the strongest in the world-lay apparently in an inertia diversified only by occasional mishap,” he later wrote.

Churchill was under pressure and the last thing he needed was another naval public relations disaster that would provoke more press criticism, public opprobrium and probing questions in Parliament.

So, while the families ashore waited anxiously for news of loved ones and many dealt with their grief and braced themselves for the financial catastrophe of losing their sole breadwinner, Churchill set to work.

The First Lord carefully undertook an exercise in damage limitation and constructed a carefully crafted narrative issued by the Press Bureau via the office of the Chief Naval Censor at the Admiralty. The official line was that these were old, obsolete vessels of negligible strategic significance. What’s more, they were manned by amateur part-timers and that the commanding officers had made errors of judgement in stopping to pick up survivors struggling in the water. Blame was artfully deflected from the Admiralty, to those serving at sea.

For many at the higher echelons of the Royal Navy, this was a step too far. Behind the scenes, they were outraged about what they saw as an unnecessary and avoidable loss. They were even more furious that serving officers were being arbitrarily blamed in the press before an official inquiry had been held. Captain Robert Warren Johnson, the highly respected commanding officer of HMS Cressy and one of the few with knowledge of submarines, died in the action, so could hardly defend himself or his reputation.

It was also a huge disservice to the reservists who augmented the regular nucleus crews of about 40 per cent. These reservists were either Royal Naval Reserve, professional mariners from the merchant service who undertook regular training, or the experienced former navy regulars of the Royal Fleet Reserve who had completed 12 years’ service before joining the reserve. These were professional seamen through and through, who according, to all accounts, conducted themselves with great courage and professionalism in hopeless circumstances.

Not everyone bought into Churchill’s version. Newspapers continued to ask why the cruisers were deployed without escort in such a vulnerable position and why the Admiralty had failed to provide any anti-submarine weapons or even any basic anti-submarine measures? There were no life jackets either and most of the ship’s boats had been landed at Chatham dockyard at the advent of war.

The court of inquiry found the Admiralty largely to blame for placing the cruisers so close to a German submarine base, for no apparent reason and with no destroyer escorts. The classified findings concluded that a submarine attack was inevitable, so Churchill hushed them up. But the criticism of him and the accusations that he was meddling in operational matters continued.

“In spite of being accustomed to years of abuse, I could not but feel the adverse and hostile currents that flowed about me,” wrote Churchill.

Fortunately for him, the First Lord had a ‘get out of jail card’—a crucial memo that absolved the future prime minister of personal responsibility and saved his career at least for a few more months. Buried in the cabinet archives, I discovered original documents that raise serious questions about the validity of that memo and the role of Churchill in the death of 1,459 men and boys.

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A new stunning book, Recreating Titanic and Her Sisters tells the story of not just the Titanic, but also of its sister ships, Olympic and Britannic. Maritime experts J. Kent Layton, Tad Fitch, and Bill Wormstedt tell the stories of these legendary liners with a compelling narrative alongside original artwork from up-and-coming artists, bringing to life the design, construction and service of the ships together with the wrecks of the ill-fated Titanic and Britannic.

From the cold, starry night when Titanic collided with her iceberg to the tragic wartime loss of Britannic and the impressive reliability of the long-lived Olympic, this cinematic and immersive new study captures all of the glory and drama of the Olympic-class age and allows readers to visualise Titanic and her sisters like never before.

Take a look at our gallery of images below for a sneak peak!

The post Recreating Titanic and Her Sisters: A Visual History appeared first on The History Press.