Tonight's picture was taken in April of 2009. Mattie was home between treatments and we were having a silly moment together. Since those moments were so few and far between, we captured it on camera. Mattie received an alligator toy from a friend and as you can see Mattie was opening his mouth like the toy! We were trying to see whose mouth was bigger!
Quote of the day: The day the Titanic left Belfast for Southampton, England, a massive fire was found in one of the coal storage bunkers. Typically firemen aboard a ship's dig out the burning coal before the fire spreads, but the Titanic's coal bunkers were three-stories high making it impossible to quickly deal with the massive flames. ~ from the Smithsonian Channel's Titanic's Fatal Fire
This past April 15th, marked the 105th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Those of you who are loyal readers know I am fascinated by the Titanic, its history and the stories of all the passengers aboard! This week, the Smithsonian Channel ran two documentaries. One is entitled, Titanic's Fatal Fire. Since I never heard about a fire aboard the Titanic, I decided to record this show so we could see it today. It was very well worth the watch!
Thanks to a photo album that showed up at an auction house, more clarity has now been uncovered about Titanic's perilous fate. So what does this photo show? This photo was taken as the Titanic left its dock in Belfast, Ireland, and was headed to Southhampton, England to pick up passengers for its maiden voyage. What you are seeing circled in this photo was a LARGE scorch mark, from a fire. That is correct, there was a coal fire already out of control on the Ship before it ever left port in Ireland!
I am not sure what I find more intriguing, the new information revealed or Molony's passion to answer plaguing questions about the Titanic (such as when the Titanic received several warnings of icebergs ahead, why did the captain steam full speed towards them without changing course?).
Shockingly, the owners of the Titanic knew about the fire before she set sail and deliberately kept the fire secret from their passengers. Modern scientific analysis explains how the fire was ultimately responsible for Captain Smith's decision to charge through the ice-field at top speed (basically it wasn't his choice, rather as smoldering coal causing the fire was removed from the boiler room, to try to stop the fire, this coal was thrown into the engine, which caused the ship to MOVE FASTER). The fire also explains the catastrophic failure that led to the "unsinkable" Titanic unexpectedly giving way, taking one and a half thousand passengers to their death. In a nutshell, the fire compromised two of the bulk heads, by destabilizing the steel. So when the ship hit an iceberg and water was filling the bulk heads, two of the bulk heads couldn't contain the water and exploded. It is quite plausible that without the fire damage, the bulkheads would have kept the ship afloat long enough for ALL passengers to be rescued from the Titanic.
Molony shared in the documentary that in the wake of the disaster, he believes White Star's Chairman, J Bruce Ismay, did everything in his power to keep the real story about the fire from getting out. There was great competition between the White Star Lines and Cunard, and the voyage of the Titanic was viewed as a prestigious money maker for the ship line. Therefore NOTHING of any kind was going to postpone its voyage.
But this voyage had many strikes against it, starting with the cost cutting measures from White Star Line executives that included using sub par steel to build the ship and the decision to provide a limited number of life boats. Low quality steel is more susceptible to changes when exposed to heat, such as the fire. In addition, when the Titanic set sail it had a limited amount of coal on board, because of a coal shortage. Therefore, even if the captain wanted to slow the ship down because of iceberg warnings, he really couldn't because the Titanic wouldn't have had enough fuel to make it to New York City. Taking all of these factors into account, this was a damned voyage.
To read more, go to:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/nation-now/2017/04/14/titanic-photos-may-show-why-it-sink-fire-boiler-room-iceberg-death-105-anniversary/100410926/
To see the actual hour documentary, go to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USdreZ0WIwE
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