Her Name Was " TITANIC"

[Administrator]

Titanic Tragedy to be remembered in Cobh

On 11th April 1912, Queenstown was the final port of call for the Titanic as she set out across the Atlantic on her maiden voyage. The 123 passengers boarding at Queenstown left from the White Star Line pier aboard the tenders Ireland and America which ferried them to the liner at anchor near Roche¹s Point. Three were traveling first class, seven second class and the remainder steerage. Renowned photographer Fr. Frank Browne had traveled on the ship from Southampton and disembarked at Cobh. His photographs were the last taken on the Titanic.

At the time Titanic was the largest and most luxurious liner afloat. At 882 feet long, 92 feet wide and weighing 46,000 tons it was powered by 29 coal-fired boilers which burned almost 700 tons of coal a day. Although it is dwarfed by today¹s cruise liners it still ranks as one of the most famous and recognisable liners of all time. The facilities available to second class passengers were better than those of first class passengers on competing vessels. On this voyage there were over 2200 passengers and crew aboard. There were merely 1178 lifeboat spaces!

The RMS Titanic struck an iceberg shortly before midnight on 14th April 1912. Just over two hours of terror later the Titanic sank and almost 1500 people died in what is the most widely reported shipping disaster ever. Despite the freighter Californian being within 20 miles of the Titanic all night the ship¹s radio operator was off duty and didn¹t pick up the distress signals from the Titanic. The crew was therefore unaware of the unfolding disaster nearby. The first ship to arrive at the scene of the now sunk Titanic was the Cunard liner Carpathia. She picked up over 700 survivors and brought them to New York.

A year after the disaster, the first International Convention for Safety of Life at Sea was held in London. The convention made rules requiring that every ship have lifeboat space for each person onboard and that ships maintain a continuous radio watch.

On 1st September 1985, the wreck of the Titanic was found lying upright in two sections approximately 400 miles south of Newfoundland at a depth of almost 13,000 feet. Subsequent exploration of the ship by manned and unmanned submarines under the direction of American and French scientists found no sign of the long gash thought to have been ripped in the ship's hull by the iceberg. It seems that a series of thin gashes as well as the separation of joints in the ship¹s hull allowing water to flood in.

The tragedy of the sinking of the Titanic is commemorated each year by Cobh Tourism. It is a fitting memorial to all those who lost their lives on that fateful voyage.

The 2008 ceremony will take place on Saturday 12th April with a Parade at 1.55 pm led by a Colour Party from the O.N.E., from the Old Town Hall on Lynch¹s Quay to the Titanic Memorial in Pearse Square. Following prayers, hymns by the Commodore Male Voice Choir and a wreath laying ceremony the proceedings move to the Promenade for prayers, hymns by Cobh Confraternity Band and the reading of the names of the 79 passengers who boarded the liner in Cobh and later perished in the North Atlantic. The Mayor of Cobh, Councilor Paddy Whitty will place a wreath in the sea in honour of all those who lost their lives. The ceremony will conclude with a bugler playing the Last Post and Reveille.

Further information from:

Hendrick Verwey

Chairman Cobh Tourism

Tel [phone]

[INFO AT TREGENNA]

TITANIC AND IRELAND

The Titanic was built at the Harland and Wolff Shipyards in Belfast in Northern Ireland in 1912. It was 882 feet long and had a gross tonnage of 45,000 ton. It was the worlds biggest boat.

Owned by The White Star Line who intended employing the ship (as well as the Olympic - the sister boat) for transatlantic traffic between Europe and America. The White Star Line, owners of the Titanic, and also the builders, Harland and Wolff, never publicly stated that the Titanic was unsinkable.

Despite carrying a maximum capacity of over 3200 passengers and crew the ship was only equipped with 16 lifeboats and a handful of life rafts. In total only one third of all those aboard could have fitted into the life saving measures.

Passage cost anywhere between 870 and 2 pounds, with the majority of passengers third class) opting for the cheaper fare.

Splendour abounded on board the magnificent vessel with some of the rooms even having fireplaces that burned coal in the siting room, and gigantic beds in the bedroom. Huge 500 feet promenades demonstrated the sheer scale of the boat.

Captain at the maiden voyage was E.J. Smith who had sailed over two million miles for The White Star Line who had complete confidence in him. The Titanic was to have been his last voyage before retirement.

Some 63 males and 60 females boarded the giant ship at Cobh at the very South of Ireland. The people of Cobh erected a memorial to the Irish victims of the voyage. The memorial was unveiled in 1998 by Liam Birke, T.D., who was the nephew of one of the deceased passengers, Jeremiah Burke. The monument features the Rice family, all six of whom perished, along with 70 other passengers who boarded at the Cork port.

Titanic and Ireland - An article provided by The Information about Ireland Site.

[KG]

THE SONG:

"The Titanic" (also known as "It Was Sad When That Great Ship Went Down" and "Titanic (Husbands and Wives)") is a folk song and children's song most known for being sung in the United States at summer camp. "The Titanic" is based on the sinking of the RMS Titanic which sank on April 15, 1912 after striking an iceberg. There are several regional variations on the song. According to Newman I. White's 1928 book American Negro Folk-Songs, "The Titanic" has been traced back to 1915 or 1916 in Hackleburg, Alabama. Other versions from around 1920 are documented in the Frank C. Brown Collection at Duke University in North Carolina. The earliest known recording, titled "When That Great Ship Went Down", is from August 1927 and recorded by William and Versey Smith in Chicago, Illinois.[1]. According to Jeff Place, in his notes for the American Anthology of Folk Music: "african-american musicians, in particular, found it noteworthy and ironic that company policies had kept Blacks from the doomed ship; the sinking was also attributed by some to divine retribution."

The song is sung in an upbeat tone despite its subject.[2] The song's chorus provides an example of the song's style.
Oh, they built the ship Titanic to sail the ocean blue,
And they thought they had a ship that the water would never leak through,

But the Lord's almighty hand said this ship would never land Oh it was sad when the great ship went down!

Chorus

Oh, it was sad, Oh, it was sad; Oh,it was sad, Oh, it what sad;
It was sad when the great ship went down, to the bottom of the ...
Husbands and wives, little children lost their lives,
It was sad when that great ship went down.


Oh, they sailed away from England, and were almost to the shore,
When the rich refused to associate with the poor,
So they put them down below, where they were the first to go.
It was sad when the great ship went down.

The boat was full of din, and the sides about to burst,
When the captain shouted "Women and children first!"
Then the captain tried to wire, but the wireless was on fire.
It was sad when the great ship went down.

Lady Astor turned around as she watched her husband drown
and the boat began to make a gurgling sound,
so she wrapped herself in mink as the boat began to sink.
It was sad when the great ship went down.

So they swung the lifeboats out o're the deep and raging sea,
And the band struck up with "Nearer, My God, to Thee",
Little children wept and cried, as the waves swept, o're the side,
It was sad when the great ship went down.

The captain stood on deck with a teardrop in his eye,
As the last lifeboat went out, he waved them all goodbye.
And he knew he'd made a slip so he went down with the ship.
It was sad when the great ship went down.

Oh the moral to be gained from this tale of woe and pain,
Is that if you're rich you should not be so vain.
For in the good Lord's eyes, you're the same as other guys.
It was sad when the great ship went down.

Oh they built another ship they called, "Titanic II."
They were sure this time that the water would never leak thorough.
So they launched it with a cheer, and it sank right off the pier.
It was sad when the great ship went down.

[A READER]

Her Name Was “Titanic”.

By the end of the 19th century, Britain was beginning to lose its position as Ruler of the Waves'. In 1897, the German ship Kaiser Wilhelm took the Blue Riband for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic away from us.

Worse still, American J P Morgan was buying up whole British fleets, so, to meet the competition, the British government of the day subsidised the building of the Titanic, in Harland and Wolfe's Belfast yard.

The upper decks had luxurious accommodation for very rich people.

Poor emigrants were to be confined to the lower decks, near to the pulsating steam engines.

Sixteen watertight sections were installed to make the ship unsinkable'. After only eight hours of sea trials, RMS Titanic was off on her maiden voyage.

The Titanic was to follow the shortest route from South Western Ireland to New York.

But this great circle route took her up into the Labrador Current, in which large icebergs float southwards.

In the dark, early morning of April 15, 1921, the starboard side of the Titanic scraped along an iceberg.

The impact dislodged the ships plates sufficiently to sheer off the heads of the rivets, which were made of poor quality metal.
As the flotation tanks filled with water one after the other, the unsinkable' tilted and nose-dived into the depths.

There were lifeboats for less than half of the 2,340 people who were on board.