Titanic
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The Titanic
The year is 1912 and you are on board the greatest and most luxurious ship
ever built. However, few of you are aware that the ship has just struck an iceberg [slam down book and slowly begin pushing it off edge of table, while
continue speaking] and is slowly sinking into the bottom of the North Atlantic. A lot
of you have already retired to your beds for the night. Some of you are out drinking,
smoking, just having a good time. And by the time you do realize the ship is sinking-
its too late. Most of the lifeboats are already gone. [Push book off edge of table and
onto floor] And 2/3 of you just died.
In case you havent figured it out yet, the ship Im referring to is the RMS Titanic. [Show slide 1 of Titanic] And it just happens to be a coincidence but it did sink
86 years ago today. Now like most of you I first heard about the Titanic in elementary
school and on through high school so I didnt really know a lot about it. But then
after seeing the recent movie version I left the theater wanting to know more. Like
who were some of the people on board and why were the lifeboats only half full? So I
searched around the Internet, saw a couple of TV specials on it and this is just a fraction of what I found. And like me, I hope that maybe you can learn there is more to
the Titanic than just “big ship hits ice and sinks”.
First of allЖwhy were the lifeboats only l/2 full? [Show slide 2 of filled lifeboat]
The first lifeboat to go out had a capacity of 65 people but yet it left with only 12.
That means there were a total of over 400 empty seats on those lifeboats. Thus, that
many more people should have and could have been saved.
Well the crews excuse was that they feared the lifeboats would collapse. [Demonstrate with stick] You see, they were lowered down by a rope on either end to the
water and they feared that the weight of the passengers would buckle them and just
collapse.
However, Im more apt to believe that the people just didnt want to get off. Why
would you want to get off an “unsinkable” ship? Plus a lot of people just didnt even
know anything was the matter. People just felt safe on the TitanicЖthis monstrous
ship. In fact, if you want to get an idea of about how big it was, go out to the faculty
office building which is three stories high and look straight up, the Titanic was between 3 and 4 times taller than that. So where would you feel safer, this huge monstrous ship, complete with elevators, swimming pool, gymnasium and even a hospital
with an operating room or this little wooden boat thats not even half the size of this
room?
[Show statistics slide 3] Another thing that I wondered about were the people on
board. Notice that 19 % of the men, 72% of the women, and 100% of the children
were saved. However, since most of the passengers were men,