40 Fun Facts About Titanic: Voices From the Disaster

Frankie Goldsmith, nine when the Titanic sank, never took his children to which sport because of the cheering?

Baseball was hard to escape: the family settled in Detroit beside Navin Field, home of the Tigers. Each roar after a home run sounded to Goldsmith like the cries from the water.

Stewardess Violet Jessop escaped the Titanic and also survived which hospital ship, sunk by a mine in 1916?

Britannic was the Titanic's younger sister, and Jessop was serving on it as a nurse when it went down in the Aegean in under an hour. She had also been aboard the Olympic when it hit a warship.

Charles Lightoller, the senior surviving Titanic officer, later sailed his own yacht to which wartime evacuation?

Dunkirk brought Lightoller out of retirement in 1940. Rather than let the Navy requisition his motor yacht Sundowner, he sailed it across the Channel himself with his eldest son.

Lookout Frederick Fleet told both Titanic inquiries he would have seen the iceberg sooner with what equipment?

Binoculars were requested again and again by the lookouts and never supplied. Experts now argue that, in that night's conditions, even a pair would not have shown him the iceberg any sooner.

Ida Straus refused a Titanic lifeboat seat to stay with husband Isidor, co-owner of which New York store?

Macy's was run by Isidor Straus and his brother Nathan. As the boats filled, he and Ida were seen on deck arm in arm, and only his body was ever recovered.

Which oceanographer co-led the French–American expedition that found the Titanic's wreck in 1985?

Robert Ballard was really at sea for the US Navy, which had him map two lost nuclear submarines first. Only the time left over went to the Titanic search, shared with France's Jean-Louis Michel.

Which safety exercise, due on the Sunday morning before the Titanic sank, did Captain Smith cancel?

A lifeboat drill was due that Sunday morning, and nobody knows why the captain called it off. The only one of the voyage had been held in port before sailing.

Lawrence Beesley, a survivor who published a Titanic book within nine weeks, taught which school subject?

Science master Beesley was told to jump into Lifeboat 13 just before it was lowered, then watched another boat come down almost on top of it. His book appeared in June 1912.

Harold Bride, the Titanic's junior wireless operator, suggested sending which distress call alongside CQD?

SOS had already been used many times at sea, but plenty of operators still clung to CQD, so the Titanic's wireless room sent both. Bride was washed off the deck and survived with frostbitten feet.

Which hymn, a favourite of bandleader Wallace Hartley, is said to be the last music played on the Titanic?

Nearer, My God, to Thee was reported by some survivors, though others remembered different tunes. None of the eight musicians lived to settle it.

Titanic: Voices from the Disaster was an Honor Book for which American medal for informational books?

Sibert honors go to the year's most distinguished informational books for children. The medal is named for the long-time president of Bound to Stay Bound Books, the Illinois firm that helped set it up.

Which captain pushed the Carpathia through ice at full speed to reach the Titanic's survivors?

Arthur Rostron shut off the heating so all the steam went to the engines, and had blankets, food and drinks ready before the first lifeboat came alongside. He was knighted in 1926.

Which shipyard director oversaw the Titanic's design, joined the maiden voyage and died in the sinking?

Thomas Andrews spent his last hours urging passengers into lifebelts and up to the boats. He had joined the shipyard as an apprentice at sixteen, when his uncle was a part owner.

Which White Star Line chairman was savaged by the press for escaping the Titanic in a lifeboat?

Bruce Ismay stepped into Collapsible C less than 20 minutes before the ship went down. Some papers called him the Coward of the Titanic, and his reputation never recovered in his lifetime.

Which Denver socialite urged Lifeboat 6 to turn back for survivors and was later nicknamed Unsinkable?

Margaret Brown took an oar herself but lost the argument with the quartermaster in charge, and the boat never went back. The name Molly was attached to her only after her death.

Which millionaire, the richest passenger on the Titanic, died while his pregnant wife Madeleine survived?

John Jacob Astor was worth roughly $87 million when he died. Four months later Madeleine, who had married him at 18, gave birth to his son.

Which steamer, stopped in ice within sight of the Titanic's rockets, had its only wireless operator asleep?

Californian's operator had switched off his set and gone to bed. Both inquiries concluded that many or all of the lost lives could have been saved had the ship responded to the rockets.

Jack Thayer, who jumped from the Titanic at seventeen, insisted against the officers that the liner did what?

Broke in two is what Thayer and many other survivors reported, but both inquiries accepted the officers' word that the ship sank whole. The wreck, lying in two pieces, proved the teenager right.

Father Francis Browne, who photographed life aboard the Titanic, left the ship at which Irish port?

Queenstown, now Cobh, was the liner's last stop. A wealthy couple offered to pay Browne's way on to America, but his Jesuit superior cabled a blunt order to get off that ship.

In which city did Harland and Wolff build the Titanic, on a site now called the Titanic Quarter?

Belfast built all three Olympic-class liners on Queen's Island, beneath an enormous gantry made by the Scottish firm that also built London's Tower Bridge.

From which English port did the Titanic begin her maiden voyage, narrowly missing a collision as she left?

Southampton almost saw the voyage end within minutes: the surge from the passing Titanic snapped the mooring cables of the liner New York, which swung stern-first towards her.

At which French port did the Titanic make her first stop, taking on passengers by tender?

Cherbourg had no dock big enough for the liner, so two small tenders ferried passengers out. One of them, Nomadic, is the last White Star Line ship still in existence.

What does the M stand for in RMS, the prefix shared by the Titanic and her sister Olympic?

Mail was real work aboard: as a Royal Mail Ship the Titanic carried post under contract, and five clerks on G Deck could sort up to 60,000 items a day.

Which British labour dispute in 1912 cancelled many crossings and nearly kept the Titanic in port?

A coal strike had left ships idle across Britain. The Titanic sailed on schedule only because fuel was taken from other liners tied up in port.

Which first officer was in charge of the Titanic's bridge when the lookouts sighted the iceberg?

William Murdoch tried to steer around the iceberg, but the ship took a glancing blow along her side. He then ran the evacuation on that side and went down with her.

Titanic wireless operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride worked not for White Star but for which company?

Marconi leased the wireless set to White Star and supplied the two men who worked it. On the night of the collision Phillips was busy clearing a backlog of passengers' private messages.

Titanic stewardess Violet Jessop, later known as Miss Unsinkable, was born to Irish parents in which country?

Argentina was home until Jessop was 16: her father farmed sheep on the Pampas. After he died the family moved to England, where she followed her mother into work as a ship's stewardess.

Jack Thayer's father, who died in the Titanic sinking, was a vice president of which American railroad?

Pennsylvania was the Thayers' home state as well as the railroad's name. Jack later recalled that the cries from the water reminded him of the hum of locusts there.

Recovery ships chartered by White Star brought 209 Titanic victims ashore at which Canadian port?

Halifax is where 150 of them were buried. The cable ship Mackay-Bennett, berthed there in April 1912, was chosen because its hold could carry 125 coffins and the ice needed.

The International Ice Patrol, founded after the Titanic sank to track icebergs, is operated by which service?

US Coast Guard crews run the patrol, but its cost is shared among the nations that rely on the transatlantic shipping lanes. It was set up in 1914 as a direct response to the sinking.

After Titanic: Voices from the Disaster, Deborah Hopkinson wrote histories of spies and submariners in which war?

World War II fills several of her later books for the same readers, among them Courage & Defiance, on the Danish resistance, and a history of D-Day.

Board of Trade rules in 1912 set a liner's lifeboat requirement by what measure, not by the people aboard?

Its tonnage was all the rules counted, and the scale stopped at 10,000 tons: 16 boats would do, though the Titanic was more than four times that size. She carried 20, more than the law asked.

The Titanic's fourth funnel was a dummy added mainly for looks, but what practical job did it also do?

Ventilation for the kitchens and smoking rooms ran up through it. Only the other three funnels carried smoke from the boilers.

Which leisure facility did the Titanic really offer first-class passengers, beside the Turkish baths on F Deck?

A swimming pool filled with heated salt water lay across the corridor from the Turkish baths. In the wreck it sits behind a closed watertight door, so nobody knows what state it is in.

Jack Phillips cut short an ice warning because he was busy sending passengers' messages to which shore station?

Cape Race was the relay point for a backlog built up when the Titanic's set failed the day before. A nearby ship's loud signal drowned it out, so Phillips told its operator to stop sending.

Which passenger, a two-month-old baby aboard the Titanic, was the last living survivor until her death in 2009?

Millvina Dean's family were emigrating to Kansas, where her father hoped to buy into a cousin's tobacco shop. Late in life, the stars of the 1997 film gave to a fund set up to help with her bills.

Which colonel survived on an upturned Titanic collapsible, wrote a book on the sinking and died within eight months?

Archibald Gracie never recovered from that night and became the first adult survivor to die, before he had finished correcting his book's proofs.

Which fifth officer took Lifeboat 14 back to the wreck site to search for survivors after the Titanic sank?

Harold Lowe commanded the only boat that went back by choice. Raised in Wales, he had run away to sea at around fifteen to work on coastal schooners.

Besides the moonless sky, which condition made the iceberg harder for the Titanic's lookouts to spot?

A calm sea meant no waves breaking white against the foot of the iceberg. One survivor wrote that the water was like glass, smooth enough to reflect the stars.

Which Carpathia wireless operator, working alone, caught the Titanic's distress call shortly before going to bed?

Harold Cottam was minutes from bed when he called the Titanic to pass on private messages waiting for her ashore, and got a distress call in reply. He was his ship's only operator.