TITANIC TRUTH

One of the most tragic events of the twenteith century was the sinking of the the British ship Titanic in the Atlantic Ocean on April 15 1912, with the loss of over 1500 lives. the immidate cause of this terrible loss of life was a large iceberg that tore a three-hundred-foot gash in the side of the ship, flooting five of its watertight compartments. some belive that the tragedy took place because the crew members did not see the iceberg in time, but others see a chain of different events that contibuted to the tragedy. first was the fact that the ship was not carrying enough lifeboats for all the passengers: it had enough boats for only about half of the people on board. furthermore the ship's crew showed a clear lack of caring about the third class or "steerage" passengers who went left in their cramped quarters below decks with little or no help as the ship went down. It has often been said that this social attitude of helping the wealthy and neglecting the poor was one of the real causes of the loss of life that night. Indeed some of the lifeboats that were used were not filled to capacity when the rescue ships eventually find them. finally the tragedy of Titanic was magnified by the fact that some ships nearby did not have a radio crew on duty and therefore missed the distress signals sent by the Titanic. out of all this, the need to reform saftey regulations on passenger ships became obvious.