When asked to name a famous shipwreck at a bar trivia night, a good number of attendees may immediately think of Pearl Harbor, whether or not they can remember that it was the USS. arizona It was bombed there. SS remains even more firmly in living memory andrea doriaBut she’s not the cultural reference she once was. SS wreckage edmund fitzgerald It just celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, and its monument got a boost, even if it was mostly from Gordon Lightfoot fans. of course, enduranceHowever, the ship itself has always been overshadowed by the captain’s efforts to bring everyone on board alive. schooner hesperus comes to mind as a particularly unfortunate vessel, perhaps even more so because she never actually existed.
Of course almost everyone at the bar is going to put RMS titanic beginning. Even before receiving James Cameron’s treatment, that “unsinkable” ocean liner was arguably the most famous shipwreck of the 20th century, and perhaps the most famous shipwreck in all of history. But second place has to go to RMS Lusitaniathen disappeared just three years later. titanic. 1915 may sound like 1912, but during that time the world was reshaped by the development of Europe. of titanic She met her end when she hit an iceberg, and as you can see, about two and a half hours later. Real-time sinking video at the top of the postit was at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean. time Lusitania She was torpedoed by a German U-boat, but by contrast sank in just 18 minutes.
You can witness a reproduction of the minutes. Animated video from Oceanliner Designs just above. Although World War I was raging, the ship had not yet been commissioned as an armed merchant cruiser, and was carrying war supplies and carrying regular transatlantic passenger transport, as claimed by the Germans and initially denied by the British. She was traveling due east for six days when U-20 I saw her. After a one-hour chase, the fateful underwater missile and its 160 kilogram explosive load were launched. The video shows you not only how to do it, but also Lusitania The ship slipped beneath the water, but various structural elements and mechanical systems failed along the way. That included the elevator, which at one time seemed like a great innovation.
After a torpedo hit, virtually anything that could have gone wrong appears to have happened, until several deployable lifeboats fell catastrophically from their davits. crew of titanic Although they succeeded in launching most of the lifeboats, there were not enough lifeboats to begin with. This brought the final death toll to around 1,500, compared to the previous death toll of 1,197. Lusitania. Although similar in scale and historical timing, these two maritime disasters ultimately had very different meanings. the remains of titanic It continues to captivate the imagination with its resonance with the long 19th century’s industrial romance, class stratification, and imperialist hubris. that of LusitaniaIts sinking, which played a major role in drawing the United States into what we now call World War I, shows us nothing more clearly than the ruthless geopolitical logic of the 20th century.
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Observe the sinking of. Lusitania Real-time animation (1915)
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sinking of Britannic: Animated introduction to Titanic’s forgotten sister ship
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The first full 3D scan of the Titanic was created from over 700,000 images capturing every detail of the shipwreck
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Based in Seoul, Colin Mbemust write and broadcastIt’s about cities, languages ​​and cultures. he is the author of the newsletter books about cities books as well Home page (I won’t summarize Korea) and korean newtro. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter. @Colinbemust.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
