On The Anniversary Of The Titanic, Remember The Cruel Depths And Noble Heights Of Their Final Hours: Some men chose to stoically help their families into boats and then stand aside
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On the morning of April 15, 1912, the survivors of the Titanic were pulled from the icy North Atlantic by the Carpathia. The night before, at 11:40 p.m., shipboard time, the ship had struck an iceberg in a glancing-but-fatal blow, tearing into six of her 16 compartments — two more than the greatest ship ever made could withstand.
Capt. Edward Smith, a man with four decades on the seas, immediately went to the bridge and then down below with the ship’s architect, Thomas Andrews, to ascertain the extent of the damage. By five past midnight, Smith would order the passengers brought to the deck and the lifeboats prepared. Twenty minutes later, Andrews gave him the terrible news: “the unsinkable ship” was going to the bottom.