One hundred years ago today, the Titanic had left her final port of call, on her doomed maiden voyage. According to a Los Angeles Times advertisement from April 9, 1912, a San Francisco travel agency was selling future trips on the great ship. She was next scheduled to leave New York for Southampton on April 20th.
This Saturday, April 14th, the Steamship Historical Society of America, Southern California Chapter, is hosting a weekend of free Titanic Centennial Commemorative events at Los Angeles Harbor. There will be a lunch at 11:00 (there is a charge for meals), and a free Titanic film festival aboard the Queen Mary. There’s also a candlelight vigil at 11:40 Saturday night, from Lifeboat 23. Guests are encouraged to dress in period costume–and you’ll probably hear a number of Titanic stories you never knew! Here’s the link for details.
Did you know that:
- There was no real-life passenger named “Jack Dawson” aboard the Titanic. But there was a “J. Dawson” who was a crew member. People still leave flowers at his monument in Halifax, believing him to be the character Leonardo DiCaprio portrayed in the James Cameron film.
- Titanic had a near-collision with the ocean liner New York, as she left Southampton on her doomed maiden voyage on April 10, 1912. The Titanic’s triple screws created so much suction that they pulled the New York loose from her moorings. The New York swung around and her stern narrowly missed smacking the Titanic.
- Titanic‘s captain, Edward John Smith, had had several previous mishaps. According to the article “The Final Board of Inquiry,” by Commander Richard R. Paton, Smith had nearly crushed a tugboat in a New York Harbor collision a year earlier. The same article says that there were several other instances in which Smith collided with another ship or ran aground, during his thirty-two years with White Star Line.