
Titanic Struck By Berg but Passengers Saved, Disabled Liner in Tow - jedwhite
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/titanic1.pdf
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jedwhite
Interesting to see:

1) How the company tried to manage the news cycle and put out that the ship's
design held up well and saved lives.

2) The attempt to blame new technology (wireless) for the lack of accurate
information.

3) Focus on the business personalities on board.

The WSJ story the following day focused on the value of assets lost and
insurance coverage.

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tptacek
... which makes sense, because the WSJ of 1912 was far more narrowly aimed at
financial news than it is today.

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monsterix
Observe how "blame the techie/tech" syndrome has been out there for ages!

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reneherse
The article is total spin. I fail to see how the egregious number (and
detailedness) of factual errors in this report could be blamed on faulty
wireless communication. Is it a case of just overzealous filling in the
blanks, or was the Edwardian-era WSJ the Fox News of its time?

Incidently, by coincidence I happened to see the 3D version of the movie last
night at the exact hour of the hundreth year anniversary of the collision.
Didn't realize it til later when I was reading about the disaster on
Wikipedia, at what turned out to be, after triple checking my calculations,
the centennial of the final sinking, _to the minute_ , 2:20am ship's local
time.

It was a bit surreal to say the least, inspiring a long night of contemplation
about technology, nature, society, love & honor, and the brevity of life. So
terrible to see how the facts were initially so thoroughly misrepresented...

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seldo
Out of genuine curiosity: did you miss the movie the first time, or did you
think the 3D would add something more to it? Either way, did you enjoy it?

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reneherse
I'd seen parts of the movie on the small screen, wanted to finally see the
whole thing, and there's no better place to watch an epic scale movie than in
a theater.

3D was ok. I could take it or leave it. At least in this movie it wasn't
overdone; apparently Cameron kept many of the wide shots pretty flat to avoid
making the ship look like a model. I guess it's a wash: how much the added
dimensionality enhances the experience was balanced by the times when it's
just a distraction.

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jonah
This article[1] about senior telegraph officer Jack Phillips seems to paint
wireless as a success and responsible for saving those that were picked up.

[1] [http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-
titanic-...](http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-titanic-
telegrams-20120415,0,7916165,full.story)

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drusenko
Interesting. After a bit of searching, found this:
[http://www.journalism.co.uk/news-features/titanic-
disaster-a...](http://www.journalism.co.uk/news-features/titanic-disaster-
anniversary-how-it-was-reported/s5/a548774/)

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binspace
Quite a clever ruse to give the insiders more time to dump their stocks.

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Baba_Chaghaloo
Whew! What a relief!

