Tragedy!

Part of what makes up the news is the disaster, and no disasters in the first half of the 20th century were bigger news than the sinking of what was considered an unsinkable ship, the Titanic, and the explosion of the airship, the Hindenburg.

The Titanic

With the recent remembrance of the 100th year anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, I thought it appropriate to mention a few words about that disaster. Before the fate of the Titanic, Morgan Robertson wrote a book called “The Wreck of the Titan” in 1898, which, in retrospect, read as though Robertson had looked into the future and seen the fate of the Titanic.

Fourteen years later, on April 10, 1912, the Titanic, the largest ship of its day and considered “unsinkable,” set sail from Southampton to New York. The next day, there were wired messages about icebergs in the area the Titanic would be sailing. Just before midnight, Sunday, April 14, the Titanic hit an iceberg.

In the two and a half hours it took the great ship to sink, the Titanic became a stage for great heroism from both crew members and passengers. Like many others, one elderly passenger refused a place in on an emergency boat because he wanted to wait for the other passengers. His wife, likewise, refused to get on a boat because she wouldn’t leave her husband. The engineers refused to abandon their posts to keep the lights burning for as long as possible. Meanwhile on deck, the band played ragtime tunes to calm the crowd.

In the end, 1,523 gallant souls died in the Atlantic’s cold waters that terrible night. The survivors – there were more than 700 – suffered perhaps the worst fate of all as they watched their relatives and friends die in the frigid water.

Prominent people on the ship included John Jacob Astor IV, Benjamin Guggenheim, Macy’s co-owner Isidor Straus and wife Ida Straus, who refused to leave her husband, writer Jacques Futrelle, and Francis Millet, the American painter and sculptor. Molly Brown, who became known as the “unsinkable” Molly Brown, was aboard but is reported to have rowed her lifeboat to safety. The great American novelist Theodore Dreiser nearly returned from a European trip via the doomed ship but changed his mind at the last minute. And one woman missed getting on board by a mere ten minutes, ten minutes that saved her life.

In a strange way, the disaster impacted the communication industry since it led to the passage of the Radio Act of 1912. This act provided that ships have wireless operators on duty around the clock so that similar disasters might be averted. Quietly, even innocently, the new law was the first step in government regulation of both radio and television.

The Hindenburg

It was May 6, 1937. The place was Lakehurst, New Jersey. The great dirigible, the Hindenburg, was about to finish its transatlantic flight, one that started in Frankfurt, Germany. Everywhere reporters recorded the event as the ship neared its moorings. The airship was getting ready to land, and had already dropped its landing cables when a flash suddenly appeared and flames almost immediately consumed the dirigible.

In a blazing heap, the airship, in what seemed to many like slow-motion, came crashing to the ground. Many passengers jumped from almost 200 feet, while others stayed on the fiery gondola.

The Hindenburg burned quickly because it was filled with hydrogen rather than non-flammable helium. The United States had a monopoly on helium and was afraid to sell to Germany since it was concerned about what other used the Nazis might find for the hydrogen.

The speed the conflagration made for one of the most dramatic radio broadcasts in history. Making the disaster even more tragic was its timing. The trip was over, the ship was about to land, everything seemed right. In the next moment, radio broadcasters were faced with trying to describe an event so horrible, many were left speechless, others simply cried as they attempted to relay what was occurring.

In the end, 36 people died in the accident.

No one knows what caused the tragedy. A storm had just passed and may have created a spark that ignited the fire. Others believed that anti-Nazis somehow may been involved in a plot to sabotage the giant airship which measured just 78 feet shorter than the Titanic.