- ANTONE PIERUCCI
- Posted On
This Week in History: The beginning of the Civil War and the sinking of the Titanic
This week’s historical highlights mark two important tragedies in modern history: the start of a war and the sinking of a ship.
April 12, 1861
In hindsight it was hardly the first hostilities in what would become America’s Civil War.
Dozens, possibly hundreds, of people had already died, homes burned and soldiers recruited years before Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.
Most of these early hostilities centered on the Missouri and Kansas border, however, and like the rest of the war and how it has since been remembered, the western front remained on the periphery of national interest.
It is easy to forget that when Fort Sumter was attacked in April of 1861, the state of South Carolina had already been seceded from the nation a full four months.
To the South Carolina secessionist government, United States Major Robert Anderson and his force of 85 men were foreign invaders on sovereign Carolinian territory.
Knowing full well the precariousness of his position, Major Anderson had already moved his force from Fort Moultrie at the mouth of the harbor to the water-bound Fort Sumter situated in the harbor itself.
This move, done just six days following the state’s secession in December of 1860, was widely criticized at the time as an overreaction to what many thought was an empty move on the part of the Carolinian government. After all, who would ever actually secede from America?
Anderson’s caution was born out when, on April 11, a representative of Confederate General P.T. Beauregard demanded the fort’s surrender.
Early the following morning, Major Anderson and his men were awoken to the sharp retort of cannon fire and the shuddering impact of shot on stone walls. They were being attacked. There was no turning back for South Carolina.
For the first few hours of the bombardment, Fort Sumter did not return the enemy’s fire.
For the last few months of their time in the fort, supplies had begun to dwindle and relief was nowhere in sight. The only ammunition the fort had to return fire was solid shot, since they had no fuses for their explosive rounds.
They therefore bided their time until the light of day could more completely illuminate their enemy’s location.
For the next 30 hours or so the battle raged on, with shells raining down on the defenders and shot searing outward towards the attackers.
The following day, April 13, Major Anderson was forced to accept the terms of surrender, which allowed him and his men the honor of firing a 100 gun salute on their way out of the fort and back to the north to safety.
Remarkably, no men were injured in the fort during the actual assault, although one was killed and another mortally wounded when a cannon misfired during the honorary salute at the end of the fighting.
On the Confederate side, one soldier had been injured during the fighting but also from a misfired canon, rather than enemy fire.
Unfortunately, the near bloodless battle, which ended in honor to both sides, would not set the tone for the war.
As the war dragged on beyond the first and second battle, each side became entrenched in their passionate dislike of the other. War breeds animosity, it does not solve it.
The nation that emerged four bloody years later was a stranger to the one that awoke, bleary-eyed, the early morning of April 12, 1861.
April 14 to 15, 1912
Thanks to the 1997 blockbuster, just about the only question we have regarding the sinking of the RMS Titanic today is why Rose couldn’t move over on that wood board and give Jack room. Seriously, there was plenty of space for two people to cling onto.
That plot hole aside, there do actually remain plenty of unanswered questions about the sinking of the Titanic, a luxury cruise liner that was supposed to be unsinkable.
The general timeline of events is clear: the Titanic set off from Southampton, England on April 10 for her maiden voyage to New York; the ship received several warnings of icebergs in the immediate area from other ships as she approached the southern tip of Newfoundland, nearing her journey’s end; around 11:40 p.m. on April 14 she collided with an iceberg; over two hours later she sank and over nine hours after the collision, help finally arrived to save those few passengers who had made it to the lifeboats in time.
Equally irrefutable are the numbers: 705 passengers and crewmen survived, while more than 1,500 perished.
There exist plenty of theories as to why the ship sank. Chief among them is that by attempting to turn aside from the iceberg and exposing her side, the Titanic had caused more damage to the most vulnerable part of the ship than had she chosen to simply hit the iceberg full on.
The discovery of the actual wreckage of the ship in 1985 and subsequent study of the remains have put to rest some of the wilder ideas.
During the inquiry into the wreck shortly after it occurred, testimony by eyewitnesses and architects and engineers estimated that the iceberg had caused a significant breach of the hull.
Some commentators claimed the hole to have been several hundred feet in length and a dozen feet wide in places. Even the most conservative estimate of the damage at the time was far from the truth.
In reality, the damage to the hull was far less dramatic, with six relatively small areas of damage located along the hull where the iceberg had caused the iron rivets connecting two plates together to break apart.
The iron rivets, when analyzed, were found to have contained a high level of slag, or contaminants, built into them – the result of shoddy forging.
When exposed to cold temperatures, iron rivets with high slag content are prone to snapping, just as they did on April 14, 1912.
The rivets, however, are not the sole culprits for the sinking of the ship, since the Titanic’s sister ship, the Olympic, served without incident for 25 years despite being riveted with the same iron rivets as her ill-fated sibling.
Regardless of why the ship’s hull suffered so much damage from a mere glancing blow, within 40 minutes of contact more than 35,000 tons of water had filled the Titanic, far too much for the ship’s pumps to handle.
Like a giant hand pushing the bow of the ship farther into the water, the Titanic’s stern rose into the air until the strain was too much and the ship snapped in half.
Outfitted with too few lifeboats and far away from help, most of the passengers on board were doomed the moment the ship collided with the iceberg; it just took them two hours to realize their fate.
Antone Pierucci is the former curator of the Lake County Museum and a freelance writer whose work has been featured in such magazines as Archaeology and Wild West as well as regional California newspapers.
