On the North Atlantic there were defined lanes or tracks which all passenger and cargo liners followed. Bruce Ismay did not order or put pressure on the commander or chief engineer to make a record passage to New York for the Titanic’s maiden voyage. Hardly a record for someone in his position, but reflecting the fact that Ismay had more important matters to deal with then worrying about maiden arrivals and what the papers might say. If this was the case one would expect him to have taken every maiden voyage he possibly could, but during his entire business life, and as chairman and managing director of White Star, he took only three Adriatic in May 1907, Olympic in June 1911 and Titanic in April 1912. What we now see is the stereotype of a businessman, only interested in power and money a man determined to get his own way. Various books and a recent film about the disaster have enlarged upon the Hearst stories. The most serious assertion concerned Ismay’s alleged interference with the navigation of the Titanic. None of these allegations were true, but despite the facts, the image created by Hearst survives to this day. Countless wire stories asserted Ismay’s guilt at manipulating the Titanic’s master into driving his ship faster than he wanted of cowardice in taking the place of a passenger in one of the lifeboats and of resigning from the company after the disaster rather than face the public. Hearst’s idea of what constituted a “man” or what a “glorious” death might be was a rather two-dimensional view of life and death but nevertheless one his readers, hungry for information about the disaster and eager to find someone to blame, were only to happy to accept. And may the memory of them remain forever a noble record of past heroism for humanity, a splendid inspiration to future deeds of duty and devotion.” …WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST. “So may God reward them and men remember them. They performed their duty to their fellow men, their obligation to their God. “Who would not rather die a hero than live a coward? Who would not choose so glorious a death?

“Then when the dear ones, the dependent ones, had been sent to safety in the lifeboats and had drifted away into the dark night, these true men, calm and courageous, stood alone upon the deck of the doomed ship and went down to death and to glory. Husbands embraced their wives, fathers kissed their children good-by, and men who were leaving wives and children desolate far away at home labored to save the children of companions of misfortune. “Swept without need, without heed, without reckoning or reason into disaster which meant inevitable death, these heroes thought not of their own safety, not of their own lives, but only of the lives and safety of the weak women and little children confided to their care. But the memory of the noble deed of these brave and self-sacrificing men should live forever. “Soon this monument will dissolve and disappear, as sooner or later in the lapse of years all monuments disintegrate and disappear. It towers like a mighty marble monument above the graves of 1,500 heroes who died that the women and children might be saved. “In the middle of the North Atlantic a giant iceberg lifts its white cliffs 500 feet in air. Brute Ismay” and “We respectfully suggest that the emblem of the White Star be changed to that of a yellow liver.” The Denver Post, another member of his syndicated press, published the following prose on 19 April 1912: Almost twenty years after their first meeting it was the Hearst syndicated press who prosecuted a vicious campaign against him, a full-page cartoon depicting Ismay in a lifeboat watching the sinking Titanic and captioned, “This is J. The two men disliked each other intensely and Ismay’s refusal to cooperate with the press infuriated the newspaperman storing up problems for the future. Ismay had met Hearst years before, when he was White Star’s agent in New York. Bruce Ismay at the time of the disaster, as chairman and managing director of the White Star Line, was held to blame for the loss of the Titanic by the American press especially those controlled by William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper magnate and one of the richest and most powerful men in America. Ismay And The Titanic – by Paul Louden-BrownĮxcerpted from “The White Star Line An Illustrated History 1869-1934”

Did the captain of the titanic survive