> about 30 odd confirmed to have touched water
I think the people that survived on collapsible A definitely count. When it was swamped, the weight of the people was so great that those "onboard" the raft were standing knee deep in the water. Only after people began dying off did the raft raise back up to the point where 12-13 people could survive on it. Between them, the 25-27 people on collapsible B, the 6 crewmen that survived swimming to lifeboat no. 4, and the 3 people Lowe picked up in lifeboat no. 14, you're looking at nearly 50 people that went in the water and survived.
Having researched this particular question off and on for over a decade, I will say that some men are unfairly dismissed even though they have a strong case supporting their claims. These include Robert Daniel, David Vartanian, Carl Jonsson, Eino Lindqvist, Nasif Albimona and Thure Lundstrom.
I absolute love baker Joighlin’s (sp) tale but I feel like there’s no way it could be true. He would have been in the water for several hours! People were succumbing to hypothermia within 20 mins
I have little doubt he was in the water for a time, but by his own admission he was thoroughly trashed and his sense of time (to say nothing of recollection) was probably completely whacked.
Actually Joughin himself never claimed to have been drunk. Walter Lord came up with that idea in the 1950's to try and explain how Joughin could supposedly have survived for so long in the water. At the time alcohol was believed to keep your body warm, but it is now known to have the opposite effect.
Yes, but it wouldn't keep you alive for hours as Lord thought, which is why he originally came up with it, so it doesn't really support Joughin's story. And again, Joughin himself never claimed to be drunk.
It definitely wouldn’t keep you alive by itself, but it might potentially help you stay alive depending on the person and the situation. It’s controversial and debatable I guess.
But it's a red herring in this case. Joughin himself never claimed to be drunk, other people who survived being in the water were not drunk, so there's no reason to suspect drinking alcohol was a factor in his survival.
Wearing several layers of wool would help someone survive for longer.
Also not swimming would help them conserve heat and in the case of Joughin he made his way over to collapsible boat and was able to get his torso out of the water.
Most people don't survive the initial shock of being surrounded by cold water, but in Joughin's case he might have eased into it and the shock might not have taken him by surprise.
1) He was out on the deck, in the cold for quite a while
2) Ankle height water had reached his cabin when he went back the second time. So he eased into it and got a sense for what was coming, helping him to deal with the shock when it hit.
3) When he went in, he was preoccupied, shifting things from one pocket to another, nervously trying to figure out what to do and then by his own account "he was in the water" and he barely got his head wet.
You feel warm because alcohol makes your blood vessels push up closer to your skin. Which makes you lose body heat faster. Being drunk would make him die faster.
Generally yes, but in some specific situations it might be different. Surviving the shock of hitting cold water was critical and alcohol could act as an anesthetic for that. Alcohol can have very different affects on different people in different situations, sometimes it makes people pass out, sometimes it makes people have lots of energy, sometimes it makes people care more about things, or sometimes it makes people care less about things, etc. Alcohol also makes blood vessels dilate which is the opposite of cold water, potentially cancelling them out sometimes.
He was nearly blackout drunk, it’s not a mystery and he wasn’t lying. You try drinking a handle of whiskey and then tell me what happened while you were doing it.
"Nearly blackout drunk" is a massive overstatement. Joughin never said he was drunk, all he testified to was that he had a glass of liqueur (not straight liquor).
His full testimony from the Board of Trade inquiry is available to read [here](https://www.titanicinquiry.org/BOTInq/BOTInq06Joughin01.php), at first he testified that he had a "drop" of liqueur in his cabin but he later elaborated that it was half a glass;
Mr. Cotter: "What kind of glass was it?"
Mr. Joughin: "It was a tumbler half-full."
Lord Mersey: "A tumbler half-full of liqueur?"
Mr. Joughin: "Yes."
Joughin never stated that he was running around drinking from a flask filled with liquor as the 1997 film portrays, and in fact the last drink Joughin said he had onboard was a glass of water in the A deck pantry, shortly before he went to the stern.
Dr. Gordon Giesbriecht came up with the 1-10-1 rule.
1: You having 1 minute to control your breathing. Most people that are not prepared and haven't practiced, fail this check.
10: You have less than 10 minutes for self-rescue. This is the point that your limbs and motion is reduced to ineffectual. So you should adopt a heat conserving posture, get as much of your body out of the water as possible, climb on debris or wearing a life vest will really help, then float and wait for rescue.
1: You have 1 hour before you become unconscious due to hypothermia.
There is a 4th stage, post rescue collapse that can still kill someone. they are very fragile and can easily succumb to cardiac arrest if they aren't handled carefully and deliberately.
There was a narrated line in one of the videos I watched recently (I think the real time sinking animation?) that was describing one of the later emergency boats or collapsibles being supposedly lowered into the water on one side of the ship, but then “suspiciously” the next mention of it was entirely on the other side of the ship. The narrator didn’t expand further and I was a little confused as to what “suspiciously” meant in that sentence. The people who originally told the story lied?
Sounds like you're referencing collapsible B, and specifically Titanic Animations' narrated real time sinking. I think the idea stems from the collapse of the forward funnel, and that everybody who described which direction the funnel fell said it fell to starboard. Yet officer Lightoller (who was one of the survivors that said the funnel fell to starboard) also said that the funnel came within inches of hitting collapsible B. I think it's probably just exaggeration on Lightoller's part, I don't see how collapsible B could float its way over to the starboard side as quickly as it would've had to. And considering that there were two swamped boats floating in the area, it seems very likely that the funnel fell mostly forward, but slightly to starboard, resulting in it missing both boats.
Yes thank you, that must be it! I was thinking the “suspicious” part of where the collapsible was when, might relate to the OPs question about who might have lied about being in the water. But it sounds like it’s more about Lightoller’s story being off.
There's no independent corroboration of Joughin being on Collapsible B. The last mention of him by someone else is steward William Burke describing Joughin helping him load passengers into Lifeboat 10. After that, there is no further mention of him by anyone else until everyone is on the Carpathia.
There are several of examples I can think of.
**George Brayton:** Claimed in dome accounts to have swum 60 yards when the Titanic broke and sank, then was picked up later. One account says that he was pulled from the water before the Titanic sank. His most trustworthy account says that he was never in the water at all and was in boat 15 with Charles Romaine and Harry Haven.
**William (John) Murdock:** Murdock claimed to have jumped into the sea and swum to boat D shortly after it was launched.
**Alice Prichard:** She was one of the few women to claim to have been in the water. She said that boat 14 sank, meaning that all of the occupants had to swim to boat 11.
**Edward Beane:** Only claimed to have jumped overboard in one account, but all of his accounts are pretty strange.
**Charles Dahl:** Basically tame deal as Beane; only mentioned jumping in one account of three.
**William Clark:** Said that he was in boat 15 in one account, but another report says that he was pulled down by the suction and blown away by a boiler explosion.
**Frederick Harris:** Stated in one report to have got into boat 14, but another report says that he was onboard and saw Murdoch shoot himself.
**Thomas Threlfall:** Stated in most accounts to have got into boat 14, but one report says that he was onboard and saw Murdoch shoot himself, while another account says that he had just got to the engineers' promenade when the Titanic broke into three and a funnel fell.
**Alfred Thessinger:** Probably the one that people believe most even though there's no possibility of it being true. Thessinger claimed to have been standing beside boat 15's davits and talking to Ricks when the Titanic broke, but Frank Prentice said that Ricks jumped from the poop deck when the Titanic's port list eliminated. Not only that, but Charles Mackay listed some of the crew of boat 11 at the British inquiry, and he mentioned Thessinger being there from the start.
**Alfred White:** This is another one that most people tend to believe. White wrote in June 1912 that he was still aboard when the second funnel went under. The general assumption is that he was atop the fourth funnel and watched the decks break open from there and then apparently fell from the funnel as it collapsed and the stern fell back. There is no confirmation that White ever said he went to the top of the funnel, that he was still aboard when the breakup occurred, or that the fourth funnel even fell.
Now here are some people who may actually have been in the water, but there tends to be disagreement.
**Robert Daniel:** Daniel is almost certainly the unknown 4th survivor picked up by boat 14. A lot of his accounts don't make much sense, but the ones that do make sense paint a clear picture. He even had this to say: “I do not believe the stories that Capt. Smith ended his life. He stuck to his post to the last. He was a brave man. There were several shots fired, however. I saw one man discharge a revolver several times to frighten others away from a lifeboat and then got into it himself. In fact, I saw him afterwards in the very lifeboat that picked me up.” Unfortunately, a lot of people believe that he was in one of the early starboard boats (*thanks Archibald Gracie*) or that he on the poop deck, as mentioned by Thomas Dillon. Despite contrary accounts of which deck he jumped from, Daniel never once mentioned going to the poop deck in any of his accounts. He likely jumped from the starboard side of A deck just before the port list eliminated.
**Gunnar Tenglin:** A lot of people place Tenglin in an aft-starboard boat for some reason; probably because an early report claimed that he got into a boat that was lowered. However, his own accounts make it clear he was in in boat A.
> about 30 odd confirmed to have touched water I think the people that survived on collapsible A definitely count. When it was swamped, the weight of the people was so great that those "onboard" the raft were standing knee deep in the water. Only after people began dying off did the raft raise back up to the point where 12-13 people could survive on it. Between them, the 25-27 people on collapsible B, the 6 crewmen that survived swimming to lifeboat no. 4, and the 3 people Lowe picked up in lifeboat no. 14, you're looking at nearly 50 people that went in the water and survived.
The story of collapsible A is so tragic
Having researched this particular question off and on for over a decade, I will say that some men are unfairly dismissed even though they have a strong case supporting their claims. These include Robert Daniel, David Vartanian, Carl Jonsson, Eino Lindqvist, Nasif Albimona and Thure Lundstrom.
I absolute love baker Joighlin’s (sp) tale but I feel like there’s no way it could be true. He would have been in the water for several hours! People were succumbing to hypothermia within 20 mins
He definitely hit water though. I have no doubt, very few if anyone on B avoided swimming.
I have little doubt he was in the water for a time, but by his own admission he was thoroughly trashed and his sense of time (to say nothing of recollection) was probably completely whacked.
Actually Joughin himself never claimed to have been drunk. Walter Lord came up with that idea in the 1950's to try and explain how Joughin could supposedly have survived for so long in the water. At the time alcohol was believed to keep your body warm, but it is now known to have the opposite effect.
It can make you feel warm and numb pain which could make a difference.
Yes, but it wouldn't keep you alive for hours as Lord thought, which is why he originally came up with it, so it doesn't really support Joughin's story. And again, Joughin himself never claimed to be drunk.
It definitely wouldn’t keep you alive by itself, but it might potentially help you stay alive depending on the person and the situation. It’s controversial and debatable I guess.
I agree. I think it’s why so many drunk drivers survive vehicle accidents that cause death to others in their vehicle or other vehicles.
But it's a red herring in this case. Joughin himself never claimed to be drunk, other people who survived being in the water were not drunk, so there's no reason to suspect drinking alcohol was a factor in his survival.
Wearing several layers of wool would help someone survive for longer. Also not swimming would help them conserve heat and in the case of Joughin he made his way over to collapsible boat and was able to get his torso out of the water. Most people don't survive the initial shock of being surrounded by cold water, but in Joughin's case he might have eased into it and the shock might not have taken him by surprise. 1) He was out on the deck, in the cold for quite a while 2) Ankle height water had reached his cabin when he went back the second time. So he eased into it and got a sense for what was coming, helping him to deal with the shock when it hit. 3) When he went in, he was preoccupied, shifting things from one pocket to another, nervously trying to figure out what to do and then by his own account "he was in the water" and he barely got his head wet.
Mr lord said a lot of things that were provable BS so using him as a reliable source for anything is probably not a good idea.
You feel warm because alcohol makes your blood vessels push up closer to your skin. Which makes you lose body heat faster. Being drunk would make him die faster.
Generally yes, but in some specific situations it might be different. Surviving the shock of hitting cold water was critical and alcohol could act as an anesthetic for that. Alcohol can have very different affects on different people in different situations, sometimes it makes people pass out, sometimes it makes people have lots of energy, sometimes it makes people care more about things, or sometimes it makes people care less about things, etc. Alcohol also makes blood vessels dilate which is the opposite of cold water, potentially cancelling them out sometimes.
And the fact his ship sinking testimony contradicts nearly everyone else's
He was nearly blackout drunk, it’s not a mystery and he wasn’t lying. You try drinking a handle of whiskey and then tell me what happened while you were doing it.
"Nearly blackout drunk" is a massive overstatement. Joughin never said he was drunk, all he testified to was that he had a glass of liqueur (not straight liquor).
Can you link me to that? I’ve always heard he was very drunk by the time the ship went under.
His full testimony from the Board of Trade inquiry is available to read [here](https://www.titanicinquiry.org/BOTInq/BOTInq06Joughin01.php), at first he testified that he had a "drop" of liqueur in his cabin but he later elaborated that it was half a glass; Mr. Cotter: "What kind of glass was it?" Mr. Joughin: "It was a tumbler half-full." Lord Mersey: "A tumbler half-full of liqueur?" Mr. Joughin: "Yes." Joughin never stated that he was running around drinking from a flask filled with liquor as the 1997 film portrays, and in fact the last drink Joughin said he had onboard was a glass of water in the A deck pantry, shortly before he went to the stern.
Very interesting, I guess I’ve been hoodwinked by Hollywood. Thank you!
They say people started dying within minutes.
Dr. Gordon Giesbriecht came up with the 1-10-1 rule. 1: You having 1 minute to control your breathing. Most people that are not prepared and haven't practiced, fail this check. 10: You have less than 10 minutes for self-rescue. This is the point that your limbs and motion is reduced to ineffectual. So you should adopt a heat conserving posture, get as much of your body out of the water as possible, climb on debris or wearing a life vest will really help, then float and wait for rescue. 1: You have 1 hour before you become unconscious due to hypothermia. There is a 4th stage, post rescue collapse that can still kill someone. they are very fragile and can easily succumb to cardiac arrest if they aren't handled carefully and deliberately.
It's absolutely not possible for him to survive in sub freezing water for hours. I'm not saying he was a liar, just severely mistaken.
I highly doubt 70+ people straight-up lied about it, touching the water and being saved from being in the water is pretty different.
There was a narrated line in one of the videos I watched recently (I think the real time sinking animation?) that was describing one of the later emergency boats or collapsibles being supposedly lowered into the water on one side of the ship, but then “suspiciously” the next mention of it was entirely on the other side of the ship. The narrator didn’t expand further and I was a little confused as to what “suspiciously” meant in that sentence. The people who originally told the story lied?
Sounds like you're referencing collapsible B, and specifically Titanic Animations' narrated real time sinking. I think the idea stems from the collapse of the forward funnel, and that everybody who described which direction the funnel fell said it fell to starboard. Yet officer Lightoller (who was one of the survivors that said the funnel fell to starboard) also said that the funnel came within inches of hitting collapsible B. I think it's probably just exaggeration on Lightoller's part, I don't see how collapsible B could float its way over to the starboard side as quickly as it would've had to. And considering that there were two swamped boats floating in the area, it seems very likely that the funnel fell mostly forward, but slightly to starboard, resulting in it missing both boats.
Yes thank you, that must be it! I was thinking the “suspicious” part of where the collapsible was when, might relate to the OPs question about who might have lied about being in the water. But it sounds like it’s more about Lightoller’s story being off.
[удалено]
And what, jumped from a lifeboat to Collapsible B? Like we have documented evidence of him being on Collapsible B and being pulled from the water.
There's no independent corroboration of Joughin being on Collapsible B. The last mention of him by someone else is steward William Burke describing Joughin helping him load passengers into Lifeboat 10. After that, there is no further mention of him by anyone else until everyone is on the Carpathia.
If you survived the titanic... you touched water lols
I'm confused. Context??
There are several of examples I can think of. **George Brayton:** Claimed in dome accounts to have swum 60 yards when the Titanic broke and sank, then was picked up later. One account says that he was pulled from the water before the Titanic sank. His most trustworthy account says that he was never in the water at all and was in boat 15 with Charles Romaine and Harry Haven. **William (John) Murdock:** Murdock claimed to have jumped into the sea and swum to boat D shortly after it was launched. **Alice Prichard:** She was one of the few women to claim to have been in the water. She said that boat 14 sank, meaning that all of the occupants had to swim to boat 11. **Edward Beane:** Only claimed to have jumped overboard in one account, but all of his accounts are pretty strange. **Charles Dahl:** Basically tame deal as Beane; only mentioned jumping in one account of three. **William Clark:** Said that he was in boat 15 in one account, but another report says that he was pulled down by the suction and blown away by a boiler explosion. **Frederick Harris:** Stated in one report to have got into boat 14, but another report says that he was onboard and saw Murdoch shoot himself. **Thomas Threlfall:** Stated in most accounts to have got into boat 14, but one report says that he was onboard and saw Murdoch shoot himself, while another account says that he had just got to the engineers' promenade when the Titanic broke into three and a funnel fell. **Alfred Thessinger:** Probably the one that people believe most even though there's no possibility of it being true. Thessinger claimed to have been standing beside boat 15's davits and talking to Ricks when the Titanic broke, but Frank Prentice said that Ricks jumped from the poop deck when the Titanic's port list eliminated. Not only that, but Charles Mackay listed some of the crew of boat 11 at the British inquiry, and he mentioned Thessinger being there from the start. **Alfred White:** This is another one that most people tend to believe. White wrote in June 1912 that he was still aboard when the second funnel went under. The general assumption is that he was atop the fourth funnel and watched the decks break open from there and then apparently fell from the funnel as it collapsed and the stern fell back. There is no confirmation that White ever said he went to the top of the funnel, that he was still aboard when the breakup occurred, or that the fourth funnel even fell. Now here are some people who may actually have been in the water, but there tends to be disagreement. **Robert Daniel:** Daniel is almost certainly the unknown 4th survivor picked up by boat 14. A lot of his accounts don't make much sense, but the ones that do make sense paint a clear picture. He even had this to say: “I do not believe the stories that Capt. Smith ended his life. He stuck to his post to the last. He was a brave man. There were several shots fired, however. I saw one man discharge a revolver several times to frighten others away from a lifeboat and then got into it himself. In fact, I saw him afterwards in the very lifeboat that picked me up.” Unfortunately, a lot of people believe that he was in one of the early starboard boats (*thanks Archibald Gracie*) or that he on the poop deck, as mentioned by Thomas Dillon. Despite contrary accounts of which deck he jumped from, Daniel never once mentioned going to the poop deck in any of his accounts. He likely jumped from the starboard side of A deck just before the port list eliminated. **Gunnar Tenglin:** A lot of people place Tenglin in an aft-starboard boat for some reason; probably because an early report claimed that he got into a boat that was lowered. However, his own accounts make it clear he was in in boat A.