Do Ship lines send their ships through the North Atlantic?

Question

After the Titanic went down....I was wondering if Carnival and other major ship lines still send their ships through the North Atlantic? Do they go near the spot where the Titanic hit the iceberg? Or do they stay away from that latitude?

I know technology has improved a lot and the ships are built a lot stronger now....so I would assume icebergs are not a problem for ships today....but after such a huge disaster , I was not sure rather they would still go near the area of the titanic.

Do ships ever take people to the latitude of where the titanic hit and sunk? (and I dont mean to the sea floor, but above) so they can be there ?

One final question..The Titanic hit an iceberg, and they recoreded where it sunk...how far did the ship pass the iceberg before it actually came to a complete stop and sank? I heard that the front end of the ship was like 600f away from the back (as of now) but how far did the ship travel along water after hitting the iceberg?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Do airlines stop flying after a plane crash?

Did they stop sending the shuttle into space after the Challenger and Columbia accidents?

Do people stop driving after an accident?

The Titanic sunk some 90 years ago.  A long time ago.  Since then technology has advanced quite a bit.  Not to say a ship couldn't hit an iceberg and sink, but today you would have:

-Enough lifeboats for everyone

-Better training on what to do in such an emergency

-Improved radar and sonar to better detect hazards in the water.  You don't have to depend solely on human eyes to spot thing.

-Better and more frequent condition reports by other ships, so if needed you can alter course.

-The VMS or Voyage Management System.  This is basically an autopilot for the ship.  It is what is in control of the ship most of the time.  If it detects something it can alter course.

I used to work on a cruise ship, and I've done an Atlantic crossing.  It's long, there's a lot of water, and not much else.

Answer 2

But to actually answer your question - The Cunard Line has actual Ocean Liners which take a North Atlantic route.  Also Hurtigruten and a few of the more "expedition" oriented small lines do the North Atlantic.

Princes, Carnival, Norwegian, Royal Caribbean, et al, when they go trans-atlantic typically run from Florida or the Caribbean to Spain, well south of the classic North Atlantic route.

Answer 3

There is much  you can read about the Titanic.  A lot of great books were written on the subject and the History channel frequently does a spot on it.

There was more icebergs in the Atlantic that year than any other.  Also, now there are roughly 20 (declining each year) icebergs in shipping lanes.

Do boats still sail Ireland to NY?  Yes.  

Do they go near the spot where Titanic sunk?  Yes.

While it is true technology has improved, a lot of the Titanic's misfortune had nothing to do with the technology at the time but mostly to do with bad management.  They had warnings of icebergs but didn't slow down or vary course.  Multiple warnings.  There are multiple theories as to why--was the operator asleep or too busy sending msgs for the 1st class passengers to get that msg to the bridge.  Would the cap't have altered course if he had the last two msgs of icebergs?  Did the ship that was close --the Californian--have its emergency response turned off?  

They did not have but a couple lifeboats (I believe it's 22) and only a couple were loaded with people and deployed.  Neither were loaded to capacity.  The Titanic actually would have been better off had it never spotted the iceberg and ran straight into it.

The Titanic made a difference in many of the laws though. Martime laws and radio communication laws were changed due to this disaster but while we look at it as not sufficient, really the Titanic would have had as many as most of its peers.  So the Titanic was mostly only a matter of time.

Icebergs are less of a problem due to the documentation of icebergs locations by planes and the extreme decline of the sheer number of icebergs.  There has been a 14% drop in ice since the 1970s and a lot more than that since 1912.  The ships have double hulls now and fully watertight compartments, as well as a rudder big enough to control the ship.

As to how far it traveled from the iceberg, you really can't ever know that.  After the iceberg was hit, the ship was ordered to come to a complete stop.  However the ocean is not at a stop so it would still drift as would the iceberg.  And the two parts of the Titanic came to rest 1/3 mile from each other.  Here is a really complex article where the math guy derives the impact point

http://www.glts.org/articles/halpern/col...

As for a memorial and sailing to there, not so much.  It hasn't been discovered for that long.  The Titanic was discovered in 1985 and there were numerous court battles.  The French always want something.  And it was only decided in Jan 06.  So it is a living wreck still being excavated.  However the 100th anniversary is coming up and a memorial will be planned then.