They say that once all the lifeboats had left the TITANIC a great calm came over the ship. It was as though everything came to a standstill, while the strains of the hymn, "Nearer my God to Thee" were carried across the water. It gave the sinking TITANIC and the unfortunate people on board a touch of something sacred, almost heavenly. One could all but feel the hand of God, a divine destiny at work. Those who had been left behind and were soon to die had a heroic halo around them in this grandiose finalé.

This picture is as false as most of the myths that the world has since demanded of the TITANIC; that it had the most brilliant collection of passengers that any ship could ever have boasted and was the most luxurious vessel ever built. 

Millionaires were to be found on board, but no more or less than on any other Atlantic voyage. And the TITANIC did not in fact have a skating rink, a cycle track or a garden on the upper deck. She didn't carry valuables worth over 100 million dollars or the cursed green diamond once owned by Marie Antoinette.

   Another myth that still clings to the TITANIC is that she was unsinkable. The term "Unsinkable Ships" first appeared as a commercial gimic on the front page of a catalogue from the English firm Stone-Lloyd. This company specialised in making water-tight doors. The inside of the catalogue however refers to "Ships practically Unsinkable".

Internally, amongst the professionals, it was known that no ship was unsinkable. The best proof of this was when TITANIC’s builder Thomas Andrews, who was himself aboard the TITANIC, explained to Captain Smith a few minutes after the collision exactly what was going to happen.

After the accident it was runoured from Harland and Woolf, the Protestant warf in Belfast where the TITANIC was built, that several workers had been trapped inside her double-bottoms and that her hull number 39 09 04 read "No Pope" if seen in a mirror. The ship, they said, was doomed from the begining.

But was it? Could the accident have been avoided? Was it really all the icebergs fault?