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Tuesday, 19 April 2016

The Titanic's last lifeboat: Amazing photos show vessel containing three rotting bodies - including a man still in his dinner jacket - which was found by passing liner a month later and 320km away

The Titanic's last lifeboat pictured which still contained rotting bodies when it was

The wooden lifeboat, the last to be cast off from the doomed Titanic, was spotted some 200 miles from the wreck site by crew on board the passing RMS Oceanic on May 13, 1912. On board were the decomposed corpses of two firemen from the Titanic's engine room and that of first class passenger Thomson Beattie, 37, who was dressed in his dinner jacket. Photographs and a written account (inset right) of the recovery operation will be auctioned later this week. Pictured, crewman set off for the Titanic lifeboat (circled, inset left) and the recovered vessel (main).

The crew from the RMS Oceanic

Gruesome: This account penned by a passenger on board RMS Oceanic reveals the decomposed state the bodies were in when recovered

The RMS Titanic is pictured in Belfast before it made its way to Southampton ahead of its maiden voyage in April 1912

RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912, after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York.
More than 1,500 people died when the ship, which was carrying 2,224 passengers and crew, sank under the command of Captain Edward Smith.
Some of the wealthiest people in the world were on board, including property tycoon John Jacob Astor IV, great grandson of John Jacob Astor, founder of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.
Millionaire Benjamin Guggenheim, heir to his family's mining business, also perished, along with Isidor Straus, the German-born co-owner of Macy's department store.
The ship was the largest afloat at the time and was designed in such a way that it was meant to be 'unsinkable'.
It had an on-board gym, libraries, swimming pool and several restaurants and luxury first class cabins.
There were not enough lifeboats on board for all the passengers due to out-of-date maritime safety regulations.
After leaving Southampton on April 10, 1912, Titanic called at Cherbourg in France and Queenstown in Ireland before heading to New York.
On April 14, 1912, four days into the crossing, she hit an iceberg at 11:40pm ship's time.
James Moody was on night watch when the collision happened and took the call from the watchman, asking him 'What do you see?' The man responded: 'Iceberg, dead ahead.'
By 2.20am, with hundreds of people still on board, the ship plunged beneath the waves, taking many, including Moody, with it.
Despite repeated distress calls being sent out and flares launched from the decks, the first rescue ship, the RMS Carpathia, arrived nearly two hours later, pulling more than 700 people from the water.
It was not until 1985 that the wreck of the ship was discovered in two pieces on the ocean floor.


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