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Everyone knows the tragic story of the Titanic voyage. There’s no need to remind anyone of James Cameron’s film or the disaster of April 14 to 15, 1912.
Titanic – where are the bodies
Most of us have certainly come across photos of the wreck, victim statistics, or eyewitness accounts.
However, many questions about the Titanic still remain. What happened to the victims?
Where are the bodies? Were they all recovered? Why don’t corpses appear in the photographs? Let’s start from the beginning.
Only 730 passengers survived
The figures are unclear. The list of people on board was around 2208 – 2228. Some traveled incognito and others didn’t even embark on the voyage.
Only 730 passengers survived the disaster; about 1500 people were confronted with death.
Given the difficult conditions, it was indeed not possible to recover many bodies. It’s easy to guess that some were trapped inside. Dead bodies in the wreckage were not visible at all. Many people are interested in this topic, believing that a body wouldn’t disappear so easily.
1,500 victims
We have 1,500 victims. Some of them sank into the depths of the ocean; others managed to reach the surface only to lose their lives to hypothermia within 15 minutes. After the disaster only 340 bodies were found. 1,160 were never and will never be found. So what happened to them?
Three days after the sinking of the Titanic a ship was sent to find the remaining victims. At that time the bodies were scattered about 80 kilometers from the site of the collision.
Floating bodies were used by birds and marine animals as a food source. Three months after the disaster three people were found as far as 320 kilometers from the wreck!
What happened to the unknown passengers
Those who were not identified were weighted with iron and returned to the sea, which became their grave. 166 of the 340 bodies that were recovered were not identified.
As an aside, it is worth mentioning that the organization of the burials was a business of John Snow (?). But let’s return to the 1,160 bodies that went beneath the surface with the Titanic.
Most of the bodies were exposed to ocean currents, water and pressure, which of course caused accelerated decomposition. James Cameron, during 33 expeditions, stated that he sees only shells and torn clothing. These “shells” were once human corpses.
Conclusion
The remains that most people would expect would certainly not be found on the seabed, at least not in the form of a human likeness. Only shoes and clothing may indicate where a body fell.
For obvious reasons, leather garments decompose much more slowly than human corpses.
We will never know exactly what happened to the passengers’ bodies, but now we view the photos of the wreck a little differently.
