FlexibleFlier wrote:I don't mean to spoil this wonderful adventure, but the 4th smoke stack was a dummy - people felt such a large ship needed it for visual balance - and I don't believe should have smoke. However, IMHO, it does look better with the smoke.
Its a very common myth that White Star designed the Titanic with a big, heavy, and expensive 4th Stack for appearances only.
The Titanic was designed to be the biggest, fastest, most luxurious state of the art Steamship afloat. It was to take major market share in the very profitable Atlantic runs.
Since The Cunard Lines Lusitania and Mauritania had four stacks then White Star felt that the Titanic virtually had to have four stacks to be competitive with their major rivals.
While in Florida on business a few years back I was able to visit the big Titanic display in Orlando. I was able to walk along a deck at night and touch an iceberg that was close to the deck. I will never forget how big and cold that ice was. It must have been a scary and spooky night for those passengers in 1912.
You could also walk down the third-class hallways to the cheap-ticket staterooms and the massive carved-oak main staircase was there for you to walk on . Very very impressive.
When you walked in you were given a ticket with the name of one of the real passengers on it. That was you now. At the end of the whole tour you walked past a billboard where the names of all of the fatalities and rescued were posted.
We all scrambled to find our names................................I got killed! I felt pretty bad when I saw that I was one of the 1502 victims of the sinking. It really was quite moving.
To this day I won't touch anything that says Titanic on it! LOL.