Captain Edward Smith was born on January 27, 1850 in Hanley, Staffordshire, England. He is most noted as the captain of the 
doomed passenger ship the Titanic, which went down in April 1912. Captain Smith was responsible for over 2,200 passengers and crew, more than 1,200 were killed that fateful night of April 14. Titanic was built to the highest standards of the day and was deemed unsinkable. The ship was built in the Harland & Wolfe shipyard in Belfast, Ireland, before setting sail to pick up its passengers in Southampton, England. “She was fine when she left here” is a standard Irish refrain which is still used in Belfast today when conversation turns to the subject of the tragic Titanic. Others say the Titanic was “built by Irishmen and sunk by an Englishman.” Captain Smith was ultimately found “not responsible” for the sinking of the Titanic on her maiden voyage, but is that completely true? There are a few reasons to call into question the qualifications and attentiveness of Captain Smith.
Education
Captain Smith was born the son of a potter and was taking training to follow suit at a school that was sponsored by the famous Wedgwood pottery works. Smith finished school at 12 years old and took to the sea as a teenager. There’s not much known as to what he did during the years between leaving school and becoming a sailor. He did work his way up the ranks and earn certifications in handling cargo vessels, but that had nothing to do with the enormous responsibility that goes along with carrying human freight, or passengers. He certainly had no formal Royal Navy training. It might have been over-reaching to think that 12 year old school drop out could handle the tasks of being captain to some of the largest passenger vessels ever created.
The Olympic
Captain Smith was involved in another disaster, the year before the Titanic accident, involving a sister ship of the Titanic called the Olympic. He was captain of the Olympic and had been in post one year prior to the Titanic disaster when the Olympic was seriously damaged during sea trials in Belfast Lough in Ireland. The Hawke, a British Royal Navy cruiser crashed into the side of the Olympic, and while he was not formally declared responsible, there were investigations. Years later observers say this accident was also his responsibility.
There’s nothing anyone can do to turn back the clock and demand a more thorough investigation of the events that lead up to a Royal Naval cruiser plowing into the side of a huge vessel like the Olympic, but a closer look at the events on the night of April 14, 1912 might suggest that not heeding warnings and obvious dangers could have played a key role in the Olympic mishap.
The Grand finale: Titanic
After the historic launch of the “unsinkable” Titanic which was to make its way from England to New York, did tragedy strike due to the negligence and improper management of Captain Smith? On the night of April 14th 1912, The Coronia, Baltic, Californian and Mesaba all sent warnings to the Titanic that there were icebergs in the area. There are accounts that Captain Smith willingly chose to ignore seven warnings he received about the dangers in the ocean. It is said he ordered the crew to plow through the treacherous icy waters at full speed without any change in course as he should have done in response to the serious danger warnings. Unfortunately we all know the tragic ending of the unheeded warnings.
The Titanic was built in Belfast, Ireland, before it sailed over to Southampton in England. We are pretty clear when it comes to apportioning blame for the Titanic disaster. The ship was fine when it left Ireland.
41 thoughts on “The Infamous Captain Edward Smith”
I agree, all the way. The captain is ALWAYS responsible for his vessel, crew, and passengers. Period! Even if his crew failed to relay later messages of dangers to him, THAT failure is the captain’s fault as HIS crew are under HIS orders, and if they were lacking in their duties it is HIS responsibility to get them up to full competence.
No excuses!
Get the facts Joe – Smith was chosen for the job. It was always planned to sink the vessel – that’s why it set sail with a fire burning midships. Do your own DD but don’t use Google or Wiki.
Guilty
You are spot on, with your note: regarding the Fire, in the Coal storage bins, below decks, A-Mid Ship.
Secondly, as Captain, Smith should have reduced speed, when approaching an Ice Berg field…caution & safety first, while underway, especially at night.
With little or no Formal Seamanship school, of His Majesties HMS Naval Service, the choice of Edward Smith was a bad leadership decision.
Many fore warnings were suggested, yet ignored by Man in charge.
Regretfully, HMS TITANIC, remains intombed, in “Davey Jone’s Locker”.
Hello Joe , the greatest ship of its era ,sank possibly due unprofessional attitude’s and arrogance.
The ships owner would have had great influence over the ships voyage.
The blue ribbon would have been the goal of the day.
That’s only my thinking of the sinking
The seaman ship was sloppy and reflects on the Skipper so he is accountable.
Great comment’s from you all .
I have been interested in the diving and recovery of articles from this ship the filming being incredible .
Regards Jack
he knew the risks yes, but at the time this was the biggest thing, he was able to “drive” the TITANIC not to say he def got paid for it, not knowing a ice berg is miles away isn’t HIS fault, its EVERYONES FAULT. can’t blame a captain for doing what he was doing at the time, while there were other crew members onboard to see it and still relayed the message late. he doesn’t pick these crew members to get on board with him if he didn’t think he couldn’t trust him? It’s like saying your team lost because your best player didn’t score all the goals? Makes no sense to blame an individual rather than blame the whole crew, they trained and experienced, ALL should take responsibility.
It’s definitely his fault. His crew didn’t relay the message late, other ships sent warnings to the Titanic about larger icebergs in the area well before the Titanic could’ve hit one. He just chose to ignore them and ORDERED his crew to continue at full speed instead of changing course. Because when the CAPTAIN of a ship orders you to do something, you just do it since the job of a captain is to literally take responsibility for all lives on the ship, and you would assume that they wouldn’t do anything to put people’s lives at risk. That’s the whole point of a captain, he’s the one that takes full responsibility for anything that happens on the ship and he knew it when he signed up, yet still chose to endanger his crew and passengers which led to one of the biggest tragedies ever. 110% of the fault all lies on him.
He knew the d@mn ship was going to sank before it even set sail. He received a message and ignored it. He then proceeded to say God Himself couldn’t sank this ship. His ignorance was expected due to the fact he wrecked the first ship “Olympic”. Titanic was literally made in replacement of the other ship.
Wow, I’m watching the movie, and it’s always interesting to know some truth, rather than a fictional account.
How sad that the warnings from four other ships were ignored.
When I fell off a paddle board I almost died in an ice cold mountain river. It was shocking how quickly I was unable to use my arms for swimming, they froze up within 5 minutes , and my life jacket was on the board which flew far away. So, my point is that those people in the icy water didn’t suffer long, More tragic tho is the truth that a number of the life boats were not full & they didn’t allow people in the water to get in the boats. Shame on them & we all get our karma for good or bad in this life or the next.
It took about 2 hours for every almost everyone to finally die.
I agree with “K” and Ms. “J” above: The Captain ignored warnings of danger, putting all life on the ship at risk AND those people in the life rafts were selfish to say the least by not allowing more people in them and saving more lives, shame on them. Hope Karma got them, “what goes around, comes around, the good and the bad “ that’s the universe , n my view, and no one escapes it. And this Captain should never have been Captain, also n my view. It’s good that he @ least chose to go down with the ship.
true
Sinking the Titanic was an Assassination of many wealthy men that were agains the US having a Central Bank. Most notably, Jacob Astor the wealthiest man in America at the time was completely against Central Bank control. JP Morgan wanted the central bank and owned the White Star company, owner of Titanic. JP was also a last minute cancelation on this cruise. All to coincidental. I know but 1 year later USA had a Central banking AND the 16th Amendment.
Wow all these years on and still not clear what happened.
The bulk head fire I assume is storage coal.
Is that a regular accurance ?
Replays welcomed .
Thank you Jack
Wow all these years on and still not clear what happened.
The bulk head fire I assume is storage coal.
Is that a regular accurance ?
Replays welcomed .
Thank you Jack
Idk what happened all I know is the titanic eventually sank because of an iceberg
It is always the Captain’s responsibility to run the ship. All orders come from him. He failed to acknowledge the ice warnings that came from not 1 but several other ships! I feel he was highly incompetent for some reason and he had been a captain of the Olympia when it had tragic consequences also just a month before the Titanic!
The man was incompetent and had another White Star Captain been in charge, the Titanic would have stopped to respect the horrific iceberg situation before the tragedy! At least Smith went down with the ship and didn’t jump in a lifeboat!
He was at least loyal and Brave, any other would probably take a lifeboat for himself.
Could it have been captain Smith had a drink before the ship set sail?
Would have had to been one large drink to have still been the reason for his inebriation 4 days later…
He intended to go through the ice at full speed.
He and the shipbuilders believed the ship was unsinkable but it turned out to be WRONG.
Captain E.J. Smith should have paid attention to the warnings so I agree it was his fault I’m doing a project on the titanic and who’s fault it was that it sank and I think it was his fault because he didn’t pay attention to the warnings and kept speeding not slowing down and he is the captain and all this Information is very helpful now I really believe it was his fault
I agree that Captine Edward smith is to fault for the titanic sinking. I am doing a prject that is about the ttanic and the captin should have payed more attention to the iceburg that caused the boat to sink.
Watch ‘Titanic’ from 1953. It is taken from documents of the tragedy. The lack of binoculars, the deflection of keep on course by the captain, the mistakes in tracking incoming wires of different icebergs, the lack of safety boats, etc. All rest upon a negligent Captain who should not have sailed until the basics, bots/binoculars were fixed. Completely avoidable. Tragic
the fire literally did not do anything and did not weaken the iron as you think. The captain guy was given orders from bruce ismay to go faster. This is one of the biggest reasons bruce ismay was always blamed. They also could not find their binoculars which is another whole story but the binoculars could have spotted the iceberg earlier.
He was the Captain. He made the decisions! HIS FAULT!!!!
His only fault was not having the coward ismay locked in the brig for the remainder of the trip after DEMANDING he light the last of boilers.
why’s everyone going against Joe
he was just saying his opinion guys. Calm down.
he was doing an argumentative
I just saw the epic Titanic movie by James Cameron again for about the 5th time since 1997 and it what a wonderful portrayal on the Titanic, though so tragically sad about all the lives needlessly lost.
There are also so many unanswered questions:
Why did the Captain Smith under pressure from Bruce Ismay?
Was there a special jewel of the sea?
Was there a love affair between a Rose and Jack or some kind of romance between a 1st class and 3rd class passenger?
Why couldn’t Rose move over so Jack could lay beside her on the piece of wood when they were in the freezing water?
Why did Rose keep the special Jewel and then throw it overboard all those years later?
Of the millions of gold/jewels/art sunk how much has been reclaimed?
because with both jack and rose on the wood peice is was tip over and both would fall into the water again
I strongly disagree with this!!! smith was asleep when it happend and is not responsible for the sinking.
The people who made the titanic were the shipbuilding company, “Harland & wolff”. Harland and wolff are one of the main reasons that the titanic sank on that moonless night in the atlantic ocean. That reason is because they used a very weak type of iron that becomes weaker when it is in low temperature “Olympic and Titanic were built using Siemens-Martin formula steel plating” So that is one of the main reasons why the titanic sank and killed 1,500 people on that ship that harland and wolff made. If I was the judge i would sue their company.
also titanic is a really good movie
6 warnings of ice and the captain still didn’t turn around!!!
I know right he was stupid
Captain is the one to blame
I still think the captain was solely responsible for sinking of the titanic. First he is the last man to make orders and his orders like in the army are almost executed to the word. Although he was under pressure from Bruce Ismay, he was the captain and was in charge and responsible for the over 2,200 passengers and crew, of whom he lost the souls of more than 1,200 that fateful night of April 14. He was responsible to making his crew to take orders from the chain of command and that did not include Bruce Ismay. He ignored warnings from other ships (4 of them), and having and this lenders the unavailability of binoculars almost irrelevant. Why should you see with a binoculars to believe? At full speed with all boilers burning, including the one meant for redundancy, and all producing full steam, the binoculars distance of view wouldn’t have been enough too (my opinion) to both slow down and steer away from the icebergs. The only sensible thing was to heed advice and both slow down and steer away from the already known course of the icebergs that he was warned of.
– He was not qualified with formal Royal Navy training to handle a large passenger vessel, but just apprentice training in handling cargo vessels.
– He was negligent and overambitious whose main aim was to make a name and a record for himself and the Titanic
– He already had a history of wrecking a vessel, the Olympia, again due to not heeding warning, which should have disqualified him for this job in the first place
– He failed to be in full command, and to use judgement and reason as captain. He bent to arrogancy, ambition, and demands from the ship owners.
– As captain he failed from the set go as the vessel was not equipped with enough life boats, no accessible binoculars nor adequately trained staff for an orderly evacuation protocol
IMO it was the Captain- it always is for he is ultimately responsible for the safety of his ship and passengers. The other person responsible for making a huge mistake was Robert Hitchen- His granddaughter claims that an error in steering on the bridge of the Titanic led to the collision with the iceberg. According to Ms. Patten, the ship had plenty of time to miss the iceberg, but the helmsman turned wheel the wrong way in a moment of confusion. She also says a subsequent order to steam slow ahead rather than stopping the ship, given by the owner Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line, owners of the Titanic, may have dramatically accelerated the flooding and markedly reduced the time the Titanic remained afloat.
The Captain was trying to win the Prise for the record for a liner to record the fasted time from England to New York , its called some colord Riben.