MESSAGE TO MY READERS

I published my Wednesday article on Tuesday so that this message could be placed in my blog today.

I won’t be publishing articles in my blog on Friday, April 6th and on Monday, April 9th as I will be in Washington D.C. and I won’t be back in Canada until late Monday evening. I will however be publishing an article on Wednesday the 11th of April. The article will be Terrible Prisons (Part 1)

I will be giving my readers a treat on Friday (April 13th) Monday (April 16th) and Wednesday, (April 18th). As you are probably aware, on April 15th (Sunday) one hundred years will have passed since the sinking of the Titanic. I will be publishing a three-part series on that incredible event in history.

I have an advantage that most people around the world never had with respect to the sinking of this ship. In 1947/48, I lived with Captain Radley Liversidge and his wife Carol on their farm in Nelson, British Columbia for the school year. I was 14 years of age then and the captain was 81 years of age. He told me great stories about his life at sea and about the Titanic. He knew a great deal about the Titanic because in 1912, Bruce Ismay, the chairman of the board of directors of the White Star Line offered Captain Liversidge the post of being the captain of the Titanic since Captain Smith who was the senior captain of the line was due for retirement.

After Captain Liversidge was given a thorough tour of the ship, Ismay told him that he would have to plow through the ice field south of Newfoundland, full speed and non stop at that as Ismay wanted the ship to have the Cross Atlantic speed record on its first sea-going trip. Captain Liversidge told Ismay that he couldn’t accept the post because his brother was dying. The real reason he turned the offer down was that the captain would slow down the ship when he reached the ice field. And if he did this, Ismay would fire him when the ship arrived in New York. As we all know, Captain Smith was then given the post and the rest is history.

Captain Liversidge gave me a lot of information about the Titanic and I have a book about the Titanic and I also found much about it in the Internet. I have condensed what I know about that great ship in one large article. Because the article is so large, I have divided the article into three parts.

The first part will be published on April 13th (Friday). In that article which is titled, The Sinking of the Titanic: A description of the ship and life on board, I will describe the ship and tell you about the passengers and crew and what life on board that ship was like for them.

The second part will be published on April 16th (Monday). In that article which is titled, The Sinking of the Titanic: Who was to blame? I will describe in great detail how eight men were at fault with respect to the loss of 1517 lives of the passengers and crew of that ship. The irony is that if any one of them had done his job properly, none of the crew would have died and neither would any of the passengers would have died.

The third part will be published on April 18th (Wednesday). That article is titled, The Sinking of the Titanic: Final moments of the Titanic and how fate played a role in it. Aside from describing the ship’s final moments, I will also explain four strange events with respect to the sinking of that ship that will truly boggle your minds.