An unused ticket to the Titanic launch is on sale:

Unused Titanic Ticket on Sale

Since the Titanic sank on tax day (which seems oddly appropriate), there's the big Centennial "celebration" coming up soon, in case you weren't aware.

I love this line:




It has the most interest because it's the most marketed shipwreck. There are lots of other maritime disasters that are equally interesting, if not more so. Some good examples; the wreck of the General Grant in 1866, the loss of the Patriot with Theodosia Burr, the disappearance of the Waratah, the whole mystery surrounding the Flying Enterprise in the 50's, and of course the Mary Celeste and Amelia Earhart. I won't even bother telling those stories now, except to say that many of them are quite interesting, and have a lot more unanswered questions than the Titanic does, but they don't have an aggressive marketing campaign behind them.

I'll add the Sultana to the list. The Sultana sank in the Mississippi River just miles north of Memphis in April,1865 killing something in the range of 1500-1800 people, mostly Union soldiers being released from Confederate prison camps. With the Lincoln assassination and Booth's capture the day before, it received very little publicity.

I've probably heard of that one before, but have no memory of it. If 1500 people can die on a riverboat, it's got to be bad.


The General Grant is a story I've always found interesting, though, and every few years I check in to see if they've learned anything new. A sailing ship in 1866, got caught in a current, and wrecked in a cave. Survivors lived as castaways in the Auckland Islands for a year or so until they got rescued. They went back looking for the ship, since it had quite a good sized gold shipment on board, but never could find the cave again, and at least one survivor died looking for it. I can't imagine why it would be so hard to find now.

The Patriot OUGHT to be massively famous, not only for the story, but since Aaron Burr's daughter died on it, but for some reason it isn't. The ship just disappeared on the way to New York. Years later, some US officials met the British Admiral who was blockading the coasts at the time (the War of 1812 was going on at the time). He said that he'd encountered the ship on New Year's Day and let them pass, since it was a non-military mission (awfully decent of him). That night their whole fleet was scattered by a storm, which is probably what sank the Patriot. But there are rumors and legends that the ship was captured by land pirates (very lazy pirates, who didn't go to sea, they just lured ships onto the rocks during storms by putting a donkey on the shore with a lamp on its back to simulate a ship in dock) and attacked them once they were beached. Years later, a portrait turned up in Nags Head, North Carolina, that people think might be Theodosia Burr, which would support the land pirate story, but nobody was really sure, because nobody was alive who remembered what she looked like in 1812. The mystery ought to make this story super famous.

The Mary Celeste, probably everyone knows. The ship was just found empty and drifting, with no crew, no damage, and very little missing. Various theories havae been put forth over the years (Dr. Who theorized that they were attacked by time travelling Daleks), but the most reasonable one seems to be that the crew thought the alcohol in the hold was about to explode, and abandoned ship (apparently forgetting to tie a line from the ship to the lifeboat), and never made it to shore.

I mentioned the Waratah a few years back. A ship just disappeared in 1909 from Cape Town to Durban. In the days before radio, that could happen, but the whole trip is very near shore, and they never found any wreckage, debris, or anything. Plus, someone left the ship just before the accident because of a prophetic dream about the ship sinking. There was a big hullaballoo between people who thought the ship was badly designed and top heavy, and people who thought it wasn't. Best guess is that a freak tidal wave swamped it and took everything to the bottom. Some guy spent like 20 years looking for it, hoping to find it and market it as "Australia's Titanic" (seriously), but finally gave up and said he didn't have the slightest idea where it was.

The Flying Enterprise was a big news story in the early 50's. They tried to tow a crippled freighter back to port, the captain and first officer stayed aboard as long as they could, but finally had to leave just before it sank. That's not too interesting by itself, but there was some super-secret salvage operation carried out afterwards, indicating some very valuable cargo. Some rumors said that it was carrying zirconium for the Nautilus, but who knows if that's true? That's a story worth looking up again, actually. I'm interested now.

Not a ship, but for Swedes, you can't beat Andree's bizarre balloon trip over the North Pole, in which he knew his balloon was leaking helium, but secretly refilled it at night to hide the leakage. I assume he was so heavily invested in the expedition that he couldn't back out, even though it might cost him his life. Sure enough, he went down a day or so after leaving, his whole troop spent a couple of months trying to make their way back to Svalbard over the ice, came pretty close to doing it, and then mysteriously died. (Rumors I heard said that it was tainted meat, or improperly canned foods, or something like that that got them).

There was a story I heard once, not at all famous, about a ship called the Asiatic Prince, that disappeared in a storm in the 20's. What made it interesting was that its radio operator apparently gave out the wrong call letters in the SOS, and identified themselves as another ship halfway around the world. The owners of the other ship were notified that their ship had been lost, and they said no it hadn't been. It's almost unheard of for a radio operator to get his own call letters wrong, which led to wild theories about the ship being captured by Chinese pirates and the like. Most likely they just went down very quickly in a storm, only had time for one brief SOS, and were sinking so fast that the operator just keyed it in wrong (the call letters were only slightly off, a dash instead of a dot, or something).

Amelia Earhart everyone knows. In fact, I saw a story recently about them finding another clue, and sending out another expedition. Will this be the time they finally find her?


The Titanic is a good story, full of human hubris, and Man Against Nature stuff, but most of these stories are equally interesting, and would be big news too if they had the Titanic's marketing campaign behind them.

These historical events have always been of interest to me. Thanks for sharing, Petrosianic.

Yeah, a lot of these stories are fascinating. Another interesting one I remember reading about as a kid, that easily has as much pathos as the Titanic, and would make a great movie, was the wreck of the HMS Victoria in the 1890's. It was interesting mainly because nobody knows what the guy who caused it was even thinking at the time. There was a British admiral on maneuvers. He had two lines of ships steaming along parallel to each other, and gave an order for both lines to turn TOWARDS each other, do a 180 degree turn, and end up moving in the opposite direction. Problem: The two lines of ships were MUCH too close to each other to be able to do this safely. People tried to tell him this and he shrugged them off. At one point he increased the distance a bit between the two lines, then shortened it again. When they attempted the maneuver, the two lines of ships turned in on themselves, and the two lead ships smacked into each other. Major disaster, hundreds of people dead, all because one normally talented guy had one colosally bad day.

Problem is, they still don't know what Admiral Tryon was thinking when he gave the orders. When I read about this as a kid, the author theorized that the distance between the two lines was so short because he had intended for both lines to pass each other during their turns, not turn in on each other. But I read other accounts that discounted this, saying it would have been a huge mess for every ship in this line to pass its counterpart, and that he really had intended for them to turn in on each other without hitting, but just got some calculations wrong in his head about what would constitute a safe distance. Or maybe he was thinking of the distance needed for a 90 degree turn instead of a 180, or something like that. Still, this is an amazing story about how one gigantic brain fart can turn even the greatest's name to Mud in a couple of minutes.

I remember hearing that it led to a huge inquiry about officers blindly obeying orders. The Admiral went down with the ship, so they couldn't question him. But they tried to nail the Victoria's captain. He kept objecting, and asking for permission to reverse the engines, but didn't actually do it until he got permission. They couldn't bust him, though, because he was acting on the direct orders of a commanding admiral who was physically present at the time. But the fact still remained that a lot of people saw this easily-preventable disaster coming, but it happened anyway. There was also a bit of a scandal about one (nearly two) of Britain's best battleships being sunk by a low speed ramming.

The other Admiral on the scene got off the hook too. He'd gotten an order that seemed impossible to obey safely, but accepted it. He hesitated in accepting it, but got a curt "What are you waiting for??" message from the other Admiral, and so just went along with the order rather than rock the you-know-what. Everyone just seemed to think that Tryon was going to issue a follow-up order at the last minute that would make the whole thing work. There are so many interesting angles to this story; what was Tryon thinking? What should the others have done to stop it? There's even a legend about partygoers at Tryon's estate seeing his ghost coming down the stairs, before anyone knew he was dead.

And, just as the Titanic has that bit about not carrying enough lifeboats, I'd heard the Victoria would never have sank if they'd gotten their watertight doors closed quickly enough, but it was a hot day and they were all open to ventilate the ship. I also heard it said that it would have been better if the two ships had stayed stuck together longer after ramming, to keep the water out, but they were going full astern by that time, which pulled the ships apart again, and made things worse. (This would look great in CGI).

A few years ago I did some checking on this story again, and found that they had actually found the wreck (they hadn't when I first heard about it), and that the Victoria was actually stuck into the ocean's floor at a 90 degree angle, like a dart. (The only other ship I've ever heard of that sank this way was a Russian monitor that sank the same year.) There's a shot of it on this page:


Pre-Dreadnought Preservation H.M.S. Victoria

I was looking at the new release of Lasker's Manual of Chess, and saw something noteworthy. You know how a lot of instructional books tell you all the ways a game can be drawn (agreement, 50 move rule, et cetera). Perpetual Check is usually listed as one of the methods, and annotators talk about it all the time. On page 32, Lasker gives an example which he says results in the game being drawn by perpetual check. There's a footnote which reads:'



This is all true, and something that books usually don't point out. But that wording is interesting. "Under today's rules"? Does that mean that there used to be rules that made it possible to draw by perpetual check? And if so, what were they? Anybody know?

They ought to change the name of the Capablanca Memorial to "Capablanca Simul" this year. Ivanchuk is leading but he has no Name Brand opposition.

It's not quite as bad, after all Nepomniachtchi and Dominguez are rated over 2700. And the Capablaca Memorial was never really an all-elite event anyway. Btw, why isn't Bruzon playing this year?

Yeah, they're 2700, but still not really what you'd call big names outside their home country. On the other hand, most people kind of unofficially regard 2700+ as "Elite", so it depends how you look at it.


But here's something awesomely cool. Nakamura just played an Evans Gambit in the US Championship!

[Event "2012 U.S. Championship"]
[Site "Saint Louis, MO, USA"]
[Date "2012.05.08"]
[Round "1.6"]
[White "Nakamura, Hikaru"]
[Black "Hess, Robert"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "C51"]
[WhiteElo "2775"]
[BlackElo "2635"]
[PlyCount "65"]
[EventDate "2012.??.??"]
[TimeControl "6000+1110"]
[WhiteClock "0:42:48"]
[BlackClock "0:05:07"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. b4 {You might be inclined to believe this is never played at this level barring the exception of exceptions, but that is not quite the case. Among the top players who have wielded this weapon more than once are Fressinet, Jobava, Morozevich, and the biggest expert of them all: British GM Nigel Short. That said, this is the first time Nakamura has played it.} Bxb4 ({Many prefer to avoid the complications and danger by steering for a positional game leading to an Italian where White has a lot of space.} 4... Bb6 5. a4 a6 6. c3 Nf6 7. d3 d6 8. Nbd2 O-O 9. h3 Be6 10. O-O Re8 11. Bxe6 fxe6 12. Nc4 Ba7 13. b5 Ne7 14. Bg5 Ng6 15. Nh4 Nxh4 16. Bxh4 Rf8 17. Qb3 Bc5 18. Rad1 axb5 19. axb5 Qe8 20. d4 exd4 21. cxd4 Ba7 22. Bxf6 Rxf6 23. Rd2 Rf4 24. Ra1 d5 25. Ne3 Bb6 26. Rxa8 Qxa8 27. exd5 exd5 28. Nxd5 Rf7 29. Nxb6 cxb6 30. Rd3 Kf8 31. Rf3 Rxf3 32. Qxf3+ Ke7 33. Qe4+ Kf7 34. Qf5+ Ke7 35. Qe5+ Kf7 36. Qc7+ Kg8 37. Qxb6 Qc8 38. Qc5 Qe6 39. Qe5 Qd7 40. h4 h6 41. g3 Qc8 42. Qd5+ Kh8 43. Kg2 Qc7 44. Qe5 Qd7 45. h5 Kh7 46. Qe4+ Kh8 47. b6 Kg8 48. d5 Kh8 49. Qe6 Qd8 50. d6 Qxb6 51. Qe8+ Kh7 52. d7 {1-0 (52) Wang Hao (2736) -Ponomariov,R (2723) Beijing 2011}) 5. c3 Bd6 6. d4 Qe7 7. O-O Nf6 8. Nbd2 O-O 9. Re1 Ba3 {While Black's plan with Bd6 is strange looking it is considered solid, if somewhat passive. Ba3 looks bad on principle as it seeks to exchange off one of Black's developed pieces for one of White's undeveloped ones.} (9... Na5 10. Bd3 Nc6 11. Nf1 Re8 12. Ng3 Qf8 13. Bg5 exd4 14. Bxf6 Bxg3 15. hxg3 gxf6 16. cxd4 d6 17. d5 Ne5 18. Nd4 c5 19. dxc6 bxc6 20. Bf1 Qh6 21. Rc1 c5 22. Nf3 Bg4 23. Be2 Red8 {1-0 (23) Fressinet,L (2693)-Naiditsch,A (2684) Nancy 2011 }) 10. Nxe5 Nxe5 11. dxe5 Ne8 12. f4 Bxc1 13. Rxc1 d6 14. exd6 cxd6 15. Nf3 Bg4 16. h3 Rc8 17. Bb3 Bxf3 18. Qxf3 Rc5 19. Re3 Nc7 20. e5 dxe5 21. Qxb7 a5 22. Qe4 Ne6 23. fxe5 Re8 24. Rd1 Qc7 25. Rdd3 h6 26. Bd5 Qb6 27. c4 Qb1+ 28. Kh2 Qxa2 $2 {A blunder, but Black was in big trouble anyhow.} ({For example after} 28... Rc7 29. Rg3 Qb6 (29... Qxa2 $2 30. Bxe6 fxe6 31. Qg6 {threatening e8 and Qxh6}) 30. Qf5 Rce7 31. Be4 Nf8 32. Rd6 Qc7 33. Qg4 {and Black's position is untenable.}) 29. Bxe6 fxe6 30. Rd7 Kh8 31. Rxg7 Kxg7 32. Rg3+ Kf8 33. Qh7 1-0

I'm trying to figure out what recognized international player had the most classical victories against another recognized international player.

As far as I can figure, it's Marshall, who beat Janowski 35 times (against 27 defeats).

Other players with more than 20 wins against the same guy:

Karpov, who had 31 wins over Korchnoi (with 14 defeats).

Kasparov: 29 wins over Karpov (against 21 defeats).

Portisch: 26 wins over Larsen (against 14 defeats).

Rubinstein: 23 wins over Salwe (against 8 defeats).

Who else has dinged the same guy more than 20 times? (I'm sure I'm missing some obvious ones). And can anyone beat Marshall's 35 number?