Inside Titanic ‘curse’ – grim omens that stopped crew boarding tragic ship

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The curse of the Titanic has struck once again after a submersible tourist vessel vanished in the Atlantic ocean.

British billionaire Hamish Harding is believed to be among the five people missing and the vessel is used to take high paying tourists to visit the wreck.

The famous ship sank in 1912 after it hit an iceberg which killed 1,500 of the 2,200 people who boarded the cruiseliner for its maiden voyage from Southampton To New York.

READ MORE: Missing Titanic tourist submarine looked 'improvised from off-shelf parts of DIY stores'

Now, a century on, even more tragedy has derived from the disaster with a desperate search operation currently underway.

But there are many tragedies surrounding the Titanic which has led some people to believe it was jinxed from the beginning.

Deadly construction

Sadly, devastation was caused even before the famous ocean liner was finished being built.

The construction of it started way back in 1909 in Belfast and eight Harland and Wolff workers lost their lives during their shifts.

Samuel Joseph Scott fractured his skull after falling from a ladder while his colleague John Kelly perished after falling from the ship two months later.

One driller, William Clarke, died from pneumonia after a fall while James Dobbin was crushed by timber.

Another man who died was Robert James Murphy who also suffered an accidental fall which fractured his skull.

Ominous fire

A fire had also broken out in the coal bunkers during the construction period which was another bad omen.

The ship was designed to ferry thousands of people across the Atlantic and it catered for first-class, second-class and third-class passengers.

But heartbreakingly, the death of the shipbuilders who worked tirelessly to get it ready was just the start of the tragedies which we now know are still unfolding today.

The British steamship had a reputation for being “unsinkable” when the monster ship set off in April of 1912.

But right before this, some 50 passengers who had already paid, refused to board at the last hour because they feared something bad was going to happen.

Close call

Even when the world’s largest vessel began its infamous journey, it had a close encounter with another ship.

When Captain Smith fired up the engines of the Titanic, the suction caused hawsers securing SS New York to break.

Gunshot-like sounds were heard as the ships drifted towards each other – but Smith was able to reverse the port propeller to prevent a collision.

However, that aside, the first four days of the voyage were uneventful for the passengers which included celebrities and wealthy industrialists.

Tip of the iceberg

Around 11.30pm on April 14, the Titanic, valued at $7.5million, hit an iceberg and eventually sank.

And author James Bancroft, who penned The Titanic Disaster: Omens, Mysteries & Misfortunes, later wrote: “There are more strange events concerning RMS Titanic than any other ship in history, and the feelings of foreboding and bad omens associated with it suggest that fate had it doomed to a watery grave.

“The iceberg [was just] the weapon that sent it there.”

It sank just three hours after striking the iceberg after taking three years to be built.

There were only 16 lifeboats and four dinghies on board, which added to the scale of the catastrophe.

More than 300 bodies were recovered from the water but it took some 70 years for the ship to be found lying at the bottom of the Atlantic in 1985.

Not all of the passengers died by drowning with one officer reportedly shooting himself in the head during the disaster.

Lost lives

There are countless heartbreaking stories associated with that awful day and just one involved an assistant deck engineer called Thomas Muller.

His wife had died just three months before the journey and he boarded the ship so he could earn money in America for his sons.

He handed his boys a penny each before he left and they remain in the family's possession to this day after Thomas passed away before making it to the states.

And another tragedy from the Titanic was a sailor called Frederick Fleet who was one of just 705 survivors.

He was 23 when he boarded from Southampton after having a lonely upbringing in foster care.

His grandparents had died and records showed that his mum and dad had fled to the states when he was young.

The brave sailor saved women and children before he was ordered into a lifeboat and was rescued by RMS Carpathia.

Incredibly, he worked on ships for the next two decades but in 1964 his wife died before he himself was evicted by her brother.

Depressed, he ended up taking his own life 52 years after surviving one of the world’s biggest disasters.

Submarine disappearance

A submersible vessel headed to the Titanic wreckage has gone missing in the Atlantic Ocean.

The submarine was used to take tourists to visit the wreck of the Titanic, immortalised in the blockbuster film starring Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet.

But after its disappearance, a major search operation has been sparked.

A British billionaire is believed to be among those missing.

The wreck is located about 370 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada – and now searchers are in a race against time to find the submersible that went missing on Sunday morning (June 18).

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