“I was just paddling and treading water,” he testified.īrock University’s Stephen Cheung is another leading Canadian expert in hypothermic responses. Photo by 20th Century Foxīut Joughin, who had made sure to cinch his lifebelt before going in, met the ice-choked North Atlantic with a stiff upper lip of almost mythic proportions.
Still of a deleted scene from the 1997 blockbuster Titanic, showing Charles Joughin having a swig of whiskey. In the panicked flailing of those first minutes, many drowned or dramatically sped up their loss of body temperature. Regardless, cold shock was a stage that many Titanic victims did not survive. “The average adult is a big chunk of meat and it takes a lot of energy to cool it off,” said Giesbrecht. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. At exactly 2:20 a.m., he rode the sinking Titanic into the sea like an elevator. Photo by Wikimedia Commonsĭeftly moving through swarms of people, Joughin made it to the stern rail of the ship. The Titanic was a violent shipwreck in its final minutes, although Charles Joughin was apparently too inebriated to notice. A sketch made just after the disaster by a survivor. “There was no great shock or anything,” he told the inquiry. And yet, he remembered the violent, catastrophic breakup only as a “great list over to port.” The baker was standing on the stern when the ship broke in half. Parched, he then worked his way back to his pantry to get a drink of water. Joughin then splashed topside again, where he took it upon himself to begin throwing deck chairs overboard, with an eye to filling the water with impromptu floatation devices.
Lord was in touch with Joughin just before the baker’s 1956 death. “He sat down on his bunk and nursed it along - aware but not particularly caring that the water now rippled through the cabin doorway,” wrote historian Walter Lord in A Night to Remember. This could very well have been one of the chairs thrown overboard by Joughin. Article content A deck chair from the Titanic, recovered floating at the disaster site.
However, Canadian hypothermia expert Gordon Giesbrecht figures that in the -2 C temperature of the North Atlantic, the water was cold enough to quickly tighten Joughin’s blood vessels and cancel out any effect of the alcohol. In a survival situation, having all that warm blood away from the vital organs means that the drinker is at greater risk of hypothermia. The warming sensation of a glass of brandy (and the telltale red cheeks that sometimes results) is caused by vasodilation, the phenomenon of warm blood rushing to the surface of the skin.
To be sure, a good rule of thumb is that a drunk man will usually freeze to death faster than a sober man. And, according to the British Titanic inquiry, it was because the 33-year-old Englishman had the presence of mind to greet history’s greatest maritime disaster by getting smashed. It was an almost physiologically impossible feat of survival. Article content Contemporary etching of the British Titanic inquiry. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.
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