PRESENTS
THE WORLD’S W RST
The acts of nature and human error that resulted in tragedy
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CONTENTS From earthquakes and epidemics, to human errors that have devastated entire countries, disasters have as much of a place in history as war and politics. Here we take a look at six of the worst disasters ever, the reasons behind them, and the aftershocks that still resonate today.
Alicea Francis Production Editor
The World’s Worst Disasters
04 The Haiti Earthquake
An orphanage worker tells her remarkable story
08 The Hindenburg Disaster
An eyewitness account of the airship tragedy
12 Titanic: The Unsinkable Ship
its murky resting place
20 Black Death
Discover the gruesome tale of a medieval epidemic
26 Mao’s Disaster Plan
The famine that devastated a country on the rise
32 Chernobyl
How the luxury liner came to
What caused the worst nuclear accident of the 20th century?
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Eye Witness HAITI EARTHQUAKE
A poor neighbourhood in Port-au-Prince reduced to rubble after the earthquake
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Eye Witness HAITI EARTHQUAKE, HAITI, 12 JANUARY 2010 Written by Frances White
MELANIE WRIGHT ZEEB Melanie fell in love with Haiti when she visited in 2004 and in 2008 moved there to work at God’s Littlest Angels adoption orphanage near the capital city of Port-au-Prince. Melanie was working at the orphanage when a magnitude 7.0 earthquake devastated the city and has since written about the tragedy. She now lives in the USA and is working on her next book.
O
‘‘
I remember just standing there and wondering if it was ever going to end or if we were just going to shake forever
’’
n Tuesday 12 January 2010, at 4.53pm, a powerful earthquake tore mercilessly through the Caribbean country of Haiti. Measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale, the quake would not only devastate the landscape and infrastructure of the nation but would also claim the lives of at least 100,000 people. Suddenly the world’s press was focused on the povertystricken land and images of destruction, ruin and death were pumped across every news channel. Behind the numbers and horrifying images, thousands of real people were struggling to survive; Melanie Wright Zeeb was one of those who was unlucly enough to personally experience the quake that shook the world. American-born Zeeb first visited Haiti in 2004 on a short business trip with her church and instantly fell in love with the country and its people. She spent the next couple of years trying to find a way back and in 2008 moved there to work at God’s Littlest Angels, an orphanage located in the picturesque Kenscoff Mountains above the capital city of Port-au-Prince. In the afternoon on 12 January 2010, Zeeb was just coming to the end of a long shift and was looking forward to taking a shower and relaxing. “It had been a really long day and I had spent my day taking pictures of all the kids in the orphanage. I was very tired, the day was very stressful”, she explains. Drained from the busy shift, Zeeb had returned to her office and was waiting for her computer to go through a back-up process before she could finally go home and relax. The day was far from over, though.
“I was sitting at my desk and all of a sudden I felt the tremor go through the desk, I felt it in my hand. I didn’t know what was going on, it was a very strange sensation, but in my mind it was coming from the desk,” she says. “I was on a chair with wheels on it so I pushed back from the desk very quickly and the motion of me moving backward in conjunction with the earth moving completely disorientated me and I got very dizzy. I looked at the floor to try to get my equilibrium back and when I looked at the floor I thought it was moving up and down, almost as if I were a kid sitting on a seesaw.” Disorientated and confused, Zeeb looked behind her and saw the heavy filing cabinets that lined the wall swaying back and forth; slowly her mind began to understand just what was going on. Suddenly afraid that they were going to fall on her, Zeeb leapt to her feet. “I had heard this advice at some point to get in a doorway during an earthquake so I went to the next doorway which was about 12 feet [four metres] away and I stayed there and waited out the remainder of the earthquake.” Although the shaking only lasted approximately 40 seconds, as Zeeb stood terrified in the doorway of her office, the tremors seemed never ending. “It felt allencompassing and I remember just standing there and wondering if it was ever going to end or if we were just going to shake forever.” When the initial earthquake finally stopped, a dazed Zeeb and her colleagues gathered outside the orphanage, unsure what was happening or what to do. “There was a lot of chaos and confusion when it happened, a lot of
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Eye Witness HAITI EARTHQUAKE
Timeline of a natural disaster CST
4:53pm 12 January
l The quake hits A magnitude 7.0 earthquake hits Haiti, with an epicentre near the town of Léogâne. 25km (16mi) west of the capital of Portau-Prince.
5:00pm
l The staff and children of God’s Littlest Angels orphanage gather outside as they wait for the aftershocks to pass.
6:53pm
l Over the two hours after the earthquake, eight aftershocks with magnitudes between 4.3 and 5.9 are recorded.
11:00pm
6:00am 13 January
4:50pm
l A tireless rescue People dig through the rubble through the night using flashlights and torches, hoping to save the thousands of people trapped beneath. l Rescuers discover the dead body of Port-au-Prince’s Catholic Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot in his office at the cathedral. l The first international aid team, ICE-SAR from Iceland, arrives in Port-au-Prince within 24 hours of the earthquake striking.
6:00am 14 January
l Haiti struggles to cope As aftershocks begin to slow, mass graves are dug for the estimated 50,000 dead. Morgues overflow and hospital parking lots are littered with bodies. Medical supplies run dangerously low.
10:00am 16 January
l At God’s Littlest Angels orphanage, two strangers arrive with a pick-up truck full of supplies.
6:00pm
l Mobile hospitals A field hospital with specialised facilities to treat children, the elderly and pregnant women is set up by a rescue team from the Israel Defence Forces’ Home Front Command.
6:00pm 17 January
l Rescue efforts continue Reports show a record-breaking number of rescues, with 12 survivors pulled from rubble in Port-au-Prince bringing the total of survivors dug out from the rubble to 110.
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Residents of Cité Soleil, one of the poorest areas in Portau-Prince, look for resources
The second storey of the Haitian presidential palace completely collapsed in the earthquake
“Over 50 aftershocks were recorded after the initial earthquake, some measuring as large as 5.9 on the Richter scale” our volunteers […] came down and when they came they brought children with them.” The workers and children stood outside for 40 minutes, shaken and confused, before they thought it safe to return to the building. But the earthquake wasn’t finished yet, “Literally ten minutes after we went inside we experienced two fairly major aftershocks. At that point we went back outside”, she recalls. Terrified their building was going to collapse around them, they prepared to stay outside for a while until it calmed down but she admits, “I’m not sure what we were expecting.” Zeeb and the others at the orphanage were lucky, the building escaped only with cracks and minor damage, but this was not the case for much of the capital city. The quake had struck the most populated area in the whole country, affecting three million people. There was widespread damage across the country, with an estimated 250,000 homes and 30,000 commercial buildings collapsing or suffering extreme damage. Landmark buildings such as the presidential palace, national assembly building and the main jail were also ravaged by the quake. It wasn’t just the quake that would test the spirits of the people of Haiti, though – the aftereffects created multitudes of struggles to overcome. “One of our most immediate concerns […] was the shortage of supplies," recalls Zeeb. "We had supplies in the orphanage but due to the number of children that we were caring for and the amount of storage space we had, it was a concern.” With 152 confused and vulnerable children to care for, Zeeb and the staff at the orphanage struggled mightily to gather enough supplies in the panicked country: “We didn’t know, nobody knew at that time, about the others, about the houses […] we knew the harbour had sunk. So we didn’t know when any of the supplies in Haiti were going to be replenished.” With the care of orphaned children entrusted to her and her coworkers, Zeeb felt a heavy burden on her shoulders. “Kids tend to pick up your attitude, if the people entrusted with their care seemed okay then they
know they’re okay.” Cut off from the world and unsure of when the next supplies were coming, Zeeb focused on ensuring the children would feel calm and safe, “We helped them to feel a certainty that we didn’t. A lot of them were so young, they were so resilient.” Many of the children were from newborn to three years old, but the older children had a better understanding what was going on. “We were able to explain to them – it’s okay, we are going to take care of you, and they would trust you.” Try as she might, Zeeb could not stop the ground from shaking. Over 50 aftershocks were recorded after the initial earthquake, some measuring as large as 5.9 on the Richter scale. “The aftershocks would not stop”, Zeeb says. “With everything else we were dealing with, it was just one more drain on us mentally, emotionally and psychologically – the fact that there was nowhere we could go where we could just be still.” Ravaged by aftershocks and desperate for food and water, the orphanage staff would travel to the grocery stores that had not been destroyed and stand in the long, slow lines, hoping to bring something back. Little did Zeeb know that help was coming and, drip by drip, supplies started to find their way to the orphanage. “As the days went on we started realising the world was coming to help, they were literally coming, they were sending aid”, she recalls. A group of Americans had heard of their situation and brought them supplies; there was even a group who chartered a plane with supplies to the orphanage, and people who had adopted children there sent what they could. Accustomed to seeing negative attention toward Haiti in North America, these acts of kindness were touching to Zeeb. “The world had seen the tragedy and was responding to cries for help – and that was one of the most heartening things.” The orphanage worker recalls one such instance that happened shortly after the quake. After learning about the destruction of the harbour, the orphanage staff felt completely and utterly cut off from the rest of the world, “We knew the situation there was bad in terms of our ability to function, so we felt completely
Gonaives
1.0
2.0 3.0 4.0
5.0 6.0
7.0 8.0 9.0
Microearthquakes – Several million per year.
Hautes Feuiles
Earthquake intensity Extreme
Saint-Marc
Violent
Minor – Over one million per year.
Petite Rivière de l'Artibonite
Serve
Minor – Over 100,000 per year
Very Strong
Light – 10,000 to 15,000 per year. The Kent earthquake in Britain in 2007 measured 4.3. Over 450 properties were damaged and two people were injured in that quake.
Strong Moderate Light
Moderate – 1,000 to 1,500 per year. Strong – 100 to 150 per year. In 1989 the Loma Prieta earthquake in California measured 6.9. 3,757 people were injured and 63 killed, leaving up to 12,000 homeless.
Mombin Crochu
The epicentre for a magnitude 5.9 aftershock, Petit-Goâve was severely damaged by the earthquake and the town’s water system was destroyed.
Camp-Perrin
Great – One per year. Great – One per ten to 50 years. 2011’s Tōhoku earthquake in Japan was 9.0 on the Richter scale and triggered a powerful tsunami; the final death toll stood at 15,887.
alone.” But on the Saturday morning after the Tuesday quake, the orphanage received two anonymous visitors she had never seen before. “They were at our gate and they brought us food, water and I don’t even remember what else”, says Zeeb. “It wasn’t a lot, I think it was what they could fit in a pick-up truck, but just having them there and knowing that was the first actual physical embodiment of any sort of help from the outside was extremely encouraging.” The quake had struck Haiti to the core and the country struggled to cope. “The government did what they could, but they were so crippled, they lost key officials as well – a lot of the government officials died in the earthquake”, Zeeb explains. "The governmental infrastructure was basically nonexistent after the earthquake.” After losing their homes, leaders, loved ones and struggling for food and water, Zeeb marvelled at the strength of the people around her. “The thing about Haiti is that the people there are so resilient, they already have so little, that they were used to making the best of a bad situation.” To this day, Zeeb likes to remember the quake, not for the devastation, but for the acts of kindness, companionship and strength that shone through the darkness.
Cabaret
Petit-Goâve
Anse-a-Veau
Major – Ten to 20 per year.
Boucan-Carré
Anse-à-Galets
Port-au-Prince
Most of the central area of Haiti’s capital was destroyed and the seaport and airport were severely affected.
Santo Miragoane
Aquin
Ganthier
Jacmel Léogâne
The town nearest to the epicentre. It was the island's worst-affected area with 80-90 per cent of the buildings damaged and no remaining government infrastructure.
Approximately 70 per cent of the homes in Jacmel were damaged, with severe damage in the poorer neighbourhoods. Jacmel Bay was also hit by a small tsunami.
Origins and aftermath
Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and has a history of natural disasters. During its time as a French colony the central city of Port-au-Prince was destroyed twice – once in 1751 and again in 1770. Haiti struggles with a history of national debt, unfair trade policies and frequent foreign invention that are all thought to have contributed to the poverty rife in the region. This poverty, especially the poor housing conditions, is thought to have massively inflated the death toll as a result of the quake to an estimated 100,000. After the 7.0 earthquake hit, countries around the world responded with humanitarian aid and rescue efforts were covered by the world press and across social media. The aftermath of the quake is still being felt today – with a cholera outbreak linked to the rescue efforts.
People working together to retrieve goods from a damaged building in Port-au-Prince
Beauty From Ashes, Melanie Wright Zeeb’s eyewitness account of the Haiti earthquake, is published from Ambassador-Emerald International and is available through Amazon and iTunes.
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US soldiers help the crew of a US Navy helicopter unload food and supplies at the Port-au-Prince airport
Debris and destruction in the streets of the neighbourhood of Bel-Air in Port-au-Prince after the earthquake struck
© Melanie Zeeb; Free Vector Maps/Alamy
Richter scale explained
Where it happened
Eye Witness HAITI EARTHQUAKE
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Eye Witness HINDENBURG DISASTER
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Eye Witness HINDENBURG DISASTER, UNITED STATES, 6 MAY 1937 Written by Dom Reseigh-Lincoln
NICK RAKONCZA Nick Rakoncza was five years old when the Hindenburg came to a fiery demise at Lakehurst Naval Air Station. He was present that fateful evening and his first-hand experience has helped provide a vital insight into one of history’s most iconic aviation disasters. Now 82, Nick is a tour guide at the site of the crash, now known as the Navy Lakehurst Historical Society.
I
‘‘
I often wonder how many of the people in the ship waving to me were not alive that next morning
n early-May 1937, airship D-LZ 129 Hindenburg sets off from Rio de Janeiro on a three-day journey to Europe. At only two years old it’s one of the largest airships floating in the skies of the world, ferrying passengers with the money and the taste for a more luxurious means of travel. But as it sets down in Germany for a brief stopover before heading for North America, no one knows its next voyage will end in tragedy. While the fiery descent of the Hindenburg over Lakehurst Naval Air Station is far from the worst airship disaster of its age (the loss of the USS Akron over the coast of New Jersey, which left over 70 people dead in 1933, is considered the most catastrophic), it remains one of the best known. Its spectacular conflagration has been immortalised in photos and radio coverage and its demise signified a turning point in airship popularity. Aviation historian Nick Rakoncza was one of those people who looked to the skies on that fateful night, and it’s an event that’s stayed with him his whole life. “The day is warm and sunny with no wind, if my memory serves me well,” he recalls. “It’s late in the afternoon and my mother tells me we’re going downstairs to see the Hindenburg. We live in a small apartment on the second floor of a townhouse, so it’s quite a way for me to walk at such a young age. I tell her ‘okay’ trying to figure out what she was talking about. I’m only five and a half years old at the time so my worldly knowledge is obviously limited. ‘What was a Hindenburg?’ I wondered, ‘and what was so important about it?’”
’’
The Hindenburg, as it turns out, is quite the famous airship. Originally designed in 1931 by German airship manufacturer Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH, it’s the flagship of its class, dwarfing all other aircraft at a staggering 245 metres (803.8 feet) in length and 41.2 metres (135.1 feet) in diameter. Rather than using the highly flammable gas helium, the Zeppelin company chose to use the less dangerous (but substantially heavier) gas hydrogen instead. By the time it sets off from Rio de Janeiro on the beginning of its final voyage, the Hindenburg has completed 17 transatlantic flights. Even though enginebased aircraft are slowly becoming a more commercially viable means of travel, the Hindenburg is still the domain of rich socialites. So as it approaches New Jersey, local families from miles around gather with news crews to witness an aviation celebrity descend from the sky. “Not wanting to get left behind, I follow my mother downstairs and across the street to a coal yard owned by people with whom we were friendly”, remembers Nick. “We’re invited to sit on top of an icehouse, which is not unlike an ammunition bunker. It’s an odd sight to say the least, but it’s a perfect place to watch the airship come in to land. There’s a real sense of growing excitement. People from all around the neighbourhood are gathering to watch. The vans from local newsrooms whizz past as fast as ambulances, racing to the reach the airfield in time.” It was then that the giant airship finally came into view. “After a short while, someone points to a dot
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Eye Witness HINDENBURG DISASTER
Timeline of an aviation disaster EDT
2.00pm 3 May 1937
● The takeoff After a round trip to Rio de Janeiro and two test flights, the Hindenburg takes off from an airfield in Germany.
4.00pm 6 May
● While travelling over the Atlantic, the Hindenburg encounters no real trouble but takes a detour near New Jersey to avoid storms.
6.22pm
● Hindenburg heads toward Lakehurst Naval Air Station. Its 36 passengers and 61 crew members are now late by almost half a day.
7.00pm
● At an altitude of 200m (650ft), the Hindenburg approaches Lakehurst. The captain is scheduled to conduct a high landing.
7.09pm
● Ground crew unprepared Despite the delays already clocked, the Hindenburg makes a full-speed left turn because the ground crew is not ready.
7.11pm
● The Hindenburg is given the all clear and the captain orders the ship back toward the landing strip.
7.17pm
● The wind shifts direction and the captain orders the ship take another sharp left turn.
7.18pm
● Tanks of water are emptied from the ship as it’s too heavy to attempt a flying moor.
7.21pm
● The mooring lines are dropped to the ground as a light rain begins to fall.
7.25pm
● Witnesses note the fabric of the ship beginning to flutter, suggesting a gas leak is passing through the airship’s main structure.
7.25pm
● Fire spreads An intense fire is now spreading across the port side of the Hindenburg, consuming the fabric around the hull.
7.26pm
● A fuel and water tank suddenly burst out of the hull. The passenger deck is quite severely cracked from the explosion.
7.28pm
● The stern implodes with great force and the Hindenburg loses buoyancy, forcing the tail of the ship down.
7.29pm
● Flames burst through the inside of the airship, killing nine of the 12 crew. Some of the passengers leap from the ship and perish in the fall.
7.30pm
● With fuels cells still exploding, the stern of the ship eventually strikes the ground. One crewman on the ground is killed during the impact.
7.30pm
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● Crash landing The airship has crashed to the ground, with emergency services trying to save crew and passengers from the fiery wreckage.
over Staten Island, New York, which certainly doesn’t impress me”, laughs Nick. “The dot gradually becomes larger as it flies over the Kill Van Kull waterway (The Dutch originally settled in much of the area, hence the name) and finally over Woodbridge, New Jersey. As it gets closer, I can hear the heavy drone of the big diesel engines. They’re so loud! I remember covering my ears to begin with, but I soon get used to it. As it continues toward us, it flies almost overhead at about 120 metres (400 feet) or less in altitude and about 30 degrees down
The cindered frame of the Hindenburg on the day after its fatal crash at Lakehurst Naval Station
from my location. It fills the sky above me like nothing I’d seen before.” As the airship passes overhead and into the airfield proper, a light rain begins to fall. Inside the airship, the crew of the Hindenburg is preparing to throw down the mooring lines. The passengers, excited to finally arrive at their destination after a long journey, wave happily to the folks below. “The observation deck windows are open and the passengers whose faces I could see are waving handkerchiefs, hats and hands and, being a nice little guy, I smile and wave back,” remembers Nick. “Now I am impressed and wonder how something so big stays floating in the air. It continues west over the nearby hill and out of sight.” The Hindenburg, carrying 36 passengers and 61 crewmen, had enjoyed a fairly unremarkable journey from Germany. It was already fully booked for its return journey to Europe a day later, with plans to arrive in time for the coronation of King George VI in London. Its trip to the United States was something of a lowkey affair in comparison to its other voyages, but it still attracted considerable media attention from across the country. The cameras were already pointed to the sky as the Hindenburg approached the airfield. The captain, Max Pruss, decided the Hindenburg would attempt a high landing (otherwise known as a flying moor, where a blimp drops its mooring ropes from a high altitude before being pulled down to the ground), however the crew weren’t ready, so Captain Pruss ordered the pilot to take the airship on a loop around the airfield. Upon its second attempt to set up for a landing, the airship slowed down and released some its gas reserves. At a
“The bow lurched up and the airship was now descending tail first toward the airfield. As cameras started to roll the stern hit the ground” Hindenburg’s final landing 3Bailing ballast
Around 500kg (1,100lb) of water ballast is released from the side of the hull as the ship is deemed too heavy for a high landing.
2
Passing gas
The Hindenburg now circles the base, waiting for clearance. Gas is routinely released from the ship in order to slow its speed and decrease height.
4Fiery impact
The Hindenburg eventually loses buoyancy, crashing tail-first into the ground in front of the air station’s main hangars.
Lakehurst 1 Approaching
The Hindenburg makes its initial approach into the airspace of Lakehurst at an approaching altitude of 200m (650ft), ready for a high landing.
Eye Witness HINDENBURG DISASTER The front page of The New York Times the day after the disaster – note the lower death toll that was initially reported
airship haywire. The bow lurched up and the airship was now descending tail first toward the airfield. As cameras started to roll the stern hits the ground, the intense explosion that followed killing nine of the 12 crewmen instantly, as well as a crewman on the ground. Passengers and members of the crew leaped from the slowly descending airship, many willing to risk the great fall rather than remain on the fiery giant. Some survived the fall, but others weren’t so fortunate. A considerable amount of gas remained in the front section of the blimp so the bow continued to point upward as the stern collapsed. The disaster continued as the passenger deck disintegrated, trapping passengers in the intense, merciless heat. The remains of the gondola hit the ground, causing the final fuel cell to blow. As the Hindenburg finally came to a standstill, the hydrogen and diesel continued to burn for hours afterward. While the death toll was not the highest for an airship disaster of this type, it was still plastered across wirelesses and newspapers across the world. Recalling that fateful night, Nick Rekoncza can still picture those happy passengers waving from the passenger decks. “I often wonder how many of the people in the ship waving to me were not alive that next morning”, he says. “They all looked so happy to be home and that image has stayed with me my whole life.”
The Hindenburg legacy
Even before that fateful night in New Jersey, the prominence of airship travel was beginning to fade from the public mind. And while it would take the catalyst of a second global conflict to really accelerate its industry, traditional aeroplane designs were already becoming much cheaper to manufacture, as well providing a more financially viable option for public use. The fiery end of the Hindenburg – and the 35 passengers and crewmen who perished along with it – simply signified the end of a costly and inherently dangerous transport era. Despite a relatively low death toll, the wide news coverage of the event helped elevate the disaster to almost iconic status. Much like the loss of the Titanic, the Hindenburg disaster lives on in industrial infamy.
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Two bloodied passengers are tended to in the aftermath of the disaster
© Alamy; Corbis
height of around 120 metres (400 feet) the Hindenburg prepared for its landing, but a shift in the wind forced Pruss to order the airship on another circuit of the airfield. After nearly 20 minutes of delay, the Hindenburg was finally ready to land. It was then the crowds on the ground near the landing site began to realise something was going terribly wrong. The fabric of the airship was starting to ripple violently from its stern to its bow, with some onlookers remarking at flashes of blue light near its tail fin – some onlookers remarked that it was static electricity, while others thought it might be St Elmo’s Fire, a type of atmosphere anomaly. The mood of the crowd had now shifted from enraptured excitement to taut apprehension. Young Nick, now back home, could sense something was awry over at the airfield. “It’s way past my bedtime, but getting to sleep is a big problem. About three blocks from us, there’s Route 35, the main highway south, and from there I can hear the wailing of sirens. My father recognises them as ambulances and fire trucks. I can hear my mother speaking to our neighbours down the hall so I slink out of bed and creep to the window. Over the hill beyond our suburb, the sky isn’t dark and black. It’s bright orange, as if someone had set the horizon on fire.” Nick was right; tragedy was indeed striking a few miles away. The tail of the Hindenburg had now caught fire as a muffled explosion rocks the back of the blimp. The fire began to spread across the whole craft, causing a fuel tank to burst from the hull like a missile. The exploding stern sent the buoyancy of the
This picture shows the Hindenburg gliding over New York earlier in 1937
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“God himself could not sink this ship” It was the first word in luxury travel but the Titanic disaster shook the world Written by Andy Brown
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The unsinkable ship
A
t 12.15pm on 31 May, 1911, the largest ship that had ever been constructed was launched into the water for the first time, causing a not-inconsiderable wake in the River Lagan in Northern Ireland as all 52,000 tons of it entered the water. Over 20 tons of soap and candle wax were spread on the shipway to help lubricate the great beast’s entry into its natural habitat where, like a seal labouring on the land before gliding in the water, all of a sudden the great monster changed from an inert piece of metal into something imbued with grace and power. Members of the press and tens of thousands of spectators were in attendance, with tickets actually being sold for the event. This was not just a national event, but something with international appeal; the unveiling of the largest ship ever to take to the water, the industrial marvel of its day. The launch might have occurred without a champagne bottle smashing onto the bow of the ship, but this was a rare moment lacking in pomp. The chairman of White Star Line, the prominent British shipping company behind this new venture, J. Bruce Ismany, was in attendance as well as other important businessmen. This was an exciting time for the company as the Titanic – the name derived from Greek mythology meaning gigantic – was actually only one of three of their new Olympicclass ships that were designed to bring a new meaning to size and luxury when it came to sea travel. The other two ships – Olympic and Britannic – would, along with the Titanic, usher in a new age. On the same day the Titanic was launched, the Olympic successfully finished its sea trials. A new age of sea travel had truly begun. The Titanic was the flagship and the ship everyone clamoured to get a ticket to travel on; Titanic was the name on everyone’s lips. This last point would be realised, more so than the company could ever have wished, but for markedly different reasons, when the ship sunk in the cold and murky waters of the Atlantic Ocean and claimed with her the lives of over 1,500 souls. The Titanic and her sister ships had been built by White Star Line to compete with the ship builders Cunard, which had built the fastest ships ever constructed. In the early-20th century, before air travel had entered its golden age and become available to others than only the super-rich, travel by the oceans was the main form of transport from country to country, and indeed, continent to continent. White Star Line decided to compete on not just speed but also on luxury and extravagance. Their new ships were forged in Queen’s Island in the industrial docklands of Belfast and no expense was spared – the estimated cost of the Titanic was $7.5 million (£4.6 million), an absolute fortune for the time. The Titanic was constructed at the same time as the Olympic, with both ships taking around 26 months to make. It would be generous to even label the safety precautions as adequate, although to be fair to the makers of the ship, they were fairly standard for the time and injuries were probably
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The unsinkable ship made worse due to the fact that no ship building of this size had been attempted before. Construction of the Titanic began in the spring of 1909 and was carried out by the men of Harland and Wolff, the firm given the mammoth task. During its construction just under 250 injuries were recorded, with 28 of these classified as ‘severe’, where limbs were severed by the gigantic cutting machinery or workers were crushed on the building site by stray pieces of metal. Official figures put the death count during the making of the ship at nine; these would not be the last deaths caused by the ship made to be the last word in luxury. The docks at Southampton on 9 April 1912 were a flurry of activity; high-class gentlemen and ladies arrived in motorcars with servants carrying their luggage filled with the finest clothes, silentfilm stars milled about and families looking for a new life and adventure on the other side of the world in the United States tried to control their excitable children from running around the deck. The ship may have been luxurious but it was financially unfeasible to fill a ship this size with only the upper class, so different-class tickets were available: A first-class ticket cost between £30 ($50) and £660 ($1,080) – or £1,875 ($3,060) to £41,000 ($67,000) in today’s money. Second-class tickets were available from £12 ($20) – £750 ($1230) in today’s money, and buried out of sight in the bottom of the ship, a third-class ticket could be purchased from £3 ($5), which equals £190 ($310) today. The largest third-class cabins could hold ten passengers, a world away from the resplendent luxury of first class. At 12pm the next day the passengers boarded the ship and its journey began. There were 2,223 people on board (1,324 passengers), of which there were 13 couples on their honeymoon. The journey almost got off to an inauspicious start when, after pulling away from Southampton docks, the wash from the giant ship’s propeller caused a laid-up ship called New York to break from her moorings
The Titanic and the Olympic were built at the same time
A group of shipbuilders gather under the Titanic’s propellers to give an idea of its size
The iceberg that it is believed sunk the Titanic
The Titanic under construction
1. Journey begins
5. Warnings ignored
6. Iceberg ahead 7. New York
The passengers rescued by the ship Carpathia arrive in New York on 18 April to be met by friends, family and a throng of press.
At approximately 11.40pm on 14 April, the Titanic strikes an iceberg. 20 minutes later the captain orders the crew to ready the lifeboats.
The Californian, a ship not far away from the Titanic, sends an ice warning at around 7.30pm on 14 April. Captain Smith is at dinner and doesn’t receive the message. Later that night the Titanic radio operator receives more ice warnings that evening but doesn’t act on them as he is busy sending and receiving passenger messages.
On 10 April 1912, the Titanic sets sail on her maiden voyage from Southampton, England to New York, USA.
3. Ireland
The Titanic stops at Queenstown in Ireland to pick up its final passengers.
4. Ice warnings
While en route through the Atlantic, the Titanic receives numerous ice warnings from other vessels.
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2. First stop
The ship stops at Cherbourg in France to pick up more passengers.
The unsinkable ship
“Women and children first”
“Official figures put the death count during the making of the ship at nine; these would not be the last deaths caused by the ship” and swing towards the Titanic. Quick action from Captain Edward J Smith helped avert a premature end to the maiden voyage. The unfortunate incident was seen by those thus inclined as an ill portent for the journey ahead. The ship’s itinerary called for the vessel to stop at Cherbourg and Queenstown (Cork) before making the journey across the Atlantic to New York City, expected to take seven days. The ship was equipped with enough amenities for a much longer voyage, though. Among the facilities on board were four restaurants, a swimming pool (entry fee was one shilling); two barber shops, two libraries, one fully-equipped gymnasium and one photographic darkroom. The ship held
15,000 bottles of ale, 8,000 cigars, 40,000 eggs, 36,000 apples and 57,000 pieces of crockery. The ship also carried 20 lifeboats, which was more than the law required but too few to safely evacuate all of the passengers on the world’s largest ship, with the lifeboats capable of holding approximately 1,178 people. However, this fact was not given much thought or care, and why should it have been? The Titanic was a triumph of modern technology. It is unclear whether anyone ever explicitly referred to it as the ‘unsinkable ship’ but this sentiment was certainly the general feeling at the time. It has been reported that a Titanic crew member remarked to an embarking passenger: “God himself could not sink this ship!” Part of this
Captain Edward J Smith (1850-1912) was one of the White Star Line’s most experienced captains. Aged 17 he travelled to Liverpool to begin his apprenticeship on the ship Senator Webber before he joined White Star as a Fourth Officer in 1880. He quickly rose through the ranks and seven years later was given his first command. Smith became commodore of the White Star fleet in 1904, after which it became routine for him to command the line’s newest ships on their maiden voyages and it is said that he gained such a reputation as a captain that some passengers would only travel on ships where he was in command. However, this is not to say that he had not had previous incidents; in 1911 while captaining of the Olympic, the ship collided with a British warship, leaving Smith’s vessel to limp back to port. The Royal Navy blamed the ship, saying that due to its massive size it had created a suction that pulled the warship into her. It was an indicator of how difficult it could be to operate these new giant ships. By 1912, Smith had served at sea for 40 years, with 27 years in command. However, when the Titanic collided with the iceberg this experienced captain did not cover himself in glory, and many believe that he panicked. He did not issue a general call for evacuation, he withheld information from his crew – for example, Quartermaster George Rowe did not find out the ship was sinking until over an hour after the collision and phoned the bridge from his watch station to ask why he had just seen a lifeboat lower into the water. The captain did not supervise the loading of the lifeboats and according to later testimony it was the second officer who actually suggested getting the women and children into the lifeboats before others. Captain Smith, aware of the enormity of the situation, retreated into his shell and appeared to simply wait for the inevitable. The great captain, as legend dictated, went down with his ship.
Captain Edward Smith was one of the world’s most experienced captains
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The unsinkable ship
Inside the Titanic
Pure luxury
Main staircase
The first-class decks had luxurious cabins, gyms, Turkish baths, cafes, á la carte restaurants, libraries and a squash court.
Lifeboats
The ship had 20 boats, all located on the upper deck: 12 at the bow and 8 at the stern, capable of carrying a total of 1,178 people.
Lookout booth
Stern
How the collision happened 11.40pm 10% Just 37 seconds after sighting the iceberg and having tried to avoid it, the Titanic touched it at a speed of 22.5 knots (41.7km/h / 26mph).
90% submerged
The impact would create six large cracks in the submerged part of the bow hull.
How the sinking unfolded
Á la carte restaurant
Decorated in Louis XIV-style furnishings and with an exquisite wooden panelling. The menu was designed by Auguste Escoffier, the most famous chef of that time.
The rubbing of the iceberg against the hull created six cracks below the waterline, flooding five watertight compartments. If only four had been flooded, the ship would not have sunk.
2.15am
Water floods the compartments and its weight sinks the prow.
The hull’s front part is detached.
The keel is subjected to tremendous pressure. The ship breaks.
confidence was that the ship’s double-plated bottom and 16 watertight compartments designed to close if water entered them were believed to offer the utmost in security. Several years before he took command of the Titanic, Captain Smith was quoted as saying: “I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder. I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to this vessel. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.” This comment tragically sums up the overly confident attitude of the time. With the voyage under way and the ship generally travelling full steam ahead, the ship’s two radio operators were busy. Senior operator John George Phillips and his junior, Harold Sydney Bridge, had agreed a system where the radio was operated for 24 hours a day. They also
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The command bridge is destroyed.
had one of the most powerful radio systems in the world , giving them a 640-kilometre (400mile) transmission range with the large antennae between the two masts used to send and receive the messages. A large part of the radio operators’ job was to pass on and send messages from the crew and this responsibility – and perhaps pressure to keep some of their rich and privileged passengers content – contributed to the disaster. Starting 11 April, the ship began to receive ice warnings from other ships further ahead of her in the voyage and by the time of the disaster they had received at least five warnings. Perhaps the most striking of these both occurred on 14 April. First, the radio operators overheard an ice warning that was passed onto the bridge but was not brought to Captain Smith’s attention as he
Boiler rooms
They were six, where each one had five boilers – except the sixth one, with only four – of almost 100 tons each.
2.20am
The stern rises vertically for a moment before sinking.
was at dinner. The second incident occurred when the ship Californian – which was approximately 32 kilometres (20 miles) from the Titanic – reported to the Titanic that she was blocked in by ice. Phillips, the radio operator on duty at the time, signalled back to tell him to stop bothering him, that he was busy. The Californian’s radio operator switched his radio off and went to bed. Less than an hour later the Titanic, rushing through the water at just under 23 knots (42km/h / 26mph) on the cold and clear evening collided with an iceberg. Would things have been any different if the message had been passed onto the bridge and the captain? With the benefit of hindsight it seems like an astonishing neglect of duties by the radio operator. However, the captain and other senior members of the crew were well-aware of
The unsinkable ship Data sheet
First-class cabins
They had private bathrooms and were equipped with electric stoves or, in the case of the suites, a chimney.
Length: 269m (882ft) Beam: 28m (92ft) Displacement: 52,310t Cruising speed: 21 knots (39km/h / 24mph)
269m
28m
Technical innovations
The Titanic had four elevators, three for first class and one for second.
Logo
The front of the ship carried the logo of the White Star Line, a red flag with a white star on it.
Command bridge
Bow
Swimming pool
“On 11 April the ship began to receive ice warnings from other ships that were further ahead of it” the ice warnings, as several had been passed on previously. It’s unlikely that even if this final warning had been relayed that anything different would have occurred. What we do know is that at 11.40pm, lookout Frederick Fleet spotted an iceberg immediately ahead and alerted the bridge. First Officer William Murdoch ordered the engines to be put into reverse and for the ship to be steered around the obstacle but it was too late. Far, far too late. Just 30 seconds after the iceberg had been spotted the giant ship, the embodiment in man’s industrial prowess, careered the starboard side of its frame into the iceberg, cutting open a series of holes below the waterline. The actual collision wasn’t that strong, indeed, many of the ship’s passengers who had already retired to bed remained asleep, their dreams
undisturbed. However, after a survey of the ship Captain Smith realised that serious damage had been done and that water was rapidly being taken on. The Titanic was sinking. At the British enquiry following the accident, Edward Wilding (chief naval architect for Harland and Wolff), calculating on the basis of the observed flooding of forward compartments 40 minutes after the collision, testified that the area of the hull opened to the sea was, “Somewhere about 12 square feet (1.1 square metre).” Modern ultrasound surveys of the wreck found that the damage consisted of six narrow openings in an area of the hull covering about 1.1 to 1.2 square metres (12 to 13 square feet). Regardless, the ship was going down. Less than 20 minutes after the iceberg had been struck, lifeboats were launched into the water
One of the most luxurious rooms aboard the Titanic, Stateroom B-59, decorated in Old Dutch style
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The unsinkable ship and the radio operators had started sending out a distress signal. The standard distress signal at this time was the ‘CQD’ signal – ‘CQ’ was the signal to other ships to stop transmission and pay attention and the ‘D’ was added to indicate distress. In 1906, the signal ‘SOS’ was created for the characters’ simplicity in Morse code: three dots, three dashes and then three dots. The radio operators on the Titanic used both distress signals – for the help that they immediately received though they may as well have invented some new distress signals and used them as well. The California – the ship that had earlier warned the Titanic about ice – was by some distance the doomed vessel’s nearest ship, although how far away it was has become a topic of hot debate. The radio operators called to it, saying: “Come at once. We have struck a berg. It’s a CQD, old man.” However, neither this nor any of the other messages they sent was met with a response. A later, more desperate message read: “We are putting passengers off in small boats. Women and children in boats. Cannot last much longer. Losing power.” Above This photograph shows the last lifeboat successfully launched from the sinking Titanic
Left Hearses line up on Halifax wharf, Canada, to carry Titanic victims to funeral parlours
Legacy of the Titanic
The ship was seen as the very embodiment of modern technology and that it sunk was a shock to everyone. The disaster ended the career of the White Star Line chairman, J Bruce Ismay, who was on board but survived on a lifeboat. Many believed he should have, like the captain, gone down with his ship and in 1913 the board of directors denied his request to continue as chairman. Separate inquiries were held in the US and Britain to identify the cause of the disaster. The US committee was seen in Britain as an attack on the British shipping industry but both committees reached similar conclusions and, as a result, improvements to safety were made. These included a decree that ships has to carry enough lifeboats for those aboard, that radio communications on passenger ships would be operated for 24 hours a day and that the firing of red rockets from a ship must be interpreted as a sign of distress.
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There are a number of Titanic museums and memorial monuments across the world; from an 18-metre (60foot) lighthouse built in New York, to memorials in Southampton, Liverpool and Belfast. The ship was constructed in Belfast and it is here that a memorial statue and a garden was opened in 2002 around the original Titanic monument, which contains 15 bronze plaques listing in alphabetical order the names of all those who died on RMS Titanic. The ship has left behind a cultural legacy, with a number of films, books and television shows about the tragedy. At the ship’s 100th anniversary a number of events marked the event, such as a cruise ship that retraced the journey and took part in a memorial service at the spot where it sank. This event led to accusations of bad taste, but left no doubt that the Titanic still captures the public’s imagination.
Not getting any response from the California on the radio the Titanic began firing their distress rockets into the air. However, the ship still did not respond and at a later enquiry apprentice officer James Gibson admitted that they had seen the lights but, after attempting to contact the Titanic through Morse code – not radio – and getting no reply it was decided that no action should be taken. On the doomed boat itself, the crew members were attempting to take control of the situation but most were criminally unprepared. On that very morning Captain Smith had planned a lifeboat drill but for an unknown reason it was cancelled. If it had gone ahead it is likely that many lives could have been saved as no one on the ship seemed to be aware how many people each of the lifeboats could safely hold. The captain’s call for ‘women and children first’ was, in the main, observed and the result was that many men stood on the slowly sinking ship and could only watch as lifeboats were filled to half capacity before they were lowered
The Titanic signature building in Belfast is a museum dedicated to the iconic ship
Newly-rescued crew members being given dry clothes in New York City
“ That very morning Captain Smith had planned a lifeboat drill but for an unknown reason it was cancelled” into the ice-cold water below. The first lifeboat that launched (Lifeboat 7) only carried 24 people, despite having a capacity of 65. The fewest-recorded people carried on a lifeboat through was one that only took 12 even though it had a capacity of 40. It may have been women and children first but to even have a chance of getting off the ship social class was all-important. The third class were located in the depths of the ship and had to navigate a
mini-maze in order to get out onto the deck; and that was if they even realised that something was wrong. The boat had no public address system and while the first-class stewards were responsible for only a few cabins the second and third-class stewards had much greater numbers to take care of. In the third class the best passengers received was simply being informed of the need to come up on deck. In some cases it was much worse. Titanic survivor Margaret Murphy was a thirdclass passenger. She wrote later: “Before all the steerage passengers had even a chance of their lives, the Titanic’s sailors fastened the doors and companionways leading up from the third-class section ... A crowd of men was trying to get up to a higher deck and were fighting the sailors; all striking and scuffling and swearing. Women and some children were there praying and crying. Then the sailors fastened down the hatchways leading to the third-class section. They said they wanted to keep the air down there so the vessel could stay up longer. It meant all hope was gone for those still down there.” The first lifeboat entered the water at 12.45am, although the crew had initial difficulty in persuading passengers that they would be safer on them rather than the ‘big ship’. Soon after the first, a number of other lifeboats entered the freezing water while crewmen on the Titanic fought a desperate and ultimately doomed mission to expel the
water seeping inn. It soon became apparent to all that the ship was sinking and the reactions of the crew and passengers was striking in their variance. Some couples separated, with the women taking a lifeboat and the men staying on the ship but others refused to part. The co-owner of the department store Macy’s, Isidor Straus, was reportedly told by his wide Ida: “We have been living together for many years. Where you go, I go,” and the pair sat down in deck chairs and waited for whatever hand fate dealt them. Industrialist Benjamin Guggenheim changed out of his life vest and sweater into top hat and evening dress, stating to those around him he wished to go down with the ship like a gentleman. Many members of the Titanic band continued to play their instruments. At just after 2.00am the angle the ship was lurching at became more acute, causing a giant wave to crash along the forward part of the ship and wash many passengers into the sea. Sadly, they were only the first to enter the water that night. The ship snapped in half and the stern began to lift into the air and, to add to the terror, the lights soon went off, plunging the ship into total darkness. Soon afterwards the ship would be in darkness forever, as it plunged into the water to make its way to the bottom of the ocean. Those lucky enough to be on lifeboats had to spend hours floating in them, waiting for rescue, listening to the death throes of those not fortunate enough to get on a boat. These poor souls died in the freezing waters, crying out in anger, despair and fear as debris from the ‘greatest ship in the world’ floated alongside them. With an estimated temperate of −2 degrees Celsius (28 degrees Fahrenheit), some would have died instantly from the shock of the cold, while for others death by hyperthermia would have been agonizingly slower. Mercifully for those in the water – and those who had to hear their cries – most slipped away after 20 minutes. Now those in the lifeboats had only silence and the black night for company and it was several hours until the Carpathia, which had travelled full steam ahead throughout the night at considerable risk to herself, arrived at 4.00am. The survivors entered their rescuing ship by any means they could; some had enough strength left to climb up the rope ladders that were dangled down, others were hoisted up in slings, with mail sacks being used for children. Either way, for a lucky few the ordeal was over. The Carpathia arrived in New York in the evening of 18 April to be greeted by a throng of 40,000, among them family members of passengers and some of the world’s media. It was only several days after the ship had docked that the sheer scale of the disaster became public knowledge. Trips would have to be made to try to collect those who had perished and inquiries would be held to determine the cause of the disaster. The ‘unsinkable ship’, the great marvel of modern technology that was a symbol of man’s advancement and skill had vanished into the depths, claiming the lives of over 1,500 souls. The world would never be quite the same again.
© Sol 90 Images; Corbis; Mary Evans
The unsinkable ship
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Black Death the terrifying true story of the outbreak that crippled the world Written by Gavin Thomas
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Black Death
A
fter enjoying generations of sunshine and warmer climes, Europe had undergone an unprecedented population boom that saw more people living on the continent than ever before. At the turn of the first millennium there were 24 million people in Europe, and by 1340 this had reached 54 million. Entire countries were straining at the edges of their farmlands and eating into the forests, and the availability of food was beginning to reach the limits of population support. A dire evil, however, stalked the land, just as the Little Ice Age began, and a century later Europe’s population had plummeted to 37 million. The true origins of this bringer of death are unknown, though many people believe it emerged in south-east Africa centuries ago and crept along the Nile to the Eurasian continent. This monster scurried on a million legs through the dank holds of ships, grain-stuffed silos and mills, filthy streets and docks slick with grime – and much worse in the years to come. It sprang from the backs of great black rats, borne in the blood of fleas infected with Yersinia pestis, and thrived in the blood-flecked sputum of the plague’s violently coughing victims. It wept from the bulbous, stinking sores that erupted in people’s groins and armpits. It struck fiercely and mercilessly, bringing down towns in a matter of days, erasing families in mere hours. While we now call this great pandemic that brought Europe to its knees in the mid-14th century the Black Death, it was known by a different name at the time – the apocalyptic moniker, Pestilence. With the Hundred Years’ War sweeping western Europe and conflicts with the unstoppable Golden Horde in the east, famine beginning to cripple countries whose populations were at the limits of sustainability, and then sickness swiftly following – bringing with it death – the people of the world knew that Pestilence was upon them, and many feared the apocalypse drew near… Pestilence is shrouded in mystery, and even now researchers still debate the exact components of the beast and the path it took across the continent. What is certain is that it originated in the eastern end of the continent, and worked its way through the Mongolian Empire before piercing Caffa (now Feodosiya in Ukraine), Sicily and southern Europe, reaching peak strength as it smashed into France and England. Scientists agree that its main weapon was bubonic plague, a bacterial disease carried by infected fleas that fed on the black rats ubiquitous to the continent, but were also known to dine on other types of rodents, rabbits and, sometimes, larger mammals like cats. The bacterium itself – Yersinia pestis – was a rather nasty piece of work; it would infect the blood of fleas and then cause a buildup of old blood and cells within the proventriculus (a valve preceding the flea’s stomach). This blockage meant that when a hungry flea tried to bite its next victim, the high pressure in its stomach would force some of the ingested blood back into the open wound, along with thousands of bacterial cells that had accumulated in the proventriculus. This swarm of Yersinia pestis would then drain along the lymphatic tract of the victim from the source of the bite down to the nearest lymph node. Once there, the bacteria would proceed to colonise the lymph node so entirely that it would swell, stiffen and ooze a rancid pus.
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Black Death Since most people were bitten on their legs, this would usually be the lymph node in the groin. These enlarged lymph nodes, known as buboes, were the main sign of Pestilence; ugly and painful, they ranged from the size of a grape to a fat orange and they made any movement unbearable. Before the appearance of the buboes though, victims would have a slight warning. Flu-like symptoms would appear first, swiftly followed by a high fever. Within a day or two these would be joined by ‘God’s tokens’ – small circular rashes, also called roses – that would spread over the body and particularly around infected lymph nodes. Caused by weak blood vessel walls and internal haemorrhaging, they were a sure sign that you didn’t just have a nasty cold, as noted by Shakespeare: ‘the tokened pestilence where death is sure’. Things tended to move quickly once the buboes had boiled up through the skin. Diarrhoea and vomiting would ensue, as would often septic shock due to the buboes bursting, with respiratory failure and pneumonia wiping up the last sops of life. Within two weeks, four out of five people who contracted the plague died. Agnolo di Tura del Grasso, a chronicler from Siena, Italy, captured the terror of the time well: ‘I do not know where to begin describing its relentless cruelty; almost everyone who witnessed it seemed stupefied by grief. It is not possible for the human tongue to recount such a horrible thing, and those who did not see such horrors can well be called blessed. They died almost immediately; they would swell up under the armpits and in the groin and drop dead while talking. Fathers abandoned their children, wives left their husbands, brothers forsook each other; all fled from each other because it seemed that the disease could be passed on by breath and sight. And so they died, and one could not find people to carry out burials for money or friendship.’ In the face of Pestilence and the approaching end-times, King Philip VI of France commissioned the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Paris to deduce the source of the evil so that it might be eradicated. The findings of these professors did not bode well, for they ascribed the tragedy to the conjunction of Saturn, Mars and Jupiter in Aquarius, and to the position of Saturn in the House of Jupiter – and nothing could be done to challenge the will of the cosmos. At the time, Jupiter was believed to be the source of warm, humid vapours, while hot, dry Mars was thought to ignite them. These pestilential vapours were thought to form a thick, stinking smog of sickness known as a miasma, which was compounded by the sulphurous eruptions of volcanoes and wrathful power of earthquakes. Believed to be the main culprit of the Black Death, people gave up bathing (as it opened the pores to miasma), barricaded themselves in closed rooms hung with thick tapestries to block out the poisoned air and took to carrying nosegays and pomanders to avail themselves of the evil stench. None of this would save them though.
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“It was a staggering loss in this age of arable farming, where the majority of the country’s wealth lay in the land” In 1346, amid reports from the east of biblical plagues – rains of frogs and serpents, hail, stinking smoke and thunder – the Mongols of the Golden Horde attacked Caffa – an island port off the north coast of the Black Sea. The horde laid siege to the city and were all set for a protracted campaign when the Black Death struck them in the back ranks. Suddenly, their army was dying and the siege began to fall apart. What followed is the first known incidence of biological warfare: about to pull back and return to the east, the horde first gathered up the diseased bodies of their dead and catapulted them over the walls of Caffa. Instantly, Pestilence struck Europe, and though it took around 15 years to cross Asia it would destroy Europe in less than five. As the horde went home, defeated, the Black Death ran around the coast of the Black Sea and straight through the Byzantine Empire (south of modern Bulgaria). By 1347 – just as Joan of England, of the House Plantagenet, was departing Britain to marry Prince Pedro of Castile and form a political alliance – it had arrived on the Mediterranean and struck Messina in Sicily. Here, frightened peasants were beginning to realise that the monster attacked by sea and had started to refuse ships at the port, but it was a case of too little, too late. Trading ships from Genova and Constantinople carried the plague to the Italian mainland, where it ran up and down the infected rivers, canals and walkways. By 1348, 600 people were dying each day in Venice; Rhodes, Cyprus and Messina had all fallen. The invasion gathered pace and then punched up into the heart of Europe, striking down 60 per cent of Marseille’s population and half of Paris’s. The bewildering death toll was so high that the mayor of Bordeaux even set fire to the port, in a remarkably prescient move considering the fact that serpents and smog were more feared than rats at this stage.
Kill or Cure
A number of herbal treatments were thought to be effective against the Black Death. Sufferers were regularly prescribed, depending on their income, solutions of ground emeralds or potions made from the crushed shells of newly laid eggs mixed with chopped marigolds, ale and treacle. Treacle was, in fact, a leading remedy, though it had to be at least ten years old to have any potency. Another effective, if less appealing, curative was urine – two glasses a day was widely thought to strengthen the constitution and fend off disease. Treatment of the buboes was a trickier affair. In their terror, people believed they could draw out Pestilence by holding bread against the boils and burying it – or, more incredibly, by strapping a live hen to the swelling, rinsing and repeating. Physicians later discovered that
Britain fared little better at the time. Arriving on the south coast of England in 1348 – primarily through ports like Bristol, Weymouth and London – the Black Death was to claim 50 per cent of the population and reach a height of around 300 souls each day in London by spring 1349. It was a staggering loss in this age of arable farming, where the majority of the country’s wealth lay in the land. Acres and acres of golden cornfields were left without farmers to sow or plough them; knights and churchmen found themselves working by the sweat of their brows – and this led to the growth of the new yeoman
A plague doctor from the early-1600s
lancing buboes, draining the pus and applying poultices was relatively effective in the affliction’s early stages. Such poultices usually consisted of tree resin, white lily root and then dried human excrement, arsenic or dried toad, depending on availability. Less extreme ointments were mixed from cooked onions, butter and garlic, while bloodletting through leeches or incisions and the application of clay and violets was also practised. For the most part, since the Black Death was allegedly miasmatic, the best preventative measure was thought to be carrying pouches of sweet herbs and spices (or balls of perfume called pomanders), and burning them in your home. Most felt their only options were to fast, pray and join the Flagellants in order to pay penance for their sins, and kill suspected witches or well-poisoners, while waiting for Saturn to move out of the House of Jupiter.
Black Death
Extent of area reached by Black Death 1346
1349
1347
1350
1348
1351
Area unaffected No reliable data
1351
In its death throes, the plague threw itself into eastern Europe with abandon. By this time, however, the worst was over. Half of Europe had died and the survivors – whether serf, squire or churchman – found themselves working the fields in ever-colder seasons.
1350
The Black Death hits Sweden and begins to complete its clockwise circle from the Mongol steppes east of the Black Sea, through southern Europe and into the north.
1346
1349
Believed to be poisoning wells, Jews are driven out of every country as the Black Death consumes central Europe, now reaching from the coast of Scandinavia to Morocco. Poland provides a home to the stricken Jewish population, while in London the death rate is now 300 souls each day.
The Black Death is brewing in the heart of the Golden Horde, the north-western chunk of the disintegrated Mongolian Empire, which stretches from the Black Sea deep into modern Kazakhstan and Russia. Struck down as they lay siege to Caffa, the invaders launched the diseased bodies of their dead over the walls.
1348
Southern Europe is overrun with Pestilence. A swathe of plague-lands stretches from the west coast of Spain to Bucharest, with fingers of disease pushing up into France and Britain. Bordeaux burns and the mainland is caught up in a frenzy of religious penance for God’s wrath.
1347
Spreading along the sea lanes and coastal trade routes of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, plague sends ships thronging with bacteria into Constantinople, Crete, Sicily, Sardinia and south France. People blame cursed ships and the foul air they bring, but fail to spot the rats.
When Pestilence strikes… Flu hits The Black Death begins like a bad cold, with aches, pains, chills and a fever setting in.
God’s tokens Just a few hours later, circular red rashes appear around infected lymph nodes.
Bubo breakout Within a day or two, the lymph nodes blacken and swell to the size of oranges.
Vomiting Severe fluid loss, including blood, accompanies and exacerbates the bloating buboes.
Septic shock Two to three days after infection, septic shock and pneumonia often hit the victim.
Respiratory failure Weakened under the assault, the body’s central systems begin to shut down.
Death Usually within two to four days, Pestilence conquers the host.
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Black Death
A French painting of plague sufferers being tended to outside a temple
“With the death rate increasing and spinsters gobbling up inheritances, young lords were as out of pocket as the poor” class, as serf-less landowners were forced to rent their estates to the surviving farmers, whose labour was now very much in demand against crippling inflation and who became independent for the first time. This freed up capital and made it more economically mobile, possibly leading to the birth of a kind of proto-capitalism, but it also led to the English ‘lost villages’. As well as being depopulated through disease, the estates of the rich also succumbed to the fat dowers of widows who were entitled, for life, to a third of their dead spouse’s income. With the death rate increasing and ageing spinsters gobbling up inheritances, young lords were as out of pocket as the poor and stood no better chance against Pestilence. While the chronic overpopulation in England before the Black Death meant that there was no initial effect on the labour market, by the next generation – the 1370s – there was a critical shortage. This led to the British government passing increasingly stringent regulations aimed at holding down rising wages, and ultimately to
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the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. The same was true elsewhere in Europe, with the effects of the Black Death also leading to the Jacquerie in France (1358) and the Revolt of the Ciompi in Italy (1378). Despite the reassurance that the clergy provided, religion was powerless against the Black Death. Churchmen, who were often the closest thing to a doctor, were forbidden to dissect the bodies of God and so could not perform autopsies to learn the exact causes of death. Priests afraid of the plague refused to administer last rites, and urged people to confess to each other. Funeral rites were similarly abandoned, with corpses stacked several layers deep with a smattering of earth between each row, and entrepreneurial peasants began to gather and bury the dead for a fee. Eventually, the clergy refused bodies entry into cities and, since death had become such a constant companion, ordained that no funeral bells were to ring. In 1348, however, a much greater religious threat abounded. The Brotherhood of Flagellants rose up in Germany and led 1,000-strong marches
through the country for 33 and a half days at a time (to mark the Saviour’s years on Earth), brutally whipping themselves with iron-studded belts of leather to display their penance to God and earn protection from his wrath. They had something of a rockstar status and many people reached out to catch the sacred drops of blood that spattered from their holy wounds. By 1349 the movement had petered out – falling prey to a bandwagon effect that led to too many misfits and vagabonds exploiting the Flagellants’ notoriety – but the effect it had on public sentiment was grave. The reinforcement of extreme Christian ideology in the face of the apocalypse inflamed anti-Semitism across Europe and the Jews were persecuted like never before. Associated as they were with the mystical Kabbalah (and black magic), the 2.5 million Jews living in Europe at the time were prime suspects for witchcraft and nefarious deeds. Having been strong international merchants in 1000, they were in a period of decline that would ultimately lead to their replacement in economic terms by Italian merchants by 1500. Divided and wandering across Europe, they were accused of brewing poisons from basilisk skin, spiders, lizards and frogs – even Christian hearts and the wafer of Christ – and then infecting wells with disease.
Black Death
“The plague had claimed an estimated 40-50 per cent of the European population – that’s around 20 million people” million people. By way of comparison, the Spanish Flu that followed the end of WWI in 1918 – raging across a far more populous Europe – claimed 50 million lives. Never before or since has such a potent infection wracked the continent. There is a nursery rhyme still sung today that is believed by some to bear the terrible mark of the plague, an unconscious testament to the deep psychological impact it had upon the survivors: ‘Ring around the roses; a pocketful of posies; ashes, ashes; we all fall down!’. In the early stages of the plague, the afflicted were known to develop rosy red rashes on the skin in the shape of a ring, and ‘posies’ – nosegays of dried flowers, or small pouches of sweet-smelling herbs – were often carried to ward off the disease. Unaware of the true nature of the monster, many believed the Black Death was a miasmatic illness, caused by noxious, pestilential fumes in
the air. As such, posies were carried and incense burned in homes, people forwent bathing (as it opened the pores) and even splashed themselves in urine to bolster their natural protection against external fumes and vapours. It is thought that the first two lines of the rhyme refer to this. As for the closing lines, historians believe that the Great Fire of London (1666) – which wiped out the black rats – was the only thing that saved England from succumbing entirely. It took Europe 150 years to fully recover, and those who survived believed they had witnessed the apocalypse. With war, death and famine rampant in the century following the Black Death, it was as if the four horsemen themselves had ridden out in force to bring Europe to its knees. To a superstitious, God-fearing populace, it was a hell on Earth that they were utterly powerless to defend themselves against, and which would never be forgotten.
Funerals for plague victims would often be performed at night to limit contact with other people
© SPL; Getty; Alamy
False confessions under torture, such as that of Agimet the Jew during the plague’s peak in 1348, certainly didn’t help matters, and on Valentine’s Day of 1349 in Strasbourg 2,000 Jews were burned in a cemetery. The crime was repeated in other cities across Germany and Switzerland, prompting a mass Jewish migration across Europe. It was to Poland that they fled, as King Casimir was in love with a Jewish woman and so opened the borders of his country to his lover’s kinsmen, where they would remain until the Holocaust. Yet while the Jews were fleeing death and destruction at the hands of humans, the monster itself was winding down. Pestilence reached Sweden in 1350 and, by the time it got to Russia, the plague had all but passed in France and England. Historians have never reached complete agreement on what exactly stopped the disease, though quarantines, slightly better hygiene and the reduced number of people travelling back and forth through Europe – as a result of mass depopulation and a growing fear of infective trade routes – are all thought to have played a role. The plague had claimed an estimated 40-50 per cent of the European population – that’s around 20
25
Feature
MAO ZEDONG
China, 1893-1976 Mao was born into a peasant family in Hunan province, China. Initially training as a teacher, he then became one of the key leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, fighting for Chinese freedom during World War II. He rose to become Chairman of the Party and effectively ruled China until his death in 1976 aged 83.
Brief Bio
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MAO’S DISASTER PLAN China’s disastrous bid to become the greatest country in the world Written by Chris Fenton
I
n 1940 China was in hell. The country was overrun with foreign invaders, the government was powerless and the workers fought among themselves for the scraps falling from the tables of petty warlords. How did the celestial kingdom come to this? The communists knew the answer – through the arrogance and pomposity of China’s noble emperors. Communism had changed all that and chased away the foreign devils, pushed aside their rightist puppets and, by 1949, had established a peoples’ China. The self-styled driving force behind this revolution was Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and a man of the people. Residing from proletariat beginnings in Hunan province’s rural China, Mao had grown up with revolution fervor in his veins. Having witnessed the destruction of Chinese power and heritage during the early 20th century, he had become a committed nationalist and later a communist, dedicating himself to the restoration of Chinese power through collective struggle. He had seen the Chinese peoples’ spirit when properly motivated during the Communist Party’s retreat into the mountains, which would later be dubbed the Long March, and the triumph of communist ideals after the destruction of the fascists led by Chiang Kai-Shek – his greatest rival. Now, under his leadership, China would be great again. Mao’s plan was to instigate a radical industrialisation of the Chinese countryside, creating mass communes to produce grain, rice and steel to turn the country into a superpower. The population was to be organised on a mass scale – this was no time to think small, the Chinese strength was in its population and the entire country had to be put to work to make China great again. These reforms would combine to form the Great Leap Forward. He ignored economists who argued for a gradual industrialisation process rather than a single quick bound and those who said that the post-feudal Chinese society couldn’t handle so much change so quickly. Anyone who got in the way of his vision was against Mao and so against China. So, in May 1958, the Communist Party agreed to Mao’s proposals. China braced itself for its Great Leap Forward out of hell into a workers’ paradise. What followed was one of the worst humanitarian disasters in history. Mobilisation and ideological conditioning of the Chinese people was absolutely key. Under Mao’s plans, all private property and private action was banned. Every Chinese rural worker was forced into communes, thousands strong, to create a mass land army to produce grain that would pay for new equipment from abroad and lead to the production of steel. Under the commune system workers would sleep in dormitories, eat in huge communal kitchens and work a ’48-hour working day, with six hours for rest’ as the People’s Daily, Mao’s propaganda newspaper, proudly proclaimed. There was not even room for traditional Chinese family roles in the new collectivist utopia – children were sent to mass crèches and women into the fields to work.
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Mao’s disaster plan Party officials would ‘herd villagers in the fields to sleep and to work intolerable hours, forcing them to walk to distant additional projects.’ As villagers watched their homes get destroyed to make way for the mass communes, some wept. One villager cried: “Destroying my home is even worse than digging up my ancestor’s gravestone!” Mao was delighted and commented: “The notion of utopia mentioned by our predecessors will be realised and surpassed.” Initial results sent back to Beijing were more optimistic than Mao could possibly imagine. The harvest was so good that communist workers were encouraged to eat ‘five meals a day’ in the communal food halls. As one commune worker put it: “It was real communism… we got to eat things made from wheat flour every day and they were always slaughtering pigs for us. For a while it seemed that they were telling the truth and we were going to enter heaven.” Mao saw no need to wait for grain production to start rendering export capital and commanded steel production to start immediately. He instigated a cottage industry for the steel program – Chinese urban dwellers and rural workers were told to make steel in their backyards with primitive furnaces. Foreign visitors were impressed when they visited Beijing and saw the cityscape lit up with the contained fires of Mao’s mini steel plants in the back gardens of his comrades. As one commune member recalled: “The more metal you collected, the more revolutionary you were.” Mao instructed grain harvesting to be switched to cash crops, such as cotton and for steel production to be given the highest priority. The figures for the 1958 harvest showed there was more than enough food to go around so, as far as Mao A crowd stare at a victim of the famine
“Mao’s ideology had shackled a grim existence of absolute poverty to the provinces and had killed millions” was concerned, China should continue to bound forward. In August, Mao raised the target for steel production from six to nine million tons. Provincial leaders spoke of unleashing ‘surprise attacks’ into the fields with ‘shock armies’ of mobilised labour to gather in cotton and begin collecting metal for steel production. War was also declared on flies, rats, mosquitoes and grain-eating sparrows. As the weather closed in and Chinese workers began to feel the grind of their 48-hour days, loudspeakers in every commune boomed out Party propaganda: “Our workers are strong, the people’s communes are good!” By now grain was being left out in the field as workers frantically scrambled through their communes trying to find raw material for their backyard steel plants. Party ideology was relentless and the eradication of sparrows became fanatical, but by killing the sparrows there were no longer any predators that could kill the insects that were now destroying crops. Other such contradictory policies emerged. Mao’s obsession with steel production meant there were no longer enough workers to bring in crops and they sat uncollected in fields, rotting away as food reserves diminished. The ideological pressure worked so well that no one really knew China was marching headlong into a disaster until it was too late. The 1958 harvest was modestly successful but no one wanted to be the one to tell Mao that it wasn’t a resounding
success. A poor harvest followed but the workers were encouraged to ‘fill their bellies until they burst’ and as a result the food supplies were quickly ate through. Since the commune system had not envisaged transporting large amounts of food to other communes, food could not be transported to the areas that were now suffering from famine. In a Guangdong commune a six-month supply of rice was eaten in 20 days and then the old and weak started to die of starvation. The violent hysteria Maoism had created was now directed against the people, as starving Chinese workers began to weaken through malnutrition and the nightmare poverty of the commune system. Special ‘criticism sessions’ were established by Party officials within rural villages and miscreants who were not meeting the required working standards were paraded in front of the village and Communist Party members forced other villagers to beat and humiliate the accused. The good harvests indicated by the official statistics meant that Mao continued to insist that steel was brought in to build his great utopia. Thousands of rural peasants were forced through beatings and intimidation to abandon food production and concentrate on making steel from their furnaces, despite the hunger they were now experiencing. One communist inspector noted on the punishments: “Commune members too sick to work are deprived of food. It hastens their
The little red book
Mao’s little red book, more formally known as Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, details the deepest aspects of Mao’s wisdom. It was first compiled during the Great Leap Forward by committed Maoist Lin Biao in 1960. While the original text is a tedious diatribe collecting over 400 selected quotes about the evils of capitalism and the need for continuous revolution against the bourgeoisie, its condensed version, the little red book, was used extensively during the Cultural Revolution by Maoists after the failure of the Great Leap Forward. The book preached non-violence to solve internal disputes and democracy among the instruments of the Communist Party, but also marked unity and a continuous form of revolution as key to a successful communist state. These contradictory lines resulted in violence among fanatical Maoist supporters and the supposed enemies of the state during the Cultural Revolution. Critics have argued that the book’s publication was little more than an attempt to raise the profile of Mao after the failure of the Great Leap even though Mao insisted the book represented his inner thoughts about the subject of Marxism. Despite Mao’s disapproval of profitmaking enterprises in the book, he wasn’t above claiming millions in royalties when it became a bestseller – only the Bible has more copies in circulation.
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Mao’s disaster plan
The Kuhsien steel mill in Changchi city added about 220 small local-type furnaces in seven days, increasing the daily steel output from 90 tons to 2,150 tons
Mao Zedong on a balcony above a seemingly adoring crowd
deaths.” The persecution within the rural areas was terrible, but things were even worse in urban dwellings. Constant Party propaganda, mixed with the terrifying prospect of being selected for ‘criticism’, meant that urban dwellers had to toe the line and endure the endless working hours. Industrial accidents in factories were commonplace due to exhaustion and Soviet advisors teaching the industrial techniques left after abuse and molestation by Mao’s officials, taking with them their expert knowledge. When asked about production figures, a typical response from one foreman was: “Day in, day out, they telephone for figures… who cares if they are true or false? Everyone is just going through the motions!”
One man had his ears chopped off, was tied up with iron wire and branded with a white hot tool after he stole a potato from a communal plot near a factory. The worker’s utopia had become a proletarian nightmare. As the summer of 1958 turned into the harsh reality of early 1959, the supposedly glorious Great Leap had turned into a cold drop into the abyss. The decision to carry on regardless rested with the workers’ paradise itself – China and its rotten communist system. There was no doubt in the mind of Mao that the Great Leap was working at the end of 1958, but this was because the system had created die-hard communist rhetoric and by 1959 that’s all that Mao was hearing.
Part of the great Maoist vision was to enable communes to organise themselves – subject to strict Party controls – and give them centrally dictated grain and produce quotas that the provisional leaders had to meet. Of course, it would take a brave man, or a suicidal one, to return to the communist leadership anything other than glowing reports of fabulous harvests and content workers. Local leaders from Sichuan province were often compelled to revise their grain figures upwards if the original amount was felt to be not what the Party wanted to hear. Doctored photos were taken for the People’s Daily of children lying on tightly packed wheat six-feet high. It was a delusion, the people were starving, but the Party swallowed the lie and Mao insisted on bigger targets, which created a culture of deceit among the provinces. If one area had a high grain production, whether falsified or not, its neighbouring area would double their figures. Even the Mao-endorsed ‘make your own steel’ furnace was a fabrication. The highquality steel Mao saw from the prototype was probably imported from one of the Soviet-model factories outside of Beijing. This was Mao’s fantasy world and it was lethal. By the end of 1959, as the full force of the disaster unfolded, the time China would need to overtake Britain economically was slashed from 15 years to five and then down to two by the Party. One of the first test communes in Henan was named ‘Let us overtake England’. Its inhabitants starved after their farmers were sent to produce steel and their fields flooded due to poor irrigation control. Locusts ate what was left of their crops. Terrified provisional leaders carefully managed tours by Party leaders. At the beginning of 1959, Marshal Peng Dehuai, a ranking People’s Liberation Army soldier who was deeply committed to the wellbeing of the
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Mao’s disaster plan
“The Great Leap was no longer about grain, communism or even China. It was about Mao and his unquenchable ambition” peasant farmers, visited the communes and was appalled. He was convinced that the Leap had been an utter disaster. He talked to the emaciated peasants trying desperately to manufacture steel even though they were starving and asked: “Hasn’t any one of you given a thought to what you will eat next year if you don’t bring in the crops? You’re never going to be able to eat steel.” The response was typical: “True enough, but who would stand up against this wind [command]?” Even Peng himself thought better of saying anything to the Chairman. Then, in the summer of 1959 after seeing the latest fabricated figures from the communes, Peng could restrain himself no longer. He wrote Mao a letter describing the Great Leap as a ‘wind of exaggeration.’ Mao’s response was to throw a temper tantrum and in a speech to the Party he described Peng as a ‘bourgeois rightist’ who needed to strengthen his backbone. Peng was promptly forced out of Mao’s inner circle to live among the peasants in a run-down area of Beijing. The standard line from the Party was spoken by a Mao favourite, Shanghai leader Ke Qingshi: “We should obey the Chairman to the extent of total abandon, in every respect – thinking, perspective, foresight and method – we are way behind [Mao].” There was only one man who could stop the Great Leap from bounding into greater destruction: Mao himself. The beginning of 1960 brought with it grim statistics. Average available grain per head had dropped from 311 kilograms in 1958 to 191 in 1960. Mao’s ideology had shackled a grim existence of absolute poverty to the provinces and coupled with the corrupt, sycophantic communist system, had killed millions. People were eating tree bark and
Mao’s vision
l May 1958 The Great Lead Forward begins. Millions of Chinese workers are inspired and motivated by Maoist communism, striving to shake off their feudal existence and become happy, productive state workers.
gnawing the flesh off corpses lying unattended in Chinese streets; all from a country that was supposedly producing 596 million tons of grain a year. Mao was convinced it was everyone else’s fault. He blamed the provincial officials for not following his reforms closely enough, then for following them too rigidly. He blamed the Party in 1959 when he sensed that the officials were starting to move away from him, which after the Leap’s failure was becoming glaringly obvious. His rants became more drawn out, claiming the revolution was “under a combined attack from within and outside the Party.” A new anti-fascist campaign was launched by Mao, which purged anyone who wasn’t feeding him the lies he wanted to hear. In the end, he blamed communism itself. In a heated speech to the Party after reports that peasants were dying of exhaustion, he said: “If you don’t follow me, I’ll do it myself… even to the lengths of abandoning my Party membership and even to the extent of bringing a suit against Marx himself.” The Great Leap was no longer about grain, communism or even China. It was about Mao and his unquenchable ambition, as well as the forces of reality that were blocking him in his great quest As the months rolled by in 1960, and the population became weaker and weaker, Mao began to realise the country was in turmoil. The United States offered humanitarian aid and, in a final act of humiliation, so did Japan. They were all refused and Mao descended into a depressive stupor. The Party members became more vocal in their dissent but Mao used his traditional form of intimidation. He threatened to purge dissenters, even going so far as saying: “I will go into the countryside to
lead the peasants to overthrow the government.” The level of these misguided tantrums was only matched by the amount Mao was now out of touch with reality. The famine had crippled large parts of the country’s infrastructure; the only official organ that was working was the Communist Party and its lackeys. Even if Mao’s supporters were willing to follow him through another civil war, the population was no longer physically capable of fighting one. Finally, in 1960, Mao approved some roll back on the Great Leap. He allowed the economic planner Chen Yun to cut back on steel production and concentrate on farming grain for the starving populace. The farcical quota system was made more attainable and thousands of industrialisation projects were cancelled. It was far too late. Over 30 million Chinese citizens lay dead, mostly due to starvation but a good portion due to the savage punishments imposed by Party officials. Some official Communist Party figures put the figure at 40 million dead. Mao’s doctor had to order in more sleeping pills for the great leader. By the end of 1960 China was in hell once again, however this new hell was called Maoism and it was digging China deeper into the depths of starvation and absolute poverty. Mao’s ideology and propaganda had convinced the people to starve themselves by their own hands, it had forced the communist system to hasten their fates and had even deluded Mao himself. On Mao’s birthday that year, the inner circle of the Party faithful dined on bird’s nest soup, baby doves, shark’s fin and the finest wine. The event was noted for the vast amounts of alcohol consumed, with at least one top-ranking official falling down drunk. Around the same time a Chinese peasant recalled the death around her due to the famine: “The people were numb, you just carried on as usual – no fear of death, no emotion for the living.”
l Harvest 1958 The harvest in 1958 is so bountiful and the commune system is working so well that Mao insists that workers eat five meals a day in the communal kitchens, fulfilling the ideal of the workers’ paradise.
l April 1959 The timetable for overtaking Britain is shrunk from 15 to two years. The workers are producing grain, cotton and steel in such large quantities that export capital is building huge industrial cities.
l June 1959 Mao addresses the Luschan Party conference in triumph. He has stared down the capitalists in America and the class traitors in the Soviet Union that told him he couldn’t make China a world power.
l 1960 China has become so powerful that the Western imperialists are forced to treat with Mao on his terms. American bases in Japan are forced to close and the Soviet Union now takes its lead from Beijing.
l Harvest 1958 The 1958 harvest succeeds, but the Party overestimates its success to please Mao. In reality there is not enough food in the country for the workers and reserves are depleted by the communal kitchens.
l April 1959 Fifteen provinces are now suffering from drought and 25 million people need urgent food relief. There is no help forthcoming from the government as the Party had not planned for such an eventuality. The workers are suppressed.
l June 1959 Mao is forced to fight for his position at the Lushan conference. Loud voices in the Party are now saying that the country is in chaos. As a final act of humiliation, China is offered food aid by America and Japan.
l 1960 With the country in chaos and over 30 million people dead, Mao’s power within the Party weakens. He is forced to accept partial blame for the Great Leap and allows Party officials to roll back his plans.
1948
China’s reality 30
1948 l May 1958 The Great Lead Forward begins. Millions of Chinese workers are displaced and forced to relinquish all private property, leave their ancestral homes and begin grinding 48-hour working days.
Production Grain Years
million metric tons
1958 1959 1960
215 170 143.3
Steel
(million metric tons) 1958 1959 1960
Rice
8.8 13.87 18.66
(million metric tons) 1958 1959 1960
80.8 69.3 59.7
Steel furnaces Mao’s backyard steel industry was a disaster from the beginning, the prototype he saw probably did not produce the high-quality steel he was told it did. Feeding lowquality metal into the furnaces only served to create lowquality produce, meaning the workers were wasting their time. After millions of starving workers tried to produce steel rather than food, Mao was convinced to leave steel production to proper industrial facilities and skilled workers.
Irrigation Thousands of starving peasants died creating ill-conceived and poorly planned irrigation projects throughout China. Mao knew the importance of irrigation to a country that had a vast amount of land and an unpredictable climate, but had expelled the Soviet engineers sent to help China establish such large projects. The irrigation projects that were built created droughts in some areas and flooding in others, as poorly trained Chinese agriculture engineers were ordered to set about irrigating Chinese fields without expert advice.
1958-1961
1534.8
10,729,000
1820.2
1959 1960
2169.6
estimated deaths due to starvation
Death Calories rate per day
Specific events Henan Party militias fanned out across the country and brutalised the population to force them to work. According to one researcher in Daoxian county ten per cent of those who died during the Leap were “buried alive, clubbed to death or otherwise killed by Party members.” Yunnan As a high-profile Mao supporter, the leader of Yunnan instructed his workers to work ‘day and night’ for two weeks to increase steel and rice production. Thousands died of exhaustion.
Overall figures 38,000,000
1958
25.40%
14.60%
1959 1960
12.00%
20.90%
24.80%
Birth rate
1958
Maoist communism commanded the people to live side by side in communes and eat together in communal kitchens. When the Great Leap started, workers were encouraged to eat as much as they wanted in the communal kitchens. What followed was severe food shortages as the harvests could not support such demand for food and the communist system wasn’t strong enough to provide food aid to all parts of the country. This led to famine.
1959 1960
Communal eating
1958
Failures
29.20%
Population
estimated deaths due to punishment/ internment Anhui In one of the worst affected areas by the famine, workers resorted to cannibalism as their fellow workers died around them. Some even sold their wives and children in return for food.
© Corbis; Alamy; Getty
A prisoner is subjected to public criticism
1958-1961
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Chernobyl
An aerial view of the ruined reactor four of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, 1986
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Chernobyl
CHERNOBYL A seemingly routine safety check led to the worst nuclear accident of the 20th century and helped bring about the end of the Soviet Union Written by Andy Brown
T
he Chernobyl nuclear power plant is a large and imposing building, easily dwarfing the trees in the forest around it. To many this gargantuan industrial monster that spewed out smoke and power was a sign of the Soviet Union’s ambitions. Situated in Ukraine (part of the Soviet Union until 1989), approximately 16 kilometres (10 miles) northwest of the city of Chernobyl, work began on the plant in the Seventies with the first reactor commissioned in 1977. By 1984 four reactors were active. Each reactor was capable of producing one gigawatt of electricity and the plant provided approximately 10 per cent of Ukraine’s electricity. The Soviets weren’t stopping there though. By 1986 two more reactors were being built, with ambitions to make Chernobyl one of the world’s largest nuclear power stations. The plant also provided a living for the local inhabitants and numerous people had moved into the region because of their work with the nuclear power station. In fact, the town of Pripyat had been built in 1970 to house almost 50,000 plant workers and their families, less than two miles from the sprawling power station. It may have looked industrial and ugly, but it was good for the region’s economy and served as a symbol that the Soviets were as technologically advanced as any of the decadent countries in the west. One of the men who earned their living from the plant was Aleksandr Akimov, a night shift supervisor. On 26 April 1986, he was in charge of a seemingly routine safety test on reactor four. In less
than two weeks time he would be dead from severe radiation poisoning from the worst nuclear accident of the 20th century. The plant may have been highly effective at generating power, but safety concerns had been raised. The four reactors were of the Soviet RBMK design, which produced both plutonium and electric power. This meant that they were different from standard commercial designs, as they employed a unique combination of a graphite moderator and water coolant. Adding to these safety concerns, the reactors were unstable at low power, primarily owing to control-rod design. In 1986 the Soviet Union was an ‘interesting’ place. In five years’ time its communist structures would come unceremoniously crashing down and the Soviet Union would be dissolved, leading to the biggest change in the country for a generation. However, at the time of the Chernobyl disaster, the old mechanics of government were still clinging on and the old adage, ‘knowledge is power’, was at the heart of the government’s policies. There were those who were concerned – although given how seriously the Soviet administration took secrecy the numbers in the know were limited – that the Chernobyl plant did not have the massive containment structure common to most nuclear power plants elsewhere in the world. This meant that if an accident occurred, radioactive material would not be contained, but seep into the environment and cause untold damage to people and natural surroundings. This secrecy ran not just to the knowledge held
This hotel in Pripyat has not seen guests since the accident in 1986
The abandoned town of Pripyat is seeing nature retake some areas
33
Chernobyl
by other countries, but also to their own people. Aleksandr Akimov’s superior at Chernobyl was Anatoly Dyatlov, deputy chief engineer. When the Soviet Union’s authorities later tried Dyatlov, desperately looking for scapegoats, he stated that he did not know of the previous accidents that had occurred at reactors of the same type, even though several had. It may seem strange that the authorities wouldn’t want those in positions of authority to possess all of the pertinent facts about the equipment they were working with, but such was the culture. There are conflicting reports about the circumstances of the disaster, with some claiming that Akimov and other engineers were reluctant to carry out the test but were pressured into doing so by Dyatlov. The deputy chief engineer later countered this and said the atmosphere in the plant was normal and no one was anxious about the test proceeding. The test was to examine whether the reactor could operate under electricity generated by its own turbines and produce a backup source of electricity to keep the reactor going in the event of
Ghost town
The town of Pripyat is located just 1.8 miles (three km) away from the nuclear power plant and had a population just under 50,000 at the time of the Chernobyl disaster. It was a growing town with 15 primary schools, five secondary schools, a hospital and sports and recreational facilities, including an Olympic-sized swimming pool. After the accident, residents were evacuated but told they could return in three days time, meaning that many possessions are still in the city to this day. Some residents have returned to the area, but none have been allowed back into the town, as it is still quarantined due to high levels of radiation. The city is a historical monument to life in the Soviet Union in the Eighties: walls still display propaganda slogans and the houses and factories speak of a different era. In some parts nature is reclaiming areas, and in 2002 the city opened as a slightly macabre tourist destination for those willing to sign a waiver in case they die of radiation poisoning.
“Parts of the exploded roof landed onto the roof of the still operating reactor three and several fires sprung up and began to dance” Countdown to disaster 25 April
01.24am
Two explosions cause the reactor’s roof to be blown off and the contents to erupt outwards. Air sucked into the shattered reactor causes a reactor fire and, as the reactor is not housed in a reinforced concrete shell, large amounts of radioactive debris escape into the atmosphere.
With reactor four scheduled to be shut down for routine maintenance, the plant’s engineers decided to take the opportunity to see whether the cooling pump system could still function using power generated from the reactor under low power should the auxiliary electricity supply ever fail.
12.30am
01.21am
50 seconds after the test starts, power levels suddenly surge to dangerous levels and the emergency shutdown button is pressed. However, with power 100 times more than normal, fuel pellets in the core begin to explode, rupturing the fuel channels.
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11.00pm
Control rods, which regulate the fission process by absorbing neutrons and slowing the chain reaction, are lowered to reduce output to about 20 per cent of normal output required for the test. However, too many rods are lowered and output drops too quickly, resulting in an almost complete shutdown.
01.00am
Power is still only at about 7%, so more rods are raised. The automatic shutdown system is disabled to allow the reactor to continue working under low power.
The engineers are concerned by the possible instability and begin to raise the rods to increase output, but make the decision to carry on.
a general power failure. Several safety features that could have interfered with the test were deliberately turned off. When the test began it quickly became apparent that something was wrong and the special button that triggers an emergency shutdown was pressed. Nothing happened. In an interview later Dyatlov said of the incident: “I thought my eyes were coming out of my sockets. There was no way to explain it. It was clear this was not a normal accident, but something much more terrible. It was a catastrophe.” After only a minute reactor four’s roof was suddenly blown off into the air, and radiation began seeping out of it. The dozen people in the control room – including Akimov and Dyatlov – were exposed to shocking levels of radiation and five of them died soon afterwards from radiation burns. The radiation levels in the worst-hit areas of the reactor building have been estimated to be 5.6 roentgens per second (R/s). A lethal dose is around 500 roentgens over five hours, meaning that some workers received fatal doses in less than a minute. Unfortunately for those working in the contaminated area, a dosimeter (which measures an individual or object’s exposure to radiated energy) capable of measuring up to 1,000 R/s was buried in the rubble of a collapsed part of the building, and another one failed when turned on. All remaining dosimeters had limits of 0.001 R/s and simply read
Chernobyl
An abandoned classroom in Pripyat, where everything was left behind in what was called a ‘temporary’ evacuation
‘off scale’. Therefore, the reactor crew could only ascertain that the radiation levels were somewhere above 0.001 R/s and did not have confirmation of the truth: that the radiation was life-threatening. Due to these inaccurate low readings, Akimov assumed the reactor was intact – although to come to this conclusion he ignored the assorted pieces of graphite and reactor fuel lying around the building and the high readings of another dosimeter brought in that was dismissed as ‘defective’. Whether Akimov really thought the reactor was intact or he knew the importance of averting further disaster is mere conjecture. What is fact is that he stayed with his crew in the reactor building until morning, sending members of his crew to try to pump water into the reactor and that none of them wore any protective gear. The radiation leak wasn’t the only danger. In flagrant disregard of safety regulations, a combustible material, bitumen, had been used in the construction of the reactor building and turbine hall’s roof. Parts of the exploded roof from reactor four landed onto the roof of the still-operating reactor three and several fires sprung up, dancing on its roof. A Chernobyl Power Station firefighter brigade was first on the scene to try and extinguish the flames; with the main objective to douse the fires around reactors three and four, and ensure that reactor three’s cooling system was kept intact to avert further disaster.
Radiation doses across Europe in 1986 Much of the fallout was deposited close to Chernobyl, in parts of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, where more than 350 thousand people resettled away from these areas, but about 5.5 million remain. After the accident, traces of radioactive deposits were found in nearly every country in the northern hemisphere but due to fluctuating winds, some areas were worse affected than others. The disaster released a 100 times more radiation than the atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in WWII.
Dose = multiples of normal rate 102 - 1 1-5
Chernobyl
5 - 10 10 - 20 20 - 40 40 - 100 100+
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Chernobyl
Health physicists in special suits controlling radiation in the fields of the Chernobyl disaster area
“I thought my eyes were coming out of my sockets. There was no way to explain it. It was clear this was not a normal accident, but something much more terrible” One of the firefighters was Lieut Col Leonid Telyatnikov. In an interview with People magazine years later he recalled: “It was a clear night with lots of stars. I had no idea what had happened, but as I approached the plant I could see debris on fire all around, like sparklers. Then I noticed a bluish glow above the wreckage of reactor four and pockets of fire on surrounding buildings. It was absolutely silent and eerie.” The firefighters managed to control the blast, but with none of them wearing any radiation protection it was inevitable there would be casualties, especially for those combating the flames on the roof. Six of the firefighters died following their exposure and many others suffered long-lasting damage. Still, it’s hard to overstate the importance of their actions; an explosion in reactor three could have led to the destruction of all four reactors and the world would have faced a far greater disaster. Further catastrophe may have been averted due to the bravery of the plant engineers and firefighters, but radiation was now leaking out of the plant on an unprecedented scale in modern history, and the Soviets’ reluctance to share information – even when their citizens were at risk – would lead to further loss of life. The nearby city of Pripyat was not immediately evacuated after the incident and with the townspeople oblivious to events just down the road many of them fell ill and complained of a metallic taste in their mouth before suffering uncontrollable fits of coughing and vomiting. Soviet authorities started evacuating people from the area around Chernobyl within 36 hours of the accident and told the people who were forced to leave their
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homes that it was only a temporary measure and that they were safe in leaving behind any personal and materially valuable possessions. A month later all those living within an 30 kilometre (18 mile) radius of the nuclear power plant – over 100,000 people – had been relocated. The actions of the local Soviet authorities in evacuating the surrounding area were slow, but they were positively proactive compared to the national response. The general population weren’t actually informed of the incident until several days later, and even then it was a cursory 20-second announcement on a TV news program stating: “An accident occurred at the Chernobyl Atomic Power Plant and one of the reactors was damaged. Measures have been undertaken to eliminate the consequences of the accident.” The only reason this statement was made was because of events occurring in Sweden. On Monday 28 April, 55 hours after the explosion at reactor four, an alarm sounded at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Station in Sweden; high amounts of radioactivity were being detected and workers were evacuated. As the alarm sounded other nuclear power stations across Scandinavia also detected high radiation levels coming from an incoming nuclear cloud that had originated in the Soviet Union. When asked for an explanation, the Soviets Union’s response was predictable; they denied anything had happened. It was only after the Scandinavian countries had announced the source of immense radiation that Moscow issued the statement above and admitted that something had occurred.
Gas masks left behind during the evacuation of Prypiat’s primary school
Chernobyl
A disaster still waiting to happen?
Around the plant action had been taken, even if it wasn’t announced. The day after the incident, a government commission was set up and reactors one and two were shut down. A Soviet officer, General Pikalov, set out in a truck fitted with radiation apparatus and rammed through the closed gates to measure the radiation. He established that the graphite in the reactor was burning and that it was giving off an enormous amount of radiation and heat. Shortly afterwards, the government in Moscow was warned and the town of Pripyat evacuated but further mistakes were then made. First, extinguishing water is added but the high temperature separates the water into hydrogen and oxygen and the resultant explosion releases heat. Thus, the fire is not extinguished but fanned. After three fruitless attempts to quell the flames with water, the authorities decide to throw sand, lead and boron carbide onto the reactor from helicopters. This causes the temperate to finally drop but all those in the helicopters died soon afterwards – of unrelated causes, according to Moscow. Ten days passed until the reactor core was fully extinguished. With the fire out, those in power began looking for people to blame. To point the finger at substandard equipment would have been tantamount to admitting that the mighty Soviet Union lagged behind its world competitors in matters of technology or safety. No, it was far better to put the blame on human error. Over 25 members of the Communist Party were expelled for their ‘role’ in the disaster and six Chernobyl workers were accused of violating safety rules during experiments on
reactor four. Dyatlov was accused of sending four subordinates to inspect the burning reactor without telling them of the radiation hazard. All of them were found guilty and given sentences varying from two years in a camp to 10 years in jail. The government had their scapegoats but, just like the radiation leaking out of reactor four, the political consequences of the accident could not be contained and one of the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster was the demise of the Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev had been the Soviet leader for just over a year at the time of the disaster and was embarking on a series of reforms, one of which was to decrease the withholding of information from the population by certain government agencies. Chernobyl gave him the chance to draw a line in the sand between the old and new eras in terms of communications and brought home to him the damage nuclear weapons would cause. He later wrote that this was a major factor in his decision to open a dialogue with the US about decreasing the number of nuclear weapons of both countries. The disaster at Chernobyl caused great suffering but was also a turning point in the Soviet Union’s history and ultimate dissolution. It proved that, towards the end of the 20th century, a Western government that seemingly cared so little for the safety of its citizens was no longer sustainable. As the last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachevh, himself later wrote: ‘The Chernobyl disaster, more than anything else, opened the possibility of much greater freedom of expression, to the point that the system as we knew it could no longer continue.’
© Alamy; Corbisw
Construction of the confinement arch for Chernobyl’s reactor four won’t be finished until at least 2015
The effects of the Chernobyl disaster are still widely felt, with different agencies varying in their estimates of the amount of deaths it caused. The World Health Organisation put the figure at 4,000 whereas Greenpeace believe it is at least 10,000 and perhaps considerably higher. The economic costs have also been high, with Mikhail Gorbachev claiming the Soviet Union spent 18 billion rubles on containment and decontamination, virtually bankrupting itself, and costs are still ongoing. There are fears that because of these economic costs the world could be sleepwalking into another disaster. The long-term plan for the containment of reactor four is the New Safe Confinement (NSC), a 20,000-ton steel arch intended to prevent any radiation leakage into the environment for the next 100 years. The structure will be 190 metres (623 feet) wide and more than 100 metres (328 feet) high. Initial plans were for the NSC to be in place by 2005 but recent reports suggest this will not happen until 2015 at the earliest. A hastily-built sarcophagus has sheltered the reactor since 1986 but there are genuine and serious concerns over its effectiveness. Despite different governments pledging to help pay for the work to be completed, with the NSC currently eight years behind schedule there are those who fear that the work will never be finished and that the current sarcophagus will begin leaking dangerously high levels of radiation. Then Chernobyl will be the scene of its second nuclear disaster.
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