Titanic accident in the book

Examples: «He was occasionally to be seen wandering through the house in his cream linen jacket, college tie - Gonville and Caius. His name was Lawrence Beesley. Fifty-two years before I met him, Lawrence Beesley had been a second-class passenger on the maiden voyage of the Titanic».

«He was thirty-five, had recently given up his job as science master at Dulwich College, and was crossing the Atlantic - according to subsequent family legend, at least - in half-hearted pursuit of an American heiress».

«When the Titanic struck its iceberg, Beesley escaped in the underpopulated Lifeboat 13, and was picked up by the Carpathia. Among the souvenirs this octogenarian survivor kept in his room was a blanket embroidered with the name of the rescuing ship».

«They also amused themselves with the speculation that their ancestor had escaped from the Titanic in women's clothing. Lawrence Beesley made no mention of female dress in his book The Loss of the Titanic».

«It made Beesley one of the best-known survivors of the disaster, and for fifty years - right up to the time I met him - he was regularly consulted by maritime historians, film researchers, journalists. Forty or so years after his escape he was engaged as a consultant on the film A Night to Remember, made at Pinewood.

Beesley was - not surprisingly - intrigued by the reborn and once-again-teetering Titanic. Beesley, adept in any emergency, counterfeited the pass required to let him board the facsimile Titanic, dressed himself in period costume and installed himself among the extras. Right at the last minute, as the cameras were due to roll, the director spotted that Beesley had managed to insinuate himself to the ship's rail; picking up his megaphone, he instructed the amateur imposter kindly to disembark. And so, for the second time in his life, Lawrence Beesley found himself leaving the Titanic just before it was due to go down».

Характеристики концепта TITANIC:

- Titanic

- Survivor

- Shipwreck accident

- Lawrence Beesley

- Cheating

Article:

Lawrence Beesley was an English science teacher, journalist, and author who survived the sinking of the RMS Titanic.

On the evening of April 14, Beesley saw two women in the Second Class Library. They were identified as Mary Emma Corey and Claire Karnes. It was the last time these two were reported alive; they died in the sinking even though they were second class women.

One of the survivors of the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912, Beesley wrote a successful book about his experience, The Loss of the SS Titanic (June 1912), published just nine weeks after the disaster. He saw two second class women who tried to get on a lifeboat and were told to go back to their own deck and that their lifeboats were waiting there.

At the time of Lifeboat 13's launching on the Boat Deck, no women or children were in immediate sight, but it seemed there was room for more. As a result, Beesley was ordered to jump into the lifeboat just before it launched. He managed to survive a subsequent incident, where Lifeboat 15 nearly came on top of No. 13. The leading fireman in charge of boat No.13, Fred Barrett, managed to cut the ropes connecting the boat to the falls at the last minute, and those in both boats emerged unharmed. Beesley and the rest of the survivors were picked up by the RMS Carpathia early morning on April 15.

During the filming of A Night to Remember (1958), Beesley famously gatecrashed the set during the sinking scene, hoping to "go down with the ship" that time. But he was spotted by the director, Roy Ward Baker, who vetoed this unscheduled appearance, due to actors' union rules. These events are parodied in Julian Barnes' novel A History of the World in 10.5 Chapters, where Beesley makes a brief appearance as a fictional character.

Beesley was portrayed by actor David Warner (who went on to portray Spicer Lovejoy in the 1997 film) in the 1979 dramatization of the voyage and sinking, S.O.S. Titanic. He is the grandfather of New York Times science editor Nicholas Wade. Beesley was also portrayed by Lawrence Bennett in 1999 musical stage adaptation Titanic.

https://titanic.fandom.com/wiki/Lawrence_Beesley

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2284933/Titanic-II-Australian-tycoon-unveils-plans-replica-doomed-vessel.html

Exercises:

1. Give the Russian equivalents for: the meritocrat, sneering, socially crass, gaudy roles, snobbery, an oar, perennials, double-breasted, decrepitude, adolescent anger, inevitable valedictory condition, a heiress, octogenarian survivor, corroboration, skulking, once-again-teetering Titanic, the amateur imposter, Marx's elaboration of Hegel.

2. Fill the gaps and explain the meaning of the words:

On warm afternoons he would sit outside the front door with a Roberts … radio (… construction, I learned, gave better sound quality than the plastic or metal bodies of the transistors I admired), listening to the … commentary. His name was Lawrence Beesley. Apart from my great-grandfather, he was the oldest man I had ever met. His age and status induced in me the normal mixture of deference, fear and cheek. His … - the historically stained clothes, that dangle of egg-white slobber from the chin - set off in me a general adolescent anger against life and its inevitable valedictory condition; a feeling which smoothly translated itself into hatred of the person undergoing that condition. His daughter fed him on tins of …, which again confirmed for me the sour joke of existence and the particular contemptibility of this old man. I used to tell him invented cricket scores. '84 for 2, Mr Beesley,' I would shout as I passed him … in the sun beneath the gangling wisteria. 'West Indies 790 for 3 declared,' I would insist as I delivered him his child's dinner on a tray. I would tell him scores from matches that were not being played, scores from matches that could never have been played, fanciful scores, impossible scores. He would nod in reply, and I would …, sniggering at my tiny cruelty, pleased that I was not such a nice young man as he might have imagined. Fifty-two years before I met him, Lawrence Beesley had been a … passenger on … voyage of the Titanic. He was thirty-five, had recently given up his job as … at Dulwich College, and was crossing the Atlantic - according to subsequent family …, at least - in half-hearted pursuit of an American heiress.

1) creep away

2) the maiden

3) a second-class

4) science master

5) cricket

6) baby food

7) decrepitude

8) snoozing

9) portable

10) legend

11) in all-wood

3. Read the article and choose the correct answer to the questions below

The sinking of the Titanic occurred on April 15, 1912 in the North Atlantic Ocean, four days into the ship's maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. The largest passenger liner in service at the time, Titanic had an estimated 2,224 people on board when she hit an iceberg. The sinking took two hours and forty minutes and resulted in the deaths of more than 1,500 people. This made it one of the deadliest maritime disasters in history.

Titanic received six warnings of sea ice on April 14th but was traveling near her maximum speed when her lookouts saw the iceberg. Unable to turn quickly enough, the ship suffered a blow on the right side. The crew used distress flares and radio messages to attract help. Passengers were put into lifeboats, however, evacuation efforts were poorly managed and many lifeboats were launched before they were totally full. Almost all those who jumped or fell into the water drowned within minutes due to the effects of hypothermia.

Titanic sank with over a thousand passengers and crew still on board. Another ship, the Carpathia, arrived on the scene about an hour and a half after the sinking and helped rescuing survivors.

The disaster caused widespread outrage over the lack of lifeboats, lax regulations, and the unequal treatment of the three passenger classes during the evacuation.

Accident investigators recommended extensive changes to maritime regulations, leading to the establishment in 1914 of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, which still governs maritime safety today.

1. What body of water was the Titanic crossing?

a) A sea

b) A gulf

c) An ocean

d) An iceberg

2. How many people were aboard?

a) Two thousand, two hundred and twenty-four

b) Twenty-two thousand, two hundred and twenty-four

c) Two thousand and twenty-four

d) Two hundred thousand and twenty-four

3. What did the crew do to avoid the collision with the iceberg?

a) Send radio signals