RMS Titanic sailing from Southampton, England. April 10 1912.
[7]
About[1]
The Titanic, a British luxury passenger liner that sank on April 15, 1912, en route to New York from Southampton, England, on its maiden voyage. The largest and most luxurious ship afloat, the Titanic had a double-bottomed hull divided into 16 watertight compartments. Because four of these could be flooded without endangering its buoyancy, it was considered unsinkable. Shortly before midnight on April 14, it collided with an iceberg southeast of Cape Race, Newfoundland; five compartments ruptured and the ship sank. Some 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers died.
Construction[2]
RMS Titanic under construction at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland. 1910. [8]
The Titanic was the product of intense competition among rival shipping lines in the first half of the 20th century. In particular, the White Star Line found itself in a battle for steamship primacy with Cunard, a venerable British firm with two standout ships that ranked among the most sophisticated and luxurious of their time;
- The Mauretania
A ship that began service in 1907 and soon after set the record for average speed during a transatlantic crossing, which it held for 22 years. - and the Lusitania
also launched the same year and was lauded for its spectacular interiors.
The same year that Cunard unveiled its two magnificent liners, J. Bruce Ismay, chief executive of
White
Star, discussed the construction of three large ships with William J. Pirrie, chairman of the
shipbuilding company Harland and Wolff. Part of a new “Olympic” class of liners, each ship would
measure
882 feet in length and 92.5 feet at their broadest point, making them the largest of their time.
In March 1909, work began in the massive Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland, on the
second
of these three ocean liners, Titanic, and continued nonstop for two years.
On May 31, 1911, Titanic's immense hull-the largest movable manmade object in the world at the time-made its way down the slipways and into the River Lagan in Belfast. More than 100,000 people attended the launching, which took just over a minute and went off without a hitch.
The hull was immediately towed to a mammoth fitting-out dock where thousands of workers would spend most of the next year building the ship's decks, constructing her lavish interiors and installing the 29 giant boilers that would power her two main steam engines.
The course of The RMS Titanic across the Atlantic ocean
[9]
Voyage[3]
After the success of Titanic's sea trials in Ireland, she made the short journey to Southampton,
England
for what would be both the maiden and final titanic voyage.
Titanic arrived in Southampton only two weeks before her maiden voyage which meant there was an
incredible amount of pressure from White Star Lines to turn her from an Irish built ship into their
most
elegant British Royal Mail Steamer. Food, Linen and Furniture were thousands of other items were
hauled
aboard the Titanic around the clock and staff were selected and trained accordingly for their roles.
Captain Edward James Smith would be the man to steer Titanic to New York and was the perfect fit for
the
role due to his presence and stature for the media, experience from his crew and was a particular
favourite of J. Bruce Ismay for all of these reasons.
Like nearly all other elements of Titanic's life thus far its departure was a successful event that
was
witnessed in large numbers by both the media and interested parties of all shapes, ages and walks of
life.
Passengers on the Titanic paid significantly different prices for different accommodation options.
The
suites and cabins on the Titanic cost the passengers no small sum for the time. At approximately
$100,000 in today's United States dollars, you can see why the world's richest and most elite sailed
on
the Titanic —
only they could afford the parlour suites. For the immigrants who travelled in third class, a berth
cost
was no small sum either. The immigrants were poor, and raising that kind of money (approximately
$350 to
$900 in today's dollars) for passage to America was difficult in the early 1900s.
First-class passengers sipped wine and enjoyed cigars and hors d'oeuvres, whilst those on the lower
decks were overcome with happiness and sadness at the prospect of entering a new life in the United
States but also knowing they may never see their families or beloved England again.
The Titanic seemed to have everything on board, including its own newspaper. The Atlantic Daily
Bulletin
was printed every day on board the Titanic. The newspaper included news, advertisements, stock
prices,
horse-racing results, society gossip, and the day's menu.
On the left, a menu of the luxurious food served to passengers.
[10]
On the right a photo of John Jacob
Astor, one of the wealthiest people in the world of the time.
[11]
The radio message sent out by the titanic on April 14, 1912. It reads;"We are sinking fast, passangers being put into boats." [12]
Titanic had stopped in Cherbourg, France, to pick up additional passengers. Here, one of the most famous people on the ship boarded, John Jacob Astor IV. Astor was a colonel in the United States military and one of the richest people in the world at the time, with an estate worth roughly $87 million USD at the time. That is approximately equivilant to $2.4 billion USD as of 2021.
Originally, a lifeboat drill was scheduled to take place on board the Titanic on April 14, 1912 - the day the Titanic hit the iceberg. However, for an unknown reason, Captain Smith cancelled the drill. Many believe that had the drill taken place, more lives could have been saved.
On the night of April 14, wireless operator Phillips was very busy sending chatty passenger's
messages
to Cape Race, Newfoundland, whence they could be relayed inland to friends and relatives. He
received a
sixth ice-warning that night, but didn't realize how close Titanic was to the warning position and
put
that message under a paperweight at his elbow. It never reached Captain Smith or the officer on the
bridge.
The Titanic sunk on Monday, April 15, 1912, at 2:20 am. Only two hours and forty minutes after she
struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean. The iceberg collision ripped open Titanic's hull in
several places, including her five watertight compartments. The rate at which Titanic sank was quite
rapid for a ship of such size.
Titanic carried 2224 people of all age, gender and social class that fateful night and only 710 escaped in lifeboats who the RMS Carpathia later rescued. 1514 people died in the icy waters. The dead mainly consisted of men who offered their limited lifeboat spaces to the many women children on board. The bulk of those men who perished primarily came from the ship's second class passengers with ninety percent of these men perishing in the icy waters.[4]
The night was uncommonly clear and dark, moonless but faintly glowing with an incredible sky full of stars by all accounts. The stars were so bright that one officer mistook the planet Jupiter (then rising just above the horizon) for a steamship light. The sea was, likewise, unusually calm and flat, “like glass,” said many survivors. The lack of waves made it even more difficult to spot icebergs since no tell-tale white water broke at the bergs' edges. The lookouts were questioning White Star personnel as to where their binoculars were. They were told that they were misplaced, which would play a role in destroying the ship.[3]
The last lifeboat launched from the Titanic to be rescued by the Carpathia. April 15, 1912.
[13]
Aftermath
After the disaster, new rules were drawn up requiring that the number of places in lifeboats equal the number of passengers (the Titanic had only 1,178 lifeboat places for 2,224 passengers) and that all ships maintain a 24-hour radio watch for distress signals (a ship less than 20 mi [32 km] away had not heard the Titanic's distress signal because no one had been on duty). The International Ice Patrol was established to monitor icebergs in shipping lanes.[1]
On the first of September 1985, one of the greatest mysteries of the twentieth century was solved as three supercharged lights strained to break through the murky depths of the Atlantic Ocean floor to reveal a sharp mass rising from below which clearly did not fit with its surroundings.[5]
On the left, a photo of Dr Robert Ballard with "Hercules"
[14]
and on the right, "Alvin" the submarine he used to discover the Titanic wreck.
[15]
The bow of the Titanic, photographed by the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) "Hercules" during a 2004
expedition.
[16]
Those lights were attached to a tiny three-person deep-water submarine called Alvin captained by
Dr Robert Ballard
, a renowned oceanographer and underwater archaeologist and that sharp mass was the
bow of
the Titanic.
Within moments Ballard and his crew realized they were the first people to lay eyes on the Titanic
in
over 73 years as they confirmed portholes, cabins and items that correlated perfectly with
blueprints of
Titanic.[5]
The RMS Titanic wreck lies at a depth of about 12,500 feet (3.8 km; 2.37 miles), about 370 miles
(600
km) south-southeast off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
Ballard's first discovery was that the Titanic was not in one piece and was in a heavily rusted
state.
The Bow and stern were separated by approximately 640 meters (2000 feet.) which instantly ruined
some
misguided dreams of refloating her as a living museum. Scientists had theorized that due to the
ocean's
depths and temperature in the region that Titanic lay, it might have avoided the ravages of
corrosion,
wood disintegration, and possibly even may contain some well-preserved skeletons. This was not the
case.
Learn more
The Titanic Belfast museum, with one of the enormous
Titanic Belfast (The Titanic Museum, Belfast, Northern Ireland)
"Located beside the Titanic Slipways, the Harland & Wolff Drawing Offices and Hamilton Graving Dock - the very place where Titanic was designed, built and launched, Titanic Belfast tells the story of Titanic from her conception, through her construction and launch, to her maiden voyage and subsequent place in history." - Titanic Belfast website.[6]
There is also a list of online resources included at the end of this page used to create this website.