The RMS Titanic was a British registered four funnelled ocean liner built for the transatlantic passenger and mail service between Southampton and New York.
Constructed at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland Titanic was, on her maiden voyage, the largest vessel afloat.
The great ship, at that time the largest and most luxurious afloat, was designed and built by William Pirrie's Belfast firm Harland and Wolff to service the highly competitive Atlantic Ferry route. It had a double-bottomed hull that was divided into 16 presumably watertight compartments. Because four of these could be flooded without endangering the liner's buoyancy, it was considered unsinkable.
On April 10th 1912 the Titanic sailed from Southampton with 2,200 passengers and crew, four days later the Titanic collided with an iceberg.
Less than three hours later, the Titanic plunged to the bottom of the sea, taking more than 1500 people with her. Only a fraction of her passengers were saved. The world was stunned to learn of the fate of the unsinkable Titanic. It carried some of the richest, most powerful industrialists of her day. Together, their personal fortunes were worth $600 million in 1912! In addition to wealthy and the middle class passengers, she carried poor emigrants from Europe and the Middle East seeking economic and social freedom in the New World.
On September 1, 1985, Titanic was discovered resting on the ocean floor. The remains of the Titanic were found in 1985 by Dr. Robert Ballard, an oceanographer and marine biologist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. When he located the Titanic, he saw that, as some survivors reported, the ship had broken apart. Twenty-five years after her discovery, RMS Titanic, Inc., in partnership with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Waitt Institute, embarked on what is arguably the most technologically advanced scientific expedition to Titanic ever organized.
How many lifeboats were needed? The Titanic was owned by the British White Star Line, flew the British flag,and thus was under the rules and regulations of the British government. Although she was originally designed to carry 42 lifeboats, the ship carried only 20 lifeboats (four more than were required at the time by British regulations) for the 2,228 passengers and crew. (That number could supposedly hold 1,178 people.) The original designer of theTitanic had proposed 50 lifeboats, but the British owners of the White Star Line had decided against it. (If it had been under US Government regulation at the time, 42 lifeboats, enough to accommodate 2,367 persons would have been required for a ship that size.)Titanic Facts: The
Construction
-March 31, 1909 in Belfast (Ireland)
-The Titanic was constructed by the Harland & Wolff company
- Titanic construction took about 3 years and $7.5 million to complete
- It took around 3000 laborers to construct the Titanic
- The vessel featured 16 watertight compartments with steel doors designed to close within 25 seconds, keep any flooding out of the ship’s interior
- Nearly 3 million rivets were used in the Titanic construction
Only 705 people were rescued; 1523 drowned or froze to death in the icy water. Ironically, most of those who drowned were Americans. Assuming that each lifeboat could hold 65 people, how many lifeboats did they need? Unfortunately, the 20 lifeboats on board were launched in panic before they were filled to capacity, so the number of people rescued was even fewer than could have been accommodated.
Only 710 of 2,227 people on board survived.Lights from another vessel could be seen in the distance at the time of the impact, and although the identity of the ship remains a mystery, speculation is that it was the lights of the Californian or a sealer called the Sampson. The Californian had warned the Titanic’s wireless operator of ice ahead and received an angry response back about being too busy to listen. It is believed that the Californian had seen the distress rockets launched by the Titanic, but the Morse Lamp distress signals had not.
What do these figures tell you about the policy of saving women and children first, how social standing and wealth influenced who was rescued, and the tradition that the crew usually went down with the ship? Many of the poorest people were not aware of the seriousness of the damage to the Titanic until shortly before it sank.
The aftermath of the sinking of the Titanic has led to changes in maritime law as well as controversy about whether the accident could have been avoided, and even a conspiracy surrounding the incident.
The Titanic was a White Star ocean liner and had two sister ships named the Olympic and the Britannic (originally called the Gigantic). This line of cruisers was designed to be the sturdiest and most luxurious ships of their time. Construction of the Titanic was founded by American industrialist J.P. Morgan and his international Mercantile Marine Co. and began in March 1909. The hull was launched a year later on March 31, 1911, and the outfitting was completed on March 31 of the following year. She was equipped with two reciprocating four-cylinder, triple-expansion steam engines and one low-pressure Parsons turbine, which powered three propellers. There were 29 boilers fired by 159 coal burning furnaces that made possible a top speed of 23 knots (43 km/h; 26 mph). Only three of the four 62 feet (19 m) funnels were functional: the fourth, which served only for ventilation purposes, was added to make the ship look more impressive. The ship could carry a total of 3,547 passengers and crew.
Offering passengers all of the aquatic luxuries of the time, the Titanic featured n on-board swimming pool, a gymnasium, a squash court, a Turkish bath, a Veranda Cafe and libraries in both the first and second class. Each room was decorated with beautiful and durable teak furniture adding to strong appearance of the virtually unsinkable Titanic. In addition, The Cafe Parisien offered first class guests an even more luxurious dining experience unlike anything ever seen on a cruise ship. She was also equipped with two Marconi radios, an electrical subsystem which provided lighting to the entire ship, and steam-powered generators. The most expensive one-way trans-Atlantic passage was $4,350 (which is more than $95,860 in 2008 dollars.
Many of those who perished on the ship came from prominent American, British, and European families. Among the dead were the noted British journalist William Thomas Stead and heirs to the Straus and Astor fortunes. The glamour associated with the ship, its maiden voyage, and its notable passengers magnified the tragedy of its sinking in the popular mind. Legends arose almost immediately around the night's events, those who had died, and those who had survived. Heroes and heroines, such as American Molly Brown, were identified and celebrated by the press. The disaster and the mythology that has surrounded it have continued to fascinate millions.
As a result of the disaster, the first International Convention for Safety of Life at Sea was called in London in 1913. The convention drew up rules requiring that every ship have lifeboat space for each person embarked (the Titanic had only 1,178 boat spaces for the 2,224 persons aboard); that lifeboat drills be held during each voyage; and, because the Californian had not heard the distress signals of the Titanic, that ships maintain a 24-hour radio watch. The International Ice Patrol also was established to warn ships of icebergs in the North Atlantic shipping lanes.
On Sept. 1, 1985, the wreck of the Titanic was found lying upright in two pieces on the ocean floor at a depth of about 4,000 m (about 13,000 feet). The ship, located at about 41° 46' N 50° 14' W, was subsequently explored several times by manned and unmanned submersibles under the direction of American and French scientists. The expeditions found no sign of the long gash previously thought to have been ripped in the ship's hull by the iceberg. The scientists posited instead that the collision's impact had produced a series of thin gashes as well as brittle fracturing and separation of seams in the adjacent hull plates, thus allowing water to flood in and sink the ship. In subsequent years marine salvagers raised small artifacts and even a 20-ton piece of the hull from the wreckage.
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