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RMS Titanic was a British ocean liner that sank in the early hours of 15 April 1912 as a result of striking an iceberg on her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, United States. Of the estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, approximately 1,500 died (estimates vary), making the incident one of the deadliest peacetime sinkings of a single ship. Titanic, operated by White Star Line, carried some of the wealthiest people in the world, as well as hundreds of emigrants from the British Isles, Scandinavia, and elsewhere in Europe who were seeking a new life in the United States and Canada. The disaster drew public attention, spurred major changes in maritime safety regulations, and inspired a lasting legacy in popular culture. It was the second time White Star Line had lost a ship on her maiden voyage, the first being in 1854.
Titanic was the largest ship afloat upon entering service and the second of three s built for White Star Line. The ship was built by the Harland and Wolff shipbuilding company in Belfast. Thomas Andrews, the chief naval architect of the shipyard, died in the disaster. Titanic was under the command of Captain Edward John Smith, who went down with the ship. White Star Line's chairman, J. Bruce Ismay, survived in a lifeboat.
The first-class accommodations were designed to be the pinnacle of comfort and luxury. They included a gymnasium, swimming pool, smoking rooms, fine restaurants and cafes, a Victorian-style Turkish bath, and hundreds of opulent cabins. A high-powered radiotelegraph transmitter was available for passenger use. Titanic had advanced safety features, such as watertight compartments and remotely activated watertight doors, which contributed to the ship's reputation as "unsinkable".
Titanic was equipped with sixteen lifeboat , each capable of lowering three lifeboats, for a total capacity of 48 boats. Despite this capacity, the ship was scantly equipped with a total of only twenty lifeboats. Fourteen of these were regular lifeboats, two were cutter lifeboats, and four were collapsible and proved difficult to launch while the ship was sinking. Together, the lifeboats could hold 1,178 people – roughly half the number of passengers on board, and a third of the number of passengers the ship could have carried at full capacity (a number consistent with the maritime safety regulations of the era). The British Board of Trade's regulations required fourteen lifeboats for a ship of 10,000 tonnes. Titanic carried six more than required, allowing 338 extra people room in lifeboats. When the ship sank, the lifeboats that had been lowered were only filled up to an average of 60%.
White Star faced an increasing challenge from its main rivals, Cunard Line—which, with the aid of the Admiralty, had recently launched the twin sister ships and , the fastest passenger ships then in service—and the German lines Hamburg America and Norddeutscher Lloyd. Ismay preferred to compete on size rather than speed and proposed to commission a new class of liners larger than anything that had come before, which would be the last word in comfort and luxury. The new ships would have sufficient speed to maintain a weekly service with only three ships instead of the original four. Olympic and Titanic would replace of 1889, of 1890 and of 1907. first departed from a new home port in June 1907 along with the Teutonic, Majestic, and the new Adriatic on the Southampton-New York run.
The ships were constructed by the Belfast shipbuilder Harland & Wolff, which had a long-established relationship with the White Star Line dating back to 1867. Harland and Wolff were given a great deal of latitude in designing ships for the White Star Line; the usual approach was for Wilhelm Wolff to sketch a general concept, which Edward Harland would turn into a ship design. Cost considerations were a relatively low priority; Harland & Wolff were authorised to spend what it needed on the ships, plus a five per cent profit margin. In the case of the Olympic-class ships, a cost of £3 million (£ million today) for the first two ships was agreed, plus "extras to contract" and the usual five per cent fee.
Harland and Wolff put their leading designers to work designing Olympic-class vessels. The design was overseen by Lord Pirrie, a director of both Harland and Wolff and the White Star Line; naval architect Thomas Andrews, the managing director of Harland and Wolff's design department; Edward Wilding, Andrews's deputy and responsible for calculating the ship's design, stability and trim; and Alexander Carlisle, the shipyard's chief draughtsman and general manager. Carlisle's responsibilities included the decorations, equipment, and all general arrangements, including the implementation of an efficient lifeboat davit design.
On 29 July 1908, Harland and Wolff presented the drawings to J. Bruce Ismay and other White Star Line executives. Ismay approved the design and signed three "letters of agreement" two days later, authorising the start of construction. At this point, the first ship—which was later to become Olympic—had no name but was referred to simply as "Number 400", as it was Harland and Wolff's 400th hull. Titanic was based on a revised version of the same design and was given the number 401.
The ship's total height, measured from the base of the keel to the top of the bridge, was . Titanic measured and and with a draught of and displaced 52,310 tonnes. All three of the Olympic-class ships had ten decks (excluding the top of the officers' quarters), eight of which were for passenger use. From top to bottom, the decks were:
The two reciprocating engines were each long and weighed 720 tonnes, with their bedplates contributing a further 195 tonnes. They were powered by steam produced in 29 boilers, 24 of which were double-ended and five single-ended, which contained a total of 159 furnaces. The boilers were in diameter and long, each weighing 91.5 tonnes and capable of holding 48.5 tonnes of water.
They were fuelled by burning coal, 6,611 tonnes of which could be carried in Titanics Fuel bunker, with a further 1,092 tonnes in Hold 3. The furnaces required over 600 tonnes of coal a day to be shovelled into them by hand, requiring the services of 176 firemen working around the clock. 100 tonnes of ash a day had to be disposed of by ejecting it into the sea. The work was relentless, dirty and dangerous, and although firemen were paid relatively well, there was a high suicide rate among those who worked in that capacity.
Exhaust steam leaving the reciprocating engines was fed into the turbine, which was situated aft. From there it passed into a surface condenser, to increase the efficiency of the turbine and so that the steam could be condensed back into water and reused. The engines were attached directly to long shafts which drove the propellers. There were three, one for each engine; the outer (or wing) propellers were the largest, each carrying three blades of manganese-bronze alloy with a total diameter of . The middle propeller was slightly smaller at in diameter, and could be stopped but not reversed.
Titanics electrical plant was capable of producing more power than an average city power station of the time. Immediately aft of the turbine engine were four 400 kW steam-driven electric generators, used to provide electrical power to the ship, plus two 30 kW auxiliary generators for emergency use. Their location in the stern of the ship meant they remained operational until the last few minutes before the ship sank.
Titanic lacked a searchlight, in accordance with the ban on the use of searchlights in the merchant navy.
Titanic was laid out in a much lighter style similar to that of contemporary high-class hotels—the Ritz Hotel was a reference point—with First Class cabins finished in the Empire style. A variety of other decorative styles, ranging from the Renaissance to Louis XV, were used to decorate cabins and public rooms in First and Second Class areas of the ship. The aim was to convey an impression that the passengers were in a floating hotel rather than a ship. As one passenger recalled, on entering the ship's interior a passenger would "at once lose the feeling that we are on board ship, and seem instead to be entering the hall of some great house on shore". Cabins in First Class also contained buttons that, when pressed, would signal for a steward to come to the cabin.
Among the more novel features available to first-class passengers was a deep saltwater swimming pool, a gymnasium, a squash court, and a Victorian-style Turkish bath which comprised hot room, warm (temperate) room, cooling-room, and two shampooing (massage) rooms. Complementing the Turkish bath, and within the same area, was a steam room and an electric bath. First-class common rooms were impressive in scope and lavishly decorated. They included a lounge in the style of the Palace of Versailles, an enormous reception room, a men's smoking room, and a reading and writing room. There was an à la carte restaurant in the style of the Ritz Hotel which was run as a concession by the famous Italian restaurateur Gaspare Gatti. A Café Parisien decorated in the style of a French pavement café, complete with ivy-covered trellises and wicker furniture, was run as an annex to the restaurant. For an extra cost, first-class passengers could enjoy the finest French haute cuisine in the most luxurious of surroundings. There was also a Verandah Café where tea and light refreshments were served that offered grand views of the ocean. At long by wide, the dining saloon on D Deck, designed by Charles Fitzroy Doll, was the largest room afloat and could seat almost 600 passengers at a time.Brewster, Hugh & Coulter, Laurie. 882 1/2 Answers to Your Questions About The Titanic, Scholastic Press, 1998; 32.
Leisure facilities were provided for all three classes to pass the time. As well as making use of the indoor amenities such as the library, smoking rooms, and gymnasium, it was also customary for passengers to socialise on the open deck, promenading or relaxing in hired deck chairs or wooden benches. A passenger list was published before the sailing to inform the public which members of the great and good were on board, and it was not uncommon for ambitious mothers to use the list to identify rich bachelors to whom they could introduce their marriageable daughters during the voyage.
One of Titanics most distinctive features was the First Class staircase, known as the Grand Staircase or Grand Stairway. Built of solid English oak with a sweeping curve, the staircase descended through seven decks of the ship, between the boat deck to E deck, before terminating in a simplified single flight on F Deck. It was capped with a dome of wrought iron and glass that admitted natural light to the stairwell. Each landing off the staircase gave access to ornate entrance halls panelled in the William & Mary style and lit by ormolu and crystal light fixtures.
At the uppermost landing was a large carved wooden panel containing a clock, with figures of "Honour and Glory Crowning Time" flanking the clock face. The Grand Staircase was destroyed during the sinking and is now just a void in the ship which modern explorers have used to access the lower decks. During the filming of James Cameron's Titanic in 1997, his replica of the Grand Staircase was ripped from its foundations by the force of the inrushing water on the set. It has been suggested that during the real event, the entire Grand Staircase was ejected upwards through the dome.
The ship's passengers brought with them a huge amount of baggage; another was taken up by first- and second-class baggage. In addition, there was a considerable quantity of regular cargo, ranging from furniture to foodstuffs, and a 1912 Renault Type CE Coupe de Ville motor car. Despite later myths, the cargo on Titanics maiden voyage was fairly mundane; there were no large quantities of , exotic minerals or diamonds. The so-called Unlucky Mummy being on board is also false.
One of the more famous items lost in the shipwreck, a jewelled copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, was valued at £405 (£ today). According to the claims for compensation filed with Commissioner Gilchrist, following the conclusion of the Senate Inquiry, the single most highly valued item of luggage or cargo was a large neoclassical oil painting entitled La Circassienne au Bain by French artist Merry-Joseph Blondel. The painting's owner, first-class passenger Mauritz Håkan Björnström-Steffansson, filed a claim for $100,000 (equivalent to $ million in ) in compensation for the loss of the artwork. Other intriguing items in the manifest included twelve cases of ostrich feathers, seventy-six cases of dragon's blood resin, and sixteen cases of .
Titanic was equipped with eight electric cranes, four electric winches and three steam winches to lift cargo and baggage in and out of the holds. It is estimated that the ship used some 415 tonnes of coal whilst in Southampton, simply generating steam to operate the cargo winches and provide heat and light. The Titanic: The Memorabilia Collection, by Michael Swift, Igloo Publishing 2011,
Both cutters were kept swung out, hanging from the davits, ready for immediate use, while collapsible lifeboats C and D were stowed on the boat deck (connected to davits) immediately inboard of boats 1 and 2 respectively. A and B were stored on the roof of the officers' quarters, on either side of number 1 funnel. There were no davits to lower them and their weight would make them difficult to launch by hand. Each boat carried (among other things) food, water, blankets, and a spare life belt. Lifeline ropes on the boats' sides enabled them to save additional people from the water if necessary.
Titanic had 16 sets of davits, each able to handle three lifeboats, as Carlisle had hoped. This gave Titanic the ability to carry up to 48 wooden lifeboats. However, the White Star Line decided that only 16 wooden lifeboats and four collapsibles would be carried, which could accommodate 1,178 people, only one-third of Titanic total capacity. At the time, the Board of Trade's regulations required British vessels over 10,000 tonnes to carry only 16 lifeboats with a capacity of 990 occupants.
Therefore, the White Star Line actually provided more lifeboat accommodation than was legally required. At the time, lifeboats were intended to ferry survivors from a sinking ship to a rescuing ship—not keep afloat the whole population or power them to shore. Had responded to Titanic Distress signal, the lifeboats might have been able to ferry all passengers to safety as planned.
The construction of Olympic and Titanic took place virtually in parallel, with Olympics keel laid down first on 16 December 1908 and Titanics on 31 March 1909. Both ships took about 26 months to build and followed much the same construction process. They were designed essentially as an enormous floating box girder, with the keel acting as a backbone and the frames of the hull forming the ribs. At the base of the ships, a double bottom deep supported 300 frames, each between apart and measuring up to about long. They terminated at the bridge deck (B Deck) and were covered with steel plates which formed the outer skin of the ships.
The 2,000 hull plates were single pieces of rolled steel structural steel, mostly up to wide and long and weighing between 2.5 and 3 tonnes. Their thickness varied from . The plates were laid in a clinkered (overlapping) fashion from the keel to the bilge. Above that point they were laid in the "in and out" fashion, where strake plating was applied in bands (the "in strakes") with the gaps covered by the "out strakes", overlapping on the edges. Commercial oxy-fuel and electric arc welding methods, ubiquitous in fabrication today, were still in their infancy. Like most other iron and steel structures of the era, the hull was held together with over three million iron and steel , which by themselves weighed over 1,200 tonnes. They were fitted using hydraulic machines or were hammered in by hand. In the 1990s, material scientists concluded that the steel plate used for the ship was subject to being especially brittle when cold, and that this brittleness exacerbated the impact damage and hastened the sinking. It is believed that, by the standards of the time, the steel plate's quality was good, not faulty, but that it was inferior to what would be used for shipbuilding purposes in later decades, owing to advances in the metallurgy of steelmaking. As for the rivets, considerable emphasis has also been placed on their quality and strength.
Two side anchors and a centre anchor were among the last items to be fitted on Titanic before it launched. The anchors were a challenge to make; the centre anchor was the largest ever Forging by hand. The head weighed nearly 16 tonnes and the shank another 8. Twenty Clydesdale horse draught horses were needed to haul the centre anchor by wagon from the Noah Hingley & Sons Ltd forge shop in Netherton, near Dudley, United Kingdom to the Dudley railway station two miles away. It was then shipped by rail to Fleetwood in Lancashire before boarding a ship to Belfast.
Constructing the ships was difficult and dangerous. Safety precautions were rudimentary at best for the 15,000 men who worked at Harland and Wolff at the time. Much of the work was carried out without safety equipment like hard hats or hand guards on machinery. 246 injuries were recorded during Titanics construction, including 28 severe injuries, such as arms severed by machines or legs crushed under falling pieces of steel. Six people died on the ship during construction and fitting out, and another two died in the shipyard workshops and sheds. Just before the launch, a worker was killed when a piece of wood fell on him.
Titanic was launched at 12:15 pm on 31 May 1911 in the presence of Lord Pirrie, J. Pierpont Morgan, J. Bruce Ismay and 100,000 onlookers. The Caucasian , (newspaper of Shreveport, Louisiana) 6 June 1911...Retrieved 4 October 2018 Twenty-two tonnes of soap and tallow were spread on the slipway to lubricate the ship's passage into the River Lagan. In keeping with the White Star Line's traditional policy, the ship was not formally named or christened with champagne. The ship was towed to a fitting-out berth where, over the course of the next year, the engines, funnels and superstructure were installed and interior was fitted out.
Although Titanic was virtually identical to the class's lead ship Olympic, a few changes were made to distinguish both ships. The most noticeable exterior difference was that Titanic (and the third vessel in class, ) had a steel screen with sliding windows installed along the forward half of the A Deck promenade. This was installed as a last-minute change at the personal request of Bruce Ismay and was intended to provide additional shelter to First Class passengers. Extensive changes were made to B Deck on Titanic as the promenade space in this deck, which had proven unpopular on Olympic, was converted into additional First-Class cabins, including two opulent parlour suites with their own private promenade spaces. The À la Carte restaurant was also enlarged and the Café Parisien, an entirely new feature which did not exist on Olympic, was added. These changes made Titanic slightly heavier than Olympic and allowed claim to be the largest ship afloat. The work took longer than expected due to design changes requested by Ismay and a temporary pause in work occasioned by the need to repair Olympic, which had been in a collision in September 1911. Had Titanic been finished earlier, the ship might well have missed colliding with an iceberg.
On 3 February 1912, Titanic was pulled into Thompson Graving Dock. It was the largest dry dock of the world and had been built with an eye to building ships of the size of the Olympic class. Here, Titanic would receive its propellers and final red hull coating. However, on 6 March 1912, Titanic was moved out again to allow Olympic in, which had lost a propeller blade.
The sea trials consisted of a number of tests of handling characteristics, carried out first in Belfast Lough and then in the open waters of the Irish Sea. Over the course of about 12 hours, Titanic was driven at different speeds, turning ability was tested, and a "crash stop" was performed in which the engines were reversed full ahead to full astern, bringing the ship to a stop in or 3 minutes and 15 seconds. Titanic covered a distance of about , averaging and reaching a maximum speed of just under .
On returning to Belfast at about 7 pm, the surveyor signed an "Agreement and Account of Voyages and Crew", valid for 12 months, which declared the ship seaworthy. An hour later, Titanic departed Belfast to head to Southampton, a voyage of about . After a journey lasting about 28 hours, Titanic arrived about midnight on 4 April and was towed to the port's Berth 44, ready for the arrival of passengers and the remainder of the crew.
In addition, Southampton, being on the south coast, allowed ships to easily cross the English Channel and make a port of call on the northern coast of France, usually at Cherbourg. This allowed British ships to pick up clientele from continental Europe before recrossing the channel and picking up passengers at Queenstown. The Southampton-Cherbourg-New York run would become so popular that most British ocean liners began using the port after World War I. Out of respect for Liverpool, ships continued to be registered there until the early 1960s. Queen Elizabeth 2 was one of the first ships registered in Southampton when introduced into service by Cunard in 1969.
Titanics maiden voyage was intended to be the first of many trans-Atlantic crossings between Southampton and New York via Cherbourg and Queenstown on westbound runs, returning via Plymouth in England while eastbound. The entire schedule of voyages through to December 1912 still exists.Eaton and Haas; The Misadventures of the White Star Line, c. 1990 When the route was established, four ships were assigned to the service. In addition to Teutonic and Majestic, and the brand new sailed the route. When the Olympic entered service in June 1911, the ship replaced Teutonic, which after completing a last run on the service in late April was transferred to the Dominion Line's Canadian service. The following August, Adriatic was transferred to White Star Line's main Liverpool-New York service, and in November, Majestic was withdrawn from service pending the arrival of Titanic in the coming months and was mothballed as a reserve ship.De Kerbrech, Richard, Ships of the White Star Line, pp. 50, 53, 112
White Star Line's initial plans for Olympic and Titanic on the Southampton run followed the same routine as their predecessors had done before them. Each would sail once every three weeks from Southampton and New York, usually leaving at noon each Wednesday from Southampton and each Saturday from New York, thus enabling the White Star Line to offer weekly sailings in each direction. Special trains were scheduled from London and Paris to convey passengers to Southampton and Cherbourg respectively. The deep-water dock at Southampton, then known as the " White Star Dock, had been specially constructed to accommodate the new Olympic-class liners, and had opened in 1911.
Captain Edward John Smith, the most senior of the White Star Line's captains, was transferred from Olympic to take command of Titanic. Henry Tingle Wilde also came across from Olympic to take the post of chief mate. Titanics previously designated chief mate and first officer, William McMaster Murdoch and Charles Lightoller, were downgraded to the ranks of first and second officer respectively, and the original second officer, David Blair, was dropped altogether. The Third mate, Herbert Pitman, was the only deck officer not a member of the Royal Naval Reserve. Pitman was the second-to-last surviving officer.
Titanics crew were divided into three principal departments: Deck, with 66 crew; Engine, with 325; and Victualling, with 494. The vast majority of the crew were thus not seamen but were either engineers, firemen, or stokers, responsible for looking after the engines, or stewards and galley staff, responsible for the passengers. Of these, over 97% were male; just 23 of the crew were female, mainly stewardesses. The rest represented a variety of professions—bakers, chefs, butchers, fishmongers, dishwashers, stewards, gymnasium instructors, laundrymen, waiters, bed-makers, cleaners, and even a printer, who produced a daily newspaper for passengers called the Atlantic Daily Bulletin with the latest news received by the ship's wireless operators.
Most of the crew signed on in Southampton on 6 April; in all, 699 of the crew came from there, and 40% were natives of the town. A few specialist staff were self-employed or subcontractors, including: five postal clerks who worked for the Royal Mail and the United States Post Office Department, the staff of the First Class À La Carte Restaurant and the Café Parisien, the radio operators (who were employed by Marconi) and the eight musicians, who were employed by an agency and travelled as second-class passengers. Crew pay varied greatly, from Captain Smith's £105 a month (equivalent to £ today) to the £3 10 s (£ today) that stewardesses earned. The lower-paid victualling staff could, however, supplement their wages substantially through tips from passengers.
Usually, a high-prestige vessel like Titanic could expect to be fully booked on a maiden voyage. However, a national coal strike in the UK had caused considerable disruption to shipping schedules in the spring of 1912, causing many crossings to be cancelled. Many would-be passengers chose to postpone their travel plans until the strike was over. The strike had finished a few days before Titanic sailed; however, that was too late to have much of an effect. Titanic was able to sail on the scheduled date only because coal was transferred from other vessels which were tied up at Southampton, such as and , as well as coal that Olympic had brought back from a previous voyage to New York, which had been stored at the White Star Dock.
Some of the most prominent people of the day booked a passage aboard Titanic, travelling in First Class. Among them (with those who perished marked with a dagger†) were the American millionaire John Jacob Astor IV† and his wife, Madeleine Astor (with John Jacob Astor VI in utero); industrialist Benjamin Guggenheim†; painter and sculptor Francis Davis Millet†; Macy's owner Isidor Straus† and his wife, Ida Straus†; millionaire Margaret Brown; officer Archibald Butt†, aide to two U.S. presidents (Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, neither aboard ship); Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon and his wife, Lucy (Lady Duff-Gordon); Lieut. Col. Arthur Peuchen; writer and historian Archibald Gracie; cricketer and businessman John B. Thayer† with his wife, Marian Thayer, and son Jack Thayer; George Dunton Widener† with his wife, Eleanor, and son Harry†; Noël Leslie, Countess of Rothes; Mr.† and Mrs. Charles M. Hays; Mr. and Mrs. Henry S. Harper; Mr.† and Mrs. Walter D. Douglas; Mr.† and Mrs. George D. Wick; Mr.† and Renee Harris Henry B. Harris; Mr.† and Mrs. Emily Ryerson; Mr.† and Mrs.† Allison family; Mr. and Mrs. Dickinson Bishop; noted architect Edward Austin Kent†; brewery heir Harry Molson†; tennis players Karl Behr and Dick Williams; author and socialite Helen Churchill Candee; future lawyer and suffragette Elsie Bowerman and her mother Edith; journalist and social reformer William Thomas Stead†; journalist and fashion buyer Edith Rosenbaum; socialite Edith Corse Evans†; wealthy divorcée Charlotte Drake Cardeza; French sculptor Paul Chevré; author Jacques Futrelle† with his wife May; silent film actress Dorothy Gibson with her mother Pauline; President of the Swiss Bankverein, Col. Alfons Simonius-Blumer; James A. Hughes's daughter Eloise; banker Robert Williams Daniel; the chairman of the Holland America Line, ; Arthur Wellington Ross's son John H. Ross; Washington Roebling's nephew Washington A. Roebling II†; Andrew Saks's daughter Leila Saks Meyer with her husband Edgar Joseph Meyer† (son of Marc Eugene Meyer); William A. Clark's nephew Walter M. Clark with his wife, Virginia; a great-great-grandson of soap manufacturer Andrew Pears, Thomas C. Pears, with wife; John S. Pillsbury's grandson John P. Snyder and wife Nelle; and Dorothy Parker's uncle Martin Rothschild with his wife, Elizabeth.
Titanics owner J. P. Morgan was scheduled to travel on the maiden voyage but cancelled at the last minute. Also aboard the ship were the White Star Line's managing director J. Bruce Ismay and Titanics designer Thomas Andrews†, who was on board to observe any problems and assess the general performance of the new ship.
The exact number of people aboard is not known, as not all of those who had booked tickets made it to the ship; about 50 people cancelled for various reasons, and not all of those who boarded stayed aboard for the entire journey. Fares varied depending on class and season. Third Class fares from London, Southampton, or Queenstown cost £7 5 s (equivalent to £ today) while the cheapest First Class fares cost £23 (£ today). The most expensive First Class suites were to have cost up to £870 in high season (£ today).
After making it safely through the complex tides and channels of Southampton Water and the Solent, Titanic disembarked the Southampton Maritime pilot at the Nab Tower and headed out into the English Channel. pp. 81–82 by Kevin Wright Carney, 2008 (hard cover) The ship headed for the French port of Cherbourg, a journey of . The weather was windy, very fine but cold and overcast. Because Cherbourg lacked docking facilities for a ship the size of Titanic, tenders had to be used to transfer passengers from shore to ship. The White Star Line operated two tenders at Cherbourg: and ( Nomadic is the only surviving White Star Line ship). Both had been designed specifically as tenders for the Olympic-class liners and launched shortly after Titanic. Four hours after leaving Southampton, Titanic arrived at Cherbourg and was met by the tenders where 274 additional passengers were taken aboard (142 First Class, 30 Second Class, and 102 Third Class). Twenty-four passengers had booked a cross-Channel passage only and were left aboard the tenders to be conveyed to shore, a process completed within 90 minutes. At 8 pm, Titanic Weigh anchor and left for Queenstown with the weather remaining cold and windy. At 11:30 am on Thursday 11 April, Titanic arrived at Cork Harbour on the south coast of Ireland. It was a partly cloudy but relatively warm day, with a brisk wind. Again, the dock facilities were not suitable for a ship of Titanic size, and the tenders America and Ireland were used to bring passengers aboard. In all, 123 passengers boarded Titanic at Queenstown – three First Class, seven Second Class and 113 Third Class. In addition to the 24 cross-Channel passengers who had disembarked at Cherbourg, another seven passengers had booked an overnight passage from Southampton to Queenstown. Among the seven was Francis Browne, a Jesuit trainee who was a keen photographer and took many photographs aboard Titanic, including one of the last known photographs of the ship. The very last one was taken by another cross-channel passenger, Kate Odell. A decidedly unofficial departure was that of a crew member, stoker John Coffey, a Queenstown native who sneaked off the ship by hiding under mail bags being transported to shore. Titanic weighed anchor for the last time at 1:30 pm and departed on the westward journey across the Atlantic.
From 11 April to local apparent noon the next day, Titanic covered ; the following day, ; and by noon on the final day of the voyage, . From then until the time of sinking, the ship travelled another , averaging about .
The weather cleared as Titanic left Ireland under cloudy skies with a headwind. Temperatures remained fairly mild on Saturday 13 April, but the following day Titanic crossed a cold weather front with strong winds and waves of up to . These died down as the day progressed until, by the evening of Sunday 14 April, it became clear, calm, and very cold.
The first three days of the voyage from Queenstown had passed without apparent incident. A fire had begun in Titanics forward most coal bunker (that supplied coal to boiler rooms six and five) approximately 10 days prior to the ship's departure, and continued to burn for several days into its voyage, Fire Down Below – by Samuel Halpern. Retrieved 7 January 2017. but passengers were unaware of this situation. Fires occurred frequently on board steamships at the time, due to spontaneous combustion of the coal. The fires had to be extinguished with fire hoses by moving the coal on top to another bunker and by removing the burning coal and feeding it into the furnace.Titanic Research & Modeling Association: Coal Bunker Fire The fire was finally extinguished on 14 April. Titanic: Fire & Ice (Or What You Will) Various Authors. Retrieved 23 January 2017. There has been some speculation and discussion as to whether this fire and attempts to extinguish it may have made the ship more vulnerable to sinking.
Titanic received a series of warnings from other ships of drifting ice in the area of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, but Captain Smith ignored them. One of the ships to warn Titanic was the Atlantic Line's . Nevertheless, Titanic continued to steam at full speed, which was standard practice at the time. Although not trying to set a speed record, timekeeping was a priority, and under prevailing maritime practices, ships were often operated at close to full speed; ice warnings were seen as advisories, and reliance was placed upon lookouts and the watch on the bridge. It was generally believed that ice posed little danger to large vessels. Close calls with ice were not uncommon, and even head-on collisions had not been disastrous. In 1907, , a German liner, had rammed an iceberg but still completed the voyage, and Captain Smith said in 1907 that he "could not imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that."
Those aboard Titanic were ill-prepared for such an emergency. In accordance with accepted practices of the time, as ships were seen as largely unsinkable and lifeboats were intended to transfer passengers to nearby rescue vessels, Titanic only had enough lifeboats to carry about half of those on board; if the ship had carried the full complement of about 3,339 passengers and crew, only about a third could have been accommodated in the lifeboats. The crew had not been trained adequately in carrying out an evacuation. The officers did not know how many they could safely put aboard the lifeboats and launched many of them barely half-full. Third-class passengers were largely left to fend for themselves, causing many of them to become trapped below decks as the ship filled with water. The "women and children first" protocol was generally followed when loading the lifeboats, and most of the male passengers and crew were left aboard. Women and children survived at rates of about 75 per cent and 50 per cent, while only 20 per cent of men survived.
Between 2:10 and 2:15 am, a little over two and a half hours after Titanic struck the iceberg, the rate of sinking suddenly increased as the boat deck dipped underwater, and the sea poured in through open hatches and grates, following which the electrical power supply on board stopped after the circuit breakers tripped and the lights flickered and went out. As the ship's unsupported stern rose out of the water, exposing the propellers, the ship broke in two main pieces between the second and third funnels, due to the immense forces on the keel. With the bow underwater, and air trapped in the stern, the stern remained afloat and buoyant for a few minutes longer, rising to a nearly vertical angle with hundreds of people still clinging to it, before foundering at 2:20 am. It was believed that Titanic sank in one piece, but the 1985 discovery of the wreck revealed that the ship had broken in two. All remaining passengers and crew were immersed in water at a temperature of . Only five who were in the water were helped into the lifeboats, though the lifeboats had room for almost 500 more people.
Distress signals were sent by wireless, rockets, and lamp, but none of the ships that responded were near enough to reach Titanic before sinking. A radio operator on board , for instance, estimated that it would be 6 am before the liner could arrive at the scene. Meanwhile, , which was the last to have been in contact before the collision, saw Titanics flares but failed to assist. Around 4 am, arrived on the scene in response to Titanics earlier distress calls.
When the ship sank, the lifeboats that had been lowered were only filled up to an average of 60%. The number of survivors have been variously reported as between 705 and 708. While estimates, both official and otherwise, vary; it is generally accepted that approximately 1,500 persons died in the disaster.
took three days to reach New York after leaving the scene of the disaster with a journey slowed by pack ice, fog, thunderstorms and rough seas. ''Carpathia'' was, however, able to pass news to the outside world by wireless about what had happened. The initial reports were confusing, leading the American press to report erroneously on 15 April that ''Titanic'' was being towed to port by . Late on the night of 15 April White Star reported a message was received saying ''Titanic'' had sunk, but all passengers and crew had been transferred to another vessel. Later that day, confirmation came through that ''Titanic'' had been lost and that most of the passengers and crew had died. The news attracted crowds of people to the White Star Line's offices in London, New York, Montreal, Southampton, Liverpool and Belfast.''In His Court''. Mike Yorkey (2002) p. 127 It hit hardest in Southampton, whose people suffered the greatest losses from the sinking; four out of every five crew members came from this town.Carpathia docked at 9:30 pm on 18 April at New York's Pier 54 and was greeted by some 40,000 people waiting at the quayside in heavy rain. Immediate relief in the form of clothing and transportation to shelters was provided by the Women's Relief Committee, the Travelers Aid Society of New York, and the Council of Jewish Women, among other organisations. Many of Titanics surviving passengers did not linger in New York but headed onwards immediately to relatives' homes. Some of the wealthier survivors chartered private trains to take them home, and the Pennsylvania Railroad laid on a special train free of charge to take survivors to Philadelphia. Titanics 214 surviving crew members were taken to the Red Star Line's steamer , where they were accommodated in passenger cabins.
Carpathia was hurriedly restocked with food and provisions before resuming the journey to Rijeka, Austria-Hungary. The crew were given a bonus of a month's wages by Cunard as a reward for their actions, and some of Titanic passengers joined to give them an additional bonus of nearly £900 (£ today), divided among the crew members.
The ship's arrival in New York led to a frenzy of press interest, with newspapers competing to be the first to report the survivors' stories. Some reporters bribed their way aboard the pilot boat New York, which guided Carpathia into harbour, and one even managed to get onto Carpathia before docking. Crowds gathered outside newspaper offices to see the latest reports being posted in the windows or on billboards. It took another four days for a complete list of casualties to be compiled and released, adding to the agony of relatives waiting for news of those who had been aboard Titanic.
Many charities were set up to help the survivors and their families, many of whom lost their sole wage earner, or, in the case of many Third-Class survivors, everything they owned. In New York City, for example, a joint committee of the American Red Cross and Charity Organization Society formed to disburse financial aid to survivors and dependents of those who died. On 29 April, opera stars Enrico Caruso and Mary Garden and members of the Metropolitan Opera raised $12,000 ($ today) in benefits for victims of the disaster by giving special concerts in which versions of "Autumn" and "Nearer My God To Thee" were part of the programme. In Britain, relief funds were organised for the families of Titanics lost crew members, raising nearly £450,000 (£ million today). One such fund was still in operation as late as the 1960s.
In the United States and Britain, more than 60 survivors combined to sue the White Star Line for damages connected to loss of life and baggage. The claims totalled $16,804,112 (), which was far in excess of what White Star argued it was responsible for as a limited liability company under American law. Because the bulk of the litigants were in the United States, White Star petitioned the United States Supreme Court in 1914, which ruled in its favour that it qualified as an LLC and found that the causes of the ship's sinking were largely unforeseeable, rather than due to negligence. This sharply limited the scope of damages survivors and family members were entitled to, prompting them to reduce their claims to some $2.5 million ($ million today). White Star only settled for $664,000 ($ million today), about 27% of the original total sought by survivors. The settlement was agreed to by 44 of the claimants in December 1915, with $500,000 ($ million today) set aside for the American claimants, $50,000 ($ million today) for the British, and $114,000 ($ million today) to go towards interest and legal expenses.
The US Senate's inquiry into the disaster was initiated on 19 April, a day after Carpathia arrived in New York. The chairman, Senator William Alden Smith, wanted to gather accounts from passengers and crew while the events were still fresh in their minds. Smith also needed to subpoena all surviving British passengers and crew while they were still on American soil, which prevented them from returning to the UK before the American inquiry was completed on 25 May. The British press condemned Smith as an opportunist, insensitively forcing an inquiry as a means of gaining political prestige and seizing "his moment to stand on the world stage". Smith, however, already had a reputation as a campaigner for safety on US railroads, and wanted to investigate any possible malpractices by railroad tycoon J. P. Morgan, Titanics ultimate owner.
The British Board of Trade's inquiry into the disaster was headed by Lord Mersey, and took place between 2 May and 3 July. Being run by the Board of Trade, who had previously approved the ship, it was seen by some as having little interest in its own or White Star's conduct being found negligent.
Each inquiry took testimony from both passengers and crew of Titanic, crew members of Leyland Line's Californian, Captain Arthur Rostron of Carpathia and other experts. The British inquiry also took far greater expert testimony, making it the longest and most detailed court of inquiry in British history up to that time. The two inquiries reached broadly similar conclusions: the regulations on the number of lifeboats that ships had to carry were out of date and inadequate, Captain Smith had failed to take proper heed of ice warnings, the lifeboats had not been properly filled or crewed, and the collision was the direct result of steaming into a dangerous area at too high a speed.
Neither inquiry's findings listed negligence by IMM or the White Star Line as a factor. The American inquiry concluded that since those involved had followed standard practice, the disaster was an act of God. The British inquiry concluded that Smith had followed long-standing practice that had not previously been shown to be unsafe, noting that British ships alone had carried 3.5 million passengers over the previous decade with the loss of just 10 lives, and concluded that Smith had done "only that which other skilled men would have done in the same position". Lord Mersey did, however, find fault with the "extremely high speed (twenty-two knots) which was maintained" following numerous ice warnings, noting that "what was a mistake in the case of the Titanic would without doubt be negligence in any similar case in the future".
The recommendations included strong suggestions for major changes in maritime regulations to implement new safety measures, such as ensuring that more lifeboats were provided, that lifeboat drills were properly carried out and that wireless equipment on passenger ships was manned around the clock. An International Ice Patrol was set up to monitor the presence of icebergs in the North Atlantic, and maritime safety regulations were harmonised internationally through the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea; both measures are still in force today.
On 18 June 1912, Guglielmo Marconi gave evidence to the Court of Inquiry regarding the telegraphy. Its final report recommended that all liners carry the system and that sufficient operators maintain a constant service.Court of Inquiry Loss of the S.S. Titanic 1912
The way the Titanic sank brought to light serious design issues with the Olympic-class. As a result, the Olympic went through a major refit and design changes for the construction of the Britannic.Archibald, Rick & Ballard, Robert. "The Lost Ships of Robert Ballard," Thunder Bay Press: 2005; 100.
In August 1912, the liner Corsican struck an iceberg in the Atlantic, severely damaging the bow. However, because the weather was hazy at the time, speed had been reduced to 'dead slow', which limited further damage. While the lifeboats had been deployed, they were not boarded.Liner Strikes An Iceberg, Western Mail, 22 August 1912, p5
Testimony before the British inquiry revealed that at 10:10 pm, Californian observed the lights of a ship to the south; it was later agreed between Captain Stanley Lord and Third Officer C.V. Groves (who had relieved Lord of duty at 11:10 pm) that this was a passenger liner. At 11:50 pm, the officer watched that ship's lights flash out, as if shutting down or turning sharply, and noted that the port light was visible. Morse light signals to the ship, upon Lord's order, were made between 11:30 pm and 1:00 am, but were not acknowledged. If Titanic was as far from the Californian as Lord claimed Morse signals would not have been visible. A reasonable and prudent course of action would have been to awaken the wireless operator and to instruct him to attempt to contact Titanic by that method. Had Lord done so, it is possible he could have reached Titanic in time to save additional lives.
Captain Lord had gone to the chart room at 11:00 pm. Second Officer Herbert Stone, now on duty, notified Lord at 1:10 am that the ship had fired five rockets. Lord wanted to know if they were company signals, that is, coloured flares used for identification. Stone said that he did not know and that the rockets were all white. Captain Lord instructed the crew to continue to signal the other vessel with the Morse lamp, and went back to sleep. Three more rockets were observed at 1:50 am and Stone noted that the ship looked strange in the water, as if the ship were listing. At 2:15 am, Lord was notified that the ship could no longer be seen. Lord asked again if the lights had had any colours in them, and he was informed that they were all white.
Californian eventually responded. At around 5:30 am, Chief Officer George Stewart awakened wireless operator Cyril Furmstone Evans, informed him that rockets had been seen during the night, and asked that he try to communicate with any ship. He got news of Titanics loss, Captain Lord was notified, and the ship set out to render assistance, arriving well after Carpathia had already picked up all the survivors.
The inquiries found that the ship seen by Californian was in fact Titanic and that it would have been possible for Californian to aid rescue; therefore, Captain Lord had acted improperly in failing to do so.
The water temperature was well below normal in the area where Titanic sank. It also contributed to the rapid death of many passengers during the sinking. Water temperature readings taken around the time of the accident were reported to be . Typical water temperatures were normally around during mid-April. The coldness of the water was a critical factor, often causing death within minutes for many of those in the water.
Fewer than a third of those aboard Titanic survived the disaster. Some survivors died shortly afterwards; injuries and the effects of exposure caused the deaths of several of those brought aboard Carpathia. The figures show stark differences in the survival rates of the different classes aboard Titanic. Although only 3% of first-class women were lost, 54% of those in third-class died. Similarly, five of six first-class and all second-class children survived, but 52 of the 79 in third-class perished. The differences by gender were even bigger: nearly all female crew members, first- and second-class passengers were saved. Men from the First Class died at a higher rate than women from the Third Class. In total, 50% of the children survived, 20% of the men and 75% of the women.
Thomas Andrews, the chief naval architect of the shipyard, died in the disaster.
The last living survivor, Millvina Dean from England, who, at only nine weeks old, was the youngest passenger on board, died aged 97 on 31 May 2009. Last Titanic survivor, a baby put in a lifeboat, dies at 97 The Guardian. Retrieved 31 March 2012 Two special survivors were the stewardess Violet Jessop and the stoker Arthur John Priest, "Titanic's unsinkable stoker" BBC News 30 March 2012 who survived the sinkings of both Titanic and and were aboard when the ship was rammed in 1911. Aforementioned tennis player Richard N. Williams survived as a first class male passenger by swimming to a life boat. He almost had his legs amputated from frostbite but managed to keep them and continue his sports career. His father, who was beside him in the water, was on the other hand killed by a funnel.
The first ship to reach the site of the sinking, the CS Mackay-Bennett, found so many bodies that the embalming supplies aboard were quickly exhausted. Health regulations required that only embalmed bodies could be returned to port. Captain Larnder of the Mackay-Bennett and undertakers aboard decided to preserve only the bodies of first-class passengers, justifying their decision by the need to visually identify wealthy men to resolve any disputes over large estates. As a result, many third-class passengers and crew were buried at sea. Larnder identified many of those buried at sea as crew members by their clothing, and stated that as a mariner, he himself would be content to be buried at sea.
Bodies of passengers of the Titanic were numbered as they were brought aboard. Physical characteristics, clothing, identifying marks, and personal effects were all documented. Personal effects were stored separately, labelled with the same body number, and valuables were locked up by the purser. Without enough material or space to handle bodies and their belongings, the crew had to triage.
Bodies recovered were preserved for transport to Halifax, the closest city to the sinking with direct rail and steamship connections. The Halifax Registrar of Vital Statistics, John Henry Barnstead, developed a detailed system to identify bodies and safeguard personal possessions. Relatives from across North America came to identify and claim bodies. A large temporary morgue was set up in the curling rink of the Mayflower Curling Club and undertakers were called in from all across eastern Canada to assist. Some bodies were shipped to be buried in their home towns across North America and Europe. About two-thirds of the bodies were identified. Unidentified victims were buried with simple numbers based on the order in which their bodies were discovered. The majority of recovered victims, 150 bodies, were buried in three Halifax cemeteries, the largest being Fairview Lawn Cemetery (121 bodies), followed by the nearby Mount Olivet Cemetery (19 bodies) and the Jewish Baron de Hirsch Cemetery (10 bodies).
In mid-May 1912, recovered three bodies over from the site of the sinking who were among the original occupants of Collapsible A. When Fifth Officer Harold Lowe and six crewmen returned to the wreck site sometime after the sinking in a lifeboat to pick up survivors, they rescued a dozen men and one woman from Collapsible A, but left the dead bodies of three of its occupants. After their retrieval from Collapsible A by Oceanic, the bodies were buried at sea.
The last Titanic body recovered was steward James McGrady, Body No. 330, found by the chartered Newfoundland sealing vessel Algerine on 22 May and buried at Fairview Lawn Cemetery in Halifax on 12 June.Alan Ruffman, Titanic Remembered: The Unsinkable Ship and Halifax Formac Publishing (1999), p. 38.
333 bodies of Titanic victims were recovered, which amounted to one in five of the over 1,500 victims. Some bodies sank with the ship while currents quickly dispersed bodies and wreckage across hundreds of miles, making them difficult to recover. By June, one of the last search ships reported that life jackets supporting bodies were coming apart and releasing bodies to sink.
The team discovered that Titanic had in fact split apart, probably near or at the surface, before sinking to the seabed. The separated bow and stern sections lie about a apart in Titanic Canyon off the coast of Newfoundland. They are located from the inaccurate coordinates given by Titanics radio operators on the night of the ship's sinking, and approximately from Halifax and from New York.
Both sections struck the seabed at considerable speed, causing the bow to crumple and the stern to collapse entirely. The bow is by far the more intact section and still contains some surprisingly intact interiors. In contrast, the stern is completely wrecked; its decks have pancaked down on top of each other and much of the hull plating was torn off and lies scattered across the sea floor. The much greater level of damage to the stern is probably due to structural damage incurred during the sinking. Thus weakened, the remainder of the stern was flattened by the impact with the sea bed.
The two sections are surrounded by a debris field measuring approximately . It contains hundreds of thousands of items, such as pieces of the ship, furniture, dinnerware and personal items, which fell from the ship while sinking or ejected when the bow and stern impacted on the sea floor. The debris field was also the last resting place of a number of Titanic victims. Most of the bodies and clothes were consumed by sea creatures and bacteria, leaving pairs of shoes and boots—which have proved to be inedible—as the only sign that bodies once lay there.
Since its initial discovery, the wreck of Titanic has been revisited on numerous occasions by explorers, scientists, filmmakers, tourists and salvagers, who have recovered thousands of items from the debris field for conservation and public display. The ship's condition has deteriorated significantly over the years, particularly from accidental damage by but mostly because of an accelerating rate of growth of iron-eating bacteria on the hull. In 2006, it was estimated that within 50 years the hull and structure of Titanic would eventually collapse entirely, leaving only the more durable interior fittings of the ship intermingled with a pile of rust on the sea floor.
Many artefacts from Titanic have been recovered from the seabed by RMS Titanic Inc., which exhibits them in touring exhibitions around the world and in a permanent exhibition at the Luxor Las Vegas hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. A number of other museums exhibit artefacts either donated by survivors or retrieved from the floating bodies of victims of the disaster.
On 16 April 2012, the day after the 100th anniversary of the sinking, photos were released showing possible human remains resting on the ocean floor. The photos, taken by Robert Ballard during an expedition led by NOAA in 2004, show a boot and a coat close to Titanic stern which experts called "compelling evidence" that it is the spot where somebody came to rest, and that human remains could be buried in the sediment beneath them. The wreck of the Titanic falls under the scope of the 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage. This means that all states party to the convention will prohibit the pillaging, commercial exploitation, sale and dispersion of the wreck and its artefacts. Because of the location of the wreck in international waters and the lack of any exclusive jurisdiction over the wreckage area, the convention provides a state co-operation system, by which states inform each other of any potential activity concerning ancient shipwreck sites, like the Titanic, and co-operate to prevent unscientific or unethical interventions.
Submersible dives in 2019 have found further deterioration of the wreck, including loss of the captain's bathtub. Between 29 July and 4 August 2019, a two-person submersible vehicle that was conducting research and filming a documentary crashed into the wreck. EYOS Expeditions executed the dives. It reported that the strong currents pushed the submersible into the wreck, leaving a red rust stain on the submersible's side. The report did not mention if the Titanic sustained damage.
In May 2023, Magellan Ltd., a deep-water seabed-mapping company, announced that they had created a "digital twin" of the Titanic, showing the wreckage in a level of detail that had never been captured before. The company created the model from some 715,000 3D images, captured over the course of a six-week expedition in the summer of 2022, using two submersibles, named Romeo and Juliet. They mapped "every millimetre" of the wreckage as well as the entire debris field. Creating the model took about eight months.
On 18 June 2023, the submersible , operated by OceanGate Expeditions, imploded in the North Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Newfoundland. The submersible was carrying an expedition of tourists to view the wreckage of the Titanic.
On 15 July 2024, RMS Titanic Inc. held their first expedition to the wreck in 14 years, with the objective of examining its status in high-resolution photography for future scientific studies, likewise with identifying and searching for on-site artefacts. The event received coverage from the BBC, who interviewed numerous figures involved, such as co-leader David Gallo, who said "We want to see the wreck with a clarity and precision that's never before been achieved". A magnetometer was utilised to produce metal detection – whether visible or not – for the first time in the history of Titanic expeditions.
Further, the United States government passed the Radio Act of 1912. This Act, along with the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, stated that radio communications on passenger ships would be operated 24 hours a day, along with a secondary power supply, so as not to miss distress calls. Also, the Radio Act of 1912 required ships to maintain contact with vessels in their vicinity as well as coastal onshore radio stations. In addition, it was agreed in the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea that the firing of red rockets from a ship must be interpreted as a sign of need for help. Once the Radio Act of 1912 was passed, it was agreed that rockets at sea would be interpreted as distress signals only, thus removing any possible misinterpretation from other ships. In the same year, the Board of Trade bareboat charter the barque to act as a weather ship in the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, keeping a look-out for icebergs. A Marconi wireless telegraph was installed to enable her to communicate with stations on the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland.
Finally, the disaster led to the formation and international funding of the International Ice Patrol, an agency of the U.S. Coast Guard that to the present day monitors and reports on the location of North Atlantic Ocean icebergs that could pose a threat to transatlantic sea traffic. Coast Guard aircraft conduct the primary reconnaissance. In addition, information is collected from ships operating in or passing through the ice area. Except for the years of the two World Wars, the International Ice Patrol has worked each season since 1913. During the period, there has not been a single reported loss of life or property due to collision with an iceberg in the patrol area.
The first film about the disaster, Saved from the Titanic, was released only 29 days after the ship sank and had an actual survivor as its star—the silent film actress Dorothy Gibson. This film is considered lost film. The British film A Night to Remember (1958) is still widely regarded as the most historically accurate movie portrayal of the sinking. The most financially successful by far has been James Cameron's Titanic (1997), which became the highest-grossing film in history up to that time, as well as the winner of 11 Academy Awards at the 70th Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Cameron.
The Titanic disaster was commemorated through a variety of memorials and monuments to the victims, erected in several English-speaking countries and in particular in cities that had suffered notable losses. These included Southampton and Liverpool in England; New York and Washington, D.C. in the United States; and Belfast and Cobh (formerly Queenstown) in Ireland. A number of museums around the world have displays on Titanic; the most prominent is in Belfast, the ship's birthplace (see below).
RMS Titanic Inc., which is authorised to salvage the wreck site, has a permanent Titanic exhibition at the Luxor Las Vegas hotel and casino in Nevada which features a 22-tonne slab of the ship's hull. It also runs an exhibition which travels around the world. In Nova Scotia, Halifax's Maritime Museum of the Atlantic displays items that were recovered from the sea a few days after the disaster. They include pieces of woodwork such as panelling from the ship's First Class Lounge and an original deckchair, as well as objects removed from the victims. In 2012 the centenary was marked by plays, radio programmes, parades, exhibitions and special trips to the site of the sinking together with commemorative stamps and coins. Iceberg Right Ahead!—review The Guardian. Retrieved 1 April 2012 Royal Mail (whose mail was carried by RMS (Royal Mail Ship) Titanic) issued ten 1st class UK postage stamps, each with the "crown seal", to mark the centenary of the disaster.
In a frequently commented-on literary coincidence, in 1898 Morgan Robertson authored a novel called Futility about a fictional British passenger liner. The plot bears a number of similarities to the Titanic disaster. In the novel, the ship is the SS Titan, a four-stacked liner that is the largest in the world and is considered unsinkable; like the Titanic, it sinks in April after hitting an iceberg and does not have enough lifeboats.
After the Troubles and Good Friday Agreement, the number of overseas tourists visiting Northern Ireland increased. It was subsequently identified in the Northern Ireland Tourism Board's Strategic Framework for Action 2004–2007 that the significance of and interest in Titanic globally (partly due to the 1997 film Titanic) was not being fully exploited as a tourist attraction. Thus, Titanic Belfast was spearheaded, along with some smaller projects, such as a Titanic memorial.
In 2012 on the ship's centenary, the Titanic Belfast visitor attraction was opened on the site of the shipyard where Titanic was built. It was Northern Ireland's second most visited tourist attraction with almost 700,000 visitors in 2016.
Despite over 1,600 ships being built by Harland and Wolff in Belfast Harbour, Queen's Island became renamed after its most famous ship, Titanic Quarter in 1995. Once a sensitive story, Titanic is now considered one of Northern Ireland's most revered and uniting symbols.
In late August 2018, several groups were vying for the right to purchase the 5,500 Titanic relics that were an asset of the bankrupt Premier Exhibitions. Eventually, Titanic Belfast, Titanic Foundation Limited and the National Museums Northern Ireland joined with the National Maritime Museum as a consortium that was raising money to purchase the 5,500 artefacts. The group intended to keep all of the items together as a single exhibit. Oceanographer Robert Ballard said he favoured this bid since it would ensure that the memorabilia would be permanently displayed in Belfast (where Titanic was built) and in Greenwich. The museums were critical of the bid process set by the Bankruptcy court in Jacksonville, Florida. The minimum bid for the 11 October 2018 auction was set at US$21.5 million (£16.5m) and the consortium did not have enough funding to meet that amount. On 17 October 2018, The New York Times reported that a consortium of three —Apollo Global Management, Alta Fundamental Advisers, and PacBridge Capital Partners—had paid US$19.5 million for the collection. At the time of the purchase, the consortium agreed to continued oversight by the court concerning new exploration or salvage expedition must receive approval from NOAA and the court. Further, the purchase price gives Premier's unsecured creditors an 80% recovery.
A Chinese shipbuilding company known as Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group Co., Ltd commenced construction in November 2016 to build a replica ship of the Titanic for use in a resort. The vessel was to house many features of the original, such as a ballroom, dining hall, theatre, first-class cabins, economy cabins and swimming pool. Tourists were to be able to reside inside the Titanic during their time at the resort. It was to be permanently docked at the resort and feature an audiovisual simulation of the sinking, which has caused some criticism. As of 2022, however, it was reportedly only 25% complete, and its website and Twitter account are offline.
Survivors and victims
The number of casualties of the sinking is unclear, because of a number of factors. These include confusion over the passenger list, which included some names of people who cancelled their trip at the last minute, and the fact that several passengers travelled under aliases for various reasons and were therefore double-counted on the casualty lists. The death toll has been put at between 1,490 and 1,635 people. The tables below use figures from the British Board of Trade report on the disaster. While the use of the Marconi wireless system did not achieve the result of bringing a rescue ship to Titanic before it sank, the use of wireless did bring Carpathia in time to rescue some of the survivors who otherwise would have perished due to exposure.
Retrieval and burial of the dead
Once the massive loss of life became known, White Star Line chartered the cable ship CS Mackay-Bennett from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, to retrieve bodies. Three other Canadian ships followed in the search: the cable ship CS Minia, lighthouse supply ship Montmagny and seal hunting Algerine. Each ship left with embalming supplies, undertakers, and clergy. Of the 333 victims who were eventually recovered, 328 were retrieved by the Canadian ships and five more by passing North Atlantic steamships.
Wreck
Titanic was long thought to have sunk in one piece and, over the years, many schemes were put forward for raising the wreck. None came to fruition. The fundamental problem was the sheer difficulty of finding and reaching a wreck that lies over below the surface, where the water pressure is over , about 370 standard atmospheres. A number of expeditions were mounted to find Titanic but it was not until 1 September 1985 that a Franco-American expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel and Robert Ballard succeeded.
Legacy
Safety
After the disaster, recommendations were made by both the British and American Boards of Inquiry stating that ships should carry enough lifeboats for all aboard, mandatory lifeboat drills would be implemented, lifeboat inspections would be conducted, etc. Many of these recommendations were incorporated into the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea passed in 1914. The convention has been updated by periodic amendments, with a completely new version adopted in 1974. International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) . International Maritime Organization, 1974. Signatories to the Convention followed up with national legislation to implement the new standards. For example, in Britain, new "Rules for Life Saving Appliances" were passed by the Board of Trade on 8 May 1914 and then applied at a meeting of British steamship companies in Liverpool in June 1914.
Cultural legacy
The story of Titanic has been remembered in history as a tragedy and cautionary tale, particularly because the ship had been considered unsinkable. Titanic has inspired fiction, been the subject of documentaries, and commemorated in monuments for the dead and museum exhibitions. Shortly after sinking, memorial postcards sold in huge numbers together with memorabilia ranging from tin candy boxes to plates, whiskey jiggers, and even mourning teddy bears. The sinking inspired ballads such as "The Titanic".Place, J., "Supplemental notes on the selections," selection 22, in H. Smith (ed), liner notes, Anthology of American Folk Music , page 50 (1952). Several survivors wrote books about their experiences, but it was not until 1955 that the first historically accurate book – A Night to Remember – was published.
In Northern Ireland
It took many decades before the significance of Titanic was promoted in Northern Ireland, where it was built by Harland and Wolff in Belfast. While the rest of the world embraced the glory and tragedy of Titanic, it remained a taboo subject throughout the 20th century in its birth city. The sinking brought tremendous grief and was a blow to Belfast's pride. Its shipyard was also a place many Catholics regarded as hostile. In the latter half of the century, during a 30-year sectarian conflict, Titanic was a reminder of the lack of civil rights that in part contributed towards the Troubles. While the fate of Titanic remained a well-known story within local households throughout the 20th century, commercial investment in projects recalling RMS Titanic legacy was modest because of these issues.
Diagrams and timeline
Diagram of RMS Titanic showing the arrangement of the bulkheads in red. Compartments in the engineering area at the bottom of the ship are noted in blue. Names of decks are listed to the right (starting at top on Boat deck, going from A through F and ending on Lower deck at the waterline). Areas of damage made by the iceberg are shown in green. The scale's smallest unit is and its total length is .
A cutaway diagram of Titanics midship section.
S: Sun deck. A: upper promenade deck. B: promenade deck, glass-enclosed. C: saloon deck. E: main deck. F: middle deck. G: lower deck: cargo, coal bunkers, boilers, engines. (a) Welin davits with lifeboats, (b) bilge, (c) double bottom
Comparison of Titanic in size to modern means of transport and a person
(2026). 9780752446066, History Press. ISBN 9780752446066
Replicas
There have been several proposals and studies for a project to build a ship replica based on the Titanic.
See also
Comparable disasters
Notes
Bibliography
Books
(2026). 9780752462103, The History Press. ISBN 9780752462103
(2026). 9780439899956, Orchard Books. ISBN 9780439899956
(1987). 9780007321643, Patrick Stephens. ISBN 9780007321643
(1994). 9781852604936, Patrick Stephens. ISBN 9781852604936
(1995). 9780393036978, W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 9780393036978
(2026). 9780752462103, The History Press. ISBN 9780752462103
(2026). 9781844256624, Haynes. ISBN 9781844256624
Journals and news articles
Investigations
External links
Categories: 1910s In Newfoundland, 1911 Ships, 1912 Disasters In Canada, 1912 Disasters In The United Kingdom, 1912 Disasters In The United States, 1985 Archaeological Discoveries, Four Funnel Liners, History Of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Olympic-class Ocean Liners, Passenger Ships Of The United Kingdom, Ships Built By Harland & Wolff, Ships Built In Belfast, Ships Of Ireland, Ships Of The White Star Line, Ships Sunk By Icebergs, Shipwrecks In The Atlantic Ocean, Shipwrecks Of The Newfoundland And Labrador Coast, Steamships Of The United Kingdom, Shipwrecks Discovered By Robert Ballard
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