RMS Titanic
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RMS Titanic departing Southampton on 10 April 1912 |
| Career |
 |
| Name: |
RMS Titanic |
| Owner: |
 White Star Line |
| Port of registry: |
 Liverpool |
| Route: |
Southampton to New York City |
| Ordered: |
17 September 1908 |
| Builder: |
Harland and Wolff, Belfast |
| Yard number: |
401 |
| Laid down: |
31 March 1909 |
| Launched: |
31 May 1911 (not christened) |
| Completed: |
2 April 1912 |
| Maiden voyage: |
10 April 1912 |
| Identification: |
Radio Callsign "MGY" |
| Fate: |
Foundered on 15 April 1912 on its maiden voyage |
| General characteristics |
| Class and type: |
Olympic-class ocean liner |
| Tonnage: |
46,328 GRT |
| Displacement: |
52,310 tons |
| Length: |
882 ft 6 in (269.0 m) |
| Beam: |
92 ft 0 in (28.0 m) |
| Height: |
175 ft (53.3 m) (Keel to top of funnels) |
| Draught: |
34 ft 7 in (10.5 m) |
| Depth: |
64 ft 6 in (19.7 m) |
| Decks: |
9 (A - G) |
| Installed power: |
24 double-ended and 5 single-ended boilers feeding two reciprocating steam engines for the wing propellers and a low-pressure turbine for the center propeller. Effect: 46,000 HP |
| Propulsion: |
Two 3-blade wing propellers and one 4-blade centre propeller |
| Speed: |
Cruising: 21 kn (39 km/h; 24 mph). Max: 24 kn (44 km/h; 28 mph) |
| Capacity: |
Passengers: 2,435, crew: 892 |
| Notes: |
Lifeboats: 20 for 1,178 people |
Her passengers included some of the wealthiest people in the world, such as millionnaires
John Jacob Astor IV,
Benjamin Guggenheim and
Isidor Strauss, as well as over a thousand emigrants from
Ireland,
Scandinavia
and elsewhere seeking a new life in America. The ship was designed to
be the last word in comfort and luxury, with an on-board gymnasium,
swimming pool, libraries, high-class restaurants and opulent cabins. She
also had a powerful wireless telegraph provided for the convenience of
passengers as well as for operational use. Though she had advanced
safety features such as watertight compartments and remotely activated
watertight doors, she lacked enough lifeboats to accommodate all of
those aboard. Due to outdated maritime safety regulations, she carried
only enough lifeboats for 1,178 people – a third of her total passenger
and crew capacity.
After leaving Southampton on 10 April 1912,
Titanic called at
Cherbourg in
France and
Queenstown,
Ireland before heading westwards towards New York. On 14 April 1912,
four days into the crossing and about 375 miles south of Newfoundland,
she hit an iceberg at 11:40 pm (ship's time;
UTC-3). The glancing collision caused
Titanic's hull plates to buckle inwards in a number of locations on her
starboard
side and opened five of her sixteen watertight compartments to the sea.
Over the next two and a half hours, the ship gradually filled with
water and sank. Passengers and some crew members were evacuated in
lifeboats, many of which were launched only partly filled. A
disproportionate number of men – over 90% of those in Second Class –
were left aboard due to a
"women and children first" protocol followed by the officers loading the lifeboats. Just before 2:20 am
Titanic broke up and sank bow-first with over a thousand people still on board. Those in the water died within minutes from
hypothermia caused by immersion in the freezing ocean. The 710 survivors were taken aboard from the lifeboats by the
RMS Carpathia a few hours later.
The disaster was greeted with worldwide shock and outrage at the huge
loss of life and the regulatory and operational failures that had led
to it. Public inquiries in Britain and the United States led to
major improvements in maritime safety. One of their most important legacies was the establishment in 1914 of the
International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea
(SOLAS), which still governs maritime safety today. Many of the
survivors lost all of their money and possessions and were left
destitute; many families, particularly those of crew members from
Southampton, lost their primary bread-winners. They were helped by an
outpouring of public sympathy and charitable donations. Some of the male
survivors, notably the White Star Line's chairman,
J. Bruce Ismay, were accused of cowardice for leaving the ship while women and children were still on board, and they faced social
ostracism.
The
wreck of the Titanic
remains on the seabed, gradually disintegrating at a depth of 12,415
feet (3,784 m). Since its rediscovery in 1985, thousands of artefacts
have been recovered from the sea bed and put on display at museums
around the world.
Titanic has become one of the most famous ships in history, her memory kept alive by numerous
books, films, exhibits and memorials.
Background
Titanic was one the second of the three
Olympic-class ocean liners – the others were the
RMS Olympic and the
RMS Britannic (originally named
Gigantic). They were by far the largest vessels in the White Star Line's fleet, which comprised 29 steamers and tenders in 1912.
The three ships had their genesis in a discussion in mid-1907 between
the White Star Line's chairman, J. Bruce Ismay, and the American
financier
J. Pierpont Morgan, who controlled the White Star Line's parent corporation, the
International Mercantile Marine Co. The White Star Line faced a growing challenge from its main rivals
Cunard, which had just launched
Lusitania and
Mauretania – 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 that would be bigger than anything that
had gone before as well as being the last word in comfort and luxury.
The ships were constructed by the Belfast shipbuilders Harland and
Wolff, who 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 the latter to
sketch out a general concept which the former would take away and turn
into a ship design. Cost considerations were relatively low on the
agenda and Harland and Wolff was 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 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 the
Olympic-class vessels. It 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' 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.
[a]
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 four hundredth hull. Titanic was based on a revised version of the same design and was given the number 401.
Dimensions and layout
Titanic was 882 feet 9 inches (269.06 m) long with a maximum
breadth of 92 feet 6 inches (28.19 m). Her total height, measured from
the base of the keel to the top of the bridge, was 104 feet (32 m). She measured 46,328
gross register tons and with a draught of 34 feet 7 inches (10.54 m), she displaced 52,310 tons.
All three of the Olympic-class ships had eleven decks
(excluding the top of the officers' quarters), eight of which were for
passenger use. From top to bottom, the decks were:
Cutaway diagram of
Titanic's midship section
- The Boat Deck, on which the lifeboats were positioned. It was from here in the early hours of 15 April 1912 that Titanic's
lifeboats were lowered into the North Atlantic. The bridge and
wheelhouse were at the forward end, in front of the captain's and
officers' quarters. The bridge stood 8 feet (2.4 m) above the deck,
extending out to either side so that the ship could be controlled while
docking. The wheelhouse stood directly behind and above the bridge. The
entrance to the First Class Grand Staircase
and gymnasium were located midships along with the raised roof of the
First Class lounge, while at the rear of the deck were the roof of the
First Class smoke room and the relatively modest Second Class entrance.
The wood-covered deck was divided into four segregated promenades; for
officers, First Class passengers, engineers and Second Class passengers
respectively. Lifeboats lined the side of the deck except in the First
Class area, where there was a gap so that the view would not be spoiled.
- A Deck, also called the Promenade Deck, extended along
the entire 546 feet (166 m) length of the superstructure. It was
reserved exclusively for First Class passengers and contained First
Class cabins, the First Class lounge, smoke room, reading and writing
rooms and Palm Court.
- B Deck, the Bridge Deck, was the top weight-bearing
deck and the uppermost level of the hull. More First Class passenger
accommodation was located here with six palatial staterooms (cabins)
featuring their own private promenades. On Titanic, the A La Carte
Restaurant and the Café Parisien provided luxury dining facilities to
First Class passengers. Both were run by subcontracted chefs and their
staff; all were lost in the disaster. The Second Class smoking room and
entrance hall were both located on this deck. The raised forecastle of
the ship was forward of the Bridge Deck, accommodating Number 1 hatch
(the main hatch through to the cargo holds), various pieces of machinery
and the anchor housings. It was kept off-limits to passengers; the
famous "flying" scene at the ship's bow from the 1997 film Titanic
would not have been possible in real life. Aft of the Bridge Deck was
the raised Poop Deck, 106 feet (32 m) long, used as a promenade by Third
Class passengers. It was where many of Titanic's
passengers and crew made their last stand as the ship sank. The
forecastle and Poop Deck were separated from the Bridge Deck by well decks.
- C Deck, the Shelter Deck, was the highest deck to run
uninterrupted from the ships' stem to stern. It included the two well
decks; the aft one served as part of the Third Class promenade. Crew
cabins were located under the forecastle and Third Class public rooms
were situated under the Poop Deck. In between were the majority of First
Class cabins and the Second Class library.
- D Deck, the Saloon Deck, was dominated by three large
public rooms – the First Class Reception Room, the First Class Dining
Saloon and the Second Class Dining Saloon. An open space was provided
for Third Class passengers. First, Second and Third Class passengers had
cabins on this deck, with berths for firemen located in the bow. It was
the highest level reached by the ships' watertight bulkheads (though
only by eight of the fifteen bulkheads).
- E Deck, the Upper Deck, was predominantly used for
passenger accommodation for all classes plus berths for cooks, seamen,
stewards and trimmers. Along its length ran a long passageway nicknamed Scotland Road by the crew, in reference to a famous street in Liverpool.
- F Deck, the Middle Deck, was the last complete deck
and mainly accommodated Third Class passengers. There were also some
Second Class cabins and crew accommodation. The Third Class dining
saloon was located here, as were the swimming pool and Turkish bath.
- G Deck, the Lower Deck, was the lowest complete deck
that carried passengers, and had the lowest portholes, just above the
waterline. The squash court was located here along with the travelling
post office where mail clerks sorted letters and parcels so that they
would be ready for delivery when the ship docked. Food was also stored
here. The deck was interrupted at several points by orlop (partial) decks over the boiler, engine and turbine rooms.
- The Orlop decks and the Tank Top were at the lowest
level of the ship, below the waterline. The orlop decks were used as
cargo space, while the Tank Top – the inner bottom of the ship's hull –
provided the platform on which the ship's boilers, engines, turbines and
electrical generators sat. This part of the ship was dominated by the
engine and boiler rooms, areas that passengers would never normally see.
They were connected with higher levels of the ship by flights of
stairs; twin spiral stairways near the bow gave access up to D Deck.
Features
Engines, boilers and generators
View of the rear port side of
Titanic, showing the rudder and the central and port wing propellers. Note the man at the bottom of the image.
Titanic was equipped with three engines – two
reciprocating four-
cylinder, triple-expansion
steam engines and one centrally placed low-pressure
Parsons turbine – each driving a
propeller. The two reciprocating engines had a combined output of 30,000hp and a further 16,000hp was contributed by the turbine. The White Star Line had previously used the same combination of engines on an earlier liner, the
SS Laurentic, where it had been a great success.
It provided a good combination of performance and speed; reciprocating
engines by themselves were not powerful enough to propel an
Olympic-class
liner at the desired speeds, while turbines were sufficiently powerful
but caused uncomfortable vibrations, a problem that affected the
all-turbine Cunard liners
Lusitania and
Mauretania.
By combining reciprocating engines with a turbine, fuel usage could be
reduced and motive power increased, while using the same amount of
steam.
The two reciprocating engines were giants, each 63 feet (19 m) long
and weighing 720 tons. Their bedplates alone weighed a further 195 tons.
They were powered by steam produced in 29 boilers, 24 of which were
double-ended and 5 single-ended, which contained a total of 159
furnaces.
The boilers were 15 feet 9 inches (4.80 m) in diameter and 20 feet
(6.1 m) long, each weighing 91.5 tons and capable of holding 48.5 tons
of water.
They were heated by burning coal, 6,611 tons of which could be carried in Titanic's
bunkers with a further 1,092 tons in Hold 3. The furnaces required over
600 tons of coal a day to be shovelled into them by hand, requiring the
services of 176 firemen working around the clock. 100 tons 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 generously 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 condenser
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 23.5 feet (7.2 m). The central propeller was somewhat smaller at 17 feet (5.2 m) in diameter, and could be stopped but not reversed.
Titanic's electrical plant was capable of producing more power than a typical city power station of the time.
Immediately aft of the turbine engine were four 400kW steam-driven
electric generators, used to provide electrical power to the ship, plus
two 30 kW auxiliary generators for emergency use. Their location at the rear of the ship meant that they remained operational until the last few minutes before the ship sank.
Technical facilities
Titanic's rudder was
so huge – at 78 feet 8 inches (23.98 m) high and 15 feet 3 inches
(4.65 m) long, weighing over 100 tons – that it required
steering engines
to move it. Two steam-powered steering engines were installed though
only one was used at any one time, with the other one kept in reserve.
They were connected to the short
tiller through stiff springs, to isolate the steering engines from any shocks in heavy seas or during fast changes of direction. As a last resort, the tiller could be moved by ropes connected to two steam
capstans. The capstans were also used to raise and lower the ship's five anchors (one port, one starboard, one in the centreline and two
kedging anchors).
The ship was equipped with its own waterworks, capable of heating and
pumping water to all parts of the vessel via a complex network of pipes
and valves. The main water supply was taken aboard while Titanic
was in port but in an emergency she could also distil fresh water from
the sea, though this was not a straightforward process as the
distillation plant was quickly clogged by salt deposits. A network of
insulated ducts conveyed warm air, driven by electric fans, around the
ship, and First Class cabins were fitted with additional electric
heaters.
Titanic was equipped with two 1.5 kW
spark-gap wireless telegraphs
located in the radio room on the Bridge Deck. One set was used for
transmitting messages and the other, located in a soundproofed booth,
for receiving them. The signals were transmitted through two parallel
wires strung between the ship's masts, 50 feet (15 m) above the funnels
to avoid the corrosive smoke. The system was one of the most powerful in the world, with a range of up to 1,000 miles. It was owned and operated by the
Marconi Company
rather than the White Star Line, and was intended primarily for
passengers rather than ship operations. The function of the two wireless
operators – both Marconi employees – was to operate a 24-hour service
sending and receiving wireless telegrams for passengers. They did,
however, also pass on professional ship messages such as weather reports
and ice warnings.
Passenger facilities
The passenger facilities aboard
Titanic aimed to meet the
highest standards of luxury. The ship could accommodate 739 First Class
passengers, 674 in Second Class and 1,026 in Third Class. Her crew
numbered about 900 people; in all, she could carry total of about
3,339 people. Her interior design was a departure from that of other
passenger liners, which had typically been decorated in the rather heavy
style of a
manor house or an
English country house.
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
Victorian style,
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 a some great house on shore."
There was a telephone system, a lending library and a large barber shop on the ship. The First Class section had a swimming pool, a gymnasium,
squash court,
Turkish bath,
electric bath and a Verandah Cafe.
First Class common rooms were adorned with ornate wood panelling,
expensive furniture and other decorations while the Third Class general
room had pine panelling and sturdy teak furniture.
[54] The
Café Parisien offered the best French
haute cuisine for the First Class passengers, who sat on a sunlit veranda fitted with trellis decorations.
[55]
| Titanic's First Class passenger facilities |
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Titanic's gymnasium on the Boat Deck, which was equipped with the latest exercise machines.
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Titanic's famous Grand Staircase, which provided access between the Boat Deck and D Deck.
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The A La Carte restaurant on B Deck, run as a concession by Italian-born chef Gaspare Gatti.
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Third Class passengers were not treated as luxuriously as those in
First Class, but even so they were better off than their counterparts on
many other ships of the time. They were accommodated in cabins
accommodating between two and ten people, with a further 164 open berths
provided for single young men on G Deck.
They were, however, much more limited in their washing and bathing
facilities. There were only two bathrooms, one each for men and women,
for the entire Third Class complement. They had to wash their own
clothes in washrooms equipped with iron tubs, whereas those travelling
in First and Second Class could use the ship's laundry.
There were also restrictions on which parts of the ship they could
enter; all three classes were segregated from each other, and although
in theory passengers from the higher classes could visit the lower-class
areas of the ship, in practice respect for social conventions meant
that they did not do so.
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
Titanic's most distinctive features was its First Class staircase, known as the
Grand Staircase
or Grand Stairway. This descended through five decks of the ship, from
the Boat Deck to the Reception Room adjoining the First Class Dining
Saloon on D Deck.
It was capped with a dome of wrought iron and glass that admitted
natural light. Each landing off the staircase gave access to ornate
entrance halls lit by gold-plated 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 in
Titanic's 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.
Mail and cargo
Although
Titanic was primarily a passenger liner, she also carried a substantial amount of cargo. Her designation as a
Royal Mail Ship indicated that she carried mail under contract with the
Royal Mail (and also for the
United States Postal Service). 26,800 cubic feet (760 m
3) of space in her holds was allocated for the storage of letters, parcels and
specie,
(bullion, coins and other valuables). The Sea Post Office on G Deck was
manned by five postal clerks, three Americans and two Britons, who
worked thirteen hours a day, seven days a week sorting up to 60,000
items daily.
The ship's passengers brought with them a huge amount of baggage; another 19,455 cubic feet (550.9 m
3)
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 even motor cars. Despite later myths, the cargo on
Titanic's maiden voyage was fairly mundane; there was no gold,
exotic minerals or diamonds, and one of the more famous items lost in the shipwreck, a jewelled copy of the
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, was valued at only £405 (£29,717 today) – hardly the stuff of legends.
Titanic
was equipped with eight electric cranes, four electric winches and
three steam winches to lift cargo and baggage in and out of the hold.
Lifeboats
Titanic carried a total of 20 lifeboats: 14 standard wooden
Harland and Wolff lifeboats with a capacity of 65 people each and four
Englehardt "collapsible" lifeboats (identified as A to D) with a
capacity of 47 people each. In addition, she had two emergency
cutters with a capacity of 40 people each.
[b] All of the lifeboats were stowed securely on the boat deck and, except for A and B, connected to
davits
by ropes.Those on the starboard side were odd-numbered 1–15 from bow to
stern, while those on the port side were even-numbered 2–16 from bow to
stern. The two 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. Collapsible lifeboats 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
challenging to launch.
Each boat carried (among other things) food, water, blankets, and a
spare lifebelt. 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 4 lifeboats. This gave
Titanic the ability to carry up to 64 wooden lifeboats
[67],
which would have been enough for 4,000 people – considerably more than
her actual capacity. However, the White Star Line decided that only 16
wooden lifeboats and four collapsibles
[c] would be carried, which could accommodate 1,178 people, only one-third of
Titanic's total capacity.
[d]
At the time, the Board of Trade's regulations required British vessels
over 10,000 tons to carry 16 lifeboats with a capacity of 5,500 cubic
feet (160 m
3), plus enough capacity in rafts and floats for
75% (50% for vessels with watertight bulkheads) of that in the
lifeboats. In principle, the White Star Line could even have made use of
the exception for vessels with watertight bulkheads, which would have
reduced the legal requirements to a capacity of 756 persons only.
[69] Therefore, the White Star Line actually provided much more lifeboat accommodation than was legally required.
[e]
Building and preparing the ship
Construction, launch and fitting-out
Titanic and
Olympic under construction in Belfast
The sheer size of
Titanic and her sister ships posed a major
engineering challenge for Harland and Wolff; no shipbuilder had ever
before attempted to construct vessels of this size. The ships were
constructed on Queen's Island, now known as the
Titanic Quarter, in
Belfast Harbour. Harland and Wolff had to demolish three existing slipways and build two new
slipways, the biggest ever constructed up to that time, to accommodate the giant ships.
Their construction was facilitated by an enormous gantry built by
Sir William Arrol & Co., a Scottish firm responsible for the building of the
Forth Bridge and London's
Tower Bridge.
The Arrol Gantry stood 228 feet (69 m) high, was 270 feet (82 m) wide
and 840 feet (260 m) long, and weighed more than 6,000 tons. It
accommodated a number of mobile cranes and a separate floating crane,
capable of lifting 200 tons, was brought in from Germany.
The construction of
Titanic and
Olympic took place virtually in parallel, with
Olympic's hull laid down first on 16 December 1908 and
Titanic's 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 5 feet 3 inches (1.60 m) deep
supported 300 frames, each between 24 inches (61 cm) and 36 inches
(91 cm) apart and measuring up to about 66 feet (20 m) 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, mostly up
to 6 feet (1.8 m) wide and 30 feet (9.1 m) long and weighing between 2.5
and 3 tons. Their thickness varied from 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) to 1 inch (2.5 cm). 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.
Steel welding was still in its infancy, so the structure was held together with over three million iron and steel
rivets which by themselves weighed over 1,200 tons. These were fitted using hydraulic machines or were hammered in by hand.
The interiors of the
Olympic-class ships were subdivided into
sixteen primary compartments divided by fifteen bulkheads which extended
well above the waterline. Eleven vertically closing watertight doors
could seal off the compartments in the event of an emergency. The ships' exposed decking was made of pine and teak, while interior ceilings were covered in painted granulated
cork to combat condensation.
The superstructure consisted of two decks, the Promenade Deck and Boat
Deck, which were some 500 feet (150 m) long. They accommodated the
officers' quarters, gymnasium, public rooms and first-class cabins, plus
the bridge and wheelhouse. The ships' lifeboats were carried on the
Boat Deck, the uppermost deck.
Standing above the decks were four funnels, though only three were
functional – the last one was a dummy, installed for aesthetic purposes –
and two masts, each 155 feet (47 m) high, which supported derricks for
loading cargo. A wireless aerial was slung between the masts.
The work of constructing the ships was difficult and dangerous. For the 15,000 men who worked at Harland and Wolff at the time,
safety precautions were rudimentary at best; a lot of the work was
dangerous and was carried out without any safety equipment like hard
hats or hand guards on machinery. As a result, deaths and injuries were
to be expected. During Titanic's
construction, 246 injuries were recorded, 28 of them "severe", such as
arms severed by machines or legs crushed under falling pieces of steel.
Six people died on the ship itself while it was being constructed and
fitted out and another two died in the shipyard workshops and sheds.
Titanic was launched at 12:15 pm on 31 May 1911 in the
presence of Lord Pirrie, J. Pierpoint Morgan and J. Bruce Ismay and
100,000 onlookers. 22 tons 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. Just before the launch a worker was killed when a piece of wood fell on him.
The ship was towed to a fitting-out berth where, over the course of the
next year, her engines, funnels and superstructure were installed and
her interior was fitted out.
The work took longer than expected due to design changes ordered 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, she might well have missed her rendezvous with an iceberg.
Sea trials
Titanic's sea trials began at 6 am on Monday, 2 April 1912,
just two days after her fitting out was finished and eight days before
she was due to leave Southampton on her maiden voyage. The trials had been delayed for a day due to bad weather, but by Monday morning it was clear and fair.
Aboard were 78 stokers, greasers and firemen, and 41 members of crew.
No domestic staff appear to have been aboard. Representatives of various
companies travelled on
Titanic's
sea trials, Thomas Andrews and Edward Wilding of Harland and Wolff and
Harold A. Sanderson of IMM. Bruce Ismay and Lord Pirrie were too ill to
attend.
Jack Phillips and
Harold Bride
served as radio operators, and performed fine-tuning of the Marconi
equipment. Francis Carruthers, a surveyor from the Board of Trade, was
also present to see that everything worked, and that the ship was fit to
carry passengers.
[86]
The sea trials consisted of a number of tests of her handling characteristics, carried out first in
Belfast Lough and then in the open waters of the
Irish Sea. Over the course of about twelve hours,
Titanic
was driven at different speeds, her turning ability was tested and a
"crash stop" was performed in which the engines were reversed full ahead
to full astern, bringing her to a stop in 850 yd (777 m) or 3 minutes
and 15 seconds.
The ship covered a distance of about 80 miles (130 km), averaging 18
knots (21 mph; 33 km/h) and reaching a maximum speed of just under 21
knots (24 mph; 39 km/h).
On returning to Belfast at about 7 pm, the surveyor signed an
"Agreement and Account of Voyages and Crew", valid for twelve months,
which declared the ship seaworthy. An hour later,
Titanic left
Belfast again – as it turned out, for the last time – to head to
Southampton, a voyage of some 570 miles (920 km). She arrived there at
about midnight and was towed to the port's Berth 44, ready for the
arrival of her passengers and the remainder of her crew.
Maiden voyage
Titanic was only to sail as a complete ship for two weeks before she sank; although she was registered at
Liverpool, she never made it to her home port. The story of her sinking is famous, but will only be covered briefly here.
Crew
Titanic had around 885 crew members on board for her maiden voyage.
Like other vessels of her time, she did not have a permanent crew, and
the vast majority of crew members were casual workers who only came
aboard the ship a few hours before she sailed from Southampton.
The process of signing up recruits had begun on 23 March and some had
been sent to Belfast, where they served as a skeleton crew during Titanic's sea trials and passage to England at the start of April.
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.
Titanic's previously designated Chief Mate and First Officer,
William McMaster Murdoch and
Charles Lightoller, were bumped down to the ranks of First and Second Officer respectively. The original Second Officer,
David Blair,
was dropped altogether. He expressed deep disappointment about the
decision before the voyage, but was presumably greatly relieved
afterwards.
Titanic's 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 great 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. Titanic
also had a ship's cat, Jenny, who gave birth to a litter of kittens
shortly before the ship's maiden voyage; all perished in the sinking.
Most of the crew signed on in Southampton on 6 April; in all, 699 of the crew came from there, and 40 per cent were natives of the town.
A few specialist staff were self-employed or were subcontractors. These
included the five postal clerks, who worked for the Royal Mail and US
Postal Service, the staff of the First Class
A 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 £7,704 today) to the £3 10
s
(£257 today) that stewardesses earned. The lower-paid victualling staff
could, however, supplement their wages substantially through tips from
passengers.
Passengers
Titanic's passengers
numbered around 1,317 people: 324 in First Class, 284 in Second Class
and 709 in Third Class. 869 (66%) were male and 447 (34%) female. There
were 107 children in all, the largest number of which were in Third
Class.
The ship was considerably under capacity on her maiden voyage, as she
could accommodate 2,566 passengers – 1,034 First Class, 510 Second Class
and 1,022 Third Class.
Some of the most prominent people of the day booked a passage aboard
Titanic, travelling in First Class. Among them were the American millionaire
John Jacob Astor IV and his wife
Madeleine Force Astor, industrialist
Benjamin Guggenheim,
Macy's owner
Isidor Straus and his wife
Ida,
Denver millionairess
Margaret "Molly" Brown,
[f] Sir
Cosmo Duff Gordon and his wife,
couturière Lucy (Lady Duff-Gordon), cricketer and businessman
John Borland Thayer with his wife Marian together with their son
Jack, the
Countess of Rothes, author and socialite
Helen Churchill Candee, journalist and social reformer
William Thomas Stead, author
Jacques Futrelle with his wife May, and silent film actress
Dorothy Gibson, among others.
[103] Titanic's 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
Titanic's designer Thomas Andrews, who was on board to observe any problems and assess the general performance of the new ship.
The passengers began arriving from 9.30 am, when the
London and South Western Railway's boat train from
London Waterloo station reached
Southampton Terminus railway station on the quayside, right alongside
Titanic's berth.
The large number of Third Class passengers meant that they were the
first to board, with First and Second Class passengers following up to
within an hour of departure. Stewards showed them to their cabins and
First Class passengers were personally greeted by Captain Smith on
boarding.
Third Class passengers were inspected for ailments and physical
impairments that might lead to them being refused entry to the United
States – not a prospect that the White Star Line wished to see, as it
would have to carry them back across the Atlantic. Not all of those who had booked tickets made it to the ship; about fifty people cancelled for various reasons, and not all of those who boarded stayed aboard for the entire journey.
Fares aboard
Titanic varied enormously in cost. Third Class fares from London, Southampton or Queenstown cost £7 5
s (equivalent to £532 today) while the cheapest First Class fares cost £23 (£1,688 today).
[109] The most expensive First Class suites cost up to £870 in high season (£63,837 today).
Departure and westbound journey
Titanic's maiden
voyage was intended to be the first of many cross-Atlantic journeys
between Southampton in England, Cherbourg in France, Queenstown in
Ireland and New York in the United States, returning via
Plymouth in England on the eastbound leg. The White Star Line intended to operate three ships on that route:
Titanic,
Olympic and the smaller
RMS Oceanic.
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.
[109]
The maiden voyage began on time at noon on Wednesday 10 April 1912 but nearly ended in disaster only a few minutes later. As
Titanic passed the moored liners
SS City of New York and
Oceanic, her huge displacement caused both of the smaller ships to be lifted by a bulge of water, then dropped into a trough.
New York's mooring cables could not take the sudden strain and snapped, swinging her round stern-first towards
Titanic. A nearby tugboat,
Vulcan, came to the rescue by taking
New York under tow and Captain Smith ordered
Titanic's engines to be put "full astern". The two ships only avoided a collision by a matter of about 4 feet (1.2 m). The incident delayed
Titanic's departure for about an hour while the drifting
New York was brought under control.
After making it safely through the complex tides and channels of
Southampton Water and the
Solent,
Titanic headed out into the
English Channel. She headed for the French port of Cherbourg, a journey of 77 nautical miles (89 mi; 143 km). 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 at Cherbourg, the
SS Traffic and the
SS Nomadic. Both had been designed specifically as tenders for the Olympic-class liners and were launched shortly after
Titanic. (
Nomadic is today the only White Star Line ship still afloat.) Four hours after
Titanic left Southampton, she arrived at Cherbourg and was met by the tenders. 274 more passengers boarded
Titanic and 24 left aboard the tenders to be conveyed to shore. The process was completed within only 90 minutes and at 8 pm
Titanic weighed anchor and left for Queenstown with the weather continuing cold and windy.
At 11.30 am on Thursday 11 April,
Titanic arrived at Cork Harbour in southern 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 her size,
and tenders were used to bring passengers aboard. 113 Third Class and
seven Second Class passengers came aboard, while seven passengers left.
Among the departures was Father
Francis Browne, a
Jesuit trainee, who was a keen photographer and took many photographs aboard
Titanic,
including the last-ever known photograph of the ship. A decidedly
unofficial departure was that of a crew member, stoker John Coffey, a
native of Queenstown 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 her westward journey across the Atlantic.
The route of
Titanic's maiden voyage, with the coordinates of her sinking.
After leaving Queenstown
Titanic followed the Irish coast as far as
Fastnet Rock,
a distance of some 55 nautical miles (63 mi; 102 km). From there she
travelled 1,620 nautical miles (1,860 mi; 3,000 km) along a
Great Circle
route across the North Atlantic to reach a spot in the ocean known as
"the corner" south-east of Newfoundland, where westbound steamers
carried out a change of course. The next leg of her journey would take
her a further 1,023 nautical miles (1,177 mi; 1,895 km) from the corner
along a
rhumb line course to
Nantucket Shoals Light. A final leg of 193 nautical miles (222 mi; 357 km) would bring the ship to
Ambrose Light and finally to
New York Harbor.
Titanic only sailed a few hours past the corner before she made her fatal rendezvous with an iceberg.
The next three days passed without incident. From 11 April to
local apparent noon the next day,
Titanic
covered 484 nautical miles (557 mi; 896 km); the following day, 519
nautical miles (597 mi; 961 km); and by noon on the final day of her
voyage, 546 nautical miles (628 mi; 1,011 km). From then until the time
of her sinking she travelled another 258 nautical miles (297 mi;
478 km), averaging about 21 knots (24 mph; 39 km/h).
The weather cleared as she left Ireland under cloudy skies with a
headwind. Temperatures remained fairly mild through Saturday 13 April,
but the following day
Titanic crossed a cold
weather front
with strong winds and waves of up to 8 feet (2.4 m). These died down as
the day progressed until, by the evening of Sunday 14 April, it became
clear, calm and very cold.
Titanic received a series of warnings from other ships of drifting ice in the area of the
Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Nonetheless the ship continued to steam at full speed, which was standard practice at the time.
It was generally believed that ice posed little danger to large vessels
and Captain Smith himself had declared that he could not "imagine any
condition which would cause a ship to founder. Modern shipbuilding has
gone beyond that."
Sinking
At 11.40 pm (ship's time), lookout
Frederick Fleet spotted an iceberg immediately ahead of
Titanic and alerted the bridge.
First Officer William Murdoch ordered the ship to be steered around the obstacle and the engines to be put in reverse, but it was too late; the starboard side of
Titanic
struck the iceberg, creating a series of holes below the waterline.
Five of the ship's watertight compartments were breached. It soon became
clear that the ship was doomed, as she could not survive more than four
compartments being flooded.
Titanic began sinking bow-first, with water spilling from compartment to compartment as her angle in the water became steeper.
Those aboard Titanic were ill-prepared for such an emergency.
There was only enough space in the lifeboats for a third of her maximum
number of passengers and crew,
and 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. A "women and children first" protocol was generally followed for the loading of the lifeboats and most of the male passengers and crew were left aboard.
Two hours and forty minutes after Titanic struck the iceberg,
her rate of sinking suddenly increased as her forward deck dipped
underwater and the sea poured in through open hatches and grates.
As her unsupported stern rose out of the water, exposing the
propellers, the ship split apart between the third and fourth funnels
due to the immense strain on the keel.
The severed bow section headed for the sea bed, while the stern
remained afloat for a few minutes longer, rising to a nearly vertical
angle with hundreds of people still clinging to it.
At 2.20 am, the stern sank, pitching the remaining passengers and crew
into lethally cold water with a temperature of only 28 °F (-2 °C).
Almost all of those in the water died of hypothermia or cardiac arrest
within minutes. Only 13 of them were helped into the lifeboats though these had room for almost 500 more occupants.
Distress signals were sent by wireless, rockets and lamp, but none of
the ships that responded were near enough to reach her before she sank. A nearby ship, the Californian, which was the last to have been in contact with her before the collision, saw her flares but failed to assist. Around 4 am, RMS Carpathia arrived on the scene in response to Titanic's earlier distress calls. 710 people survived the disaster and were conveyed by Carpathia to New York, Titanic's
original destination. 1,517 people were lost, either drowning inside
the sinking ship or freezing to death on the surface (kept from drowning
by their lifebelts).
Aftermath of sinking
Homecoming of the survivors
According to an eyewitness report, there "were many pathetic scenes" when
Titanic's survivors disembarked at New York
Carpathia took three days to reach New York after leaving the
scene of the disaster. Her journey was slowed by pack ice, fog,
thunderstorms and rough seas.
She was, however, able to pass news to the outside world by wireless
about what had happened. The initial reports were confused, leading the
American press to report erroneously on 15 April that
Titanic was being towed to port by the
SS Virginian.
Later that day, confirmation came through that
Titanic had
been lost and that most of her passengers and crew had died. The news
attracted crowds of people to the White Star Line's offices in London,
New York, Southampton, Liverpool and Belfast. It hit hardest in
Southampton, whose people suffered the greatest losses from the sinking.
According to the
Hampshire Chronicle on 20 April 1912, almost
1,000 local families were directly affected. Almost every street in the
Chapel district of the town lost more than one resident and over
500 households lost a member.
[141]
The British Army's newspaper, The War Cry, reported that "none
but a heart of stone would be unmoved in the presence of such anguish.
Night and day that crowd of pale, anxious faces had been waiting
patiently for the news that did not come. Nearly every one in the crowd
had lost a relative." It was not until 17 April that the first incomplete lists of survivors came through, delayed by poor communications.
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.
[145][146] Many of
Titanic's
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.
Titanic's 214 surviving crew members were taken to the
Red Star Line's steamer
SS Lapland, where they were accommodated in passenger cabins.
Carpathia was hurriedly restocked with food and provisions before resuming her journey to
Fiume,
Austria-Hungary. Her crew were given a bonus of a month's wages by Cunard as a reward for their actions, and some of
Titanic's passengers joined together to give them an additional bonus of nearly £900 (£66,038 today), divided between 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 she docked. 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. On 23 April, the
Daily Mail reported:
Late in the afternoon hope died out. The waiting
crowds thinned, and silent men and women sought their homes. In the
humbler homes of Southampton there is scarcely a family who has not lost
a relative or friend. Children returning from school appreciated
something of tragedy, and woeful little faces were turned to the
darkened, fatherless homes.
Many charities were set up to help the victims and their families,
many of whom lost their sole breadwinner, or, in the case of many Third
Class survivors, everything they owned. On 29 April opera stars
Enrico Caruso and
Mary Garden and members of the
Metropolitan Opera
raised $12,000 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 program.
[152] In Britain, relief funds were organised for the families of
Titanic's lost crew members, raising nearly £450,000 (£33,018,954 today). One such fund was still in operation as late as the 1960s.
Investigations into the disaster
"The Margin of Safety Is Too Narrow!", a 1912 cartoon by Kyle Fergus,
showing the public demanding answers from the shipping companies
Even before the survivors arrived in New York, investigations were
being planned to discover what had happened, and what could be done to
prevent a recurrence. The
United States Senate initiated an inquiry into the disaster on 19 April, a day after
Carpathia arrived in New York.
[154]
The chairman of the inquiry, 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.
[154]
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 U.S. railroads, and wanted to
investigate any possible malpractices by railroad tycoon
J. P. Morgan,
Titanic's ultimate owner.
Lord Mersey was appointed to head the
British Board of Trade's
inquiry into the disaster, which took place between 2 May and 3 July.
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 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 danger area at too high a
speed.
The recommendations included 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.
Role of the SS Californian
SS
Californian, which had tried to warn
Titanic of the danger from pack-ice
One of the most controversial issues examined by the inquiries was the role played by the
SS Californian, which had been only a few miles from
Titanic
but had not picked up her distress calls or responded to her signal
rockets. 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.
Californian had warned the ship by radio of the pack ice which was the reason
Californian had stopped for the night, but was rebuked by
Titanic's senior wireless operator,
Jack Phillips.
At 11:50 pm, the officer had watched that ship's lights flash out, as
if it had shut down or turned sharply, and that the port light was now
visible. Morse light signals to the ship, upon Lord's order, occurred
five times between 11:30 pm and 1:00 am, but were not acknowledged. (In
testimony, it was stated that
Californian's morse lamp had a range of about four miles (6 km), so could not have been seen from
Titanic.)
[161]
Captain Lord had retired at 11:30 pm; however, Second Officer Herbert
Stone, now on duty, notified Lord at 1:15 am that the ship had fired a
rocket, followed by four more. 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
she 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.
[162]
Californian eventually responded. At 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 ships.
Frankfurt notified the operator of
Titanic's loss, Captain Lord was notified, and the ship set out to render assistance. It arrived well after
Carpathia had already picked up all the survivors.
[162]
The inquiries found that
Californian was much closer to
Titanic
than the 19.5 miles (31.4 km) that Captain Lord had believed, and that
Lord should have awakened the wireless operator after the rockets were
first reported to him, and thus could have acted to prevent loss of
life.
[161][g]
Survivors and victims
Of a total of 2,224 people aboard Titanic only 710, less than a third, survived and 1,514 perished.
Second and Third Class passengers were least likely to survive. The
highest survival rates were among women and children in First Class. The
table below shows the survivors and victims for passengers and crew
onboard the RMS Titanic. Passengers are subdivided into men, women and children for each class while crew is divided into men and women.
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 to retrieve bodies. Three other Canadian ships followed in the search: the cable ship
Minia, lighthouse supply ship
Montmagny and sealing vessel
Algerine.
Each ship left with embalming supplies, undertakers, and clergy. Of the
333 victims that were eventually recovered, 328 were retrieved by the
Canadian ships and five more by passing North Atlantic steamships.
[h] In mid-May 1912,
RMS Oceanic
recovered three bodies over 200 miles (320 km) 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 had rescued a female from
Collapsible A, but left the dead bodies of three of its occupants.
[i] After their retrieval from Collapsible A by
Oceanic, the bodies were then buried at sea.
The first body recovery ship to reach the site of the sinking, the cable ship CS
Mackay-Bennett
found so many bodies that the embalming supplies aboard were quickly
exhausted, and health regulations required that only embalmed bodies
could be returned to port.
[171] 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, third class passengers and crew were buried at sea. Larnder
himself claimed that as a mariner, he would expect to be buried at sea.
[172]
Bodies recovered were preserved for transport to Halifax, the closest
city to the sinking with direct rail and steamship connections. The
Halifax coroner, 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 a
curling rink and undertakers were called in from all across Eastern Canada to assist.
[172]
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 followed by the nearby
Mount Olivet and
Baron de Hirsch cemeteries.
Wreck
Part of the
Titanic wreck in 2003 with
rusticles on it.
The idea of finding the wreck of
Titanic, and even raising the ship from the ocean floor, had been around since shortly after the ship sank.
[j]
Discovery
The most notable finding at the discovery was that the ship had split
apart, the stern section lying 1,970 feet (600 m) from the bow section
and facing opposite directions.
As the ship fell into the depths, the two sections had behaved very
differently. The streamlined bow planed off approximately 2,000 ft
(610 m) below the surface and slowed somewhat, landing relatively
gently. The stern plunged violently to the ocean floor, the hull being
torn apart along the way from massive
implosions
caused by compression of water tight compartments inside the ship. The
stern smashed into the bottom at considerable speed, grinding the hull
deep into the silt.
[177]
Surrounding the wreck was a large debris field with pieces of the
ship, furniture, dinnerware and personal items scattered over 2 square
miles (5.2 km2). Approximately 5,500 artefacts have been removed from the wreck.
Ownership of artefacts
Titanic's rediscovery in 1985 launched a debate over ownership
of the wreck and the valuable items inside. In 1994 RMS Titanic Inc., a
subsidiary of
Premier Exhibitions Inc., was awarded ownership and salvaging rights by the
United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. (See
Admiralty law)
On 24 March 2009, it was revealed that the fate of 5,900 artefacts
retrieved from the wreck would rest with a U.S. District Judge's
decision.
[181]
The ruling was later issued in two decisions on 12 August 2010 and
15 August 2011. As announced in 2009, the judge ruled that RMS Titanic
Inc. owned the artefacts and her decision dealt with the status of the
wreck as well as establishing a monitoring system to check future
activity upon the wreck site.
[182]
On 12 August 2010, Judge
Rebecca Beach Smith
granted RMS Titanic, Inc. fair market value for the artefacts but
deferred ruling on their ownership and the conditions for their
preservation, possible disposition and exhibition until a further
decision could be reached.
[183] On 15 August 2011, Judge Smith granted title to thousands of artefacts from the
Titanic
that RMS Titanic Inc., did not already own under a French court
decision concerning the first group of salvaged artefacts to RMS Titanic
Inc., subject to a detailed list of conditions concerning preservation
and disposition of the items.
[184] The artefacts can be sold only to a company that would abide by the lengthy list of conditions and restrictions.
[184] RMS Titanic Inc. can profit from the artefacts through exhibiting them.
[184]
Legacy
Literature
In literature, "down like the
Titanic" is a simile that refers to an
epic failure, as does practically any reference to the ship or its sinking. The maritime principle that a
captain goes down with his ship is often made in reference to the
Titanic
and to Captain Smith who practised this. Although the "band playing
while the ship sinks" motif dates back at least to the 1852 sinking of
the
HMS Birkenhead, "while the band played" refers almost exclusively to the
Titanic.
[citation needed]
Films
Seven of the eight members of
Titanic's band that became a legend.
Legends and myths
The
Titanic has gone down in history as the ship that was called unsinkable.
[k] However, even though she was called so in news stories after the sinking, the fact is that neither
The White Star Line nor
Harland and Wolff declared her unsinkable.
[191]
Another well-known story is that of the ship's band, who heroically
played on while the great steamer was sinking. This seems to be true but
there has been conflicting information about which song was the last to
be heard. The most reported is "
Nearer, My God, to Thee" but also "Autumn" has been mentioned.
[l] Finally, a widespread myth is that the internationally recognised
Morse code distress signal "
SOS" was first put to use when the
Titanic
sank. While it is true that British wireless operators rarely used the
"SOS" signal at the time, preferring the older "CQD" code, "SOS" had
been used internationally since 1908. The first wireless operator on
Titanic,
Jack Phillips, sent both "SOS" and "CQD" as distress calls.
Memorials and museums
The memorial to
Titanic's engineers in
Southampton unveiled 1914
In
Cobh (formerly known as Queenstown from 1849 to 1920), County
Cork, Ireland a memorial to the
Titanic stands in the town centre.
[195] Queenstown was the final port of call for the ill-fated liner as she set out across the Atlantic on 11 April 1912.
There is a memorial to Bandmaster Wallace Hartley in his home town of Colne in Lancashire.
[197]
A memorial to the liner is also located on the grounds of City Hall in
Belfast,
Northern Ireland.
[198] Titanic Belfast,
a £77m tourist attraction on the regenerated site of the Harland and
Wolff shipyard is to be completed by 15 April 2012, the
100th anniversary of the sinking of
Titanic. The building and surrounding park will celebrate
Titanic and her links with Belfast, where the ship was built.
[199]
The oldest Titanic Museum in America is in Indian Orchard,
Massachusetts. Established in 1963, the Titanic Historical Society
Museum
[202]
houses a number of original artefacts from the ship, including the
lifejacket of Mrs. John Jacob Astor, assorted blueprints, and other
memorabilia. The museum and its co-run Titanic Historical Society,
occasionally loan artefacts to larger museums elsewhere in the United
States.
[citation needed]
Many artefacts are on display at the
National Maritime Museum in
Greenwich, England, and later as part of a travelling museum exhibit. The
Merseyside Maritime Museum in the
Titanic's
home port of Liverpool also has an extensive collection of artefacts
from the wreck located within a permanent exhibition named 'Titanic,
Lusitania and the Forgotten Empress'.
[203] Much floating wreckage which was recovered with the bodies in 1912 can be seen today in the
Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax. Other pieces are part of the travelling exhibition,
Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition.
[204] A newer attraction, the
Branson Titanic Museum opened 2006 in Missouri, USA, is a permanent two-story museum shaped like the RMS
Titanic. It is built half-scale to the original and holds 400 pre-discovery artefacts in twenty galleries.
[citation needed]
100th anniversary commemoration
At 12:13 pm on 31 May 2011, exactly 100 years after
Titanic rolled down her slipway, a single
flare
was fired over Belfast's docklands in commemoration. All boats in the
area around the Harland and Wolff shipyard then sounded their horns and
the assembled crowd applauded for exactly 62 seconds, the time it had
originally taken for the liner to roll down the slipway in 1911.
[205] On 6 April 2012, the 100th anniversary of Titanic's maiden voyage will be celebrated by re-releasing the 1997 feature film
Titanic in 3D.
[206] ITV1 have produced a four-part
Titanic mini-series, written by Oscar-winner
Julian Fellowes, to be broadcast in early 2012.
[207] A new original stageplay by Chris Burgess about the Titanic, called
Iceberg - Right Ahead! will be performed
Upstairs at the Gatehouse from 22nd March - 22nd April 2012.
[citation needed]
The cruise ship
Balmoral, operated by
Fred Olsen Cruise Lines has been chartered by Miles Morgan Travel to follow the original route of
Titanic, intending to stop over the point on the sea bed where she rests on 15 April 2012.
[209]
