Facts
The RMS Titanic was said to be the most luxurious and safest ship that human hands could ever make. Was believed to be virtually unsinkable.
The luxury liner was 882.5 feet long, 92.5 feet braod, and 45,000 tons. She was so large there were no piers in the United States to accommodate her initially.
The largest and most luxurious ship of her day had two swimming pools, Turkish baths with cooling rooms and saunas, a gymnasium, suites with maid quarters, private promenade decks, and heated water in baths.
The White Star Line commissioned the building of the Titanic and her "sister ships" the Olympic and the Britannic.
The Titanic was built at Harland and Wolff in Belfast, Ireland. Thomas Andrews designed the Titanic.
The chairman of the White Star Line was Bruce Ismay. Ismay was aboard the ship on her one and only sailing and survived the sinking.
The captain of the Titanic was Edward John (E.J.) Smith. Smith was the highest paid captain in his day. He also commanded the Titanic's sister ship, the Olympic. With a career of over 40 years in sailing, Smith planned to retire after the Titanic's maiden voyage.
The Titanic departed from Southampton, England on April 10, 1912 at 12 o'clock noon.
650 tons of coal were needed for the 159 furnaces on the Titanic.
The first class suites could cost as much as as $4,350 one-way. The total worth of the first class passengers was estimated to be more than $500 million.
The second class was as luxurious as many ship's first class accommodations.
There were 710 steerage, or third class, passengers aboard the Titanic. Even though the steerage accommodations were isolated from the rest of the ship, the rooms were still far superior to the other ships of that day. Some of the passengers saw toilets and running water for the first time in their lives. Many of them had sold everything and packed what possessions they had left, to take with them to America, where they would start their new lives.
Senior Officer Jack Phillips and Junior Officer Harold Bride were the wireless officers of the Titanic. They not only sent and received personal messages for the Titanic's passengers, but they received nearly a dozen ice warnings.
At 11:40 p.m. on April 14, lookout Frederick Fleet rang the bell in the crow's nest three times, and yelled "Iceberg right ahead". The crew had 37 seconds to take action before hitting the iceberg. When the lookouts spotted the iceberg, the Titanic was traveling at about 22 knots.
The iceberg tore down her starboard side for a length of five compartments causing the lean to one side. This caused the water to run over the watertight comparments, because they were not sealed at the top, If the Titanic had hit the iceberg head-on she might not have sunk,
Lifeboats 6,7, and 8 were sent away with as few as 20 passengers, even though they were tested to hold 68 full grown men. Boat number 1 took only 12 people.
Wallace Hartly's band played ragtime music until about 2 o'clock a.m. when they switched to "Nearer My God To Thee". **Note~This song was claimed to be the last song heard as the Titanic was sinking.**
58 miles away, the Carpathia received a distress call from the Titanic and sped through the dangerous ice fields to rescue the survivors of the Titanic.
Sadly, out of the 2,235 passengers and crew that were on the Titanic, 713 people (mostly women and children) survived. Meaning 1,523 people lost their lives in the cold, Atlantic. The reason so many people lost their lives was due to the fact that there were only 16 lifeboats, and 4 collapsible boats. Even though this exceeded the amount of lifeboats required of that day, these boats could only accommodate less than 1/3 of the Titanic's maximum capacity, for the passengers and crew,
The Titanic is also known as the "Ship of Widows" because so many wives lost their husbands April 15, 1912.
