TITANIC
Titanic departed Southampton on 10 April 1912, and was heading west to New York. Four days into the crossing and about 600 km south of Newfoundland, she hit an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. ship's time. The collision caused the ship's hull plates to buckle inwards along her starboard side and opened five of her sixteen watertight compartments to the sea; the ship gradually filled with water. Meanwhile, the evacuation processes were started and partly filled lifeboats were launched into the ocean. The "women and children first" protocol was followed by some of the officers loading the lifeboats which led to a large number of men being left behind. After approximately four hours, around 2:20 a.m., she broke apart and foundered. Just less than two hours after Titanic sank the Cunard liner RMS Carpathia arrived on the scene of the sinking, where she rescued an estimated 705 survivors.
The Titanic wreck remains on the
seabed, split in two and at a depth of 3,784 m. Since her discovery in
1985, thousands of artifacts have been recovered and put on
display at museums around the world. Titanic has
become one of the most famous ships in history.
People
RMS Titanic carried
2224 people who belonged to different age groups with great wealth and of
bitter poverty with different dialects of spoken language.That is why RMS
Titanic is often described as a microcosm of society.
History
As the legend goes, the idea of RMS Titanic was
born at a dinner between Lord Pirrie of the Harland & Wolff shipyard
and Joseph Bruce Ismay, Chairman of the White Star Line, at Downshire House,
Lord Pirrie's London home. With the introduction of the Lusitania and
Mauretania Curnard had stolen a march on the White Star Line; they saw a golden
opportunity with Olympic, Titanic and Britannic to regain the lost pride and image of White
Star Line.
Design
The design and construction of Titanic was done at the Harland &
Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland under marine architect Alexander
Carlisle and chief designer Thomas Andrews. She was 882 feet 9 inches in length
and 92 feet in breadth. Her gross tonnage was 46,328 tons. Three propellers
were driven by two four-cylinder, triple-expansion, inverted reciprocating
steam engines and one low-pressure Parsons turbine. Steam was provided by 25
double-ended and 4 single-ended Scotch-type boilers fired by 159 coal burning
furnaces that gave her a theoretical top speed of 23 knots.
Passenger facilities
The facilities on the Titanic for
the passengers meeted the highest standards of luxury. According to
statistics it could accommodate a total of 2,453 passengers (833 First Class
Passengers, 614 in Second Class and 1,006 in Third Class) and her capacity for
crew members exceeded 900. Her interior design was unique and different from
that of other passenger liners; it resembled the heavy style of a manor house or an English country house.
grand staircase |
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 shooting of James Cameron's Titanic in
1997, his replica of the Grand Staircase was ripped from its foundations by the
force of the in rushing water on the set. It has been suggested that during the
real event, the entire Grand Staircase was ejected upwards through the dome.
Lifeboats
There were a total of 20
lifeboats on the Titanic, 14 standard wooden Harland and Wolff lifeboats (capacity
of 65 people each) and four Englehardt "collapsible" lifeboats (capacity
of 47 people each). In addition, she had two emergency cutters (capacity
of 40 people each). All of the lifeboats were stowed securely on the
boat deck and, except for collapsible lifeboats A and B, connected to davits by ropes.
Titanic had
16 sets of davits, each able to handle 4 lifeboats which gave it the
ability to carry up to 64 wooden lifeboats, enough for 4,000 people—quite more than her actual capacity. However, the
White Star Line decided that only 16 wooden lifeboats and four collapsible
would be carried, which could accommodate 1,178 people, only one-third
of Titanic’s total capacity. At the time, the Board of Trade's
regulations required British vessels over 10,000 tons to only carry
16 lifeboats with a capacity of 990 occupants.
In other words, 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 the SS Californian responded to Titanic's
distress calls, the lifeboats may have been adequate to ferry the passengers to
safety as planned.
Sea Trials
The sea trials consisted of a number of tests which were carried
out first in Belfast Lough and then in the open waters of the Irish Sea. During
these trials Titanic was driven at different speeds, her turning
ability was tested and a "crash stop" was performed in which the
engines were reversed, bringing her to a stop in 3 minutes and 15 seconds. The
ship covered a distance of about 80 nautical miles (92 mi; 150 km),
averaging 18 knots and reaching a maximum speed of just under 21 knots. It took
a total of three years of construction and fitting out before RMS
Titanic was ready for sea, commanded by veteran Captain Edward John
Smith.
Captain Edward John Smith |
Maiden
voyage
The Titanic’s entire schedule of voyages till December 1912 still
exists.
Its maiden voyage was actually intended to be the first of its
kind i.e. 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. It was scheduled to sail in
this way 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. In 1911, a deep-water dock at
Southampton (then known as the "White
Star Dock”), was specially constructed to accommodate this new
Olympic-class liner.
Sinking
Lookout Fredrick Fleet spotted an iceberg in front of The
Titanic at
11:40 p.m. on 14 April (ship's time), and immediately alerted the bridge. Then
First Officer William Murdoch ordered the ship to be steered around the
obstacle and the engines to be put in reverse, but it was unfortunately too
late; the starboard side of Titanic struck the iceberg,
creating a series of holes below the waterline. Consequently five of the
ship's watertight compartments were flooded soon. It became clear that the ship
was doomed, as she could not survive more than four compartments being
flooded.
The ship began
sinking bow-first, with water spilling from compartment to compartment as her
angle in the water became steeper. Those aboard her were not properly prepared
for such an emergency. At that time ships were seen as largely unsinkable and
lifeboats were intended to transfer passengers to nearby rescue vessels only
(as previously mentioned before). However Titanic only had
enough lifeboats to carry about half of those on board; if the ship had carried
her full complement of about 3,339 passengers and crew, only about a third
could have been accommodated in the lifeboats. Furthermore, the crew had not
been adequately trained in carrying out such a large scale evacuation. The
officers did not know how many they could safely put aboard the lifeboats and
launched many of them barely half-full. Unfortunately, it was the Third-class
passengers who were largely left to fend for themselves, thereby causing many
of them to become trapped below decks as the ship continued to fill with water. The "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. At 2:20 a.m., 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 began to break in two between the
third and fourth funnels. 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 sinking. All remaining passengers and crew were plunged into lethally
cold water with a temperature of 28 °F (−2 °C). Almost all of
those in the water died of cardiac arrest or other causes within 15–30
minutes. Only 13 of them were helped into the lifeboats though these had
room for almost 500 more people.
Aftermath of sinking
Carpathia was the only ship which took Titanic’s distress signals
seriously and arrived for its rescue even though SS Californian was far more closer
to the Titanic at that time.
Arrival of Carpathia in New York
Role of SS Californian
One of the most controversial issues examined by the inquiries was
the role played by 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.
Californian had warned the titanic about the icebergs and that was
the reason Californian had stopped for the night, but was
rebuked by Titanic's senior wireless operator, Jack Philips. During
the inquiry it was revealed that at 10:10 p.m., 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 p.m.) that this was a passenger liner. At 11:50 p.m., the
officer had watched that ship's lights flash out, as if she had shut down or
turned sharply, and that the port light was now visible. Morse light
signals to the ship, upon Lord's order, were made between 11:30 p.m. and
1:00 a.m., but were not acknowledged. If Titanic were
as far from the Californian as Lord claimed, then he knew, or
should have known, that Morse signals would not be 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 that he could have reached Titanic in time to
save additional lives. Captain Lord had gone to the chart room at
11:00 p.m. to spend the night.
However, Second Officer Herbert Stone, now on duty, notified Lord
at 1:10 a.m. that the ship had fired five rockets. Lord wanted to know if
they were company signals, that is, colored 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 a.m. and Stone noted that the ship looked strange in the water, as if
she were listing. At 2:15 a.m., Lord was notified that the ship could no
longer be seen. Lord asked again if the lights had had any colors in them, and
he was informed that they were all white. Californian eventually
responded. At around 5:30 a.m., Chief Officer George Stewart awakened
wireless operator, informed him that rockets had been seen during the night,
and asked that he try to communicate with any ship. He got news of Titanic's
loss, Captain Lord was notified, and the ship set out to render assistance. She
arrived well after Carpathia had already picked up all the survivors.
SS Californian on the morning after titanic sank |
Link about the list of passengers: http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-passenger-list/
Age/gender
|
Class/crew
|
Number aboard
|
Number saved
|
Number lost
|
Percentage saved
|
Percentage lost
|
Children
|
First Class
|
6
|
5
|
1
|
83%
|
17%
|
Second Class
|
24
|
24
|
0
|
100%
|
0%
|
|
Third Class
|
79
|
27
|
52
|
34%
|
66%
|
|
Women
|
First Class
|
144
|
140
|
4
|
97%
|
3%
|
Second Class
|
93
|
80
|
13
|
86%
|
14%
|
|
Third Class
|
165
|
76
|
89
|
46%
|
54%
|
|
Crew
|
23
|
20
|
3
|
87%
|
13%
|
|
Men
|
First Class
|
175
|
57
|
118
|
33%
|
67%
|
Second Class
|
168
|
14
|
154
|
8%
|
92%
|
|
Third Class
|
462
|
75
|
387
|
16%
|
84%
|
|
Crew
|
885
|
192
|
693
|
22%
|
78%
|
|
Total
|
2224
|
710
|
1514
|
32%
|
68%
|
Letter of titanic survivor which was held up for auction
Wreck
For many years it was generally believed the ship sank in one
piece; however, when the wreck was located many years later, it was
discovered that the ship had fully broken in two.Over the years, many schemes
were put forward for raising the wreck. None of them were fruitful till a
Franco-American expedition succeeded in discovering the wreck on
1 September 1985. The fundamental problem was the difficulty of
finding and reaching a wreck that lies over 3,700 m below the surface, in
a location where the water pressure is over 6,500 pounds per square inch.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 third of a mile (0.6 km) apart in a canyon on the continental
shelf off the coast of Newfoundland. They are located 21.2 km from
the inaccurate coordinates given by Titanic's radio operators
on the night of her sinking. On 12 April 2012 Titanic had its
100 anniversary.
Titanic-Movie
The movie "Titanic" directed by James
Cameron is an epic, action-packed romance set against the ill-fated maiden
voyage of the R.M.S. Titanic; ironically called the unsinkable ship which was
the pride and joy of the White Star Line and, at the time, the largest and the
most luxurious liner of her era -- the "ship of dreams" -- which
ultimately carried over 1,500 people to their death in the ice cold waters of
the North Atlantic in the early hours of April 15, 1912.
Titanic was the
first film to reach the billion-dollar mark. It won 11 Oscars tying itself to
Ben Hur (1959) – the only movie to have won 11 Oscars until then.
Joseph Dawson's Tombstone-Fairview Lawn Cemetery, Halifax, Canada |
The real Titanic Rose (middle) |
Sources
You tube.com
Wikipedia
Google images
Encyclopaedia Titanica
Eyewitness to history
Hindustan times
IMDb
Titanicmovie.com
and other links attached
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