Titanic was a British ocean liner that struck an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1912. The disaster occurred on the ship’s maiden (first) voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City. The ship struck the iceberg at about 11:40 p.m. on April 14. About two and a half hours later, the huge ocean liner broke in half and sank into the icy water.
The ship held at least 2,205 passengers and crew. Historians are not sure precisely how many people were on the ship, so they can only estimate the disaster’s death toll—more than 1,500 people. Many wealthy and famous passengers perished. They included the millionaire John Jacob Astor IV, the department store owner Isidor Straus, and the businessman Benjamin Guggenheim, all of the United States. The Titanic’s captain, Edward J. Smith of England, went down with the ship.
The sinking of the Titanic was not the deadliest maritime disaster in history. Nor was the Titanic the first or the last famous ship to sink on its maiden voyage. Nevertheless, it remains the world’s best known and most storied shipwreck. People have devoted more books, articles, motion pictures, and websites to the Titanic than to any other ship ever built. The 1997 film Titanic ranks as one of the most expensive and popular movies ever made. People continue to discuss and debate the ship and the manner of its sinking today.
The ship.
The RMS Titanic was the largest and most luxurious ocean liner of its time. The designation RMS, which stands for Royal Mail Ship or Steamer, indicates that in addition to passengers, the ship carried mail under contract with the British government. The Titanic was built by the shipbuilders Harland and Wolff in Belfast, Ireland. It was built for a shipping company called the White Star Line at a reported cost of $7.5 million. At the time, the Titanic was the largest moving object ever built. It measured 882.5 feet (269 meters) long, 92.5 feet (28.2 meters) wide, and 59.5 feet (18.1 meters) deep. When loaded, the ship displaced (pushed aside) more than 52,000 long tons (53,000 metric tons) of water.
The White Star Line, like other large shipping companies, publicly emphasized safety as its top priority. But speed and luxury were more attractive marketing features to travelers. Thus, some of the Titanic’s features compromised its safety. Notably, the ship only carried enough lifeboats to hold about half of its passengers and crew. Legally, it had enough lifeboats for a ship crossing the Atlantic. But the laws in force at the time had been established many years earlier, when transatlantic steamships were much smaller and carried fewer people.
Many people believed the Titanic was unsinkable, because its hull was divided into 16 watertight compartments. Even if two of those compartments flooded, the ship could still float. However, the bulkheads (vertical walls) that separated these compartments did not extend to the higher decks. When water rose high enough, it could rush over the top of a bulkhead and into the next compartment.
Disaster.
Other ships had repeatedly warned Captain Smith of icebergs in the Titanic’s path. But he barely altered the ship’s route. He also failed to slow down to avoid the obvious danger. Based on testimony after the disaster, the ship was traveling at nearly top speed—far too fast for such conditions. According to one theory, Captain Smith took such risks to set a speed record, which would have increased the fame of the White Star Line.
The ship was speeding at about 21 knots (24.2 miles or 39 kilometers per hour) shortly before it sideswiped the iceberg. The iceberg scraped against the ship underwater. The collision burst riveted seams in the ship’s hull. It breached (broke through) five adjacent watertight compartments in the bow (front) of the ship. Seawater quickly flowed over the tops of the breached compartments into the neighboring ones, flooding the bow of the ship.
Evacuating the Titanic proved difficult and confusing in the dark night. Only a few hundred of the crew and passengers were able to get into lifeboats. The sinking ship listed (tilted sideways), making it difficult to lower the lifeboats on one side. The ship’s band famously played music during the evacuation, possibly to help calm the passengers.
As the Titanic’s flooded bow sank into the water, the stern (rear) rose up. Gradually, the angle increased until the ship was almost vertical, with its stern pointing nearly straight up into the air. Finally, the stern’s weight caused it to break from the sinking bow. Both halves quickly plunged into the depths.
Rescue.
Before the Titanic sank, its crew sent out a distress call by radio. It became one of the world’s earliest SOS signals. The RMS Carpathia, of the rival Cunard Line, heard the Titanic’s signal. The Carpathia had just left New York for a cruise to the Mediterranean Sea. The ship’s captain, Arthur H. Rostron of England, immediately decided to steam to the Titanic’s rescue. To conserve steam power for the engines, Rostron shut down all heat and hot water to the staterooms and cabins, the passenger areas of the ship. The Carpathia quickly sped about 60 miles (100 kilometers) to the doomed Titanic’s last reported location.
The Carpathia arrived around 4:00 a.m. The Titanic had sunk more than an hour earlier, and at first the Carpathia’s crew saw only empty sea. But they soon spotted one of the Titanic’s lifeboats. By 9:00 a.m., the Carpathia had rescued about 705 of the Titanic’s passengers and crew from the frigid waters. Most of the survivors were women and children. Captain Rostron decided that there was not enough food and supplies to continue with the survivors east across the Atlantic Ocean, so he returned to New York. The Carpathia’s crew and passengers assisted in the rescue and were hailed as heroes.
Legacy.
In September 1985, a team of French and American scientists found the wreckage of the Titanic. The team was led by the American explorer Robert D. Ballard and the French oceanographer Jean-Louis Michel. The ship lay in two sections about 350 miles (560 kilometers) southeast of Newfoundland at a depth of about 12,400 feet (3,780 meters). A 1986 expedition documented the wreck more thoroughly.
In 1987, treasure hunters began recovering artifacts from the wrecked ship. Over the course of seven expeditions, they brought up thousands of items. In 2012, around the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster, the artifacts were put up for sale at auction. The sale carried strict conditions—the artifacts were to be kept together, preserved to museum standards, and made available to researchers.
Laws govern visits to the Titanic’s remains. Shortly after the shipwreck’s discovery, the United States Congress passed the RMS Titanic Maritime Memorial Act of 1986. The act designated the site as an international memorial and proposed regulations for exploring the wreck. In 2001, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) developed an international convention to protect underwater sites with cultural significance. Such laws and agreements make it more difficult for commercial treasure hunters to exploit the Titanic and other wrecks of historical significance.
