Titanic was a British passenger
liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in the early
morning of 15 April 1912 after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, UK to New
York City,
US. The sinking of Titanic caused the deaths of more than 1,500
people in one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in modern history. The RMSTitanic, the largest ship afloat at the time it entered service, was the
second of three Olympic class
ocean liners operated by
the White Star Line, and was
built by the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast with Thomas Andrews as her naval architect. Andrews was among
those lost in the sinking. On her maiden voyage, she carried 2,224 passengers
and crew.
Under
the command of Edward Smith, the ship's
passengers included some of the wealthiest people in the world, as well as
hundreds of emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland, Scandinavia and elsewhere throughout Europe seeking a new
life inNorth America. A wireless
telegraph was provided for the convenience of passengers as well as for
operational use. AlthoughTitanic had
advanced safety features such as watertight compartments and remotely activated
watertight doors, there were not enough lifeboats to accommodate all of those aboard due to
outdated maritime safety regulations. Titanic only carried enough lifeboats for
1,178 people—slightly more than half of the number on board, and one-third her
total capacity.
According to some hypotheses, Titanic was doomed from the
start by the design so many lauded as state-of-the-art. The Olympic-class ships
featured a double bottom and 15 watertight bulkheads equipped with electric
watertight doors which could be operated individually or simultaneously by a
switch on the bridge. It was these watertight bulkheads that inspired Shipbuilder
magazine, in a special issue devoted to the Olympic liners, to deem them
“practically unsinkable.” But the watertight compartment design contained a
flaw that may have been a critical factor in Titanic’s sinking: While the
individual bulkheads were indeed watertight, water could spill from one
compartment into another. Several of Titanic’s Cunard-owned contemporaries, by
contrast, already boasted innovative safety features devised to avoid this very
situation. Had White Star taken a cue from its competitor, it might have saved
Titanic from disaster.
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