RMS Titanic

RMS Titanic

Maiden Voyage Iceberg Collision

The RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner which was owned and operated by the White Star Line. She was the largest ship afloat at her time and held the title for the longest ship in 1912. She was the second of three Olympic-class ocean liners operated by the White Star Line. She was built in Belfast, Ireland at the Harrland and Wolff Shipyard. The first-class accommodation was designed to be the pinnacle of comfort and luxury, with a gymnasium, swimming pool, libraries, high-class restaurants, and opulent cabins. A high-powered radiotelegraph transmitter was available for passengers to send marconigrams and also for operational use on the ship. She had advanced safety features including watertight compartments and doors. She was also equipped with sixteen lifeboat davits and they were each capable of lowering three lifeboats each, which came to a total of fourty-eight lifeboats but the Titanic only carried twenty lifeboats, which would be a problem later on. Four out of the twenty lifeboats aboard, four of them were collapsible. On April 10th, 1912, the Titanic departed from Southampton to pick up passengers from Cherbourg, France and Queenstown, Ireland. There were hundred of immigrants boarding the Titanic like people from Great Britain, Ireland, and Scandinavia. The Titanic was also carrying some of the most richest people in the world. On the night of April 14th, 1912, nearby ships were sending out Iceberg warnings but that did not stop the Titanic from scraping the side of a large iceberg that was seen to late by the crew members in the crow’s nest Southeast of Newfoundland. The starboard side of her bow struck the iceberg causing her hull plates to buckle inward. Five of her sixteen watertight compartments began flooding but she was built to survive four of them flooding. Some passengers were evacuated but they failed to fully load lifeboats and still went by the Women and Children first rule, even during an emergency. Everyone believed the ship was unsinkable and that they would be back on board in no time, but when the bow began pulling underwater, everyone’s thoughts had changed. The Titanic began firing flares into the sky. The nearest ship, the Californian, didn’t believe the Titanic’s flares and distress signals. The Californian believed that they were just celebrating and wasting their resources. John Jacob Aster IV was a passenger on the ship and he died when he was crushed by the 1st or 4th funnel of the vessel after it fell. When the ship was at it’s peak stress and the stern was high in the air above the sea, the Titanic broke in half between the third and fourth funnel and the stern fell back onto the surface of the water. The bow pulled down on the stern while being connected to the double-bottom. The bow released from the double bottom and it began to plunge down to the bottom. The stern settled back and everyone thought it would float until it began to tip back up. It listed to port and disappeared under the waves of the North Atlantic Ocean. Everyone could hear the Titanic underwater being ripped apart and imploding. As the sound faded away, lifeboats began searched for people that were still alive among the field of floating and frozen dead bodies. It was now around 2:30am and the Titanic was gone. Two hours later, the second closest vessel to the Titanic, the RMS Carpathia, arrived and picked up the remaining passengers. Over 1,500 people died in the sinking of Titanic and it could have been prevented if lifeboats were completely full, anyone could get in, and if third class passengers were allowed on the main deck. The disaster was met with worldwide shock and outrage, both at the huge loss of life and at the regulatory and procedural failures that had led to it. In 1985, the wreck of the Titanic was discovered by a Franco-American expedition sponsored by the United States Navy. She was split in two and is currently still disintegrating at a depth of almost 12,500 ft. It had been found that when her bow section landed on the ocean floor, it had landed at an angle and broke it’s back while the stern was completely mangled and less than half of its plating had ripped off in a huge and littered debris field. Thousands of artifacts have been recovered and displayed at mueseums and other attractions. The Titanic has become one of the most famous ships in history and is also the second largest ocean liner wreck in the world, only being surpassed by her sister ship, HMHS Brittanic, which sank in 1916. In 1997: a film by James Cameron about the Titanic was created and ended up being the most popular film about the vessel. The final survivor of the Titanic disaster died in 2009 at the age of 97. In 2020, a National Geographic documentary was made called Back to the Titanic when they revisited the wreck after waiting ten years since the last dive in 2012. Sadly, the entire stern had collapsed and famous photographed rooms in the bow section had rusted or collapsed.

Although *Titanic* was primarily a passenger liner, she also carried a substantial amount of cargo. She had carried mail under a contract with the Royal Mail and the United States Post Office Department. She had a large storage of letters and parcels, but there were no exotic minerals as cargo on the vessel but the most valued item on the ship was a copy of the *La Circassienne au Bain painting* by French artist Merry-Joseph Blondel. The painting's owner, a first-class passenger, filed a claim for $100,000 ($2.4 million equivalent in 2014) in compensation for the loss of the artwork. Also as cargo the the vessel she had a 1912 Renault Type CE Coupe de Villa motor car.