Story of the Titanic (DK History)

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Titanic had around 885 crew members on board for her maiden voyage. [106] Like other vessels of her time, she did not have a permanent crew, and the vast majority of crew members were casual workers who only came aboard the ship a few hours before she sailed from Southampton. [107] The process of signing up recruits had begun on 23 March and some had been sent to Belfast, where they served as a skeleton crew during Titanic 's sea trials and passage to England at the start of April. [108] Titanic was launched at 12:15pm on 31 May 1911 in the presence of Lord Pirrie, J. Pierpont Morgan, J. Bruce Ismay and 100,000 onlookers. [91] [92] Twenty-two tons of soap and tallow were spread on the slipway to lubricate the ship's passage into the River Lagan. [90] In keeping with the White Star Line's traditional policy, the ship was not formally named or christened with champagne. [91] The ship was towed to a fitting-out berth where, over the course of the next year, her engines, funnels and superstructure were installed and her interior was fitted out. [93] Features Power RMS Olympic 's rudder with central and port wing propellers; [27] the man at the bottom shows scale. [28]

Outgoing Steamships – Sail Saturday, October 26, 1912: Majestic (Southampton)". The Sun. 24 October 1912. Archived from the original on 27 June 2015 . Retrieved 18 May 2015. The way in which the Titanic sank brought to light serious design issues with the Olympic-class. This resulted in the Olympic receiving a major refit and major design changes for the construction of the Britannic. [222] Lord, Walter (2005) [1955]. A Night to Remember. New York: St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 978-0-8050-7764-3. Donahue, James (20 September 1911). "The Titanic's Sister Ship Olympic". Perdurabo10.tripod.com. Archived from the original on 4 July 2013 . Retrieved 28 May 2013. Known afterward as the "Unsinkable Molly Brown" due to her efforts in helping other passengers while the ship sank.

It was a first in many fields at that time, including the most luxurious and the largest ship in service. Its sinking in 1912 is considered to be one of the deadliest peacetime marine disaster. There are approximately 165,000 workers employed in shipyards in the U.S. Between 2011 and 2017, there were at least 45 fatal accidents (4.0 per 100,000) among shipyard workers,8 higher than the rate for all U.S. workers. (Ref: CDC https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/programs/cm...) Despite over 1,600 ships being built by Harland and Wolff in Belfast Harbour, Queen's Island became renamed after its most famous ship, Titanic Quarter in 1995. Once a sensitive story, Titanic is now considered one of Northern Ireland's most revered and uniting symbols. [314] [ failed verification] The British Board of Trade's inquiry into the disaster was headed by Lord Mersey, and took place between 2 May and 3 July. Being run by the Board of Trade, who had previously approved the ship, it was seen by some [ like whom?] as having little interest in its own or White Star's conduct being found negligent. [210] The first three days of the voyage from Queenstown had passed without apparent incident. A fire had begun in one of Titanic 's coal bunkers approximately 10 days prior to the ship's departure, and continued to burn for several days into its voyage, [142] but passengers were unaware of this situation. Fires occurred frequently on board steamships at the time, due to spontaneous combustion of the coal. [143] The fires had to be extinguished with fire hoses by moving the coal on top to another bunker and by removing the burning coal and feeding it into the furnace. [144] The fire was finally extinguished on 14 April. [145] [146] There has been some speculation and discussion as to whether this fire and attempts to extinguish it may have made the ship more vulnerable to sinking. [147] [148]

Titanic 's electrical plant was capable of producing more power than an average city power station of the time. [39] Immediately aft of the turbine engine were four 400kW steam-driven electric generators, used to provide electrical power to the ship, plus two 30kW auxiliary generators for emergency use. [40] Their location in the stern of the ship meant they remained operational until the last few minutes before the ship sank. [41] Each inquiry took testimony from both passengers and crew of Titanic, crew members of Leyland Line's Californian, Captain Arthur Rostron of Carpathia and other experts. [211] The British inquiry also took far greater expert testimony, making it the longest and most detailed court of inquiry in British history up to that time. [212] The two inquiries reached broadly similar conclusions: the regulations on the number of lifeboats that ships had to carry were out of date and inadequate, [213] Captain Smith had failed to take proper heed of ice warnings, [214] the lifeboats had not been properly filled or crewed, and the collision was the direct result of steaming into a dangerous area at too high a speed. [213] The last Titanic body recovered was steward James McGrady, Body No. 330, found by the chartered Newfoundland sealing vessel Algerine on 22 May and buried at Fairview Lawn Cemetery in Halifax on 12 June. [251]The Titanic copy-cats that have been as ill-fated as the original ship". 16 May 2022 . Retrieved 17 June 2023. Titanic—Passenger and Crew statistics". Historyonthenet.com. Archived from the original on 6 April 2012 . Retrieved 8 April 2012.

On July 29, 1908, Harland and Wolff presented the drawings to J. Bruce Ismay and other White Star Line executives. Ismay approved the design and signed three "letters of agreement" two days later, authorising the start of construction. [14] At this point, the first ship—which was later to become Olympic—had no name but was referred to simply as "Number 400", as it was Harland and Wolff's four-hundredth hull. Titanic was based on a revised version of the same design and was given the number 401. [15] Dimensions and layout Starboard view of TitanicThe ship sank on its maiden voyage in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912 after colliding with an iceberg that had gone unnoticed. Over 1,500 passengers and crew died of hypothermia and drowning, out of the 2,224 onboard. RMS Olympic on sea trials with collapsible, port side, alongside #1 funnel". Archived from the original on 6 January 2021 . Retrieved 24 November 2019. Retrieval and burial of the dead Markers of Titanic victims, Fairview Cemetery, Halifax, Nova Scotia According to some hypotheses, Titanic was doomed from the start by a design that many lauded as state-of-the-art. The Olympic-class ships featured a double bottom and 15 watertight bulkhead compartments equipped with electric watertight doors that could be operated individually or simultaneously by a switch on the bridge.

Paper says Titanic discovered". The San Bernardino County Sun. 1 September 1985. p.3. Archived from the original on 27 June 2018 . Retrieved 26 July 2016– via Newspapers.com. TITANIC IN PERIL ON LEAVING PORT; Suction of Giant Liner Breaks Hawsers of the New York, Which Floats Helpless". The New York Times. 11 April 1912. p.1 . Retrieved 22 March 2022. After the disaster, recommendations were made by both the British and American Boards of Inquiry stating that ships should carry enough lifeboats for all aboard, mandated lifeboat drills would be implemented, lifeboat inspections would be conducted, etc. Many of these recommendations were incorporated into the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea passed in 1914. [280] The convention has been updated by periodic amendments, with a completely new version adopted in 1974. [281] Signatories to the Convention followed up with national legislation to implement the new standards. For example, in Britain, new "Rules for Life Saving Appliances" were passed by the Board of Trade on 8 May 1914 and then applied at a meeting of British steamship companies in Liverpool in June 1914. [282] Lord protested his innocence to the end of his life, and many researchers have asserted that the known positions of Titanic and Californian make it impossible that the former was the infamous "mystery ship", a topic which has "generated ... millions of words and ... hours of heated debates" and continues to do so. [230] Why So Few?". Museum.gov.ns.ca. Archived from the original on 25 January 2013 . Retrieved 28 May 2013.

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Gaspare Antonio Pietro Gatti: Titanic Victim". Encyclopedia Titanica. Archived from the original on 21 February 2010 . Retrieved 24 November 2019. Titanic was laid out in a much lighter style similar to that of contemporary high-class hotels—the Ritz Hotel was a reference point—with First Class cabins finished in the Empire style. [52] A variety of other decorative styles, ranging from the Renaissance to Louis XV, were used to decorate cabins and public rooms in First and Second Class areas of the ship. The aim was to convey an impression that the passengers were in a floating hotel rather than a ship; as one passenger recalled, on entering the ship's interior a passenger would "at once lose the feeling that we are on board ship, and seem instead to be entering the hall of some great house on shore". [53] Since 1894, when the largest passenger ship under consideration was the Cunard Line's 13,000-ton Lucania, the Board of Trade had made no provision to increase the existing scale regarding the number of required lifeboats for larger ships, such as the 46,000-ton Titanic. Sir Alfred Chalmers, nautical adviser to the Board of Trade from 1896 to 1911, had considered the matter of adjusting the scale "from time to time", but because he not only assumed that experienced sailors would need to be carried "uselessly" aboard ship only to lower and man the extra lifeboats, but also anticipated the difficulty in getting away a greater number than 16 boats in any emergency, he "did not consider it necessary to increase [the scale]". [74]