Titanic: Ship's History
By Waji
The last known picture taken of Titanic as she heads
off into destiny
How did Titanic come to be built?
Although it's the most famous,
Titanic was actually the second of three great sister ships. The first
was the "Olympic", followed by "Titanic" and lastly the "Gigantic" (more
on Olympic and Gigantic later).
The idea behind these great
liners was brought up in 1907 during a dinner at the London home of Lord
William Pirrie, chairman of the renown shipbuilding firm Harland and Wolff.
At the dinner was J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star line, who
was looking to regain the company's prestige as a trans-Atlantic passenger
line.
Pirrie and Ismay agreed
the best way to increase White Star's weakening position would be to build
the three biggest and most luxurious ships ever launched. At their
completion they would be the largest moving objects in the world, each
fifty percent bigger and 100 feet longer than their new rivals from the
Cunard line, the "Mauretania" and "Lusitania". Ismay agreed that
no expense would be spared on the lavish appointments of his new ships,
with each to be constructed on a "cost-plus" basis.
Today, it's estimated it
would take $400,000,000.00 to build an exact replica of the Titanic.
Titanic and Olympic in port together
How long did it take to build Titanic?
Design work on the great leviathans
took a year. Harland and Wolff also spent several months enlarging
the slipways at its Belfast shipyard where the giants would be built.
Actual construction began first on the Olympic, with her keel laid down
on December 16, 1908. Work on Titanic started the following Spring
on March 31, 1909.
The sight of their great
steel frames soon became breathtaking and loomed over every other structure
surrounding the shipyard. A work force of 15,000 forged more than
two thousand one-inch plates to form each hull, using more than three million
rivets apiece. When completed, the ships weighed some 46,000 tons
apiece and were 882 feet long.
Despite their tremendous
size, work proceeded quickly and the Olympic was launched October 20, 1910.
The Titanic followed seven months later on May 31, 1911. It took
another ten months to finish the interiors of each, including installation
of boilers, engines, mechanical equipment and the four funnels. By
the way, only the first three funnels were real. The fourth was a
fake added for looks, although it was used for ventilation.
Thomas Andrews - Titanic's Designer
Which went into service first?
With much fanfare and publicity,
the first to leave England for New York was the Olympic on June 14, 1911.
There were 1,316 passengers and 850 crew aboard. At the helm was
Captain E.J. Smith, the same man who would take the Titanic on her fateful
maiden voyage a year later.
Olympic arrived in New York
on June 21, 1911 at Pier 59, which had been specially lengthened by 90
feet into the Hudson River to accommodate the new White Star liners.
One newspaper account of her size said "She looked to be a genuine sea
monster."
Captain Edward J. Smith
So what about Titanic?
Based on his experience with
the Olympic, Harland and Wolff's chief designer Thomas Andrews decided
to make several refinements to the Titanic, which was still being outfitted.
Among these, a decision to enclose the first-class promenade with glass
to protect passengers from wind and spray. Other enhancements included
real windows instead of portholes in several first-class staterooms.
Two of these were also outfitted with the luxury of private decks.
These revisions added another thousand tons to the Titanic's weight and
made her even more splendid and elaborate than her sister.
On the morning of April
2, 1912, Titanic at last steamed under her own power for the first time
to complete sea trials. The next day she arrived in Southampton to
prepare for her April 10, 1912 maiden voyage.
On sailing day, the Titanic
was loaded with last-minute provisions and cargo, and was boarded by her
passengers. Promptly at noon, Titanic's triple-tone whistles blew
three times as visitors departed. Assisted by six tugboats, the majestic
liner was finally underway on her first, and last voyage.
Titanic's fourth funnel was added mostly for looks
So things started out smoothly for Titanic?
Actually, no. Titanic
had its first brush with disaster within minutes after leaving the dock.
As it moved down the River Test, the immense ship passed the smaller liner
New York, which was tied up at its berth. To everyone's shock, the
Titanic displaced so much water as it went by it snapped all of the New
York's mooring lines, sucking it away from the dock and directly toward
Titanic.
Harbor pilot George Bowyer
and Captain Smith narrowly avoided a collision by quickly using the ship's
propeller wash to push the New York away. A tug finally caught the
wayward ship and pushed it back to its berth. One second-class passenger
was heard to remark "That's a bad omen."
Titanic's Grand Staircase in first-class
So then it was on to New York?
No, Titanic had two stops to
make before that. The first was at Cherbourg, France where it picked
up trans-Atlantic mail and 274 more passengers. The following day
it stopped at Queenstown, Ireland (now Cobh) to receive another 120 passengers
and more mail. A few also got off at Queenstown, including Titanic
crewman John Coffey who smuggled himself among empty mail sacks going ashore.
Whether Coffey was having second thoughts about the ship is unclear.
He was born in Queenstown and may have simply signed on with the Titanic
to get a free ride home. However, Titanic's own Chief Officer Henry
Wilde apparently did have some misgivings. He sent a letter to his
sister from the Irish port which read, "I still don't like this ship...
I have a queer feeling about it." Wilde did not survive the sinking.
But wasn't the Titanic "unsinkable"?
Neither White Star or
Harland and Wolff ever officially said the Titanic was unsinkable.
It was something picked up by the press and became legend over time.
It was probably due to the fact Titanic was divided into 16 watertight
compartments, any four of which could become flooded and the ship would
still float. Unfortunately, when Titanic hit the iceberg it suffered
damage to six compartment.
In addition, the watertight
bulkheads only went about half-way up the hull to "E" deck. That
means as they filled and pulled the bow of the ship down, water overflowed
into the next compartment much like when you fill an ice cube tray.
Titanic's Wireless Operators Jack Philips and Harold
Bride
But didn't the Titanic have plenty of warnings about
icebergs?
Sadly, yes. In fact,
the second day of the voyage her wireless operators began receiving ice
warnings from other ships in the North American shipping lanes. Several
ships even reported they had been forced to stop because they were surrounded
by dense ice fields and bergs. Despite these warnings, Captain Smith
continued to unleash the 30,000 horsepower of the Titanic's mighty engines.
To help seal Titanic's fate,
it appears some ice warnings never got to the ship's bridge. The
wireless set had broken down on Friday night. While the two radio
operators struggled to fix it, a backlog of unsent messages built up.
Most were from wealthy passengers who wanted to let shore bound friends
know about the wonderful time they were having. Once the radio was
fixed, the wireless room worked hard to send the backlog. During
this time, evidence exists that some late ice warnings were never delivered
to Captain Smith or his officers.
In fact, about ten minutes
before the Titanic hit the iceberg at 11:40 p.m., the wireless operator
of the Californian tried to make contact but was told to "shut up" by the
Titanic operators because they were too busy trying to work off the backlog
of messages. This would be perhaps the single most tragic mistake
of the night.
Not only was the Californian
stopped in ice, it was just a few miles away when the Titanic hit the iceberg
and sunk. Unfortunately, the Californian's radio room was not staffed
around the clock. After being blown off by the Titanic, its radio
operator turned off his set and went to bed for the night. He never
heard Titanic's desperate cries for help just minutes later.
Lookout Frederick Fleet - He saw the iceberg first
Why didn't Titanic's lookouts didn't spot the iceberg
in time?
The night of April 14th was
beautifully clear, but moonless and the water was dead calm. To spot
icebergs in time, lookouts generally relied on moonlight and the white
foam of waves breaking at the base of the berg. But the unusually
calm water made no waves and made the iceberg difficult to see until it
was too late. To add to the problem, the binoculars normally stowed
in the crows nest were missing.
\
The spot where Titanic met its fate
Why didn't the ship just turn away as soon as the
iceberg was spotted?
They tried, but the Titanic
was big and reacted slowly, partly because its rudder was too small for
its size. In addition, the engines were reversed, further slowing
the big ship's ability to turn. In hindsight, they probably should
have kept the ship at full speed to help turn it quicker. The other
alternative would have been to hit the iceberg head-on, hopefully damaging
only one of the watertight compartments and keeping the ship afloat.
As it was, the ship turned just enough to allow a finger of ice to scrape
the side, letting water into six compartments.
Location of Titanic's 16 lifeboats and collapsible
lifeboats A,B,C & D
If no expense was spared on the Titanic, how come
there wasn't enough lifeboats for everyone?
Believe it or not the Titanic
carried more lifeboats than was required by law at the time, which used
a ship's tonnage, not the actual number of passengers aboard. Titanic
was equipped with a total of 20 lifeboats (16 regular boats and four canvas
collapsibles) which could carry a total of 1,178 -- less than half the
3,547 passengers and crew the ship could accommodate. Even so, this
exceeded the Board of Trade requirements by 17 percent.
However, when it came time
to abandon ship many people refused to get off, thinking the Titanic was
safe from sinking. The lifeboats went away with only about 650, leaving
1,558 on the decks of the sinking liner. Of those, only 55 survived
the icy waters of the North Atlantic. The total saved numbered
705. Among those in the lifeboats was J. Bruce Ismay, the chairman
of the White Star line and the man who conceived Titanic.
Gigantic was renamed Britannic and served as a WWI
hospital ship
After the sinking of the Titanic what happened to
sister ships Olympic and Gigantic?
First, White Star quickly and
quietly dropped the name "Gigantic" and renamed the third sister ship "Britannic"
instead. In fact, White Star went on to deny it ever planned to use
the name Gigantic, although there are early mock-ups of advertising posters
with that name on them. Apparently White Star thought such a name
might once again tempt fate, plus it sounded too close to "Titanic".
Work on the Britannic was
also suspended (it was still under construction at Harland and Wolff) until
the wreck of the Titanic could be evaluated. It was decided to give
the Britannic a "double skin" and to dry-dock the Olympic and retrofit
it with a double hull as well. Watertight bulkheads were also extended
up to "B" deck.
By the time the Britannic
was ready for service in 1915, World War I had broken out and it was converted
by the British government into a hospital ship. It was steaming in
the Aegean Sea with nearly 1,100 aboard when it was either torpedoed or
struck a mine. Only 30 died, as there were plenty of lifeboats this
time. But, despite its many safety improvements, the Britannic sunk
in under an hour. By contrast, the Titanic went down in two and a
half hours.
The Olympic went on to continue
its trans-Atlantic service uninterrupted until it was retired and scrapped
in 1931. It earned the nickname "Old Reliable".
Excerpts From The 1912 German Titanic Movie!!!
"In Nacht und Eis" made just
two months after the sinking!
Titanic as seen in the 1912 movie
Captain Smith spots the berg
The fatal collision
Titanic down by the bow as passengers flee in the
lifeboats
Pulling a survivor from the Atlantic
The White Star March
