Titanic's Brief History

On April 15, 1912, the almighty Titanic went down. At 2:45 am on April 15; 5 days after its original departure from Liverpool, England, the Titanic struck a large iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean. The ship Titanic was the second in a three ship set; the Olympic, Titanic, and Brittanica. She was 300 yards long, and weighed several hundreds of thousands of pounds. The great ship, made mostly of metal, was thought to be unsinkable. Then the impossible happened. After numorous ignored iceflow warnings from the California, The California's radio operators simply stopped warning the Titanic, and turned off her radio, sealing the Titanic's fate. In the late hours of April 14, the Titanic collided with a large Iceberg. It skidded along the side of the Titanic, making many small gashes; about a finger width high, with the longest being a mere 5 feet wide. All togeter, the gashes were 10 square feet. Upon striking the berg, the Titanic's flood compartments, made for just such an occasion, began to fill with water. The titanic COULD have stayed afloat if only 4 of the compartments were flooded, but the water quickly filled 6, making the bow sink slowly into the 28 degree water. Many passengers were actually spotted playing soccer with the chunks of ice, unaware of the danger posed to them. When the danger became apperent, 3rd class passengers were locked down into their 3rd class area, unable to escape to the saftey of a lifeboat. Those who boarded the first of the 20 lifeboats were not at all crowded. They simply left with 12 or 20 people on a lifeboat designed to hold 65. Meanwhile, those in 3rd class were still trying to escape to the main deck. Desperete men ("women and children first!") Actually dressed as women so they would be allowed to enter a lifeboat. There are undisclosed rumors, still, to this day, that say the Titanic's crew shot passengers who wanted a lifeboat. This is where the almighty Titanic's journey ends. She soon went down "head-first" into the icy depths, snapped in to, leaving her hull bobbing, then the hull too sunk.

Hundreds perished that night, men, women, children, even dogs. One of the passengers describes the ride down with the sinking ship "Like an Elevator ride". The survivors recall that there were so many dead, they could hardly row through the bodies. Out of the 1500 or so in the water, 7 were found alive. All of the men in the engine room died. IF you were a 3rd class male, your survival chances were 1 in 10. Only one 1st class child died that night.