RMS Titanic: The Facts

The RMS Titanic was built to win on comfort, not speed. White Star Line ordered her on 17 September 1908. Harland and Wolff in Belfast laid her keel on 22 March 1909 as yard number 401, launched her on 31 May 1911, and delivered her on 2 April 1912 for about £1.5 million exactly.

She was the largest ship in service that spring. Titanic was 882 feet 9 inches long, 92 feet 6 inches wide, and measured 46,329 gross register tons, displacing about 52,310 tonnes. Power came from two triple-expansion reciprocating engines for the wing propellers and a low-pressure Parsons turbine for the centre propeller, together about 46,000 horsepower. Service speed was 21 knots. The design capacity was 2,453 passengers, split 833 first class, 614 second, 1,006 third, plus very roughly 900 crew.

Safety was a selling point. Sixteen watertight compartments with remotely closed doors led newspapers to call her indeed practically unsinkable. The lifeboat plan was less ambitious. Titanic carried twenty boats, fourteen standard wooden lifeboats, two cutters, four collapsibles, with space for 1,178 people. That beat the Board of Trade rule, which required only fourteen boats for ships over 10,000 tons, but it was far short of the number needed for a full ship.

Captain Edward John Smith commanded the maiden voyage. Titanic left Southampton on 10 April 1912, stopped at Cherbourg and Queenstown, then headed for New York with 2,208 passengers and crew aboard. The night of 14 April was very clear and calm. At 11:40 pm the lookout rang the bell for an iceberg ahead. The helm turned, but the starboard bow scraped the ice, opening compartments to the sea. Naval architect Thomas Andrews was traveling aboard.

Wireless operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride broadcast CQD and SOS. Boats were lowered from just after midnight, many partly filled. The closest ship to answer, RMS Carpathia, was nearly four hours away. Titanic broke apart and sank at 2:20 am on 15 April. About 1,500 people died. Roughly 706 survivors were pulled from lifeboats at dawn.

The inquiries that followed in London and Washington focused on the same gaps: too few lifeboats, no binoculars for lookouts, high speed through a known ice field, and a wireless room used mainly for passenger messages. The result was the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea in 1914. It required lifeboat seats for everyone aboard, continuous radio watches, and improved watertight standards. Britain and the United States also set up the International Ice Patrol.

The wreck lay undiscovered for 73 years. On 1 September 1985 a team led by Robert Ballard found Titanic in two main pieces at over 12,000 feet southeast of Newfoundland. Since then, expeditions have mapped the debris field and documented decay. The numbers still define her: a 46,000-ton liner, built in Belfast, lost on her first crossing, remembered because the disaster forced shipping to change for decades afterward.