The RMS Titanic
The RMS Titanic was one the three 'Olympic Class' liners that were commissioned by the White Star Line to be built in Belfast by the famed shipbuilders Harland and Wolff. The sheer size of the Titanic and her sister ships posed a major engineering challenge; after construction was completed it served as a prodigy in technological ingenuity. However, due to the unfortunate circumstances that led the Titanic to collide with an ice burg, the ship sunk on April 15th 1912, claiming more then 1,500 lives. In the following decade, the sinking of the Titanic had inspired a number of book and movies, and propelled the development of navel safety regulations. Today, the Titanic serves as a cautionary tale of human pride dominating prudence. [1]
The construction of the Titanic had began on March 31st, 1909. The Royal Mail Steamer Titanic was the product of intense competition among rival shipping lines in the first half of the 20th century; the White Star Line found itself in opposition to the British ship firm Cunard, and various German companies that dominated the international sea's with their large passenger ships. Cunard, the main rival of White Star Line, relieved a new line of luxury liners. The same year Cunard did so, the chief executive of White Star began to discuss the construction of three large ships with William J. Pirrie, chairman of the Belfast-based shipbuilding company Harland and Wolff. Part of the "Olympic" class of liners, they would measure 882 feet in length and 92.5 feet at their broadest points, making them them the largest ships of their time. [2]
On May 31st, 1911, the Titanic had launched and entered into the Victoria Channel; the largest man-made passenger ship of its time, more then 100,000 people attend the launching. Taking over 26 months to construct, the estimated costs of building the Titanic was $7,500,000; based on inflation and modern exchange rates, this would bring the 2016 cost equivalent to roughly $166,000,000. Over 15,000 men were employed in its construction; out the 15,000, 246 were injured and 8 were killed. Over 3,000,000 rivets were used in the construction of the hull, and over 20 horses were required to pull the main anchor. [3]
Inspired by technological ingenuity of its time, White Star Line wanted to make the Titanic the epitome of modern technology; a symbol of engineering, safety, and luxury for its time. Particularly within the safety aspect, engineers ahd designed the Titanic with a double steel hull and 16 separate compartments capable of being sealed off from one another in the event of an emergency. It was also capable of carrying 64 lifeboats; in a fatal decision however, White Star Line only choose to carry 16. This, combined with outdated laws and difficult to access collapsible lifeboats, initiated that the Titanic met the the minimum requirements to hold lifeboats for at least 75 percent of the ship's passengers. This hubris in believing the Titanic to be the standard of safety had led them to publicize that the Titanic was "unsinkable." Tragically, they were wrong.
On April 10th, 1912, the Titanic set sail for New York city from Southampton, England. After two stops in France and Ireland, the Titanic began its transatlantic crossing with 2,216 passengers. During the trip the Titanic had received numerous iceberg warnings via wireless telegraph; Captain Edward Smith altered the ship's course. However, due to weak communication between the radio operators and the bridge, there was a lack of updates given to the bridge on icebergs. And only four days into their journey, on April 14th at approximately 11:40 p.m., lookouts spotted an iceberg directly in the path of the ship. Evasive actions were taken to avoid it, but the Ice burg ended up striking the right side of the hull. Captain Smith ordered the ship to stop movement to address the damages. Initially only five compartments were flooded, and watertight doors were closed to prevent the spread. However, water began to flow and expand thru various other cracks that caused the Titanic to sink. [4]
Due to the lack of lifeboats, it became obvious that not everyone was going to safely secure a position on one. Though each passenger was given a life jacket, the danger wasn't in drowning; rather, the water's temperature at four degrees below freezing was what caused the majority of deaths. Groups of fifteen hundred stood aboard the ship in hopes to getting onto a lifeboat. Only after two hours and 40 minutes, the ship was consumed by the the Atlantic. The next morning, the Carpathia rescued 705 passangers; one thousand five hundred twenty-two passengers and crew had died.[5]
After the Titanic sunk, it's demise had taken a deeper, mythical meeting within today's culture. A symbol of ignorance, what was considered to be the safest ship in the world turned into a death trap that had resulted in thousands of deaths. The same overconfidence also explains the electrifying impact the Titanic had upon the public; movies, novels, and general media have deemed it to be a romantic tragedy. And within the history of engineering, it served as a grim reminder: that no matter how technologically advanced a object may be, it still requires the appropriate safety measures. Thus, the Titanic was not only a romantic symbol, but a pioneer for the development of safety procedures to come.