Titanic Pocket Watch Rose Jack Leonardo DiCaprio Kate Winslet Movie Fob Chain UK

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Seller: anddownthewaterfall ✉️ (33,557) 99.8%, Location: Manchester, Take a look at my other items, UK, GB, Ships to: WORLDWIDE, Item: 315241708297 Titanic Pocket Watch Rose Jack Leonardo DiCaprio Kate Winslet Movie Fob Chain UK. Titanic Pocket Watch This is a Reproduction Antique Victorian Pocket Watch It has the image of the Titanic with the Jack and Rose Image from the Film Quartz Watch Keeps Excellent Time Complete with Chain Water Resistant Unisex Suitable for a Man or Woman The Chain is 800mm in lenght The Watch is 42mm in diameter The watch keeps perfect time One of the images shows the watch next to a 5p coin just to give you an idea of its size, the 5p is not included Would make an Excellent Gift or Collectable Keepsake to a A Great Ship that sunk over 100 years ago In Excellent Condition Water Resistant Unisex Suitable for a Man or Woman Starting at a Penny...With No Reserve..If your the only bidder you win it for 1p....Grab a Bargain!!!! I have a lot of Titanic items on Ebay so Check out my   other items !


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Titanic (1997 film)

Titanic

The film poster shows a man and a woman hugging over a picture of the Titanic's bow. In the background is a partly cloudy sky and at the top are the names of the two lead actors. The middle has the film's name and tagline, and the bottom contains a list of the director's previous works, as well as the film's credits, rating, and release date.

Theatrical release poster

Directed by James Cameron

Written by James Cameron

Produced by

James Cameron

Jon Landau

Starring

Leonardo DiCaprio

Kate Winslet

Billy Zane

Kathy Bates

Frances Fisher

Bernard Hill

Jonathan Hyde

Danny Nucci

David Warner

Bill Paxton

Cinematography Russell Carpenter

Edited by

Conrad Buff

James Cameron

Richard A. Harris

Music by James Horner

Production

companies

Paramount Pictures[1][2]

20th Century Fox[1][2]

Lightstorm Entertainment[1]

Distributed by

Paramount Pictures

(North America)

20th Century Fox

(International)

Release dates

November 1, 1997 (Tokyo)

December 19, 1997 (United States)

December 20, 1997 (South Africa)

Running time 195 minutes[3]

Country United States

Language English

Budget $200 million[4][5][6]

Box office $2.202 billion[7]

Titanic is a 1997 American epic romance and disaster film directed, written, produced, and co-edited by James Cameron. Incorporating both historical and fictionalized aspects, it is based on accounts of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as members of different social classes who fall in love aboard the ship during its ill-fated maiden voyage. Also starring are Billy Zane, Kathy Bates, Frances Fisher, Gloria Stuart, Bernard Hill, Jonathan Hyde, Victor Garber, and Bill Paxton.

Cameron's inspiration for the film came from his fascination with shipwrecks; he felt a love story interspersed with the human loss would be essential to convey the emotional impact of the disaster. Production began in 1995, when Cameron shot footage of the actual Titanic wreck. The modern scenes on the research vessel were shot on board the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, which Cameron had used as a base when filming the wreck. Scale models, computer-generated imagery, and a reconstruction of the Titanic built at Baja Studios were used to re-create the sinking. The film was co-financed by Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox; the former handled distribution in North America while the latter released the film internationally. It was the most expensive film ever made at the time, with a production budget of $200 million.

Upon its release on December 19, 1997, Titanic achieved significant critical and commercial success, and then received numerous accolades. Nominated for 14 Academy Awards, it tied All About Eve (1950) for the most Oscar nominations, and won 11, including the awards for Best Picture and Best Director, tying Ben-Hur (1959) for the most Oscars won by a single film. With an initial worldwide gross of over $1.84 billion, Titanic was the first film to reach the billion-dollar mark. It remained the highest-grossing film of all time until another Cameron film, Avatar, surpassed it in 2010. A 3D version of Titanic, released on April 4, 2012, to commemorate the centennial of the sinking, earned it an additional $343.6 million worldwide, pushing the film's worldwide total to $2.195 billion and making it the second film to gross more than $2 billion worldwide (after Avatar). In 2017, the film was re-released for its 20th anniversary and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".

Plot

In 1996, aboard the research vessel Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, Brock Lovett and his team search the wreck of RMS Titanic. They recover a safe they hope contains a necklace with a large diamond known as the Heart of the Ocean. Instead, they only find a drawing of a young nude woman wearing the necklace. The sketch is dated April 14, 1912, the same day the Titanic struck the iceberg that caused it to sink.[Note 1] Rose Dawson Calvert, the woman in the drawing, is brought aboard Keldysh. She recounts her experiences aboard Titanic.

In 1912 Southampton, 17-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater, her wealthy fiancé Caledon "Cal" Hockley, and Rose's widowed mother, Ruth, board the Titanic. Ruth emphasizes that Rose's marriage to Cal will resolve the family's financial problems and maintain their upper-class status. Meanwhile, Jack Dawson, a poor young artist, wins a third-class Titanic ticket in a poker game. After setting sail, Rose, distraught over her loveless engagement, climbs over the stern railing, intending to jump overboard. Jack appears and coaxes her back onto the deck. The two develop a tentative friendship, but when Cal and Ruth strongly object, Rose acquiesces and discourages Jack's attention. She soon realizes she has feelings for Jack.

Rose brings Jack to her state room and pays him a coin to sketch her nude, wearing only the Heart of the Ocean necklace. They later evade Cal's servant, Lovejoy, and have sex in an automobile inside the cargo hold. On the forward deck, they witness the ship's collision with an iceberg and overhear its officers and builder discussing the serious situation. Cal discovers Jack's sketch and Rose's insulting note left inside his safe, along with the necklace. When Jack and Rose return to warn the others about the collision, Cal has Lovejoy slip the necklace into Jack's pocket to frame him for theft. Jack is then confined in the master-at-arms' office. Cal then puts the necklace into his own overcoat pocket.

With the ship sinking, Rose flees Cal and her mother, who has boarded a lifeboat. Rose finds and frees Jack, and they barely make it back to the boat deck. Cal and Jack urge Rose to board a lifeboat. Having arranged to save himself, Cal falsely claims he can get Jack safely off the ship. As her lifeboat is lowered, Rose, unable to abandon Jack, jumps back on board. Cal grabs Lovejoy's pistol and chases Rose and Jack into the flooding first-class dining saloon. They get away, and Cal realizes that he gave his coat, and consequently the necklace, to Rose; he later boards a lifeboat posing as a lost child's father.

Jack and Rose return to the boat deck. The lifeboats have departed and the ship's stern is rising as the flooded bow sinks. As passengers fall to their deaths, Jack and Rose desperately cling to the stern rail. The upended ship breaks in half and the bow section dives downward. The remaining stern slams back onto the ocean, then upends again before it, too, sinks. In the freezing water, Jack helps Rose onto a wooden panel buoyant enough for only one person and makes her promise to survive. Rose is saved by a returning lifeboat, keeping her promise, and Jack dies of hypothermia.

The RMS Carpathia rescues the survivors; Rose avoids Cal by hiding among the steerage passengers and gives her name as Rose Dawson. Still wearing Cal's overcoat, she discovers the necklace tucked inside the pocket. In the present, Rose says she later heard that Cal committed suicide after losing his fortune in the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Lovett abandons his search after hearing Rose's story. Alone on the stern of Keldysh, Rose takes out the Heart of the Ocean, which has been in her possession all along, and drops it into the sea over the wreck site. While she is seemingly asleep in her bed,[8] her photos on the dresser depict a life of freedom and adventure inspired by her early conversations with Jack. A young Rose reunites with Jack at Titanic's Grand Staircase, applauded by those who died on the ship.

Cast

Fictional characters

Leonardo DiCaprio (top, pictured in 2014), who portrayed Jack Dawson, and Kate Winslet (pictured in 2011), who portrayed Rose DeWitt Bukater.

Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson: Cameron said he needed the cast to feel they were really on the Titanic, to relive its liveliness, and "to take that energy and give it to Jack, ... an artist who is able to have his heart soar".[9] Jack is portrayed as an itinerant, poor orphan from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, who has travelled the world, including Paris. He wins two third-class tickets for the Titanic in a poker game and travels with his friend Fabrizio. He is attracted to Rose at first sight. Her fiancé's invitation to dine with them the next evening enables Jack to mix with the first-class passengers for a night. Though established actors like Matthew McConaughey, Chris O'Donnell, Billy Crudup, and Stephen Dorff were considered, Cameron felt they were too old for the part of a 20-year-old.[10][11] Tom Cruise was interested, but his asking price was too high.[11] Cameron considered Jared Leto for the role, but Leto refused to audition.[12] Jeremy Sisto did a series of screen tests with Winslet and three other actresses vying for the role of Rose.[13] DiCaprio, 21 years old at the time, was brought to Cameron's attention by casting director Mali Finn.[10] Initially, he did not want the role and refused to read his first romantic scene (see below). Cameron said, "He read it once, then started goofing around, and I could never get him to focus on it again. But for one split second, a shaft of light came down from the heavens and lit up the forest." Cameron strongly believed in DiCaprio's acting ability and told him, "Look, I'm not going to make this guy brooding and neurotic. I'm not going to give him a tic and a limp and all the things you want." Cameron envisioned the character as a James Stewart type.[10] Although Jack Dawson was a fictional character, in Fairview Cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where 121 victims are buried, there is a grave labeled "J. Dawson". The real J. Dawson was Joseph Dawson, a trimmer in the engine room. "It wasn't until after the movie came out that we found out that there was a J. Dawson gravestone," said the film's producer, Jon Landau, in an interview.[14]

Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater: Cameron said Winslet "had the thing that you look for" and that there was "a quality in her face, in her eyes," that he "just knew people would be ready to go the distance with her".[9] Rose is a 17-year-old girl, originally from Philadelphia, who is forced into an engagement to 30-year-old Cal Hockley so she and her mother, Ruth, can maintain their high-class status after her father's death had left the family debt-ridden. Rose boards the RMS Titanic with Cal and Ruth, as a first-class passenger, and meets Jack. Winslet said of her character, "She has got a lot to give, and she's got a very open heart. And she wants to explore and adventure the world, but she [feels] that's not going to happen."[9] Gwyneth Paltrow, Winona Ryder, Claire Danes, Gabrielle Anwar, and Reese Witherspoon had been considered for the role.[10][15][16][17] When they turned it down, Winslet campaigned heavily for the role. She sent Cameron daily notes from England, which led Cameron to invite her to Hollywood for auditions. As with DiCaprio, casting director Mali Finn originally brought her to Cameron's attention. When looking for a Rose, Cameron described the character as "an Audrey Hepburn type" and was initially uncertain about casting Winslet even after her screen test impressed him.[10] After she screen tested with DiCaprio, Winslet was so thoroughly impressed with him, that she whispered to Cameron, "He's great. Even if you don't pick me, pick him." Winslet sent Cameron a single rose with a card signed, "From Your Rose", and lobbied him by phone. "You don't understand!" she pleaded one day when she reached him by mobile phone in his Humvee. "I am Rose! I don't know why you're even seeing anyone else!" Her persistence, as well as her talent, eventually convinced him to cast her in the role.[10]

Billy Zane as Caledon Hockley: Caledon is Rose's arrogant and snobbish 30-year-old fiancé, who is the heir to a Pittsburgh steel fortune. He becomes increasingly embarrassed by, jealous of, and cruel about Rose's affection for Jack. The part was originally offered to Matthew McConaughey,[11] and Rob Lowe has also gone on the record as having pursued it.[18]

Frances Fisher as Ruth DeWitt Bukater: Rose's widowed mother, who arranges her daughter's engagement to Cal to maintain her family's high-society status. She loves her daughter but believes that social position is more important than having a loving marriage. She strongly dislikes Jack, even though he saved her daughter's life.

Gloria Stuart as Rose Dawson Calvert: Rose narrates the film in a modern-day framing device. Cameron stated, "In order to see the present and the past, I decided to create a fictional survivor who is [close to] 101 years, and she connects us in a way through history."[9] The 100-year-old Rose gives Lovett information regarding the "Heart of the Ocean" after he discovers a nude drawing of her in the wreck. She shares the story of her time aboard the ship, and speaks about her relationship with Jack for the first time since the sinking. At 87, Stuart had to be made up to look older for the role.[11] Of casting Stuart, Cameron stated, "My casting director found her. She was sent out on a mission to find retired actresses from the Golden Age of the thirties and forties."[19] Cameron said that he did not know who Stuart was, and Fay Wray was also considered for the role. "But [Stuart] was just so into it, and so lucid, and had such a great spirit. And I saw the connection between her spirit and [Winslet's] spirit," stated Cameron. "I saw this joie de vivre in both of them, that I thought the audience would be able to make that cognitive leap that it's the same person."[19]

Bill Paxton as Brock Lovett: A treasure hunter looking for the "Heart of the Ocean" in the wreck of the Titanic in the present. Time and funding for his expedition are running out. He later reflects at the film's conclusion that, despite thinking about Titanic for three years, he has never understood it until he hears Rose's story.

Suzy Amis as Lizzy Calvert: Rose's granddaughter, who accompanies her when she visits Lovett on the ship and learns of her grandmother's romantic past with Jack Dawson.

Danny Nucci as Fabrizio: Jack's Italian best friend, who boards the RMS Titanic with him after Jack wins two tickets in a poker game. Fabrizio does not board a lifeboat when the Titanic sinks and is killed when one of the ship's funnels breaks and crashes into the water, crushing him and several other passengers to death.

David Warner as Spicer Lovejoy: An ex-Pinkerton constable, Lovejoy is Cal's English valet and bodyguard, who keeps an eye on Rose and is suspicious about the circumstances surrounding Jack rescuing her. He dies when the Titanic splits in half, causing him to fall into a massive opening. Warner had appeared in the 1979 TV miniseries S.O.S. Titanic.

Jason Barry as Tommy Ryan: An Irish third-class passenger who befriends Jack and Fabrizio. Tommy is killed when he is accidentally pushed forward and shot by a panicked First Officer Murdoch.

Historical characters

Although not intended to be an entirely accurate depiction of events,[20] the film includes portrayals of several historical figures:

The real Margaret Brown (right) giving Captain Arthur Henry Rostron an award for his service in the rescue of Titanic's surviving passengers.

Kathy Bates as Margaret "Molly" Brown: Brown is looked down upon by other first-class women, including Ruth, as "vulgar" and "new money". She is friendly to Jack and lends him a suit of evening clothes (bought for her son) when he is invited to dinner in the first-class dining saloon. She was dubbed "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" by historians because, with the support of other women, she commandeered Lifeboat 6 from Quartermaster Robert Hichens.[21] Some aspects of this altercation are portrayed in Cameron's film.

Victor Garber as Thomas Andrews: The ship's builder, Andrews is portrayed as a kind, decent man who is modest about his grand achievement. After the collision, he tries to convince the others, particularly Ismay, that it is a "mathematical certainty" that the ship will sink. He is depicted during the sinking of the ship as standing next to the clock in the first-class smoking room, lamenting his failure to build a strong and safe ship. Although this has become one of the most famous legends of the sinking of the Titanic, this story, which was published in a 1912 book (Thomas Andrews: Shipbuilder) and therefore perpetuated, came from John Stewart, a steward on the ship who in fact left the ship in boat no.15 at approximately 1:40 a.m.[22] There were testimonies of sightings of Andrews after that moment.[22] It appears that Andrews stayed in the smoking room for some time to gather his thoughts, then he continued assisting with the evacuation.[22] Another reported sighting was of Andrews frantically throwing deck chairs into the ocean for passengers to use as floating devices. Andrews was last seen leaving the ship at the last moment.

Bernard Hill as Captain Edward John Smith: Smith planned to make the Titanic his final voyage before retiring. He retreats into the wheelhouse on the bridge as the ship sinks, dying when the windows implode from the water whilst he clings to the ship's wheel. There are conflicting accounts as to whether he died in this manner or later froze to death in the water near the capsized collapsible lifeboat "B".[23]

Jonathan Hyde as J. Bruce Ismay: White Star Line’s ignorant, boorish managing director, who influences Captain Smith to go faster with the prospect of an earlier arrival in New York and favorable press attention; while this action appears in popular portrayals of the disaster, it is unsupported by evidence.[24][25] After the collision, he struggles to comprehend that his "unsinkable" ship is doomed. Ismay later boards Collapsible C (one of the last lifeboats to leave the ship) just before it is lowered. He was branded a coward by the press and public for surviving the disaster while many women and children had drowned.

Eric Braeden as John Jacob Astor IV: A first-class passenger whom Rose (correctly) calls the richest man on the ship. The film depicts Astor and his 18-year-old wife Madeleine (Charlotte Chatton) as being introduced to Jack by Rose in the first-class dining saloon. During the introduction, Astor asks if Jack is connected to the "Boston Dawsons", a question Jack deflects by saying that he is instead affiliated with the Chippewa Falls Dawsons. Astor is last seen as the Grand Staircase glass dome implodes and water surges in.

Bernard Fox as Colonel Archibald Gracie IV: The film depicts Gracie making a comment to Cal that "women and machinery don't mix", and congratulating Jack for saving Rose from falling off the ship, though he is unaware that it was a suicide attempt. Fox had portrayed Frederick Fleet in the 1958 film A Night to Remember.

Michael Ensign as Benjamin Guggenheim: A mining magnate traveling in first-class. He shows off his French mistress Madame Aubert (Fannie Brett) to his fellow passengers while his wife and three daughters wait for him at home. When Jack joins the other first-class passengers for dinner after his rescue of Rose, Guggenheim refers to him as a "bohemian". He is seen in the flooding Grand Staircase during the sinking, saying he is prepared to go down as a gentleman.

Wallace Hartley. Titanic's bandmaster and violinist.

Jonathan Evans-Jones as Wallace Hartley: The ship's bandmaster and violinist who plays uplifting music with his colleagues on the boat deck as the ship sinks. As the final plunge begins, he leads the band in a final performance of "Nearer, My God, to Thee", to the tune of Bethany,[26][27] and dies in the sinking.

Mark Lindsay Chapman as Chief Officer Henry Wilde: The ship's chief officer, who lets Cal on board a lifeboat because he has a child in his arms. Before he dies, he tries to get the boats to return to the sinking site to rescue passengers by blowing his whistle. After he freezes to death, Rose uses his whistle to attract the attention of Fifth Officer Lowe, which leads to her rescue.

Ewan Stewart as First Officer William Murdoch: The officer who is put in charge of the bridge on the night the ship struck the iceberg. During a rush for the lifeboats, Murdoch shoots Tommy Ryan as well as another passenger in a momentary panic, then commits suicide by shooting himself in the head. When Murdoch's nephew Scott saw the film, he objected to his uncle's portrayal as damaging to Murdoch's heroic reputation.[28] A few months later, Fox vice-president Scott Neeson went to Dalbeattie, Scotland, where Murdoch lived, to deliver a personal apology, and also presented a £5000 donation to Dalbeattie High School to boost the school's William Murdoch Memorial Prize.[29] Cameron apologized on the DVD commentary, but stated that there were officers who fired gunshots to enforce the "women and children first" policy.[30] According to Cameron, his depiction of Murdoch is that of an "honorable man," not of a man "gone bad" or of a "cowardly murderer." He added, "I'm not sure you'd find that same sense of responsibility and total devotion to duty today. This guy had half of his lifeboats launched before his counterpart on the port side had even launched one. That says something about character and heroism."[31]

Jonathan Phillips as Second Officer Charles Lightoller. Lightoller took charge of the port side evacuation. The film depicts Lightoller informing Captain Smith that it will be difficult to see icebergs without breaking water and following the collision suggesting the crew should begin boarding women and children to the lifeboats. He is seen brandishing a gun and threatening to use it to keep order. He can be seen on top of Collapsible B when the first funnel collapses. Lightoller was the most senior officer to have survived the disaster.

Simon Crane as Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall: The officer in charge of firing flares and manning Lifeboat 2 during the sinking. He is shown on the bridge wings helping the seamen firing the flares.

Ioan Gruffudd as Fifth Officer Harold Lowe: The ship's only officer to lead a lifeboat to retrieve survivors of the sinking from the icy waters. The film depicts Lowe rescuing Rose.

Edward Fletcher as Sixth Officer James Moody: The ship's only junior officer to have died in the sinking. The film depicts Moody admitting Jack and Fabrizio onto the ship only moments before it departs from Southampton. Moody is later shown following Mr. Murdoch's orders to put the ship to full speed ahead, and informs First Officer Murdoch about the iceberg. He is last seen clinging to one of the davits on the starboard side after having unsuccessfully attempted to launch collapsible A.

James Lancaster as Father Thomas Byles: Second-class passenger Father Byles, a Catholic priest from England, is portrayed praying and consoling passengers during the ship's final moments.

Lew Palter and Elsa Raven as Isidor Straus and Ida Straus: Isidor is a former owner of R.H. Macy and Company, a former congressman from New York, and a member of the New York and New Jersey Bridge Commission. During the sinking, his wife Ida is offered a place in a lifeboat, but refuses, saying that she will honor her wedding pledge by staying with Isidor. They are last seen lying on their bed embracing each other as water fills their stateroom.

Martin Jarvis as Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon: A Scottish baronet who is rescued in Lifeboat 1. Lifeboats 1 and 2 were emergency boats with a capacity of 40. Situated at the forward end of the boat deck, these were kept ready to launch in case of a person falling overboard. On the night of the disaster, Lifeboat 1 was the fourth to be launched, with 12 people aboard, including Duff-Gordon, his wife and her secretary. The baronet was much criticized for his conduct during the incident. It was suggested that he had boarded the emergency boat in violation of the "women and children first" policy and that the boat had failed to return to rescue those struggling in the water. He offered five pounds to each of the lifeboat's crew, which those critical of his conduct viewed as a bribe. The Duff-Gordons at the time (and his wife's secretary in a letter written at the time and rediscovered in 2007) stated that there had been no women or children waiting to board in the vicinity of the launching of their boat, and there is confirmation that lifeboat 1 of the Titanic was almost empty and that First Officer William Murdoch was apparently glad to offer Duff-Gordon and his wife and her secretary a place (simply to fill it) after they had asked if they could get on. Duff-Gordon denied that his offer of money to the lifeboat crew represented a bribe. The British Board of Trade's inquiry into the disaster accepted Duff-Gordon's denial of bribing the crew, but maintained that, if the emergency boat had rowed towards the people who were in the water, it might very well have been able to rescue some of them.[32][33]

Rosalind Ayres as Lady Duff-Gordon: A world-famous fashion designer and Sir Cosmo's wife. She is rescued in Lifeboat 1 with her husband. She and her husband never lived down rumors that they had forbidden the lifeboat's crew to return to the wreck site in case they would be swamped.[34][35][36]

Rochelle Rose as Noël Leslie, Countess of Rothes: The Countess is shown to be friendly with Cal and the DeWitt Bukaters. Despite being of a higher status in society than Sir Cosmo and Lady Duff-Gordon, she is kind, and helps row the boat and even looks after the steerage passengers.

Scott G. Anderson as Frederick Fleet: The lookout who saw the iceberg. Fleet escapes the sinking ship aboard Lifeboat 6.

Paul Brightwell as Quartermaster Robert Hichens: One of the ship's six quartermasters and at the ship's wheel at the time of collision. He is in charge of lifeboat 6. He refuses to go back and pick up survivors after the sinking and eventually the boat is commandeered by Molly Brown.

Martin East as Reginald Lee: The other lookout in the crow's nest. He survives the sinking.

Gregory Cooke as Jack Phillips: Senior wireless operator on board the Titanic whom Captain Smith ordered to send the distress signal.

Craig Kelly as Harold Bride: Junior wireless operator on board the Titanic.

Liam Tuohy as Chief Baker Charles Joughin: The baker appears in the film helping Rose stand up after she falls, following her and Jack to the ship's stern, and finally hanging onto the ship's railing as it sinks, drinking brandy from a flask. According to the real Joughin's testimony, he rode the ship down and stepped into the water without getting his hair wet. He also admitted to hardly feeling the cold, most likely thanks to alcohol.[37] In a deleted scene, he's shown throwing deckchairs overboard before taking a drink from his bottle.[38][39]

Terry Forrestal as Chief Engineer Joseph G. Bell: Bell and his men worked until the last minute to keep the lights and the power on in order for distress signals to get out. Bell and all of the engineers died in the bowels of the Titanic.

Cameos

Several crew members of the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh appear in the film, including Anatoly Sagalevich, creator and pilot of the MIR self-propelled Deep Submergence Vehicle.[40] Anders Falk, who filmed a documentary about the film's sets for the Titanic Historical Society, makes a cameo appearance in the film as a Swedish immigrant whom Jack Dawson meets when he enters his cabin; Edward Kamuda and Karen Kamuda, then President and Vice President of the Society who served as film consultants, were cast as extras in the film.[41][42]

Pre-production

Writing and inspiration

"The story could not have been written better...The juxtaposition of rich and poor, the gender roles played out unto death (women first), the stoicism and nobility of a bygone age, the magnificence of the great ship matched in scale only by the folly of the men who drove her hell-bent through the darkness. And above all the lesson: that life is uncertain, the future unknowable...the unthinkable possible."

– James Cameron[43]

James Cameron has long had a fascination with shipwrecks, and for him the RMS Titanic was "the Mount Everest of shipwrecks".[44][45][46] He was almost past the point in his life when he felt he could consider an undersea expedition, but said he still had "a mental restlessness" to live the life he had turned away from when he switched from the sciences to the arts in college. So when an IMAX film was made from footage shot of the wreck itself, he decided to seek Hollywood funding to "pay for an expedition and do the same thing". It was "not because I particularly wanted to make the movie," Cameron said. "I wanted to dive to the shipwreck."[44]

Cameron wrote a scriptment for a Titanic film,[47] met with 20th Century Fox executives including Peter Chernin, and pitched it as "Romeo and Juliet on the Titanic".[45][46] Cameron stated, "They were like, 'Oooooohkaaaaaay – a three-hour romantic epic? Sure, that's just what we want. Is there a little bit of Terminator in that? Any Harrier jets, shoot-outs, or car chases?' I said, 'No, no, no. It's not like that.'"[10] The studio was dubious about the idea's commercial prospects, but, hoping for a long-term relationship with Cameron, they gave him a greenlight.[10][11][19]

Director, writer and producer James Cameron (pictured in 2000)

Cameron convinced Fox to promote the film based on the publicity afforded by shooting the Titanic wreck itself,[47] and organized several dives to the site over a period of two years.[43] "My pitch on that had to be a little more detailed," said Cameron. "So I said, 'Look, we've got to do this whole opening where they're exploring the Titanic and they find the diamond, so we're going to have all these shots of the ship." Cameron stated, "Now, we can either do them with elaborate models and motion control shots and CG and all that, which will cost X amount of money – or we can spend X plus 30 per cent and actually go shoot it at the real wreck."[45]

The crew shot at the real wreck in the Atlantic Ocean twelve times in 1995. At that depth, with a water pressure of 6,000 pounds per square inch, "one small flaw in the vessel's superstructure would mean instant death for all on board." Not only were the dives high-risk, but adverse conditions prevented Cameron from getting the high-quality footage that he wanted.[11] During one dive, one of the submersibles collided with Titanic's hull, damaging both sub and ship, and leaving fragments of the submersible's propeller shroud scattered around the superstructure. The external bulkhead of Captain Smith's quarters collapsed, exposing the interior. The area around the entrance to the Grand Staircase was also damaged.[48]

Descending to the actual site made both Cameron and crew want "to live up to that level of reality ... But there was another level of reaction coming away from the real wreck, which was that it wasn't just a story, it wasn't just a drama," he said. "It was an event that happened to real people who really died. Working around the wreck for so much time, you get such a strong sense of the profound sadness and injustice of it, and the message of it." Cameron stated, "You think, 'There probably aren't going to be many filmmakers who go to Titanic. There may never be another one – maybe a documentarian." Due to this, he felt "a great mantle of responsibility to convey the emotional message of it – to do that part of it right, too".[19]

After filming the underwater shots, Cameron began writing the screenplay.[47] He wanted to honor the people who died during the sinking, so he spent six months researching all of the Titanic's crew and passengers.[43] "I read everything I could. I created an extremely detailed timeline of the ship's few days and a very detailed timeline of the last night of its life," he said.[45] "And I worked within that to write the script, and I got some historical experts to analyze what I'd written and comment on it, and I adjusted it."[45] He paid meticulous attention to detail, even including a scene depicting the Californian's role in Titanic's demise, though this was later cut (see below). From the beginning of the shoot, they had "a very clear picture" of what happened on the ship that night. "I had a library that filled one whole wall of my writing office with Titanic stuff, because I wanted it to be right, especially if we were going to dive to the ship," he said. "That set the bar higher in a way – it elevated the movie in a sense. We wanted this to be a definitive visualization of this moment in history as if you'd gone back in a time machine and shot it."[45]

Cameron was influenced in his crafting of the film by the 1958 British production A Night to Remember, which he had seen as a youth. He liberally copied some dialogue and scenes from that film, including the lively party of the passengers in steerage,[49] and the musicians playing on the deck during the sinking of the ship.[20]

Cameron felt the Titanic sinking was "like a great novel that really happened", but that the event had become a mere morality tale; the film would give audiences the experience of living the history.[43] The treasure hunter Brock Lovett represented those who never connected with the human element of the tragedy,[40] while the blossoming romance of Jack and Rose, Cameron believed, would be the most engaging part of the story: when their love is finally destroyed, the audience would mourn the loss.[43] He said: "All my films are love stories, but in Titanic I finally got the balance right. It's not a disaster film. It's a love story with a fastidious overlay of real history."[19]

Cameron framed the romance with the elderly Rose to make the intervening years palpable and poignant.[43] While Winslet and Stuart stated their belief that, instead of being asleep in her bed, the character dies at the end of the film,[50][51] Cameron said that he would rather not reveal what he intended with the ending because "[t]he answer has to be something you supply personally; individually."[8]

Scale modeling

A ship resembling the Titanic is being built at a port with clear skies and small waves.

The reconstruction of the RMS Titanic. The blueprints were supplied by the original ship's builder and Cameron tried to make the ship as detailed and accurate as possible.[52]

[53]Harland and Wolff, the RMS Titanic's builders, opened their private archives to the crew, sharing blueprints that were thought lost. For the ship's interiors, production designer Peter Lamont's team looked for artifacts from the era. The newness of the ship meant every prop had to be made from scratch.[52] Fox acquired 40 acres of waterfront south of Playas de Rosarito in Mexico, and began building a new studio on May 31, 1996. A horizon tank of seventeen million gallons was built for the exterior of the reconstructed ship, providing 270 degrees of ocean view. The ship was built to full scale, but Lamont removed redundant sections on the superstructure and forward well deck for the ship to fit in the tank, with the remaining sections filled with digital models. The lifeboats and funnels were shrunken by ten percent. The boat deck and A-deck were working sets, but the rest of the ship was just steel plating. Within was a fifty-foot lifting platform for the ship to tilt during the sinking sequences. The 60 foot 1/8th scale model of the stern section was designed by naval architect Jay Kantola utilizing plans of the Titanic's sister ship RMS Olympic.[54] Towering above was a 162-foot-tall (49 m) tower crane on 600 feet (180 m) of rail track, acting as a combined construction, lighting, and camera platform.[40]

The sets representing the interior rooms of the Titanic were reproduced exactly as originally built, using photographs and plans from the Titanic's builders. The Grand Staircase, which features prominently in the film, was recreated to a high standard of authenticity, though it was widened 30% compared to the original and reinforced with steel girders. Craftsmen from Mexico and Britain sculpted the ornate paneling and plaster-work based on Titanic's original designs.[55] The carpeting, upholstery, individual pieces of furniture, light fixtures, chairs, cutlery and crockery with the White Star Line crest on each piece were among the objects recreated according to original designs.[56] Cameron additionally hired two Titanic historians, Don Lynch and Ken Marschall, to authenticate the historical detail in the film.[11]

Production

Principal photography for Titanic began in July 1996 at Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, with the filming of the modern-day expedition scenes aboard the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh.[40] In September 1996, the production moved to the newly built Fox Baja Studios in Rosarito, Mexico, where a full-scale RMS Titanic had been constructed.[40] The poop deck was built on a hinge which could rise from zero to 90 degrees in a few seconds, just as the ship's stern rose during the sinking.[57] For the safety of the stuntmen, many props were made of foam rubber.[58] By November 15, the boarding scenes were being shot.[57] Cameron chose to build his RMS Titanic on the starboard side as a study of weather data revealed it was a prevailing north-to-south wind which blew the funnel smoke aft. This posed a problem for shooting the ship's departure from Southampton, as it was docked on its port side. Implementation of written directions, as well as props and costumes, had to be reversed; for example, if someone walked to their right in the script, they had to walk left during shooting. In post-production, the film was flipped to the correct direction.[59]

A full-time etiquette coach was hired to instruct the cast in the manners of the upper class gentility in 1912.[11] Despite this, several critics picked up on anachronisms in the film, not least involving the two main stars.[60][61]

A pencil-drawing sketch depicting a woman with a somewhat stern face lying on a chair and pillow naked, only wearing a diamond necklace. From the breast down the picture is cut off.

Cameron's nude sketch of Rose wearing the "Heart of the Ocean". The associated nude scene was one of the first scenes shot, as the main set was not yet ready.[19]

Cameron sketched Jack's nude portrait of Rose[62] for a scene which he feels has the backdrop of repression. "You know what it means for her, the freedom she must be feeling. It's kind of exhilarating for that reason," he said.[19] The nude scene was DiCaprio and Winslet's first scene together. "It wasn't by any kind of design, although I couldn't have designed it better. There's a nervousness and an energy and a hesitance in them," Cameron stated. "They had rehearsed together, but they hadn't shot anything together. If I'd had a choice, I probably would have preferred to put it deeper into the body of the shoot." Cameron said he and his crew "were just trying to find things to shoot" because the big set "wasn't ready for months, so we were scrambling around trying to fill in anything we could get to shoot." After seeing the scene on film, Cameron felt it worked out considerably well.[19]

Other times on the set were not as smooth. The shoot was an arduous experience that "cemented Cameron's formidable reputation as 'the scariest man in Hollywood'. He became known as an uncompromising, hard-charging perfectionist" and a "300-decibel screamer, a modern-day Captain Bligh with a megaphone and walkie-talkie, swooping down into people's faces on a 162ft crane".[63] Winslet chipped a bone in her elbow during filming and had been worried that she would drown in the 17m-gallon water tank in which the ship was to be sunk. "There were times when I was genuinely frightened of him. Jim has a temper like you wouldn't believe," she said.[63] "'God damn it!' he would yell at some poor crew member, 'that's exactly what I didn't want!'"[63] Her co-star, Bill Paxton, was familiar with Cameron's work ethic from his earlier experience with him. "There were a lot of people on the set. Jim is not one of those guys who has the time to win hearts and minds," he said.[63] The crew felt Cameron had an evil alter ego and so nicknamed him "Mij" (Jim spelled backwards).[63] In response to the criticism, Cameron stated, "Film-making is war. A great battle between business and aesthetics."[63]

During the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh shoot in Canada, an angry crew member put the dissociative drug PCP into the soup that Cameron and various others ate one night in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.[10][64] It sent more than 50 people to the hospital, including Paxton.[64] "There were people just rolling around, completely out of it. Some of them said they were seeing streaks and psychedelics," said actor Lewis Abernathy.[10] Cameron managed to vomit before the drug took a full hold. Abernathy was shocked at the way he looked. "One eye was completely red, like the Terminator eye. A pupil, no iris, beet red. The other eye looked like he'd been sniffing glue since he was four."[10][63] The person behind the poisoning was never caught.[50][65]

The filming schedule was intended to last 138 days but grew to 160. Many cast members came down with colds, flu, or kidney infections after spending hours in cold water, including Winslet. In the end, she decided she would not work with Cameron again unless she earned "a lot of money".[65] Several others left the production, and three stuntmen broke their bones, but the Screen Actors Guild decided, following an investigation, that nothing was inherently unsafe about the set.[65] Additionally, DiCaprio said there was no point when he felt he was in danger during filming.[66] Cameron believed in a passionate work ethic and never apologized for the way he ran his sets, although he acknowledged:

I'm demanding, and I'm demanding on my crew. In terms of being kind of militaresque, I think there's an element of that in dealing with thousands of extras and big logistics and keeping people safe. I think you have to have a fairly strict methodology in dealing with a large number of people.[65]

The costs of filming Titanic eventually began to mount and finally reached $200 million,[4][5][6] a bit over $1 million per minute of screen time.[67] Fox executives panicked and suggested an hour of specific cuts from the three-hour film. They argued the extended length would mean fewer showings, thus less revenue, even though long epics are more likely to help directors win Oscars. Cameron refused, telling Fox, "You want to cut my movie? You're going to have to fire me! You want to fire me? You're going to have to kill me!"[10] The executives did not want to start over, because it would mean the loss of their entire investment, but they also initially rejected Cameron's offer of forfeiting his share of the profits as an empty gesture, as they predicted profits would be unlikely.[10]

Cameron explained forfeiting his share as complex. "... the short version is that the film cost proportionally much more than T2 and True Lies. Those films went up seven or eight percent from the initial budget. Titanic also had a large budget to begin with, but it went up a lot more," he said. "As the producer and director, I take responsibility for the studio that's writing the checks, so I made it less painful for them. I did that on two different occasions. They didn't force me to do it; they were glad that I did."[19]

Post-production

Effects

Cameron wanted to push the boundary of special effects with his film, and enlisted Digital Domain and Pacific Data Images to continue the developments in digital technology which the director pioneered while working on The Abyss and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Many previous films about the RMS Titanic shot water in slow motion, which did not look wholly convincing.[68] Cameron encouraged his crew to shoot their 45-foot-long (14 m) miniature of the ship as if "we're making a commercial for the White Star Line".[69] Afterwards, digital water and smoke were added, as were extras captured on a motion capture stage. Visual effects supervisor Rob Legato scanned the faces of many actors, including himself and his children, for the digital extras and stuntmen. There was also a 65-foot-long (20 m) model of the ship's stern that could break in two repeatedly, the only miniature to be used in water.[68] For scenes set in the ship's engines, footage of the SS Jeremiah O'Brien's engines were composited with miniature support frames, and actors shot against a greenscreen.[70] In order to save money, the first-class lounge was a miniature set incorporated into a greenscreen backdrop behind the actors.[71] The miniature of the Lounge would later be crushed to simulate the destruction of the room and a scale model of a First-Class corridor flooded with jets of water while the camera pans out.[72]

The Titanic about to sink into the ocean, with the ship breaking into two parts and with smoke still coming out of the funnels.

Unlike previous Titanic films, Cameron's retelling of the disaster showed the ship breaking into two pieces before sinking entirely. The scenes were an account of the moment's most likely outcome.

An enclosed 5,000,000-US-gallon (19,000,000 L) tank was used for sinking interiors, in which the entire set could be tilted into the water. In order to sink the Grand Staircase, 90,000 US gallons (340,000 L) of water were dumped into the set as it was lowered into the tank. Unexpectedly, the waterfall ripped the staircase from its steel-reinforced foundations, although no one was hurt. The 744-foot-long (227 m) exterior of the RMS Titanic had its first half lowered into the tank, but as the heaviest part of the ship it acted as a shock absorber against the water; to get the set into the water, Cameron had much of the set emptied and even smashed some of the promenade windows himself. After submerging the dining saloon, three days were spent shooting Lovett's ROV traversing the wreck in the present.[40] The post-sinking scenes in the freezing Atlantic were shot in a 350,000-US-gallon (1,300,000 L) tank,[73] where the frozen corpses were created by applying on actors a powder that crystallized when exposed to water, and wax was coated on hair and clothes.[52]

The climactic scene, which features the breakup of the ship directly before it sinks as well as its final plunge to the bottom of the Atlantic, involved a tilting full-sized set, 150 extras, and 100 stunt performers. Cameron criticized previous Titanic films for depicting the liner's final plunge as a graceful slide underwater. He "wanted to depict it as the terrifyingly chaotic event that it really was".[11] When carrying out the sequence, people needed to fall off the increasingly tilting deck, plunging hundreds of feet below and bouncing off of railings and propellers on the way down. A few attempts to film this sequence with stunt people resulted in some minor injuries, and Cameron halted the more dangerous stunts. The risks were eventually minimized "by using computer-generated people for the dangerous falls".[11]

A Linux-based operating system was utilized for the creation of the effects.[74]

Editing

There was one "crucial historical fact" Cameron chose to omit from the film – the SS Californian was close to the Titanic the night she sank but had turned off its radio for the night, did not hear her crew's SOS calls, and did not respond to their distress flares. "Yes, the [SS] Californian. That wasn't a compromise to mainstream filmmaking. That was really more about emphasis, creating an emotional truth to the film," stated Cameron. He said there were aspects of retelling the sinking that seemed important in pre- and post-production, but turned out to be less important as the film evolved. "The story of the Californian was in there; we even shot a scene of them switching off their Marconi radio set," said Cameron. "But I took it out. It was a clean cut, because it focuses you back onto that world. If Titanic is powerful as a metaphor, as a microcosm, for the end of the world in a sense, then that world must be self-contained."[19]

During the first assembly cut, Cameron altered the planned ending, which had given resolution to Brock Lovett's story. In the original version of the ending, Brock and Lizzy see the elderly Rose at the stern of the boat and fear she is going to commit suicide. Rose then reveals that she had the "Heart of the Ocean" diamond all along but never sold it, in order to live on her own without Cal's money. She tells Brock that life is priceless and throws the diamond into the ocean, after allowing him to hold it. After accepting that treasure is worthless, Brock laughs at his stupidity. Rose then goes back to her cabin to sleep, whereupon the film ends in the same way as the final version. In the editing room, Cameron decided that by this point, the audience would no longer be interested in Brock Lovett and cut the resolution to his story, so that Rose is alone when she drops the diamond. He also did not want to disrupt the audience's melancholy after the Titanic's sinking.[75] Paxton agreed that his scene with Brock's epiphany and laugh was unnecessary, stating that "I would have shot heroin to make the scene work better ...you didn't really need anything from us. Our job was done by then ... If you're smart and you take the ego and the narcissism out of it, you'll listen to the film, and the film will tell you what it needs and what it does not need".[76]

The version used for the first test screening featured a fight between Jack and Lovejoy which takes place after Jack and Rose escape into the flooded dining saloon, but the test audiences disliked it.[77] The scene was written to give the film more suspense, and featured Cal (falsely) offering to give Lovejoy, his valet, the "Heart of the Ocean" if he can get it from Jack and Rose. Lovejoy goes after the pair in the sinking first-class dining room. Just as they are about to escape him, Lovejoy notices Rose's hand slap the water as it slips off the table behind which she is hiding. In revenge for framing him for the "theft" of the necklace, Jack attacks him and smashes his head against a glass window, which explains the gash on Lovejoy's head that can be seen when he dies in the completed version of the film. In their reactions to the scene, test audiences said it would be unrealistic to risk one's life for wealth, and Cameron cut it for this reason, as well as for timing and pacing reasons. Many other scenes were cut for similar reasons.[77]

Music and soundtrack

Main articles: Titanic: Music from the Motion Picture and Back to Titanic

Cameron wrote Titanic while listening to the work of Irish new-age musician Enya.[78] He offered Enya the chance to compose for the film, but she declined.[79] Cameron instead chose James Horner to compose the film's score. The two had parted ways after a tumultuous working experience on Aliens,[80] but Titanic cemented a successful collaboration that lasted until Horner's death.[81] For the vocals heard throughout the film, subsequently described by Earle Hitchner of The Wall Street Journal as "evocative", Horner chose Norwegian singer Sissel Kyrkjebø, commonly known as "Sissel". Horner knew Sissel from her album Innerst i sjelen, and he particularly liked how she sang "Eg veit i himmerik ei borg" ("I Know in Heaven There Is a Castle"). He had tried twenty-five or thirty singers before he finally chose Sissel as the voice to create specific moods within the film.[82]

Horner additionally wrote the song "My Heart Will Go On" in secret with Will Jennings because Cameron did not want any songs with singing in the film.[83] Céline Dion agreed to record a demo with the persuasion of her husband René Angélil. Horner waited until Cameron was in an appropriate mood before presenting him with the song. After playing it several times, Cameron declared his approval, although worried that he would have been criticized for "going commercial at the end of the movie".[83] Cameron also wanted to appease anxious studio executives and "saw that a hit song from his movie could only be a positive factor in guaranteeing its completion".[11]

Heart of the Ocean

For the Heart of the Ocean design, London-based jewelers Asprey & Garrard used cubic zirconias set in white gold[84] to create an Edwardian-style necklace to be used as a prop in the film. Asprey & Garrard produced and designed the necklaces: the result was three different and unique designs. Two of their designs were used in the film while the other went unused until after the film had been released. The three necklaces are commonly known as the original prop, the J. Peterman necklace, and the Asprey necklace. The three necklaces are all very similar but have distinguishable differences.

The third and final design was not used in the film. After the film's success, Asprey & Garrard were commissioned to create an authentic Heart of the Ocean necklace using the original design. The result was a platinum-set, 171-carat (34.2 g) heart-shaped Ceylon sapphire surrounded by 103 diamonds.[84] This design featured a much larger inverted pear-shaped Ceylon sapphire with a subtle cleft to resemble a heart. The chain for this necklace also featured a mix of round, pear, and marquise cut white diamonds. The bail also featured a heart cut white diamond with another round cut diamond attached to an inverted pear shape diamond which was then attached to the cage of the main stone. The necklace was donated to Sotheby's auction house in Beverly Hills for an auction benefiting the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund and Southern California's Aid For AIDS. It was sold to an unidentified Asprey client[85] for $1.4 million, under the agreement that Celine Dion would wear it two nights later at the 1998 Academy Awards ceremony. This necklace has since not been made available for public viewing.

Release

Initial screening

20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures co-financed Titanic, with Paramount handling the North American distribution and Fox handling the international release. They expected Cameron to complete the film for a release on July 2, 1997. The film was to be released on this date "to exploit the lucrative summer season ticket sales when blockbuster films usually do better".[11] In April, Cameron said the film's special effects were too complicated and that releasing the film for summer would not be possible.[11] With production delays, Paramount pushed back the release date to December 19, 1997.[86] "This fueled speculation that the film itself was a disaster." A preview screening in Minneapolis on July 14 "generated positive reviews" and "[c]hatter on the internet was responsible for more favorable word of mouth about the [film]". This eventually led to more positive media coverage.[11]

The film premiered on November 1, 1997, at the Tokyo International Film Festival,[87] where reaction was described as "tepid" by The New York Times.[88] Positive reviews started to appear back in the United States; the official Hollywood premiere occurred on December 14, 1997, where "the big movie stars who attended the opening were enthusiastically gushing about the film to the world media".[11]

Box office

Including revenue from the 2012 and 2017 reissues, Titanic earned $659.4 million in North America and $1.812 billion in other countries, for a worldwide total of $2.195 billion.[7] It became the highest-grossing film of all time worldwide in 1998, and remained so for twelve years, until Avatar (2009), also written and directed by Cameron, surpassed it in 2010.[89] On March 1, 1998,[90] it became the first film to earn more than $1 billion worldwide[91] and on the weekend April 13–15, 2012—a century after the original vessel's foundering, Titanic became the second film to cross the $2 billion threshold during its 3D re-release.[92] Box Office Mojo estimates that Titanic is the fifth highest-grossing film of all time in North America when adjusting for ticket price inflation.[93] The site also estimates that the film sold over 128 million tickets in the US in its initial theatrical run.[94]

Titanic was the first foreign-language film to succeed in India, which has the largest movie-going audience in the world.[95] A 2017 Hindustan Times report attributes this to the film's similarities and shared themes with most Bollywood films.[96]

Initial theatrical run

The film received steady attendance after opening in North America on Friday, December 19, 1997. By the end of that same weekend, theaters were beginning to sell out. The film earned $8,658,814 on its opening day and $28,638,131 over the opening weekend from 2,674 theaters, averaging to about $10,710 per venue, and ranking number one at the box office, ahead of the eighteenth James Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies. By New Year's Day, Titanic had made over $120 million, had increased in popularity and theaters continued to sell out. Its highest grossing single day was Saturday, February 14, 1998, on which it earned $13,048,711, more than eight weeks after its North American debut.[97][98] It stayed at number one for 15 consecutive weeks in North America, a record for any film.[99] The film stayed in theaters in North America for almost 10 months before finally closing on Thursday, October 1, 1998, with a final domestic gross of $600,788,188,[100] equivalent to $1014.2  million in 2021[101]. Outside North America, the film made double its North American gross, generating $1,242,413,080[102] and accumulating a grand total of $1,843,201,268 worldwide from its initial theatrical run.[103]

Commercial analysis

Before Titanic's release, various film critics predicted the film would be a significant disappointment at the box office, especially since it was the most expensive film ever made at the time.[63][104][105][106] When it was shown to the press in autumn of 1997, "it was with massive forebodings" since the "people in charge of the screenings believed they were on the verge of losing their jobs – because of this great albatross of a picture on which, finally, two studios had to combine to share the great load of its making".[105] Cameron also thought he was "headed for disaster" at one point during filming. "We labored the last six months on Titanic in the absolute knowledge that the studio would lose $100 million. It was a certainty," he stated.[63] As the film neared release, "particular venom was spat at Cameron for what was seen as his hubris and monumental extravagance". A film critic for the Los Angeles Times wrote that "Cameron's overweening pride has come close to capsizing this project" and that the film was "a hackneyed, completely derivative copy of old Hollywood romances".[63]

"It's hard to forget the director on the stage of the Shrine Auditorium in LA, exultant, pumping a golden Oscar statuette into the air and shouting: 'I'm the king of the world!' As everyone knew, that was the most famous line in Titanic, exclaimed by Leonardo DiCaprio's character as he leaned into the wind on the prow of the doomed vessel. Cameron's incantation of the line was a giant 'eff off', in front of a television audience approaching a billion, to all the naysayers, especially those sitting right in front of him."

– Christopher Goodwin of The Times on Cameron's response to Titanic's criticism[63]

When the film became a success, with an unprecedented box office performance, it was credited for being a love story that captured its viewers' emotions.[104] The film was playing on 3,200 screens ten weeks after it opened,[105] and out of its fifteen straight weeks on top of the charts, jumped 43% in total sales in its ninth week of release. It earned over $20 million for each of its first 10 weekends,[107] and after 14 weeks was still bringing in more than $1 million on weekdays.[105] 20th Century Fox estimated that seven percent of American teenage girls had seen Titanic twice by its fifth week.[108] Although young women who saw the film several times and subsequently caused "Leo-Mania" were often credited with having primarily propelled the film to its all-time box office record,[109] other reports have attributed the film's success to positive word of mouth and repeat viewership due to the love story combined with the ground-breaking special effects.[107][110] The Hollywood Reporter estimated that after a combined production and promotion cost of $487 million, the film turned a net profit of $1.4 billion, with a modern profit of as much as $4 billion after ancillary sources.[111]

Titanic's impact on men has also been especially credited.[112][113][114] It is considered one of the films that make men cry,[112][113] with MSNBC's Ian Hodder stating that men admire Jack's sense of adventure and his ambitious behavior to win over Rose, which contributes to their emotional attachment to Jack.[112] The film's ability to make men cry was briefly parodied in the 2009 film Zombieland, where character Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), when recalling the death of his young son, states: "I haven't cried like that since Titanic."[115]

In 2010, the BBC analyzed the stigma over men crying during Titanic and films in general. "Middle-aged men are not 'supposed' to cry during movies," stated Finlo Rohrer of the website, citing the ending of Titanic as having generated such tears, adding that "men, if they have felt weepy during [this film], have often tried to be surreptitious about it." Professor Mary Beth Oliver, of Penn State University, stated, "For many men, there is a great deal of pressure to avoid expression of 'female' emotions like sadness and fear. From a very young age, males are taught that it is inappropriate to cry, and these lessons are often accompanied by a great deal of ridicule when the lessons aren't followed." Rohrer said, "Indeed, some men who might sneer at the idea of crying during Titanic will readily admit to becoming choked up during Saving Private Ryan or Platoon." For men in general, "the idea of sacrifice for a 'brother' is a more suitable source of emotion".[113]

Scott Meslow of The Atlantic stated while Titanic initially seems to need no defense, given its success, it is considered a film "for 15-year-old girls" by its main detractors. He argued that dismissing Titanic as fodder for teenage girls fails to consider the film's accomplishment: "that [this] grandiose, 3+ hour historical romantic drama is a film for everyone—including teenage boys." Meslow stated that despite the film being ranked high by males under the age of 18, matching the ratings for teenage boy-targeted films like Iron Man, it is common for boys and men to deny liking Titanic. He acknowledged his own rejection of the film as a child while secretly loving it. "It's this collection of elements—the history, the romance, the action—that made (and continues to make) Titanic an irresistible proposition for audiences of all ages across the globe," he stated. "Titanic has flaws, but for all its legacy, it's better than its middlebrow reputation would have you believe. It's a great movie for 15-year-old girls, but that doesn't mean it's not a great movie for everyone else too."[114]

Quotes in the film aided its popularity. Titanic's catchphrase "I'm the king of the world!" became one of the film industry's more popular quotations.[116][117] According to Richard Harris, a psychology professor at Kansas State University, who studied why people like to cite films in social situations, using film quotations in everyday conversation is similar to telling a joke and a way to form solidarity with others. "People are doing it to feel good about themselves, to make others laugh, to make themselves laugh", he said.[117]

Cameron explained the film's success as having significantly benefited from the experience of sharing. "When people have an experience that's very powerful in the movie theatre, they want to go share it. They want to grab their friend and bring them, so that they can enjoy it," he said. "They want to be the person to bring them the news that this is something worth having in their life. That's how Titanic worked."[118] Media Awareness Network stated, "The normal repeat viewing rate for a blockbuster theatrical film is about 5%. The repeat rate for Titanic was over 20%."[11] The box office receipts "were even more impressive" when factoring in "the film's 3-hour-and-14-minute length meant that it could only be shown three times a day compared to a normal movie's four showings". In response to this, "[m]any theatres started midnight showings and were rewarded with full houses until almost 3:30 am".[11]

Titanic held the record for box office gross for 12 years.[119] Cameron's follow-up film, Avatar, was considered the first film with a genuine chance at surpassing its worldwide gross,[120][121] and did so in 2010.[89] Various explanations for why the film was able to successfully challenge Titanic were given. For one, "Two-thirds of Titanic's haul was earned overseas, and Avatar [tracked] similarly... Avatar opened in 106 markets globally and was no. 1 in all of them" and the markets "such as Russia, where Titanic saw modest receipts in 1997 and 1998, are white-hot today" with "more screens and moviegoers" than ever before.[122] Brandon Gray, president of Box Office Mojo, said that while Avatar may beat Titanic's revenue record, the film is unlikely to surpass Titanic in attendance. "Ticket prices were about $3 cheaper in the late 1990s."[120] In December 2009, Cameron had stated, "I don't think it's realistic to try to topple Titanic off its perch. Some pretty good movies have come out in the last few years. Titanic just struck some kind of chord."[107] In a January 2010 interview, he gave a different take on the matter once Avatar's performance was easier to predict. "It's gonna happen. It's just a matter of time," he said.[121]

Author Alexandra Keller, when analyzing Titanic's success, stated that scholars could agree that the film's popularity "appears dependent on contemporary culture, on perceptions of history, on patterns of consumerism and globalization, as well as on those elements experienced filmgoers conventionally expect of juggernaut film events in the 1990s – awesome screen spectacle, expansive action, and, more rarely seen, engaging characters and epic drama."[123]

Critical reception

Contemporary

Titanic garnered mainly positive reviews from film critics, and was positively reviewed by audiences and scholars, who commented on the film's cultural, historical, and political impacts.[123][124][125] On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 87% based on 232 reviews, with an average rating of 8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "A mostly unqualified triumph for James Cameron, who offers a dizzying blend of spectacular visuals and old-fashioned melodrama."[110] Metacritic, which assigned a weighted average rating of 75 out of 100, based on 35 critics, reports the film has "generally favorable reviews".[126] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare "A+" grade, one of fewer than 60 films in the history of the service from 1982 to 2011 to earn the score.[127]

With regard to the film's overall design, Roger Ebert stated, "It is flawlessly crafted, intelligently constructed, strongly acted, and spellbinding... Movies like this are not merely difficult to make at all, but almost impossible to make well." He credited the "technical difficulties" with being "so daunting that it's a wonder when the filmmakers are also able to bring the drama and history into proportion" and "found [himself] convinced by both the story and the sad saga".[128] He named it his ninth best film of 1997.[129] On the television program Siskel & Ebert, the film received "two thumbs up" and was praised for its accuracy in recreating the ship's sinking; Ebert described the film as "a glorious Hollywood epic" and "well worth the wait," and Gene Siskel found Leonardo DiCaprio "captivating".[130]

James Berardinelli stated, "Meticulous in detail, yet vast in scope and intent, Titanic is the kind of epic motion picture event that has become a rarity. You don't just watch Titanic, you experience it."[131] It was named his second best film of 1997.[132] Joseph McBride of Boxoffice Magazine concluded, "To describe Titanic as the greatest disaster movie ever made is to sell it short. James Cameron's recreation of the 1912 sinking of the 'unsinkable' liner is one of the most magnificent pieces of serious popular entertainment ever to emanate from Hollywood."[133]

The romantic and emotionally charged aspects of the film were equally praised. Andrew L. Urban of Urban Cinefile said, "You will walk out of Titanic not talking about budget or running time, but of its enormous emotive power, big as the engines of the ship itself, determined as its giant propellers to gouge into your heart, and as lasting as the love story that propels it."[134] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly described the film as "a lush and terrifying spectacle of romantic doom. Writer-director James Cameron has restaged the defining catastrophe of the early 20th century on a human scale of such purified yearning and dread that he touches the deepest levels of popular moviemaking."[133] Janet Maslin of The New York Times commented that "Cameron's magnificent Titanic is the first spectacle in decades that honestly invites comparison to Gone With the Wind."[133] Adrian Turner of Radio Times awarded it four stars out of five, stating "Cameron's script wouldn't have sustained Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh for 80 minutes, but, somehow, he and his magical cast revive that old-style studio gloss for three riveting hours. Titanic is a sumptuous assault on the emotions, with a final hour that fully captures the horror and the freezing, paralysing fear of the moment. And there are single shots, such as an awesome albatross-like swoop past the steaming ship, when you sense Cameron hugging himself with the fun of it all."[135]

Titanic suffered backlash in addition to its success. Some reviewers felt that while the visuals were spectacular, the story and dialogue were weak.[125] Richard Corliss of Time magazine wrote a mostly negative review, criticizing the lack of interesting emotional elements.[136] Kenneth Turan's review in the Los Angeles Times was particularly scathing. Dismissing the emotive elements, he stated, "What really brings on the tears is Cameron's insistence that writing this kind of movie is within his abilities. Not only is it not, it is not even close",[137] and later argued that the only reason that the film won Oscars was because of its box office total.[138] Barbara Shulgasser of The San Francisco Examiner gave Titanic one star out of four, citing a friend as saying, "The number of times in this unbelievably badly written script that the two [lead characters] refer to each other by name was an indication of just how dramatically the script lacked anything more interesting for the actors to say."[139]

Retrospective

According to Dalin Rowell of /Film, "With complaints about its lengthy runtime, observations that certain characters could have easily fit onto pieces of floating furniture, and jokes about its melodramatic nature, Titanic is no stranger to modern-day criticism."[140] In 2002, filmmaker Robert Altman called it "the most dreadful piece of work I've ever seen in my entire life".[141] In 2003, the film topped a poll of "Best Film Endings",[142] but also topped a poll by Film 2003 as "the worst movie of all time".[143] In his 2012 study of the lives of the passengers on the Titanic, historian Richard Davenport-Hines said, "Cameron's film diabolized rich Americans and educated English, anathematizing their emotional restraint, good tailoring, punctilious manners and grammatical training, while it made romantic heroes of the poor Irish and the unlettered".[144] The British film magazine Empire reduced their rating of the film from the maximum five stars and an enthusiastic review, to four stars with a less positive review in a later edition, to accommodate its readers' tastes, who wanted to disassociate themselves from the hype surrounding the film, and the reported activities of its fans, such as those attending multiple screenings.[145] In addition to this, positive and negative parodies and other such spoofs of the film abounded and were circulated on the internet, often inspiring passionate responses from fans of various opinions of the film.[146] Benjamin Willcock of DVDActive.com did not understand the backlash or the passionate hatred for the film. "What really irks me...," he said, "are those who make nasty stabs at those who do love it." Willcock stated, "I obviously don't have anything against those who dislike Titanic, but those few who make you feel small and pathetic for doing so (and they do exist, trust me) are way beyond my understanding and sympathy."[106]

In 1998, Cameron responded to the backlash, and Kenneth Turan's review in particular, by writing "Titanic is not a film that is sucking people in with flashy hype and spitting them out onto the street feeling let down and ripped off. They are returning again and again to repeat an experience that is taking a 3-hour and 14-minute chunk out of their lives, and dragging others with them, so they can share the emotion." Cameron emphasized people from all ages (ranging from 8 to 80) and from all backgrounds were "celebrating their own essential humanity" by seeing it. He described the script as earnest and straightforward, and said it intentionally "incorporates universals of human experience and emotion that are timeless – and familiar because they reflect our basic emotional fabric" and that the film was able to succeed in this way by dealing with archetypes. He did not see it as pandering. "Turan mistakes archetype for cliché," he said. "I don't share his view that the best scripts are only the ones that explore the perimeter of human experience, or flashily pirouette their witty and cynical dialogue for our admiration."[147]

In 2000, Almar Haflidason of the BBC wrote that "the critical knives were out long before James Cameron's Titanic was complete. Spiralling costs that led to it becoming the most expensive motion picture of the 20th Century, and a cast without any big stars seemed to doom the film before release. But box office and audience appreciation proved Cameron right and many critics wrong." He added that "the sinking of the great ship is no secret, yet for many exceeded expectations in sheer scale and tragedy" and that "when you consider that [the film] tops a bum-numbing three-hour running time, then you have a truly impressive feat of entertainment achieved by Cameron".[148] Empire eventually reinstated its original five star rating of the film, commenting, "It should be no surprise then that it became fashionable to bash James Cameron's Titanic at approximately the same time it became clear that this was the planet's favourite film. Ever."[149]

In 2017, on the 20th anniversary of its release, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[150] It was listed among the 100 best films in an Empire poll and in a later poll of members of the film industry.[151][152] In 2021, Dalin Rowell of /Film ranked it the third-best film of Cameron's career, stating that it is "easily one of his best films, simply because it defied the odds", and considering it "a legitimately remarkable achievement — one that, despite its large budget, has a humble, earnest center. Even with all of the jokes the Internet loves to throw its way, Titanic demonstrates that Cameron is truly capable of everything he can imagine."[140]

Accolades

Main article: List of accolades received by Titanic

Titanic began its awards sweep starting with the Golden Globes, winning four: Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Director, Best Original Score, and Best Original Song.[153] Kate Winslet and Gloria Stuart were also nominees.[154] The film garnered fourteen Academy Award nominations, tying the record set in 1950 by Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve[155] and won eleven: Best Picture (the second film about the Titanic to win that award, after 1933's Cavalcade), Best Director, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Sound (Gary Rydstrom, Tom Johnson, Gary Summers, Mark Ulano), Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Original Dramatic Score, Best Original Song.[156] Kate Winslet, Gloria Stuart and the make-up artists were the three nominees that did not win. James Cameron's original screenplay and Leonardo DiCaprio were not nominees.[104] It was the second film to receive eleven Academy Awards, after Ben-Hur. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King would also match this record in 2004.[157]

Titanic won the 1997 Academy Award for Best Original Song, as well as four Grammy Awards for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television, and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.[158][159] The film's soundtrack became the best-selling primarily orchestral soundtrack of all time, and became a worldwide success, spending sixteen weeks at number-one in the United States, and was certified diamond for over eleven million copies sold in the United States alone.[160] The soundtrack also became the best-selling album of 1998 in the U.S.[161] "My Heart Will Go On" won the Grammy Awards for Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or for Television.

The film also won various awards outside the United States, including the Awards of the Japanese Academy as the Best Foreign Film of the Year.[162] Titanic eventually won nearly ninety awards and had an additional forty-seven nominations from various award-giving bodies around the world.[citation needed] Additionally, the book about the making of the film was at the top of The New York Times' bestseller list for several weeks, "the first time that such a tie-in book had achieved this status".[11]

Since its release, Titanic has appeared on the American Film Institute's award-winning 100 Years... series. So far, it has ranked on the following six lists:

AFI's 100 Years...100 Rank Source Notes

Thrills 25 [163] A list of the top 100 thrilling films in American cinema, compiled in 2001.

Passions 37 [164] A list of the top 100 love stories in American cinema, compiled in 2002.

Songs 14 [165] A list of the top 100 songs in American cinema, compiled in 2004. Titanic ranked 14th for Céline Dion's "My Heart Will Go On".

Movie quotes 100 [116] A list of the top 100 film quotations in American cinema, compiled in 2005. Titanic ranked 100th for Jack Dawson's yell of "I'm the king of the world!"

Movies 83 [166] A 2007 (10th anniversary) edition of 1997's list of the 100 best films of the past century. Titanic was not eligible when the original list was released.

AFI's 10 Top 10 6 [167] The 2008 poll consisted of the top ten films in ten different genres. Titanic ranked as the sixth-best epic film.

Home media

Titanic was released worldwide in widescreen and pan and scan formats on VHS on September 1, 1998.[168] More than $50 million was spent to market the home video release of the film.[169] Both VHS formats were also made available in a deluxe boxed gift set with a mounted filmstrip and six lithograph prints from the movie. In the first 3 months, the film sold 25 million copies in North America with a total sales value of $500 million becoming the best selling live-action video, beating Independence Day.[170] In that time, it sold 58 million copies worldwide, outselling The Lion King for a total worldwide revenue of $995 million.[170] By March 2005, the film has sold 8 million DVD and 59 million VHS units.[171]

A DVD version was released on August 31, 1999, in a widescreen-only (non-anamorphic) single-disc edition with no special features other than a theatrical trailer. Cameron stated at the time that he intended to release a special edition with extra features later. This release became the best-selling DVD of 1999 and early 2000, becoming the first DVD ever to sell one million copies.[172] At the time, fewer than 5% of all U.S. homes had a DVD player. "When we released the original Titanic DVD, the industry was much smaller, and bonus features were not the standard they are now," said Meagan Burrows, Paramount's president of domestic home entertainment, which made the film's DVD performance even more impressive.[172]

Titanic was re-released to DVD on October 25, 2005, when a three-disc Special Collector's Edition was made available in the United States and Canada. This edition contained a newly restored transfer of the film, as well as various special features. The two-disc edition was marketed as the Special Edition, and featured the first two discs of the three-disc set, only PAL-enabled. A four-disc edition, only available in the United Kingdom and marketed as the Deluxe Collector's Edition, was also released on November 7, 2005. A limited 5-disc set of the film, under the title Deluxe Limited Edition, was also only released in the United Kingdom with only 10,000 copies manufactured. The fifth disc contains Cameron's documentary Ghosts of the Abyss, which was distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. Unlike the individual release of Ghosts of the Abyss, which contained two discs, only the first disc was included in the set.[106] In 2007, for the film's tenth anniversary, a 10th Anniversary Edition was released on DVD, which consists of the first two discs from the three-disc 2005 set containing the movie and the special features on those discs.[173]

A limited-edition 4-Disc Blu-ray 3D version of the film was released on September 10, 2012.[174]

3D conversion

A 2012 3D re-release was created by re-mastering the original to 4K resolution and post-converting to stereoscopic 3D format. The Titanic 3D version took 60 weeks and $18 million to produce, including the 4K restoration.[175] The 3D conversion was performed by Stereo D.[176] Digital 2D and in 2D IMAX versions were also struck from the new 4K master created in the process.[177] The only scene entirely redone for the re-release was Rose's view of the night sky at sea on the morning of April 15, 1912. The scene was replaced with an accurate view of the night-sky star pattern, including the Milky Way, adjusted for the location in the North Atlantic Ocean in April 1912. The change was prompted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who had criticized the scene for showing an unrealistic star pattern. He agreed to send film director Cameron a corrected view of the sky, which was the basis of the new scene.[178]

An accurate view of the Milky Way was used to replace Rose's view of the moonless night sky at sea, as in this photo from Paranal Observatory. The view was adjusted to match the North Atlantic at 4:20 am on April 15, 1912.

The 3D version of Titanic premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in London on March 27, 2012, with James Cameron and Kate Winslet in attendance,[179][180] and entered general release on April 4, 2012, six days shy of the centenary of RMS Titanic embarking on her maiden voyage.[181][182][183]

Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers rated the reissue 3½ stars out of 4, explaining he found it "pretty damn dazzling". He said, "The 3D intensifies Titanic. You are there. Caught up like never before in an intimate epic that earns its place in the movie time capsule."[184] Writing for Entertainment Weekly, Owen Gleiberman gave the film an A grade. He wrote, "For once, the visuals in a 3-D movie don't look darkened or distracting. They look sensationally crisp and alive."[185] Richard Corliss of Time, who was very critical in 1997, remained in the same mood: "I had pretty much the same reaction: fitfully awed, mostly water-logged." In regards to the 3D effects, he noted the "careful conversion to 3D lends volume and impact to certain moments ... [but] in separating the foreground and background of each scene, the converters have carved the visual field into discrete, not organic, levels."[186] Ann Hornaday for The Washington Post found herself asking "whether the film's twin values of humanism and spectacle are enhanced by Cameron's 3-D conversion, and the answer to that is: They aren't." She further added that the "3-D conversion creates distance where there should be intimacy, not to mention odd moments in framing and composition."[187]

The film grossed an estimated $4.7 million on the first day of its re-release in North America (including midnight preview showings) and went on to make $17.3 million over the weekend, finishing in third place.[188][189] Outside North America it earned $35.2 million, finishing second,[190] and it improved on its performance the following weekend by topping the box office with $98.9 million.[191] China has proven to be its most successful territory, where it earned $11.6 million on its opening day,[192] going on to earn a record-breaking $67 million in its opening week and taking more money in the process than it did in the entirety of its original theatrical run.[191] The reissue ultimately earned $343.4 million worldwide, with $145 million coming from China and $57.8 million from Canada and the United States.[193]

With a worldwide box office of nearly $350 million, the 3D re-release of Titanic remains the highest grossing re-released film of all time, ahead of The Lion King, Star Wars, and Avatar.[194]

The 3D conversion of the film was also released in the 4DX format in selected international territories, which allows the audience to experience the film's environment using motion, wind, fog, lighting and scent-based special effects.[195][196][197]

For the 20th anniversary of the film, Titanic was re-released in cinemas in Dolby Vision (in both 2D and 3D) for one week beginning December 1, 2017.[198]

Titanic Live

Titanic Live was a live performance of James Horner's original score by a 130-piece orchestra, choir and Celtic musicians, accompanying a showing of the film.[199] In April 2015, Titanic Live premiered at the Royal Albert Hall, London, where the 2012 3D re-release had premiered.[200]

Merchandise

A board game based on the film, titled Titanic: The Game, was released in 2020 by Spin Master Games.[201]

See also

List of Academy Award records

Titanic: Music from the Motion Picture

Notes

 Although the Titanic hit the iceberg on April 14, it did not sink until the early hours of April 15.

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Further reading

Ballard, Robert (1987). The Discovery of the Titanic. Canada: Grand Central Publishing. ISBN 978-0-446-67174-3.

Cameron, Stephen (1998). Titanic: Belfast's Own. Ireland: Wolfhound Press. ISBN 978-0-86327-685-9.

Frakes, Randall (1998). Titanic: James Cameron's Illustrated Screenplay. New York: Harper. ISBN 978-0-06-095307-2.

Lubin, David M. (1999). Titanic. BFI Modern Classics. London: BFI Publishing. ISBN 978-0-85170-760-0.

Lynch, Donald (1992). Titanic: An Illustrated History. New York: Madison Press Books. ISBN 978-0-7868-6401-0.

Majoor, Mireille; James Cameron (2003). Titanic: Ghosts of the Abyss. New York: Scholastic. ISBN 978-1-895892-31-4.

Marsh, Ed W.; Kirkland, Douglas (1998). James Cameron's Titanic. London: Boxtree. ISBN 978-0-7522-2404-6.

Molony, Senan (2005). Titanic: A Primary Source History. Canada: Gareth Stevens. ISBN 978-0-8368-5980-5.

Parisi, Paula (1998). Titanic and the Making of James Cameron. London: Orion. ISBN 978-0-7528-1799-6.

Sandler, Kevin S.; Studlar, Gaylyn, eds. (1999). Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-2669-0.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Titanic (1997 film).

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Titanic (1997 film)

Official website

Titanic at IMDb

Titanic at the TCM Movie Database

Titanic at AllMovie

Titanic at The Numbers

Screenplay of Titanic at The Internet Movie Script Database

Paramount Movies - Titanic

YouTube video detailing model construction

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Titanic

First class facilitiesSecond and Third class facilitiesGrand StaircaseAnimals aboardMusicians

Sinking

Conspiracy theoriesChanges in safety practicesLegends and mythsLifeboatsLifeboat No. 1British inquiryUnited States inquiryWreck of the Titanic

Deck officers

Edward J. Smith (Captain)Henry Tingle Wilde (Chief Officer)William McMaster Murdoch (First Officer)Charles H. Lightoller (Second Officer)Herbert Pitman (Third Officer)Joseph G. Boxhall (Fourth Officer)Harold G. Lowe (Fifth Officer)James Paul Moody (Sixth Officer)Joseph Bell (Machine Room Manager)

Crew members

Frederick BarrettHarold BrideWilliam Denton CoxSid DanielsFrederick FleetLuigi GattiRobert HichensViolet JessopArchie JewellCharles JoughinReginald LeeEvelyn MarsdenWilliam MintramJack PhillipsGeorge Symons

Passengers

Fatalities

Allison familyThomas AndrewsJohn Jacob Astor IVDavid John BowenArchibald ButtThomas BylesRoderick ChisholmWalter Donald DouglasAnnie FunkJacques FutrelleSidney Leslie GoodwinBenjamin GuggenheimJohn HarperWallace HartleyCharles Melville HaysEdward Austin KentJoseph Philippe Lemercier LarocheFrancis Davis MilletHarry Markland MolsonClarence MooreEino Viljami PanulaW. T. SteadIda StrausIsidor StrausJohn B. ThayerFrank M. Warren Sr.George Dennick WickGeorge Dunton WidenerHarry Elkins WidenerDuane WilliamsGeorge Henry Wright

Survivors

(last living)

Rhoda AbbottTrevor AllisonLillian AsplundMadeleine AstorRuth BeckerLawrence BeesleyKarl BehrDickinson BishopMauritz Håkan Björnström-SteffanssonElsie BowermanFrancis BrowneMargaret "Molly" BrownHelen Churchill CandeeCharlotte Drake CardezaLucile CarterGladys CherryMillvina DeanSir Cosmo Duff-GordonLucy, Lady Duff-GordonDorothy GibsonArchibald Gracie IVFrank John William GoldsmithEdith HaismanHenry S. HarperEva HartMargaret Bechstein HaysMasabumi HosonoJ. Bruce IsmayEleanor Ileen JohnsonLouise KinkLouise LarocheMargaret MannionMichel Marcel NavratilAlfred NourneyArthur Godfrey PeuchenJane QuickWinnifred QuickEdith RosenbaumNoël Leslie, Countess of RothesEmily RyersonAgnes SandströmBeatrice SandströmFrederic Kimber SewardEloise Hughes SmithJack ThayerMarian ThayerBarbara WestElla Holmes WhiteR. Norris WilliamsMarie Grice Young

Monuments

and memorials

General

Bandstand (Ballarat)

United Kingdom

Engine Room Heroes (Liverpool)Engineers (Southampton)Musicians (Southampton)Titanic (Belfast)Orchestra (Liverpool)

United States

Straus Park (New York City)Titanic (New York City)Titanic (Washington, D.C.)Butt–Millet Memorial Fountain (Washington, D.C.)

Popular culture

(cultural legacy)

Books

The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futility (1898)A Night to Remember (book)Polar the Titanic Bear

Films

Saved from the Titanic (1912)In Nacht und Eis (1912)Atlantic (1929)Titanic (1943)Titanic (1953)A Night to Remember (1958)The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964)Raise the Titanic (1980)Secrets of the Titanic (1986)Titanica (1992)Titanic (1997)The Legend of the Titanic (1999)Titanic: The Legend Goes On (2000)Ghosts of the Abyss (2003)Tentacolino (2004)Titanic II (2010)

Television

A Night to Remember (1956)S.O.S. Titanic (1979)Titanic: The Complete Story (1994)Titanic (1996)No Greater Love (1996)"A Flight to Remember" (Futurama) (1999)Titanic (2012)Titanic: Blood and Steel (2012)Saving the Titanic (2012)

Music

"The Titanic (It Was Sad When That Great Ship Went Down)" (folk song)The Unsinkable Molly Brown (musical)The Sinking of the Titanic (music composition)Titanic (musical)Titanic (soundtrack album)Back to Titanic (soundtrack album)"My Heart Will Go On" (Celine Dion song)"Nearer, My God, to Thee" (song)

Video games

Titanic: Adventure Out of Time (1996)Dive to the Titanic (2010)Titanic VR (2018)Titanic: Honor and Glory (TBA)

Museums

and exhibitions

SeaCity Museum (Southampton)Titanic Museum (Branson, Missouri)Titanic Museum (Pigeon Forge, Tennessee)Maritime Museum of the Atlantic (Halifax)Titanic Belfast

Places

Titanic (Canada)Titanic CanyonTitanic Quarter, BelfastCape Race, NewfoundlandFairview Lawn CemeteryMount Olivet Cemetery (Halifax, Nova Scotia)Arrol GantryTitanic, Oklahoma

Related

Ships

RMS BalticRMS OlympicHMHS BritannicSS Mount TempleRMS CarpathiaSS CalifornianCS Mackay-BennettSS BirmaTitanic IIReplica TitanicRomandisea Titanic

Law

RMS Titanic Maritime Memorial ActAgreement Concerning the Shipwrecked Vessel RMS Titanic

Others

White Star LineDavid BlairArthur RostronStanley LordTitanic Historical SocietyTitanic International SocietyEncyclopedia TitanicaHalomonas titanicaeWomen and children firstSOSCQDRobert BallardLa Circassienne au Bain

 Category

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James Cameron

FilmographyUnrealized projectsAwards and nominations

Films directed

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Piranha II: The Spawning (1982)The Terminator (1984)Aliens (1986)The Abyss (1989)Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)True Lies (1994)Titanic (1997)Avatar (2009)Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)Avatar 3 (2024)

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Xenogenesis (1978)T2-3D: Battle Across Time (1996)

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Expedition: Bismarck (2002)Ghosts of the Abyss (2003)Aliens of the Deep (2005)

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Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)Strange Days (1995)Alita: Battle Angel (2019)Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

Produced only

Solaris (2002)Years of Living Dangerously (2014 and 2016)The Game Changers (2018)Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

TV series created

Dark Angel (2000–02)

Related articles

Lightstorm EntertainmentDeepsea ChallengerPristimantis jamescameroni

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Academy Award for Best Picture

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Memorials and monuments to victims of the sinking of the RMS Titanic exist in a number of places around the world associated with Titanic, notably in Belfast, Liverpool and Southampton in the United Kingdom; Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada; and New York City and Washington, D.C. in the United States. The largest single contingent of victims came from Southampton, the home of most of the crew, which consequently has the greatest number of memorials. Titanic was built in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and had a "guarantee party" of engineers from shipbuilders Harland and Wolff aboard all of whom were lost in the disaster and are commemorated by a prominent memorial in the city. Other contingents of engineers aboard the ship came from the maritime cities of Liverpool in England and Glasgow in Scotland, which erected their own memorials. Several prominent victims, such as Titanic's captain, were commemorated individually. Elsewhere, in the United States and Australia, public memorials were erected to commemorate all the victims.

Coordinates: 41°43′57″N 49°56′49″W

RMS Titanic

Titanic departing Southampton on 10 April 1912

History

United Kingdom

Name RMS Titanic

Owner White Star flag NEW.svg White Star Line

Operator White Star Line

Port of registry United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Liverpool, UK

Route Southampton to New York City

Ordered 17 September 1908

Builder Harland and Wolff, Belfast

Cost GB£1.5 million (£150 million in 2019)

Yard number 401

Way number 400

Laid down 31 March 1909

Launched 31 May 1911

Completed 2 April 1912

Maiden voyage 10 April 1912; 110 years ago

In service 10 April 1912

Out of service 15 April 1912

Identification

Official Number 131428[1]

Code Letters HVMP[2]

ICS Hotel.svgICS Victor.svgICS Mike.svgICS Papa.svg

Radio Call sign "MGY"

Fate Struck an iceberg at 11:40 pm (ship's time) 14 April 1912 on her maiden voyage and sank 2 h 40 min later on 15 April 1912; 110 years ago.

Status Wreck

General characteristics

Class and type Olympic-class ocean liner

Tonnage 46,328 GRT

Displacement 52,310 tons

Length 882 ft 9 in (269.1 m)

Beam 92 ft 6 in (28.2 m)

Height 175 ft (53.3 m) (keel to top of funnels)

Draught 34 ft 7 in (10.5 m)

Depth 64 ft 6 in (19.7 m)

Decks 9 (A–G)

Installed power 24 double-ended and five single-ended boilers feeding two reciprocating steam engines for the wing propellers, and a low-pressure turbine for the centre propeller;[3] output: 46,000 HP

Propulsion Two three-blade wing propellers and one three-blade centre propeller

Speed Cruising: 21 kn (39 km/h; 24 mph). Max: 23 kn (43 km/h; 26 mph)

Capacity Passengers: 2,435, crew: 892. Total: 3,327 (or 3,547 according to other sources)

Notes Lifeboats: 20 (sufficient for 1,178 people)

RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner, operated by the White Star Line, which sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912 after striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, UK, to New York City. Of the estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, more than 1,500 died, which made the sinking possibly one of the deadliest for a single ship up to that time.[a] It remains to this day the deadliest peacetime sinking of a superliner or cruise ship.[4] The disaster drew much public attention, provided foundational material for the disaster film genre, and has inspired many artistic works.

RMS Titanic was the largest ship afloat at the time she entered service and the second of three Olympic-class ocean liners operated by the White Star Line. She was built by the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast. Thomas Andrews, who was the chief naval architect of the shipyard at that time, died in the disaster.[5]

Titanic was under the command of Captain Edward Smith,[6] who went down with the ship. The ocean liner carried some of the wealthiest people in the world, as well as hundreds of emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland, Scandinavia and elsewhere throughout Europe, who were seeking a new life in the United States and Canada.

The first-class accommodation was designed to be the pinnacle of comfort and luxury, with a gymnasium, swimming pool, libraries, high-class restaurants, and opulent cabins. A high-powered radiotelegraph transmitter was available for sending passenger "marconigrams" and for the ship's operational use.[7] The Titanic had advanced safety features, such as watertight compartments and remotely activated watertight doors.

The ship was equipped with 16 lifeboat davits, each capable of lowering three lifeboats, for a total of 48 boats; the Titanic carried only 20 lifeboats, four of which were collapsible and proved hard to launch while the ship was sinking.[8] Together, the 20 lifeboats were capable of holding 1,178 people—which was only about half the number of passengers on board, and only one-third of the number of passengers that the ship could have carried at full capacity (this was consistent with the maritime safety regulations of the era). In addition, when the ship sank, many of the lifeboats that had been lowered were only about half full.

The accident

Titanic had departed from Southampton on 10 April 1912, then stopped at Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland, before heading west towards New York.[9] On 14 April, four days into the crossing and about 375 miles (600 km) south of Newfoundland, she hit an iceberg at 11:40 pm ship's time. The collision caused the hull plates to buckle inwards along her starboard (right) side and laid five of her sixteen watertight compartments open to the sea; she had been designed to survive the flooding of up to four compartments. Some passengers and crew members were evacuated in lifeboats. A disproportionate number of men were left aboard because of a "women and children first" protocol for loading lifeboats, which was generally observed.[10]

At 2:20 am, the ship broke apart and foundered, with well over one thousand people still aboard. Just under two hours after Titanic sank, the Cunard liner RMS Carpathia arrived on the scene, and took on board an estimated 710 survivors.

The disaster was met with worldwide shock and outrage, both at the huge loss of life and at the regulatory and procedural failures that had led to it. Public inquiries in Britain and the United States led to major improvements in maritime safety. One of the most important results of the inquiries was the establishment in 1914 of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), which still governs maritime safety today. In addition, there was an effort to learn from the many missteps in wireless communications that had increased the number of fatalities, and as a result, several new wireless regulations were put in place around the world.[11]

The wreck of Titanic was discovered in 1985 by a Franco-American expedition sponsored by the United States Navy.[12][13] The ship was split in two and is gradually disintegrating at a depth of 12,415 feet (2,069.2 fathoms; 3,784 m). Thousands of artefacts have been recovered and displayed at museums around the world. Titanic has become one of the most famous ships in history, depicted in numerous works of popular culture, including books, folk songs, films, exhibits, and memorials. Titanic is the second-largest ocean liner wreck in the world, only being surpassed by her sister ship HMHS Britannic; however, she is the largest sunk while in service as a liner, as Britannic was in use as a hospital ship at the time of her sinking.

Background

6:42

Titanic Disaster – Genuine Footage (1911–1912)

The name Titanic derives from the Titans of Greek mythology. Built in Belfast, Ireland, in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the RMS Titanic was the second of the three Olympic-class ocean liners—the first was the RMS Olympic and the third was the HMHS Britannic.[14] Britannic was originally to be called Gigantic and was to be over 1,000 feet (300 m) long.[15] They were by far the largest vessels of the British shipping company White Star Line's fleet, which comprised 29 steamers and tenders in 1912.[16] The three ships had their genesis in a discussion in mid-1907 between the White Star Line's chairman, J. Bruce Ismay, and the American financier J. P. Morgan, who controlled the White Star Line's parent corporation, the International Mercantile Marine Co. (IMM).

The White Star Line faced an increasing challenge from its main rivals Cunard, which had recently launched the Lusitania and the Mauretania—the fastest passenger ships then in service—and the German lines Hamburg America and Norddeutscher Lloyd. Ismay preferred to compete on size rather than speed and proposed to commission a new class of liners that would be larger than anything that had gone before as well as being the last word in comfort and luxury.[17] The company sought an upgrade in their fleet primarily in response to the Cunard giants but also to replace their oldest pair of passenger ships still in service, being the RMS Teutonic of 1889 and RMS Majestic of 1890. Teutonic was replaced by Olympic while Majestic was replaced by Titanic. Majestic would be brought back into her old spot on White Star Line's New York service after Titanic's loss.[18]

The ships were constructed by the Belfast shipbuilders Harland and Wolff, who had a long-established relationship with the White Star Line dating back to 1867.[19] Harland and Wolff were given a great deal of latitude in designing ships for the White Star Line; the usual approach was for the latter to sketch out a general concept which the former would take away and turn into a ship design. Cost considerations were relatively low on the agenda and Harland and Wolff was authorised to spend what it needed on the ships, plus a five percent profit margin.[19] In the case of the Olympic-class ships, a cost of £3 million (approximately £310 million in 2019) for the first two ships was agreed plus "extras to contract" and the usual five percent fee.[20]

Harland and Wolff put their leading designers to work designing the Olympic-class vessels. The design was overseen by Lord Pirrie, a director of both Harland and Wolff and the White Star Line; naval architect Thomas Andrews, the managing director of Harland and Wolff's design department; Edward Wilding, Andrews' deputy and responsible for calculating the ship's design, stability and trim; and Alexander Carlisle, the shipyard's chief draughtsman and general manager.[21] Carlisle's responsibilities included the decorations, equipment and all general arrangements, including the implementation of an efficient lifeboat davit design.[b]

On 29 July 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.[24] 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.[25]

Dimensions and layout

Starboard view of Titanic in 1912

Titanic was 882 feet 9 inches (269.06 m) long with a maximum breadth of 92 feet 6 inches (28.19 m).

Her total height, measured from the base of the keel to the top of the bridge, was 104 feet (32 m).[26] She measured 46,328 gross register tons and with a draught of 34 feet 7 inches (10.54 m), she displaced 52,310 tons.[14] All three of the Olympic-class ships had ten decks (excluding the top of the officers' quarters), eight of which were for passenger use. From top to bottom, the decks were:

The Boat Deck, on which the lifeboats were housed. It was from here during the early hours of 15 April 1912 that Titanic's lifeboats were lowered into the North Atlantic. The bridge and wheelhouse were at the forward end, in front of the captain's and officers' quarters. The bridge stood 8 feet (2.4 m) above the deck, extending out to either side so that the ship could be controlled while docking. The wheelhouse stood within the bridge. The entrance to the First Class Grand Staircase and gymnasium were located midships along with the raised roof of the First Class lounge, while at the rear of the deck were the roof of the First Class smoke room and the relatively modest Second Class entrance. The wood-covered deck was divided into four segregated promenades: for officers, First Class passengers, engineers, and Second Class passengers respectively. Lifeboats lined the side of the deck except in the First Class area, where there was a gap so that the view would not be spoiled.[27][28]

A Deck, also called the Promenade Deck, extended along the entire 546 feet (166 m) length of the superstructure. It was reserved exclusively for First Class passengers and contained First Class cabins, the First Class lounge, smoke room, reading and writing rooms and Palm Court.[27]

B Deck, the Bridge Deck, was the top weight-bearing deck and the uppermost level of the hull. More First Class passenger accommodations were located here with six palatial staterooms (cabins) featuring their own private promenades. On Titanic, the À La Carte Restaurant and the Café Parisien provided luxury dining facilities to First Class passengers. Both were run by subcontracted chefs and their staff; all were lost in the disaster. The Second Class smoking room and entrance hall were both located on this deck. The raised forecastle of the ship was forward of the Bridge Deck, accommodating Number 1 hatch (the main hatch through to the cargo holds), numerous pieces of machinery and the anchor housings.[c] Aft of the Bridge Deck was the raised Poop Deck, 106 feet (32 m) long, used as a promenade by Third Class passengers. It was where many of Titanic's passengers and crew made their last stand as the ship sank. The forecastle and Poop Deck were separated from the Bridge Deck by well decks.[29][30]

C Deck, the Shelter Deck, was the highest deck to run uninterrupted from stem to stern. It included both well decks; the aft one served as part of the Third Class promenade. Crew cabins were housed below the forecastle and Third Class public rooms were housed below the Poop Deck. In between were the majority of First Class cabins and the Second Class library.[29][31]

D Deck, the Saloon Deck, was dominated by three large public rooms—the First Class Reception Room, the First Class Dining Saloon and the Second Class Dining Saloon. An open space was provided for Third Class passengers. First, Second and Third Class passengers had cabins on this deck, with berths for firemen located in the bow. It was the highest level reached by the ship's watertight bulkheads (though only by eight of the fifteen bulkheads).[29][32]

E Deck, the Upper Deck, was predominantly used for passenger accommodation for all three classes plus berths for cooks, seamen, stewards and trimmers. Along its length ran a long passageway nicknamed Scotland Road, in reference to a famous street in Liverpool. Scotland Road was used by Third Class passengers and crew members.[29][33]

F Deck, the Middle Deck, was the last complete deck and mainly accommodated Second and Third Class passengers and several departments of the crew. The Third Class dining saloon was located here, as were the swimming pool, Turkish bath and kennels.[29][33][34]

G Deck, the Lower Deck, was the lowest complete deck that carried passengers, and had the lowest portholes, just above the waterline. The squash court was located here along with the travelling post office where letters and parcels were sorted ready for delivery when the ship docked. Food was also stored here. The deck was interrupted at several points by orlop (partial) decks over the boiler, engine and turbine rooms.[29][35]

The Orlop Decks and the Tank Top below that were on the lowest level of the ship, below the waterline. The orlop decks were used as cargo spaces, while the Tank Top—the inner bottom of the ship's hull—provided the platform on which the ship's boilers, engines, turbines and electrical generators were housed. This area of the ship was occupied by the engine and boiler rooms, areas which passengers would have been prohibited from seeing. They were connected with higher levels of the ship by flights of stairs; twin spiral stairways near the bow provided access up to D Deck.[29][35]

Features

Power

RMS Olympic's rudder with central and port wing propellers;[d] for scale note the man at the bottom of the photo.[37]

Titanic was equipped with three main engines—two reciprocating four-cylinder, triple-expansion steam engines and one centrally placed low-pressure Parsons turbine—each driving a propeller. The two reciprocating engines had a combined output of 30,000 horsepower (22,000 kW). The output of the steam turbine was 16,000 horsepower (12,000 kW).[26] The White Star Line had used the same combination of engines on an earlier liner, the SS Laurentic, where it had been a great success.[38] It provided a good combination of performance and speed; reciprocating engines by themselves were not powerful enough to propel an Olympic-class liner at the desired speeds, while turbines were sufficiently powerful but caused uncomfortable vibrations, a problem that affected the all-turbine Cunard liners Lusitania and Mauretania.[39] By combining reciprocating engines with a turbine, fuel usage could be reduced and motive power increased, while using the same amount of steam.[40]

The two reciprocating engines were each 63 feet (19 m) long and weighed 720 tons, with their bedplates contributing a further 195 tons.[39] They were powered by steam produced in 29 boilers, 24 of which were double-ended and five single-ended, which contained a total of 159 furnaces.[41] The boilers were 15 feet 9 inches (4.80 m) in diameter and 20 feet (6.1 m) long, each weighing 91.5 tons and capable of holding 48.5 tons of water.[42]

They were heated by burning coal, 6,611 tons of which could be carried in Titanic's bunkers, with a further 1,092 tons in Hold 3. The furnaces required over 600 tons of coal a day to be shovelled into them by hand, requiring the services of 176 firemen working around the clock.[43] 100 tons of ash a day had to be disposed of by ejecting it into the sea.[44] The work was relentless, dirty and dangerous, and although firemen were paid relatively generously,[43] there was a high suicide rate among those who worked in that capacity.[45]

Exhaust steam leaving the reciprocating engines was fed into the turbine, which was situated aft. From there it passed into a surface condenser, to increase the efficiency of the turbine and so that the steam could be condensed back into water and reused.[46] The engines were attached directly to long shafts which drove the propellers. There were three, one for each engine; the outer (or wing) propellers were the largest, each carrying three blades of manganese-bronze alloy with a total diameter of 23.5 feet (7.2 m).[42] The middle propeller was slightly smaller at 17 feet (5.2 m) in diameter,[47] and could be stopped but not reversed.

Titanic's electrical plant was capable of producing more power than an average city power station of the time.[48] Immediately aft of the turbine engine were four 400 kW steam-driven electric generators, used to provide electrical power to the ship, plus two 30 kW auxiliary generators for emergency use.[49] Their location in the stern of the ship meant they remained operational until the last few minutes before the ship sank.[50]

Titanic lacked a searchlight in accordance with the ban on the use of searchlights in the merchant navy.[51][52]

Technology

Compartments and funnels

The interiors of the Olympic-class ships were subdivided into 16 primary compartments divided by 15 bulkheads that extended above the waterline. Eleven vertically closing watertight doors could seal off the compartments in the event of an emergency.[53] The ship's exposed decking was made of pine and teak, while interior ceilings were covered in painted granulated cork to combat condensation.[54] Standing above the decks were four funnels, each painted buff with black tops; only three were functional—the aftmost one was a dummy, installed for aesthetic purposes and kitchen ventilation. Two masts, each 155 ft (47 m) high, supported derricks for working cargo.

Rudder and steering engines

Titanic's rudder was so large—at 78 feet 8 inches (23.98 m) high and 15 feet 3 inches (4.65 m) long, weighing over 100 tons—that it required steering engines to move it. Two steam-powered steering engines were installed, though only one was used at any one time, with the other one kept in reserve. They were connected to the short tiller through stiff springs, to isolate the steering engines from any shocks in heavy seas or during fast changes of direction.[55] As a last resort, the tiller could be moved by ropes connected to two steam capstans.[56] The capstans were also used to raise and lower the ship's five anchors (one port, one starboard, one in the centreline and two kedging anchors).[56]

Water, ventilation and heating

The ship was equipped with her own waterworks, capable of heating and pumping water to all parts of the vessel via a complex network of pipes and valves. The main water supply was taken aboard while Titanic was in port, but in an emergency, the ship could also distil fresh water from seawater, though this was not a straightforward process as the distillation plant quickly became clogged by salt deposits. A network of insulated ducts conveyed warm air, driven by electric fans, around the ship, and First Class cabins were fitted with additional electric heaters.[48]

Radio communications

Marconi Company receiving equipment for a 5 kilowatt ocean liner station (in the picture, the wireless radio room of Titanic's sister ship, the Olympic)

The only known picture of Titanic's wireless radio room, taken by the catholic priest Francis Browne. Harold Bride is seated at the desk

Titanic's radiotelegraph equipment (then known as wireless telegraphy) was leased to the White Star Line by the Marconi International Marine Communication Company, which also supplied two of its employees, Jack Phillips and Harold Bride, as operators. The service maintained a 24-hour schedule, primarily sending and receiving passenger telegrams, but also handling navigation messages including weather reports and ice warnings.[57][58][7] The radio room was located on the Boat Deck, in the officers' quarters. A soundproofed "Silent Room", next to the operating room, housed loud equipment, including the transmitter and a motor-generator used for producing alternating currents. The operators' living quarters were adjacent to the working office. The ship was equipped with a 'state of the art' 5 kilowatt rotary spark-gap transmitter, operating under the radio callsign MGY, and communication was conducted in Morse code. This transmitter was one of the first Marconi installations to use a rotary spark-gap, which gave Titanic a distinctive musical tone that could be readily distinguished from other signals. The transmitter was one of the most powerful in the world and guaranteed to broadcast over a radius of 350 miles (563 km). An elevated T-antenna that spanned the length of the ship was used for transmitting and receiving. The normal operating frequency was 500 kHz (600 m wavelength); however, the equipment could also operate on the "short" wavelength of 1,000 kHz (300 m wavelength) that was employed by smaller vessels with shorter antennas.[59]

Passenger facilities

Further information: Grand Staircase of the Titanic, First-class facilities of the Titanic, and Second- and third-class facilities on the Titanic

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The passenger facilities aboard Titanic aimed to meet the highest standards of luxury. According to Titanic's general arrangement plans, the ship could accommodate 833 First Class Passengers, 614 in Second Class and 1,006 in Third Class, for a total passenger capacity of 2,453. In addition, her capacity for crew members exceeded 900, as most documents of her original configuration have stated that her full carrying capacity for both passengers and crew was approximately 3,547. Her interior design was a departure from that of other passenger liners, which had typically been decorated in the rather heavy style of a manor house or an English country house.[60]

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.[60] 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".[61]

Among the more novel features available to first-class passengers was a 7 ft (2.1 m) deep saltwater swimming pool, a gymnasium, a squash court, and a Turkish bath which comprised electric bath, steam room, cool room, massage room, and hot room.[61] First-class common rooms were impressive in scope and lavishly decorated. They included a Lounge in the style of the Palace of Versailles, an enormous Reception Room, a men's Smoking Room, and a Reading and Writing Room. There was an À la Carte Restaurant in the style of the Ritz Hotel which was run as a concession by the famous Italian restaurateur Gaspare Gatti.[62] A Café Parisien decorated in the style of a French sidewalk café, complete with ivy-covered trellises and wicker furniture, was run as an annex to the restaurant. For an extra cost, first-class passengers could enjoy the finest French haute cuisine in the most luxurious of surroundings.[63] There was also a Verandah Café where tea and light refreshments were served, that offered grand views of the ocean. At 114 ft (35 m) long by 92 ft (28 m) wide, the Dining Saloon on D Deck, designed by Charles Fitzroy Doll, was the largest room afloat and could seat almost 600 passengers at a time.[64]

The Forward First Class Grand Staircase of Titanic's sister ship RMS Olympic. Titanic's staircase would have looked nearly identical. No known photos of Titanic's staircase exist.

 

The gymnasium on the Boat Deck, which was equipped with the latest exercise machines

 

The Á La Carte restaurant on B Deck, run as a concession by Italian-born chef Gaspare Gatti

 

The 1st-Class Lounge of the RMS Olympic, Titanic's sister ship

 

The 1st-Class Turkish Baths, located along the Starboard side of F-Deck

Third Class (commonly referred to as Steerage) accommodations aboard Titanic were not as luxurious as First or Second Class, but even so, were better than on many other ships of the time. They reflected the improved standards which the White Star Line had adopted for trans-Atlantic immigrant and lower-class travel. On most other North Atlantic passenger ships at the time, Third Class accommodations consisted of little more than open dormitories in the forward end of the vessels, in which hundreds of people were confined, often without adequate food or toilet facilities. The White Star Line had long since broken that mould. As seen aboard Titanic, all White Star Line passenger ships divided their Third Class accommodations into two sections, always at opposite ends of the vessel from one another. The established arrangement was that single men were quartered in the forward areas, while single women, married couples and families were quartered aft. In addition, while other ships provided only open berth sleeping arrangements, White Star Line vessels provided their Third Class passengers with private, small but comfortable cabins capable of accommodating two, four, six, eight and ten passengers.[65]

Third Class accommodations also included their own dining rooms, as well as public gathering areas including adequate open deck space, which aboard Titanic comprised the Poop Deck at the stern, the forward and aft well decks, and a large open space on D Deck which could be used as a social hall. This was supplemented by the addition of a smoking room for men and a General Room on C Deck which women could use for reading and writing. Although they were not as glamorous in design as spaces seen in upper-class accommodations, they were still far above average for the period.

Leisure facilities were provided for all three classes to pass the time. As well as making use of the indoor amenities such as the library, smoking rooms, and gymnasium, it was also customary for passengers to socialise on the open deck, promenading or relaxing in hired deck chairs or wooden benches. A passenger list was published before the sailing to inform the public which members of the great and good were on board, and it was not uncommon for ambitious mothers to use the list to identify rich bachelors to whom they could introduce their marriageable daughters during the voyage.[66]

One of Titanic's most distinctive features was her First Class staircase, known as the Grand Staircase or Grand Stairway. Built of solid English oak with a sweeping curve, the staircase descended through seven decks of the ship, between the Boat Deck to E deck, before terminating in a simplified single flight on F Deck.[67] It was capped with a dome of wrought iron and glass that admitted natural light to the stairwell. Each landing off the staircase gave access to ornate entrance halls paneled in the William & Mary style and lit by ormolu and crystal light fixtures.[68]

At the uppermost landing was a large carved wooden panel containing a clock, with figures of "Honour and Glory Crowning Time" flanking the clock face.[67] The Grand Staircase was destroyed during the sinking and is now just a void in the ship which modern explorers have used to access the lower decks.[69] During the filming of James Cameron's Titanic in 1997, his replica of the Grand Staircase was ripped from its foundations by the force of the inrushing water on the set. It has been suggested that during the real event, the entire Grand Staircase was ejected upwards through the dome.[70]

Mail and cargo

La Circassienne au Bain by Merry-Joseph Blondel; the most highly valued item of cargo lost on the Titanic. This image is of a copy[e]

Although Titanic was primarily a passenger liner, she also carried a substantial amount of cargo. Her designation as a Royal Mail Ship (RMS) indicated that she carried mail under contract with the Royal Mail (and also for the United States Post Office Department). For the storage of letters, parcels and specie (bullion, coins and other valuables), 26,800 cubic feet (760 m3) of space in her holds was allocated. The Sea Post Office on G Deck was manned by five postal clerks; three Americans and two Britons, who worked 13 hours a day, seven days a week sorting up to 60,000 items daily.[72]

The ship's passengers brought with them a huge amount of baggage; another 19,455 cubic feet (550.9 m3) was taken up by first- and second-class baggage. In addition, there was a considerable quantity of regular cargo, ranging from furniture to foodstuffs, and a 1912 Renault Type CE Coupe de Ville motor car.[73] Despite later myths, the cargo on Titanic's maiden voyage was fairly mundane; there was no gold, exotic minerals or diamonds, and one of the more famous items lost in the shipwreck, a jewelled copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, was valued at only £405 (£41,000 today).[74] According to the claims for compensation filed with Commissioner Gilchrist, following the conclusion of the Senate Inquiry, the single most highly valued item of luggage or cargo was a large neoclassical oil painting entitled La Circassienne au Bain by French artist Merry-Joseph Blondel. The painting's owner, first-class passenger Mauritz Håkan Björnström-Steffansson, filed a claim for $100,000 ($2.4 million equivalent in 2014) in compensation for the loss of the artwork.[71]

Titanic was equipped with eight electric cranes, four electric winches and three steam winches to lift cargo and baggage in and out of the holds. It is estimated that the ship used some 415 tons of coal whilst in Southampton, simply generating steam to operate the cargo winches and provide heat and light.[75]

Lifeboats

Main article: Lifeboats of the Titanic

A collapsible lifeboat with canvas sides

Like Olympic, Titanic carried a total of 20 lifeboats: 14 standard wooden Harland and Wolff lifeboats with a capacity of 65 people each and four Engelhardt "collapsible" (wooden bottom, collapsible canvas sides) lifeboats (identified as A to D) with a capacity of 47 people each. In addition, she had two emergency cutters with a capacity of 40 people each.[76][f] Olympic carried at least two collapsible boats on either side of her number one funnel.[77][78] All of the lifeboats were stowed securely on the boat deck and, except for collapsible lifeboats A and B, connected to davits by ropes. Those on the starboard side were odd-numbered 1–15 from bow to stern, while those on the port side were even-numbered 2–16 from bow to stern.[79]

Both cutters were kept swung out, hanging from the davits, ready for immediate use, while collapsible lifeboats C and D were stowed on the boat deck (connected to davits) immediately inboard of boats 1 and 2 respectively. A and B were stored on the roof of the officers' quarters, on either side of number 1 funnel. There were no davits to lower them and their weight would make them difficult to launch by hand.[79] Each boat carried (among other things) food, water, blankets, and a spare life belt. Lifeline ropes on the boats' sides enabled them to save additional people from the water if necessary.

Titanic had 16 sets of davits, each able to handle four lifeboats as Carlisle had planned. This gave Titanic the ability to carry up to 64 wooden lifeboats[80] which would have been enough for 4,000 people—considerably more than her actual capacity. However, the White Star Line decided that only 16 wooden lifeboats and four collapsibles would be carried, which could accommodate 1,178 people, only one-third of Titanic's total capacity. At the time, the Board of Trade's regulations required British vessels over 10,000 tons to only carry 16 lifeboats with a capacity of 990 occupants.[76]

Therefore, the White Star Line actually provided more lifeboat accommodation than was legally required.[81][g] At the time, lifeboats were intended to ferry survivors from a sinking ship to a rescuing ship—not keep afloat the whole population or power them to shore. Had the SS Californian responded to Titanic's distress calls, the lifeboats may have been adequate to ferry the passengers to safety as planned.[83]

Building and preparing the ship

Construction, launch and fitting-out

Construction in gantry, bow is seen

Construction in gantry, 1909–11

Launch, 1911; ship with unfinished superstructure

Launch, 1911 (unfinished superstructure)

Fitting-out, 1911–12: Ship is seen in dock

Fitting-out, 1911–12

The sheer size of Titanic and her sister ships posed a major engineering challenge for Harland and Wolff; no shipbuilder had ever before attempted to construct vessels this size.[84] The ships were constructed on Queen's Island, now known as the Titanic Quarter, in Belfast Harbour. Harland and Wolff had to demolish three existing slipways and build two new ones, the largest ever constructed up to that time, to accommodate both ships.[20] Their construction was facilitated by an enormous gantry built by Sir William Arrol & Co., a Scottish firm responsible for the building of the Forth Bridge and London's Tower Bridge. The Arrol Gantry stood 228 feet (69 m) high, was 270 feet (82 m) wide and 840 feet (260 m) long, and weighed more than 6,000 tons. It accommodated a number of mobile cranes. A separate floating crane, capable of lifting 200 tons, was brought in from Germany.[85]

The construction of Olympic and Titanic took place virtually in parallel, with Olympic's keel laid down first on 16 December 1908 and Titanic's on 31 March 1909.[25] Both ships took about 26 months to build and followed much the same construction process. They were designed essentially as an enormous floating box girder, with the keel acting as a backbone and the frames of the hull forming the ribs. At the base of the ships, a double bottom 5 feet 3 inches (1.60 m) deep supported 300 frames, each between 24 inches (61 cm) and 36 inches (91 cm) apart and measuring up to about 66 feet (20 m) long. They terminated at the bridge deck (B Deck) and were covered with steel plates which formed the outer skin of the ships.[86]

The 2,000 hull plates were single pieces of rolled steel plate, mostly up to 6 feet (1.8 m) wide and 30 feet (9.1 m) long and weighing between 2.5 and 3 tons.[87] Their thickness varied from 1 inch (2.5 cm) to 1.5 inches (3.8 cm).[53] The plates were laid in a clinkered (overlapping) fashion from the keel to the bilge. Above that point they were laid in the "in and out" fashion, where strake plating was applied in bands (the "in strakes") with the gaps covered by the "out strakes", overlapping on the edges. Commercial oxy-fuel and electric arc welding methods, ubiquitous in fabrication today, were still in their infancy; like most other iron and steel structures of the era, the hull was held together with over three million iron and steel rivets, which by themselves weighed over 1,200 tons. They were fitted using hydraulic machines or were hammered in by hand.[88] In the 1990s some material scientists concluded[89] that the steel plate used for the ship was subject to being especially brittle when cold, and that this brittleness exacerbated the impact damage and hastened the sinking. It is believed that, by the standards of the time, the steel plate's quality was good, not faulty, but that it was inferior to what would be used for shipbuilding purposes in later decades, owing to advances in the metallurgy of steelmaking.[89] As for the rivets, considerable emphasis has also been placed on their quality and strength.[90][91][92][93][94]

Among the last items to be fitted on Titanic before the ship's launch were her two side anchors and one centre anchor. The anchors themselves were a challenge to make, with the centre anchor being the largest ever forged by hand and weighing nearly 16 tons. Twenty Clydesdale draught horses were needed to haul the centre anchor by wagon from the Noah Hingley & Sons Ltd forge shop in Netherton, near Dudley, United Kingdom to the Dudley railway station two miles away. From there it was shipped by rail to Fleetwood in Lancashire before being loaded aboard a ship and sent to Belfast.[95]

The work of constructing the ships was difficult and dangerous. For the 15,000 men who worked at Harland and Wolff at the time,[96] safety precautions were rudimentary at best; a lot of the work was carried out without equipment like hard hats or hand guards on machinery. As a result, during Titanic's construction, 246 injuries were recorded, 28 of them "severe", such as arms severed by machines or legs crushed under falling pieces of steel. Six people died on the ship herself while she was being constructed and fitted out, and another two died in the shipyard workshops and sheds.[97] Just before the launch a worker was killed when a piece of wood fell on him.[98]

Titanic was launched at 12:15 pm on 31 May 1911 in the presence of Lord Pirrie, J. Pierpont Morgan, J. Bruce Ismay and 100,000 onlookers.[99][100] Twenty-two tons of soap and tallow were spread on the slipway to lubricate the ship's passage into the River Lagan.[98] In keeping with the White Star Line's traditional policy, the ship was not formally named or christened with champagne.[99] 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.[101]

Although Titanic was virtually identical to the class's lead ship Olympic, a few changes were made to distinguish both ships. The most noticeable exterior difference was that Titanic (and the third vessel in class, Britannic) had a steel screen with sliding windows installed along the forward half of the A Deck promenade. This was installed as a last minute change at the personal request of Bruce Ismay, and was intended to provide additional shelter to First Class passengers.[102] Extensive changes were made to B Deck on Titanic as the promenade space in this deck, which had proven unpopular on Olympic, was converted into additional First Class cabins, including two opulent parlour suites with their own private promenade spaces. The À la Carte restaurant was also enlarged and the Café Parisien, an entirely new feature which did not exist on Olympic, was added. These changes made Titanic slightly heavier than her sister, and thus she could claim to be the largest ship afloat. The work took longer than expected due to design changes requested by Ismay and a temporary pause in work occasioned by the need to repair Olympic, which had been in a collision in September 1911. Had Titanic been finished earlier, she might well have missed her collision with an iceberg.[98]

Sea trials

Titanic leaving Belfast for her sea trials on 2 April 1912

Titanic's sea trials began at 6 am on Tuesday, 2 April 1912, just two days after her fitting out was finished and eight days before she was due to leave Southampton on her maiden voyage.[103] The trials were delayed for a day due to bad weather, but by Monday morning it was clear and fair.[104] Aboard were 78 stokers, greasers and firemen, and 41 members of crew. No domestic staff appear to have been aboard. Representatives of various companies travelled on Titanic's sea trials, Thomas Andrews and Edward Wilding of Harland and Wolff and Harold A. Sanderson of IMM. Bruce Ismay and Lord Pirrie were too ill to attend. Jack Phillips and Harold Bride served as radio operators and performed fine-tuning of the Marconi equipment. Francis Carruthers, a surveyor from the Board of Trade, was also present to see that everything worked and that the ship was fit to carry passengers.[105]

The sea trials consisted of a number of tests of her handling characteristics, carried out first in Belfast Lough and then in the open waters of the Irish Sea. Over the course of about 12 hours, Titanic was driven at different speeds, her turning ability was tested and a "crash stop" was performed in which the engines were reversed full ahead to full astern, bringing her to a stop in 850 yd (777 m) or 3 minutes and 15 seconds.[106] The ship covered a distance of about 80 nautical miles (92 mi; 150 km), averaging 18 knots (21 mph; 33 km/h) and reaching a maximum speed of just under 21 knots (24 mph; 39 km/h).[107]

On returning to Belfast at about 7 pm, the surveyor signed an "Agreement and Account of Voyages and Crew", valid for 12 months, which declared the ship seaworthy. An hour later, Titanic departed Belfast to head to Southampton, a voyage of about 570 nautical miles (660 mi; 1,060 km). After a journey lasting about 28 hours, she arrived about midnight on 4 April and was towed to the port's Berth 44, ready for the arrival of her passengers and the remainder of her crew.[108]

Maiden voyage

Titanic at Southampton docks, prior to departure

Titanic in Cork harbour, 11 April 1912

Both Olympic and Titanic registered Liverpool as their home port. The offices of the White Star Line, as well as Cunard, were in Liverpool, and up until the introduction of the Olympic, most British ocean liners for both Cunard and White Star, such as Lusitania and Mauretania, sailed out of Liverpool followed by a port of call in Queenstown, Ireland. Since the company's founding in 1845, a vast majority of their operations had taken place out of Liverpool. However, in 1907 White Star Line established another service out of the port of Southampton on England's south coast, which became known as White Star's "Express Service". Southampton had many advantages over Liverpool, the first being its proximity to London.[109]

In addition, Southampton, being on the south coast, allowed ships to easily cross the English Channel and make a port of call on the northern coast of France, usually at Cherbourg. This allowed British ships to pick up clientele from continental Europe before recrossing the channel and picking up passengers at Queenstown. The Southampton-Cherbourg-New York run would become so popular that most British ocean liners began using the port after World War I. Out of respect for Liverpool, ships continued to be registered there until the early 1960s. Queen Elizabeth 2 was one of the first ships registered in Southampton when introduced into service by Cunard in 1969.[109]

Titanic's maiden voyage was intended to be the first of many trans-Atlantic crossings between Southampton and New York via Cherbourg and Queenstown on westbound runs, returning via Plymouth in England while eastbound. Indeed, her entire schedule of voyages through to December 1912 still exists.[110] When the route was established, four ships were assigned to the service. In addition to Teutonic and Majestic, the RMS Oceanic and the brand new RMS Adriatic sailed the route. When the Olympic entered service in June 1911, she replaced Teutonic, which after completing her last run on the service in late April was transferred to the Dominion Line's Canadian service. The following August, Adriatic was transferred to White Star Line's main Liverpool-New York service, and in November, Majestic was withdrawn from service impending the arrival of Titanic in the coming months, and was mothballed as a reserve ship.[111][112]

White Star Line's initial plans for Olympic and Titanic on the Southampton run followed the same routine as their predecessors had done before them. Each would sail once every three weeks from Southampton and New York, usually leaving at noon each Wednesday from Southampton and each Saturday from New York, thus enabling the White Star Line to offer weekly sailings in each direction. Special trains were scheduled from London and Paris to convey passengers to Southampton and Cherbourg respectively.[112] The deep-water dock at Southampton, then known as the "White Star Dock", had been specially constructed to accommodate the new Olympic-class liners, and had opened in 1911.[113]

Crew

Main article: Crew of the RMS Titanic

Edward Smith, captain of Titanic, in 1911

Titanic had around 885 crew members on board for her maiden voyage.[114] 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.[115] 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.[116]

Captain Edward John Smith, the most senior of the White Star Line's captains, was transferred from Olympic to take command of Titanic.[117] Henry Tingle Wilde also came across from Olympic to take the post of chief mate. Titanic's previously designated chief mate and first officer, William McMaster Murdoch and Charles Lightoller, were bumped down to the ranks of first and second officer respectively. The original second officer, David Blair, was dropped altogether.[118][h] The third officer was Herbert Pitman MBE, the only deck officer who was not a member of the Royal Naval Reserve. Pitman was the second to last surviving officer.

Titanic's crew were divided into three principal departments: Deck, with 66 crew; Engine, with 325; and Victualling, with 494.[119] The vast majority of the crew were thus not seamen but were either engineers, firemen, or stokers, responsible for looking after the engines, or stewards and galley staff, responsible for the passengers.[120] Of these, over 97% were male; just 23 of the crew were female, mainly stewardesses.[121] The rest represented a great variety of professions—bakers, chefs, butchers, fishmongers, dishwashers, stewards, gymnasium instructors, laundrymen, waiters, bed-makers, cleaners, and even a printer,[121] who produced a daily newspaper for passengers called the Atlantic Daily Bulletin with the latest news received by the ship's wireless operators.[57][i]

Most of the crew signed on in Southampton on 6 April;[25] in all, 699 of the crew came from there, and 40% were natives of the town.[121] A few specialist staff were self-employed or were subcontractors. These included the five postal clerks, who worked for the Royal Mail and the United States Post Office Department, the staff of the First Class A La Carte Restaurant and the Café Parisien, the radio operators (who were employed by Marconi) and the eight musicians, who were employed by an agency and travelled as second-class passengers.[123] Crew pay varied greatly, from Captain Smith's £105 a month (equivalent to £10,600 today) to the £3 10s (£350 today) that stewardesses earned. The lower-paid victualling staff could, however, supplement their wages substantially through tips from passengers.[122]

Passengers

Main article: Passengers of the Titanic

See also: Animals aboard the Titanic

John Jacob Astor IV in 1909. He was the wealthiest person aboard Titanic; he did not survive.

Titanic's passengers numbered approximately 1,317 people: 324 in First Class, 284 in Second Class, and 709 in Third Class. Of these, 869 (66%) were male and 447 (34%) female. There were 107 children aboard, the largest number of whom were in Third Class.[124] The ship was considerably under capacity on her maiden voyage, as she could accommodate 2,453 passengers—833 First Class, 614 Second Class, and 1,006 Third Class.[125]

Usually, a high prestige vessel like Titanic could expect to be fully booked on its maiden voyage. However, a national coal strike in the UK had caused considerable disruption to shipping schedules in the spring of 1912, causing many crossings to be cancelled. Many would-be passengers chose to postpone their travel plans until the strike was over. The strike had finished a few days before Titanic sailed; however, that was too late to have much of an effect. Titanic was able to sail on the scheduled date only because coal was transferred from other vessels which were tied up at Southampton, such as SS City of New York and RMS Oceanic, as well as coal Olympic had brought back from a previous voyage to New York, which had been stored at the White Star Dock.[102]

Some of the most prominent people of the day booked a passage aboard Titanic, travelling in First Class. Among them (with those who perished marked with a dagger†) were the American millionaire John Jacob Astor IV† and his wife Madeleine Force Astor (with John Jacob Astor VI in utero), industrialist Benjamin Guggenheim†, painter and sculptor Francis Davis Millet†, Macy's owner Isidor Straus† and his wife Ida†, Denver millionairess Margaret "Molly" Brown,[j] Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon and his wife, couturière Lucy (Lady Duff-Gordon), Lieut. Col. Arthur Peuchen, writer and historian Archibald Gracie, cricketer and businessman John B. Thayer† with his wife Marian and son Jack, George Dunton Widener† with his wife Eleanor and son Harry†, Noël Leslie, Countess of Rothes, Mr.† and Mrs. Charles M. Hays, Mr. and Mrs. Henry S. Harper, Mr.† and Mrs. Walter D. Douglas, Mr.† and Mrs. George D. Wick, Mr.† and Mrs. Henry B. Harris, Mr.† and Mrs. Arthur L. Ryerson, Mr.† and Mrs.† Hudson J. C. Allison, Mr. and Mrs. Dickinson Bishop, noted architect Edward Austin Kent†, brewery heir Harry Molson†, tennis players Karl Behr and Dick Williams, author and socialite Helen Churchill Candee, future lawyer and suffragette Elsie Bowerman and her mother Edith, journalist and social reformer William Thomas Stead†, journalist and fashion buyer Edith Rosenbaum, Philadelphia and New York socialite Edith Corse Evans†, wealthy divorcée Charlotte Drake Cardeza, French sculptor Paul Chevré [fr], author Jacques Futrelle† with his wife May, silent film actress Dorothy Gibson with her mother Pauline, President of the Swiss Bankverein Col. Alfons Simonius-Blumer, James A. Hughes's daughter Eloise, banker Robert Williams Daniel, the chairman of the Holland America Line Johan Reuchlin [de], Arthur Wellington Ross's son John H. Ross, Washington Roebling's nephew Washington A. Roebling II, Andrew Saks's daughter Leila Saks Meyer with her husband Edgar Joseph Meyer† (son of Marc Eugene Meyer), William A. Clark's nephew Walter M. Clark with his wife Virginia, great-great-grandson of soap manufacturer Andrew Pears Thomas C. Pears with wife, John S. Pillsbury's honeymooning grandson John P. Snyder and wife Nelle, Dorothy Parker's New York manufacturer uncle Martin Rothschild with his wife, Elizabeth, among others.[126]

Titanic's owner J. P. Morgan was scheduled to travel on the maiden voyage but cancelled at the last minute.[127] Also aboard the ship were the White Star Line's managing director J. Bruce Ismay and Titanic's designer Thomas Andrews†, who was on board to observe any problems and assess the general performance of the new ship.[128]

The exact number of people aboard is not known, as not all of those who had booked tickets made it to the ship; about 50 people cancelled for various reasons,[129] and not all of those who boarded stayed aboard for the entire journey.[130] Fares varied depending on class and season. Third Class fares from London, Southampton, or Queenstown cost £7 5s (equivalent to £700 today) while the cheapest First Class fares cost £23 (£2,300 today).[112] The most expensive First Class suites were to have cost up to £870 in high season (£88,000 today).[125]

Collecting passengers

Titanic's maiden voyage began on Wednesday, 10 April 1912. Following the embarkation of the crew, the passengers began arriving at 9:30 am, when the London and South Western Railway's boat train from London Waterloo station reached Southampton Terminus railway station on the quayside, alongside Titanic's berth.[131] The large number of Third Class passengers meant they were the first to board, with First and Second Class passengers following up to an hour before departure. Stewards showed them to their cabins, and First Class passengers were personally greeted by Captain Smith.[132] Third Class passengers were inspected for ailments and physical impairments that might lead to their being refused entry to the United States – a prospect the White Star Line wished to avoid, as it would have to carry anyone who failed the examination back across the Atlantic.[129] In all, 920 passengers boarded Titanic at Southampton – 179 First Class, 247 Second Class, and 494 Third Class. Additional passengers were to be picked up at Cherbourg and Queenstown.[102]

The maiden voyage began at noon, as scheduled. An accident was narrowly averted only a few minutes later, as Titanic passed the moored liners SS City of New York of the American Line and Oceanic of the White Star Line, the latter of which would have been her running mate on the service from Southampton. Her huge displacement caused both of the smaller ships to be lifted by a bulge of water and then dropped into a trough. New York's mooring cables could not take the sudden strain and snapped, swinging her around stern-first towards Titanic. A nearby tugboat, Vulcan, came to the rescue by taking New York under tow, and Captain Smith ordered Titanic's engines to be put "full astern".[133] The two ships avoided a collision by a distance of about 4 feet (1.2 m). The incident delayed Titanic's departure for about an hour, while the drifting New York was brought under control.[134][135]

After making it safely through the complex tides and channels of Southampton Water and the Solent, Titanic disembarked the Southampton pilot at the Nab Lightship and headed out into the English Channel.[136] She headed for the French port of Cherbourg, a journey of 77 nautical miles (89 mi; 143 km).[137] The weather was windy, very fine but cold and overcast.[138] Because Cherbourg lacked docking facilities for a ship the size of Titanic, tenders had to be used to transfer passengers from shore to ship. The White Star Line operated two at Cherbourg, the SS Traffic and the SS Nomadic. Both had been designed specifically as tenders for the Olympic-class liners and were launched shortly after Titanic.[139] (Nomadic is today the only White Star Line ship still afloat.) Four hours after Titanic left Southampton, she arrived at Cherbourg and was met by the tenders. There, 274 additional passengers were taken aboard – 142 First Class, 30 Second Class, and 102 Third Class. Twenty-four passengers left aboard the tenders to be conveyed to shore, having booked only a cross-Channel passage. The process was completed within only 90 minutes and at 8 pm Titanic weighed anchor and left for Queenstown[140] with the weather continuing cold and windy.[138]

At 11:30 am on Thursday 11 April, Titanic arrived at Cork Harbour on the south coast of Ireland. It was a partly cloudy but relatively warm day, with a brisk wind.[138] Again, the dock facilities were not suitable for a ship of Titanic's size, and tenders were used to bring passengers aboard. In all, 123 passengers boarded Titanic at Queenstown – three First Class, seven Second Class and 113 Third Class. In addition to the 24 cross-Channel passengers who had disembarked at Cherbourg, another seven passengers had booked an overnight passage from Southampton to Queenstown. Among the seven was Father Francis Browne, a Jesuit trainee who was a keen photographer and took many photographs aboard Titanic, including the last known photograph of the ship. A decidedly unofficial departure was that of a crew member, stoker John Coffey, a Queenstown native who sneaked off the ship by hiding under mail bags being transported to shore.[141] Titanic weighed anchor for the last time at 1:30 pm and departed on her westward journey across the Atlantic.[141]

Atlantic crossing

The route of Titanic's maiden voyage, with the coordinates of her sinking

Titanic was planned to arrive at New York Pier 59[142] on the morning of 17 April.[143] After leaving Queenstown, Titanic followed the Irish coast as far as Fastnet Rock,[144] a distance of some 55 nautical miles (63 mi; 102 km). From there she travelled 1,620 nautical miles (1,860 mi; 3,000 km) along a Great Circle route across the North Atlantic to reach a spot in the ocean known as "the corner" south-east of Newfoundland, where westbound steamers carried out a change of course. Titanic sailed only a few hours past the corner on a rhumb line leg of 1,023 nautical miles (1,177 mi; 1,895 km) to Nantucket Shoals Light when she made her fatal contact with an iceberg.[145] The final leg of the journey would have been 193 nautical miles (222 mi; 357 km) to Ambrose Light and finally to New York Harbor.[146]

From 11 April to local apparent noon the next day, Titanic covered 484 nautical miles (557 mi; 896 km); the following day, 519 nautical miles (597 mi; 961 km); and by noon on the final day of her voyage, 546 nautical miles (628 mi; 1,011 km). From then until the time of her sinking, she travelled another 258 nautical miles (297 mi; 478 km), averaging about 21 knots (24 mph; 39 km/h).[147]

The weather cleared as she left Ireland under cloudy skies with a headwind. Temperatures remained fairly mild on Saturday 13 April, but the following day Titanic crossed a cold weather front with strong winds and waves of up to 8 feet (2.4 m). These died down as the day progressed until, by the evening of Sunday 14 April, it became clear, calm and very cold.[148]

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,[149] but passengers were unaware of this situation. Fires occurred frequently on board steamships at the time, due to spontaneous combustion of the coal.[150] 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.[151] The fire was finally extinguished on 14 April.[152][153] 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 its fate.[154][155]

Titanic received a series of warnings from other ships of drifting ice in the area of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, but Captain Edward Smith ignored them. [156] One of the ships to warn Titanic was the Atlantic Line's Mesaba.[157] Nevertheless, the ship continued to steam at full speed, which was standard practice at the time.[158] Although the ship was not trying to set a speed record,[159] timekeeping was a priority, and under prevailing maritime practices, ships were often operated at close to full speed, with ice warnings seen as advisories and reliance placed upon lookouts and the watch on the bridge.[158] It was generally believed that ice posed little danger to large vessels. Close calls with ice were not uncommon, and even head-on collisions had not been disastrous. In 1907 SS Kronprinz Wilhelm, a German liner, had rammed an iceberg but still had been able to complete her voyage, and Captain Smith himself had declared in 1907 that he "could not imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that."[160][k]

Sinking

Main article: Sinking of the Titanic

Drawing of sinking in four steps from eye witness description

The sinking, based on Jack Thayer's description. Sketched by L.P. Skidmore on board Carpathia

Photo of an iceberg taken the day after the sinking at the place of sinking

The iceberg thought to have been hit by Titanic, photographed on the morning of 15 April 1912. Note the dark spot just along the berg's waterline, which was described by onlookers as a smear of red paint

"Untergang der Titanic", a painting showing a big ship sinking with survivors in the water and boats

"Untergang der Titanic", as conceived by Willy Stöwer, 1912

At 11:40 pm (ship's time) on 14 April, lookout Frederick Fleet spotted an iceberg immediately ahead of Titanic and alerted the bridge.[163] First Officer William Murdoch ordered the ship to be steered around the obstacle and the engines to be reversed,[164] but it was too late; the starboard side of Titanic struck the iceberg, creating a series of holes below the waterline.[l] The hull was not punctured by the iceberg, but rather dented such that the hull's seams buckled and separated, allowing water to rush in. Five of the ship's watertight compartments were breached. It soon became clear that the ship was doomed, as she could not survive more than four compartments being flooded. Titanic began sinking bow-first, with water spilling from compartment to compartment as her angle in the water became steeper.[166]

Those aboard Titanic were ill-prepared for such an emergency. In accordance with accepted practices of the time, as ships were seen as largely unsinkable and lifeboats were intended to transfer passengers to nearby rescue vessels,[167][m] Titanic only had enough lifeboats to carry about half of those on board; if the ship had carried her full complement of about 3,339 passengers and crew, only about a third could have been accommodated in the lifeboats.[169] The crew had not been trained adequately in carrying out an evacuation. The officers did not know how many they could safely put aboard the lifeboats and launched many of them barely half-full.[170] Third-class passengers were largely left to fend for themselves, causing many of them to become trapped below decks as the ship filled with water.[171] The "women and children first" protocol was generally followed when loading the lifeboats,[171] and most of the male passengers and crew were left aboard. In 2022, Claes-Gõran Wetterholm, an author and expert on the Titanic, argued it was "not true" that women and children survived thanks to the gallantry of men; of the last survivors escaping on the final lifeboats leaving the starboard side of the ship, he said, the majority were men.[172]

Between 2:10 and 2:15 am, a little over two and a half hours after Titanic struck the iceberg, her rate of sinking suddenly increased as the boat deck dipped underwater, and the sea poured in through open hatches and grates.[173] As her unsupported stern rose out of the water, exposing the propellers, the ship broke in two main pieces between the second and third funnels, due to the immense forces on the keel. With the bow underwater, and air trapped in the stern, the stern remained afloat and buoyant for a few minutes longer, rising to a nearly vertical angle with hundreds of people still clinging to it,[174] before foundering at 2:20 am.[175] It was long generally believed the ship sank in one piece; but the discovery of the wreck many years later revealed that the ship had broken fully in two. All remaining passengers and crew were immersed in lethally cold water with a temperature of −2 °C (28 °F). Sudden immersion into freezing water typically causes death within minutes, either from cardiac arrest, uncontrollable breathing of water, or cold incapacitation (not, as commonly believed, from hypothermia),[n] and almost all of those in the water died of cardiac arrest or other bodily reactions to freezing water, within 15–30 minutes.[178] Only five of them were helped into the lifeboats, though the lifeboats had room for almost 500 more people.[179]

Distress signals were sent by wireless, rockets, and lamp, but none of the ships that responded were near enough to reach Titanic before she sank.[180] A radio operator on board the SS Birma, for instance, estimated that it would be 6 am before the liner could arrive at the scene. Meanwhile, the SS Californian, which was the last to have been in contact before the collision, saw Titanic's flares but failed to assist.[181] Around 4 am, RMS Carpathia arrived on the scene in response to Titanic's earlier distress calls.[182]

About 710 people survived the disaster and were conveyed by Carpathia to New York, Titanic's original destination, while at least 1,500 people lost their lives.[114] Carpathia's captain described the place as an ice field that had included 20 large bergs measuring up to 200 feet (61 m) high and numerous smaller bergs, as well as ice floes and debris from Titanic; passengers described being in the middle of a vast white plain of ice, studded with icebergs.[183] This area is now known as Iceberg Alley.[184]

Aftermath of sinking

Immediate aftermath

The New York Times had gone to press 15 April with knowledge of the iceberg collision, but before knowledge of the sinking.[185]

The president of the International Mercantile Marine Company released a statement on Monday 15 April, assuring that despite the lack of communication, the ship was "unsinkable".

London newsboy Ned Parfett with news of the disaster, as reported on Tuesday, 16 April.

Titanic had been scheduled for a 20 April departure from America, documented in an advertisement in The New York Times that apparently did not have time to be pulled, overnight, before this printing in the 15 April issue.[186]

RMS Carpathia took three days to reach New York after leaving the scene of the disaster. Her journey was slowed by pack ice, fog, thunderstorms and rough seas.[187] She was, however, able to pass news to the outside world by wireless about what had happened. The initial reports were confusing, leading the American press to report erroneously on 15 April that Titanic was being towed to port by the SS Virginian.[188] Later that day, confirmation came through that Titanic had been lost and that most of her passengers and crew had died.[189] The news attracted crowds of people to the White Star Line's offices in London, New York, Montreal,[190] Southampton,[191] Liverpool and Belfast.[192] It hit hardest in Southampton, whose people suffered the greatest losses from the sinking.[193] Four out of every five crew members came from this town.[194][o]

Carpathia docked at 9:30 pm on 18 April at New York's Pier 54 and was greeted by some 40,000 people waiting at the quayside in heavy rain.[197] Immediate relief in the form of clothing and transportation to shelters was provided by the Women's Relief Committee, the Travelers Aid Society of New York, and the Council of Jewish Women, among other organisations.[198] Many of Titanic's surviving passengers did not linger in New York but headed onwards immediately to relatives' homes. Some of the wealthier survivors chartered private trains to take them home, and the Pennsylvania Railroad laid on a special train free of charge to take survivors to Philadelphia. Titanic's 214 surviving crew members were taken to the Red Star Line's steamer SS Lapland, where they were accommodated in passenger cabins.[199]

Carpathia was hurriedly restocked with food and provisions before resuming her journey to Fiume, Austria-Hungary. Her crew were given a bonus of a month's wages by Cunard as a reward for their actions, and some of Titanic's passengers joined together to give them an additional bonus of nearly £900 (£91,000 today), divided among the crew members.[200]

The ship's arrival in New York led to a frenzy of press interest, with newspapers competing to be the first to report the survivors' stories. Some reporters bribed their way aboard the pilot boat New York, which guided Carpathia into harbour, and one even managed to get onto Carpathia before she docked.[201] Crowds gathered outside newspaper offices to see the latest reports being posted in the windows or on billboards.[202] It took another four days for a complete list of casualties to be compiled and released, adding to the agony of relatives waiting for news of those who had been aboard Titanic.[p]

Insurance, aid for survivors and lawsuits

Cartoon demanding better safety from shipping companies, 1912

Molly Brown presenting award to Carpathia Captain Arthur Rostron for his service in the rescue.

In January 1912, the hulls and equipment of Titanic and Olympic had been insured through Lloyd's of London and London Marine Insurance. The total coverage was £1,000,000 (£102,000,000 today) per ship. The policy was to be "free from all average" under £150,000, meaning that the insurers would only pay for damage in excess of that sum. The premium, negotiated by brokers Willis Faber & Company (now Willis Group), was 15 s (75 p) per £100, or £7,500 (£760,000 today) for the term of one year. Lloyd's paid the White Star Line the full sum owed to them within 30 days.[204]

Many charities were set up to help the victims and their families, many of whom lost their sole wage earner, or, in the case of many Third Class survivors, everything they owned. In New York City, for example, a joint committee of the American Red Cross and Charity Organization Society formed to disburse financial aid to survivors and dependents of those who died.[205] On 29 April, opera stars Enrico Caruso and Mary Garden and members of the Metropolitan Opera raised $12,000 ($300,000 in 2014)[206] in benefits for victims of the disaster by giving special concerts in which versions of "Autumn" and "Nearer My God To Thee" were part of the programme.[207] In Britain, relief funds were organised for the families of Titanic's lost crew members, raising nearly £450,000 (£46,000,000 today). One such fund was still in operation as late as the 1960s.[208]

In the United States and Britain, more than 60 survivors combined to sue the White Star Line for damages connected to loss of life and baggage.[209] The claims totalled $16,804,112 (appr. $419 million in 2018 USD), which was far in excess of what White Star argued it was responsible for as a limited liability company under American law.[210] Because the bulk of the litigants were in the United States, White Star petitioned the United States Supreme Court in 1914, which ruled in its favour that it qualified as an LLC and found that the causes of the ship's sinking were largely unforeseeable, rather than due to negligence.[211] This sharply limited the scope of damages survivors and family members were entitled to, prompting them to reduce their claims to some $2.5 million. White Star only settled for $664,000 (appr. $16.56 million in 2018), about 27% of the original total sought by survivors.[210] The settlement was agreed to by 44 of the claimants in December 1915, with $500,000 set aside for the American claimants, $50,000 for the British, and $114,000 to go towards interest and legal expenses.[209][210]

Investigations into the disaster

Main articles: United States Senate inquiry into the sinking of the RMS Titanic and British Wreck Commissioner's inquiry into the sinking of the RMS Titanic

Even before the survivors arrived in New York, investigations were being planned to discover what had happened, and what could be done to prevent a recurrence. Inquiries were held in both the United States and the United Kingdom, the former more robustly critical of traditions and practices, and scathing of the failures involved, and the latter broadly more technical and expert-orientated.[212]

The US Senate's inquiry into the disaster was initiated on 19 April, a day after Carpathia arrived in New York.[213] The chairman, Senator William Alden Smith, wanted to gather accounts from passengers and crew while the events were still fresh in their minds. Smith also needed to subpoena all surviving British passengers and crew while they were still on American soil, which prevented them from returning to the UK before the American inquiry was completed on 25 May.[214] The British press condemned Smith as an opportunist, insensitively forcing an inquiry as a means of gaining political prestige and seizing "his moment to stand on the world stage". Smith, however, already had a reputation as a campaigner for safety on US railroads, and wanted to investigate any possible malpractices by railroad tycoon J. P. Morgan, Titanic's ultimate owner.[215]

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.[216]

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.[217] 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.[218] 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,[219] Captain Smith had failed to take proper heed of ice warnings,[220] 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.[219]

Neither inquiry's findings listed negligence by IMM or the White Star Line as a factor. The American inquiry concluded that since those involved had followed standard practice, the disaster was an act of God.[221] The British inquiry concluded that Smith had followed long-standing practice that had not previously been shown to be unsafe,[222] noting that British ships alone had carried 3.5 million passengers over the previous decade with the loss of just 10 lives,[223] and concluded that Smith had done "only that which other skilled men would have done in the same position". Lord Mersey did, however, find fault with the "extremely high speed (twenty-two knots) which was maintained" following numerous ice warnings,[224] noting that without hindsight, "what was a mistake in the case of the Titanic would without doubt be negligence in any similar case in the future".[222]

The recommendations included strong suggestions for major changes in maritime regulations to implement new safety measures, such as ensuring that more lifeboats were provided, that lifeboat drills were properly carried out and that wireless equipment on passenger ships was manned around the clock.[225] An International Ice Patrol was set up to monitor the presence of icebergs in the North Atlantic, and maritime safety regulations were harmonised internationally through the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea; both measures are still in force today.[226]

On 18 June 1912, Guglielmo Marconi gave evidence to the Court of Inquiry regarding the telegraphy. Its final report recommended that all liners carry the system and that sufficient operators maintain a constant service.[227]

Role of the SS Californian

The SS Californian, which had tried to warn Titanic of the danger from pack-ice

One of the most controversial issues examined by the inquiries was the role played by SS Californian, which had been only a few miles from Titanic but had not picked up her distress calls or responded to her signal rockets. Californian had warned Titanic by radio of the pack ice (that was the reason Californian had stopped for the night) but was rebuked by Titanic's senior wireless operator, Jack Phillips.[228]

Testimony before the British inquiry revealed that at 10:10 pm, Californian observed the lights of a ship to the south; it was later agreed between Captain Stanley Lord and Third Officer C.V. Groves (who had relieved Lord of duty at 11:10 pm) that this was a passenger liner.[228] At 11:50 pm, the officer had watched that ship's lights flash out, as if she had shut down or turned sharply, and that the port light was now visible.[228] Morse light signals to the ship, upon Lord's order, were made between 11:30 pm and 1:00 am, but were not acknowledged.[229] If Titanic was as far from the Californian as Lord claimed, then he knew, or should have known, that Morse signals would not be visible. A reasonable and prudent course of action would have been to awaken the wireless operator and to instruct him to attempt to contact Titanic by that method. Had Lord done so, it is possible he could have reached Titanic in time to save additional lives.[83]

Captain Lord had gone to the chartroom at 11:00 pm to spend the night;[230] however, Second Officer Herbert Stone, now on duty, notified Lord at 1:10 am that the ship had fired five rockets. Lord wanted to know if they were company signals, that is, coloured flares used for identification. Stone said that he did not know and that the rockets were all white. Captain Lord instructed the crew to continue to signal the other vessel with the Morse lamp, and went back to sleep. Three more rockets were observed at 1:50 am and Stone noted that the ship looked strange in the water, as if she were listing. At 2:15 am, Lord was notified that the ship could no longer be seen. Lord asked again if the lights had had any colours in them, and he was informed that they were all white.[231]

Californian eventually responded. At around 5:30 am, Chief Officer George Stewart awakened wireless operator Cyril Furmstone Evans, informed him that rockets had been seen during the night, and asked that he try to communicate with any ship. He got news of Titanic's loss, Captain Lord was notified, and the ship set out to render assistance. She arrived well after Carpathia had already picked up all the survivors.[232]

The inquiries found that the ship seen by Californian was in fact Titanic and that it would have been possible for Californian to come to her rescue; therefore, Captain Lord had acted improperly in failing to do so.[233][q]

Survivors and victims

Main article: Passengers of the RMS Titanic

The number of casualties of the sinking is unclear, due to a number of factors. These include confusion over the passenger list, which included some names of people who cancelled their trip at the last minute, and the fact that several passengers travelled under aliases for various reasons and were therefore double-counted on the casualty lists.[235] The death toll has been put at between 1,490 and 1,635 people.[236] The tables below use figures from the British Board of Trade report on the disaster.[114] While the use of the Marconi wireless system did not achieve the result of bringing a rescue ship to Titanic before it sank, the use of wireless did bring Carpathia in time to rescue some of the survivors who otherwise would have perished due to exposure.[7]

The water temperature was well below normal in the area where Titanic sank. It also contributed to the rapid death of many passengers during the sinking. Water temperature readings taken around the time of the accident were reported to be −2 °C (28 °F). Typical water temperatures were normally around 7 °C (45 °F) during mid-April.[237] The coldness of the water was a critical factor, often causing death within minutes for many of those in the water.

Fewer than a third of those aboard Titanic survived the disaster. Some survivors died shortly afterwards; injuries and the effects of exposure caused the deaths of several of those brought aboard Carpathia.[238] The figures show stark differences in the survival rates of the different classes aboard Titanic. Although only 3% of first-class women were lost, 54% of those in third-class died. Similarly, five of six first-class and all second-class children survived, but 52 of the 79 in third-class perished. The differences by gender were even bigger: nearly all female crew members, first- and second-class passengers were saved. Men from the First Class died at a higher rate than women from the Third Class.[239] In total, 50% of the children survived, 20% of the men and 75% of the women.

The last living survivor, Millvina Dean from England, who at only nine weeks old was the youngest passenger on board, died aged 97 on 31 May 2009.[240] Two special survivors were the stewardess Violet Jessop and the stoker Arthur John Priest,[241] who survived the sinkings of both Titanic and HMHS Britannic and were aboard RMS Olympic when she was rammed in 1911.[242][243][244]

Age/sex Class/crew Number aboard Number saved Number lost Percentage saved Percentage lost

Children First Class 6 5 1 83% 17%

Second Class 24 24 0 100% 0%

Third Class 79 27 52 34% 66%

Women First Class 144 140 4 97% 3%

Second Class 93 80 13 86% 14%

Third Class 165 76 89 46% 54%

Crew 23 20 3 87% 13%

Men First Class 175 57 118 33% 67%

Second Class 168 14 154 8% 92%

Third Class 462 75 387 16% 84%

Crew 885 192 693 22% 78%

Total 2224 710 1514 32% 68%

Retrieval and burial of the dead

Photograph

Markers of Titanic victims, Fairview Cemetery, Halifax, Nova Scotia

Once the massive loss of life became known, White Star Line chartered the cable ship CS Mackay-Bennett from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, to retrieve bodies.[245] Three other Canadian ships followed in the search: the cable ship Minia,[246] lighthouse supply ship Montmagny and sealing vessel Algerine.[247] Each ship left with embalming supplies, undertakers, and clergy. Of the 333 victims that were eventually recovered, 328 were retrieved by the Canadian ships and five more by passing North Atlantic steamships.[248][r]

The first ship to reach the site of the sinking, the CS Mackay-Bennett, found so many bodies that the embalming supplies aboard were quickly exhausted. Health regulations required that only embalmed bodies could be returned to port.[250] Captain Larnder of the Mackay-Bennett and undertakers aboard decided to preserve only the bodies of first-class passengers, justifying their decision by the need to visually identify wealthy men to resolve any disputes over large estates. As a result, many third-class passengers and crew were buried at sea. Larnder identified many of those buried at sea as crew members by their clothing, and stated that as a mariner, he himself would be contented to be buried at sea.[251]

Bodies recovered were preserved for transport to Halifax, the closest city to the sinking with direct rail and steamship connections. The Halifax coroner, John Henry Barnstead, developed a detailed system to identify bodies and safeguard personal possessions. Relatives from across North America came to identify and claim bodies. A large temporary morgue was set up in the curling rink of the Mayflower Curling Club and undertakers were called in from all across eastern Canada to assist.[251] Some bodies were shipped to be buried in their home towns across North America and Europe. About two-thirds of the bodies were identified. Unidentified victims were buried with simple numbers based on the order in which their bodies were discovered. The majority of recovered victims, 150 bodies, were buried in three Halifax cemeteries, the largest being Fairview Lawn Cemetery followed by the nearby Mount Olivet and Baron de Hirsch cemeteries.[252]

In mid-May 1912, RMS Oceanic recovered three bodies over 200 miles (320 km) from the site of the sinking who were among the original occupants of Collapsible A. When Fifth Officer Harold Lowe and six crewmen returned to the wreck site sometime after the sinking in a lifeboat to pick up survivors, they rescued a dozen males and one female from Collapsible A, but left the dead bodies of three of its occupants.[s] After their retrieval from Collapsible A by Oceanic, the bodies were buried at sea.[253]

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.[254]

Only 333 bodies of Titanic victims were recovered, which amounted to one in five of the over 1,500 victims. Some bodies sank with the ship while currents quickly dispersed bodies and wreckage across hundreds of miles, making them difficult to recover. By June, one of the last search ships reported that life jackets supporting bodies were coming apart and releasing bodies to sink.[255]

Wreck

Main article: Wreck of the RMS Titanic

The bow of the wrecked Titanic, photographed in June 2004

Titanic was long thought to have sunk in one piece and, over the years, many schemes were put forward for raising the wreck. None came to fruition.[256] The fundamental problem was the sheer difficulty of finding and reaching a wreck that lies over 12,000 feet (3,700 m) below the surface, in a location where the water pressure is over 6,500 pounds per square inch (450 bar).[257] A number of expeditions were mounted to find Titanic but it was not until 1 September 1985 that a Franco-American expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel and Robert Ballard succeeded.[258][259][260]

The team discovered that Titanic had in fact split apart, probably near or at the surface, before sinking to the seabed. The separated bow and stern sections lie about a third of a mile (0.6 km) apart in Titanic Canyon off the coast of Newfoundland. They are located 13.2 miles (21.2 km) from the inaccurate coordinates given by Titanic's radio operators on the night of her sinking,[261] and approximately 715 miles (1,151 km) from Halifax and 1,250 miles (2,012 km) from New York.

Both sections struck the sea bed at considerable speed, causing the bow to crumple and the stern to collapse entirely. The bow is by far the more intact section and still contains some surprisingly intact interiors. In contrast, the stern is completely wrecked; its decks have pancaked down on top of each other and much of the hull plating was torn off and lies scattered across the sea floor. The much greater level of damage to the stern is probably due to structural damage incurred during the sinking. Thus weakened, the remainder of the stern was flattened by the impact with the sea bed.[262]

The two sections are surrounded by a debris field measuring approximately 5 by 3 miles (8.0 km × 4.8 km).[263] It contains hundreds of thousands of items, such as pieces of the ship, furniture, dinnerware and personal items, which fell from the ship as she sank or were ejected when the bow and stern impacted on the sea floor.[264] The debris field was also the last resting place of a number of Titanic's victims. Most of the bodies and clothes were consumed by sea creatures and bacteria, leaving pairs of shoes and boots—which have proved to be inedible—as the only sign that bodies once lay there.[265]

Since its initial discovery, the wreck of Titanic has been revisited on numerous occasions by explorers, scientists, filmmakers, tourists and salvagers, who have recovered thousands of items from the debris field for conservation and public display. The ship's condition has deteriorated significantly over the years, particularly from accidental damage by submersibles but mostly because of an accelerating rate of growth of iron-eating bacteria on the hull.[266] In 2006, it was estimated that within 50 years the hull and structure of Titanic would eventually collapse entirely, leaving only the more durable interior fittings of the ship intermingled with a pile of rust on the sea floor.[267]

The ship's bell recovered from the wreck

Many artefacts from Titanic have been recovered from the sea bed by RMS Titanic Inc., which exhibits them in touring exhibitions around the world and in a permanent exhibition at the Luxor Las Vegas hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.[268] A number of other museums exhibit artefacts either donated by survivors or retrieved from the floating bodies of victims of the disaster.[269]

On 16 April 2012, the day after the 100th anniversary of the sinking, photos[270] were released showing possible human remains resting on the ocean floor. The photos, taken by Robert Ballard during an expedition led by NOAA in 2004, show a boot and a coat close to Titanic's stern which experts called "compelling evidence" that it is the spot where somebody came to rest, and that human remains could be buried in the sediment beneath them.[271] The wreck of the Titanic falls under the scope of the 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage. This means that all states party to the convention will prohibit the pillaging, commercial exploitation, sale and dispersion of the wreck and its artefacts. Because of the location of the wreck in international waters and the lack of any exclusive jurisdiction over the wreckage area, the convention provides a state co-operation system, by which states inform each other of any potential activity concerning ancient shipwreck sites, like the Titanic, and co-operate to prevent unscientific or unethical interventions.[272][273][274]

Submersible dives in 2019 have found further deterioration of the wreck, including loss of the captain's bathtub.[275] Between 29 July and 4 August 2019, a two-person submersible vehicle that was conducting research and filming a documentary crashed into the shipwreck. EYOS Expeditions executed the sub dives. It reported that the strong currents pushed the sub into the wreck leaving a "red rust stain on the side of the sub." The report did not mention if the Titanic sustained any damage.[276]

Legacy

Safety

Main article: Changes in safety practices after the sinking of the RMS Titanic

An ice patrol aircraft inspecting an iceberg

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.[277] The convention has been updated by periodic amendments, with a completely new version adopted in 1974.[278] 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.[279]

Further, the United States government passed the Radio Act of 1912. This Act, along with the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, stated that radio communications on passenger ships would be operated 24 hours a day, along with a secondary power supply, so as not to miss distress calls. Also, the Radio Act of 1912 required ships to maintain contact with vessels in their vicinity as well as coastal onshore radio stations.[280] In addition, it was agreed in the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea that the firing of red rockets from a ship must be interpreted as a sign of need for help. Once the Radio Act of 1912 was passed, it was agreed that rockets at sea would be interpreted as distress signals only, thus removing any possible misinterpretation from other ships.[280]

Finally, the disaster led to the formation and international funding of the International Ice Patrol, an agency of the United States Coast Guard that to the present day monitors and reports on the location of North Atlantic Ocean icebergs that could pose a threat to transatlantic sea traffic. Coast Guard aircraft conduct the primary reconnaissance. In addition, information is collected from ships operating in or passing through the ice area. Except for the years of the two World Wars, the International Ice Patrol has worked each season since 1913. During the period, there has not been a single reported loss of life or property due to collision with an iceberg in the patrol area.[281] In 1912, the Board of Trade chartered the barque Scotia to act as a weather ship in the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, keeping a look-out for icebergs. A Marconi wireless was installed to enable her to communicate with stations on the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland.[282][283]

Cultural

Main article: Cultural legacy of RMS Titanic

Titanic Belfast, photographed in November 2017

Titanic has gone down in history as the ship that was called unsinkable.[t] For more than 100 years, she has been the inspiration of fiction and non-fiction. She is commemorated by monuments for the dead and by museums exhibiting artefacts from the wreck. Just after the sinking, memorial postcards sold in huge numbers[284] together with memorabilia ranging from tin candy boxes to plates, whiskey jiggers,[285] and even black mourning teddy bears.[286] The sinking inspired many ballads such as "The Titanic".[287] Several survivors wrote books about their experiences,[288] but it was not until 1955 that the first historically accurate book – A Night to Remember – was published.[289]

The first film about the disaster, Saved from the Titanic, was released only 29 days after the ship sank and had an actual survivor as its star—the silent film actress Dorothy Gibson. This film is considered lost.[290] The British film A Night to Remember (1958) is still widely regarded as the most historically accurate movie portrayal of the sinking.[291] The most financially successful by far has been James Cameron's Titanic (1997), which became the highest-grossing film in history up to that time,[292] as well as the winner of 11 Oscars at the 70th Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Cameron.[293]

The Titanic disaster was commemorated through a variety of memorials and monuments to the victims, erected in several English-speaking countries and in particular in cities that had suffered notable losses. These included Southampton, Liverpool and Belfast in the United Kingdom; New York and Washington, D.C. in the United States; and Cobh (formerly Queenstown) in Ireland.[294] A number of museums around the world have displays on Titanic; the most prominent is in Belfast, the ship's birthplace (see below).

RMS Titanic Inc., which is authorised to salvage the wreck site, has a permanent Titanic exhibition at the Luxor Las Vegas hotel and casino in Nevada which features a 22-ton slab of the ship's hull. It also runs an exhibition which travels around the world.[295] In Nova Scotia, Halifax's Maritime Museum of the Atlantic displays items that were recovered from the sea a few days after the disaster. They include pieces of woodwork such as panelling from the ship's First Class Lounge and an original deckchair,[296] as well as objects removed from the victims.[297] In 2012 the centenary was marked by plays, radio programmes, parades, exhibitions and special trips to the site of the sinking together with commemorative stamps and coins.[193][298][299][300][301]

In a frequently commented-on literary coincidence, Morgan Robertson authored a novel called Futility in 1898 about a fictional British passenger liner with the plot bearing a number of similarities to the Titanic disaster. In the novel, the ship is the SS Titan, a four-stacked liner, the largest in the world and considered unsinkable. And like the Titanic, she sinks in April, after hitting an iceberg and does not have enough lifeboats.[302]

In Northern Ireland

Only recently has the significance of Titanic most notably been given by Northern Ireland where it was built by Harland and Wolff in the capital city, Belfast. While the rest of the world embraced the glory and tragedy of Titanic, in its birth city, Titanic remained a taboo subject throughout the 20th century. The sinking brought tremendous grief and was a blow to the city's pride. Its shipyard was also a place many Catholics regarded as hostile.[303] In the latter half of the century, during a 30-year sectarian conflict, Titanic was a reminder of the lack of civil rights that in part contributed towards the Troubles. While the fate of Titanic remained a well-known story within local households throughout the 20th century, commercial investment in projects recalling RMS Titanic's legacy was modest because of these issues.[304]

After the Troubles and Good Friday Agreement, the number of overseas tourists visiting Northern Ireland dramatically increased to 30 million (100% rise by 2008).[305] It was subsequently identified in the Northern Ireland Tourism Board's Strategic Framework for Action 2004–2007 that the significance of and interest in Titanic globally (partly due to the 1997 film Titanic) was not being fully exploited as a tourist attraction.[306] Thus, Titanic Belfast was spearheaded, along with some smaller projects, such as a Titanic memorial.[307]

In 2012 on the ship's centenary, the Titanic Belfast visitor attraction was opened on the site of the shipyard where Titanic was built.[308] It was Northern Ireland's second most visited tourist attraction with almost 700,000 visitors in 2016.[309]

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 iconic and uniting symbols.[310]

In late August 2018, several groups were vying for the right to purchase the 5,500 Titanic relics that were an asset of the bankrupt Premier Exhibitions.[311] Eventually, Titanic Belfast, Titanic Foundation Limited and the National Museums Northern Ireland joined with the National Maritime Museum as a consortium that was raising money to purchase the 5,500 artefacts. The group intended to keep all of the items together as a single exhibit. Oceanographer Robert Ballard said he favored this bid since it would ensure that the memorabilia would be permanently displayed in Belfast (where Titanic was built) and in Greenwich.[311] The museums were critical of the bid process set by the Bankruptcy court in Jacksonville, Florida. The minimum bid for the 11 October 2018 auction was set at US$21.5 million (£16.5m) and the consortium did not have enough funding to meet that amount.[312][313] On 17 October 2018, The New York Times reported that a consortium of three hedge funds—Apollo Global Management, Alta Fundamental Advisers, and PacBridge Capital Partners—had paid US$19.5 million for the collection.[314]

Appendix

Diagrams of RMS Titanic

Timeline of RMS Titanic

Replicas

See also: Replica Titanic, Titanic II, and Romandisea Titanic

The 1st-Class Lounge of the Olympic, which was almost identical to that of the Titanic, seen today as a dining room in the White Swan Hotel, Alnwick

There have been several proposals and studies for a project to build a replica ship based on the Titanic. A project by South African businessman Sarel Gaus was abandoned in 2006, and a project by Australian businessman Clive Palmer was announced in 2012, known as the Titanic II.

A Chinese shipbuilding company known as Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group Co., Ltd commenced construction in November 2016 to build a replica ship of the Titanic for use in a resort. The vessel will house many features of the original, such as a ballroom, dining hall, theatre, first-class cabins, economy cabins and swimming pool.[322][323] Tourists will be able to reside inside the Titanic during their time at the resort. It will be permanently docked at the resort and feature an audiovisual simulation of the sinking, which has caused some criticism.[324]

The RMS Olympic was the sister ship of the Titanic. The interior decoration of the dining salon and the grand staircase were in identical style and created by the same craftsmen. Large parts of the interior of the Olympic were later sold and are now in the White Swan Hotel, Alnwick, which gives an impression of how the interior of the Titanic looked.

See also

icon Transport portal

icon Oceans portal

flag United Kingdom portal

RMS Titanic alternative theories, alternative explanations for the fate of the Titanic (rather than it hitting an iceberg)

Titanic in popular culture

Seamen's Act

Lists of shipwrecks

The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futility

Comparable disasters

Eastland disaster, a ship capsizing in 1915 after being fitted with extra lifeboats

MS Estonia

RMS Empress of Ireland

Notes

 The death toll of the sinking of the Tek Sing in 1822 is not known exactly, but it may have exceeded that of the Titanic.

 Carlisle would leave the project in 1910, before the ships were launched, when he became a shareholder in Welin Davit & Engineering Company Ltd, the firm making the ship's davits.[22] Wilding was sacked following the Titanic disaster, having apparently been blamed by Pirrie, unfairly, for the ship's loss.[23]

 It was kept off-limits to passengers; the famous "flying" scene at the ship's bow from the 1997 film Titanic would not have been permitted in real life.

 This photo is probably of Titanic's sister ship, Olympic.[36]

 Copy of the neoclassical oil painting by Merry-Joseph Blondel[71]

 Measurement of lifeboats: 1–2: 25'2" long by 7'2" wide by 3'2" deep; 326.6 cubic feet (9.25 m3); 3–16: 30' long by 9'1" wide by 4' deep; 655.2 cubic feet (18.55 m3) and A–D: 27'5" long by 8' wide by 3' deep; 376.6 cubic feet (10.66 m3)

 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]".[82]

 He expressed deep disappointment about the decision before the voyage but was presumably greatly relieved afterwards.[118]

 Titanic also had a ship's cat, Jenny, who gave birth to a litter of kittens shortly before the ship's maiden voyage; all perished in the sinking.[122]

 Known afterward as the "Unsinkable Molly Brown" due to her efforts in helping other passengers while the ship sank.

 Captain Edward Smith had been in command of Titanic's sister Olympic when she in 1911 collided with a warship. Even though that ship was designed to sink others by ramming them, it suffered greater damage than Olympic, thereby strengthening the image of the class being unsinkable.[161][162]

 The official enquiry found that damage extended about 300 feet, but both Edward Wilding's testimony and modern ultrasound surveys of the wreck suggest the total area was perhaps a few narrow openings totalling perhaps no more than 12 to 13 square feet (1.1 to 1.2 m2).[165][90]

 An incident confirmed this philosophy while Titanic was under construction: the White Star liner Republic was involved in a collision and sank. Even though she did not have enough lifeboats for all passengers, they were all saved because the ship was able to stay afloat long enough for them to be ferried to ships coming to assist.[168]

 Life expectancy in such temperatures is often under 15 minutes even for people who are young and fit. The victims would have died from bodily reactions to freezing water rather than hypothermia (loss of core temperature). Immersed into freezing seas, around 20% of victims die within two minutes from cold shock (uncontrolled rapid breathing and gasping causing water inhalation, massive increase in blood pressure, cardiac strain leading to cardiac arrest, and panic), another 50% die within 15–30 minutes from cold incapacitation (inability to use or control limbs and hands for swimming or gripping, as the body shuts down peripheral muscles to protect its core),[176] and exhaustion and unconsciousness cause drowning, claiming the rest within a similar time.[177]

 The Salvation Army newspaper, The War Cry, reported that "none but a heart of stone would be unmoved in the presence of such anguish. Night and day that crowd of pale, anxious faces had been waiting patiently for the news that did not come. Nearly every one in the crowd had lost a relative."[195] It was not until 17 April that the first incomplete lists of survivors came through, delayed by poor communications.[196]

 On 23 April, the Daily Mail reported: "Late in the afternoon hope died out. The waiting crowds thinned, and silent men and women sought their homes. In the humbler homes of Southampton there is scarcely a family who has not lost a relative or friend. Children returning from school appreciated something of tragedy, and woeful little faces were turned to the darkened, fatherless homes."[203]

 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.[234]

 Most of the bodies were numbered; however, the five passengers buried at sea by Carpathia went unnumbered.[249]

 Thomson Beattie, a first class passenger, and two crew members, a fireman and a seaman.

 An example is Daniel Butler's book about RMS Titanic, titled Unsinkable.

 Ship's time; at the time of the collision, Titanic's clocks were set to 2 hours 2 minutes ahead of Eastern Time Zone and 2 hours 58 minutes behind Greenwich Mean Time.[320]

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 "Cruise to mark Titanic centenary". BBC News. 15 April 2009.

 "Gibraltar Titanic stamps". Gibraltar-stamps.com. Archived from the original on 1 May 2013. Retrieved 28 May 2013.

 "Titanic – Futility". Archived from the original on 22 December 2012. Retrieved 15 October 2014.

 "New Titanic Belfast complex opens". BBC. 31 March 2012. Archived from the original on 6 January 2021. Retrieved 3 February 2018.

 Dalby, Douglas (16 April 2012). "Raising the Memory of the Titanic, and a City's Role in Its Creation". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 4 February 2018. Retrieved 3 February 2018.

 O'Rourke, Richard (17 October 2011). "Reducing Ireland's Oil Dependence: additional thoughts". aspoireland. Archived from the original on 4 February 2018. Retrieved 3 February 2018.

 "a strategic framework for action 2004–2007" (PDF). nitb. Northern Ireland Tourist Board. Archived (PDF) from the original on 4 January 2018. Retrieved 3 February 2018.

 "Birth of Titanic Belfast". nitb. Northern Ireland Tourist Board. Archived from the original on 4 February 2018. Retrieved 3 February 2018.

 BBC News & 31 March 2012.

 "In Full: NI's top tourist attractions for 2016". News Letter. 25 May 2017. Archived from the original on 26 January 2018. Retrieved 3 February 2018.

 "Building a Prosperous and United Community: A Progress Report" (PDF). British Government. Archived (PDF) from the original on 1 August 2017. Retrieved 3 February 2018.

 Dawn McCarty; Jef Feeley; Chris Dixon (24 July 2018). "James Cameron: Getting Titanic Artifacts to U.K. Would Be 'a Dream'". National Geographic. Archived from the original on 2 September 2018. Retrieved 2 September 2018.

 Meredith, Robbie (5 October 2018). "Titanic treasure not to return to Belfast". BBC News. Archived from the original on 6 January 2021. Retrieved 6 October 2018.

 "The Basch Report: Titanic artifacts finally to be sold at auction | Jax Daily Record". Financial News & Daily Record – Jacksonville, Florida. 20 September 2018. Archived from the original on 6 January 2021. Retrieved 6 October 2018.

 Tsang, Amie (17 August 2018). "The Titanic's Artifacts Are About to Change Hands. Here's What's for Sale". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 6 January 2021. Retrieved 22 October 2019.

 Beveridge, Bruce; Andrews, Scott; Hall, Steve; Klistorner, Daniel (2009). "Chapter 1: Inception & Construction Plans". In Braunschweiger, Art (ed.). Titanic: The Ship Magnificent. Vol. I. Gloucestershire, United Kingdom: History Press. ISBN 9780752446066. Archived from the original on 24 April 2012. Retrieved 25 May 2011.

 "Launch of Titanic". National Museums Northern Ireland. 2011. Archived from the original on 26 April 2011. Retrieved 30 May 2011.

 Lord 2005, p. 148.

 Lord 2005, p. 149.

 Lord 2005, p. 150.

 Halpern 2011, p. 78.

 "British Wreck Commissioner's Inquiry". British Wreck Commissioner's Inquiry Report. Titanic Inquiry Project. Archived from the original on 21 October 2012. Retrieved 19 June 2010.

 "China to build full-size Titanic replica". Sky News Australia. Archived from the original on 5 December 2016. Retrieved 25 March 2017.

 Xuequan, Mu. "Chinese manufacturer builds Titanic replica". news.xinhuanet.com. Archived from the original on 1 December 2016. Retrieved 25 March 2017.

 "Full size Titanic replica will stage 'simulation' of iceberg collision in China". The Independent. 30 November 2016. Archived from the original on 6 January 2021. Retrieved 25 March 2017.

Bibliography

Books

Aldridge, Rebecca (2008). The Sinking of the Titanic. New York: Infobase Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7910-9643-7.

Ballard, Robert D. (1987). The Discovery of the Titanic. New York: Warner Books. ISBN 978-0-446-51385-2.

Barczewski, Stephanie (2006). Titanic: A Night Remembered. London: Hambledon Continuum. ISBN 978-1-85285-500-0.

Barratt, Nick (2009). Lost Voices From the Titanic: The Definitive Oral History. London: Random House. ISBN 978-1-84809-151-1.

Bartlett, W. B. (2011). Titanic: 9 Hours to Hell, the Survivors' Story. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Amberley Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4456-0482-4.

Behe, George (2015). Voices from the Carpathia: Rescuing RMS Titanic. Cheltenham: History Press. ISBN 978-0-750-96464-7.

Beveridge, Bruce; Hall, Steve (2004). Olympic & Titanic: The Truth Behind the Conspiracy. Haverford, Pennsylvania: Infinity Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7414-1949-1. Archived from the original on 6 January 2021. Retrieved 15 October 2020.

Beveridge, Bruce (2008). Titanic—The Ship Magnificent Volume One: Design & Construction. Stroud: The History Press. ISBN 978-0-7524-4606-6.

Beveridge, Bruce; Hall, Steve (2011). "Description of the ship". In Halpern, Samuel (ed.). Report into the Loss of the SS Titanic: A Centennial Reappraisal. Stroud, UK: The History Press. ISBN 978-0-7524-6210-3.

Brewster, Hugh; Coulter, Laurie (1998). 882½ Amazing Answers to your Questions about the Titanic. Madison Press Book. ISBN 978-0-590-18730-5.

Brewster, Hugh (2012). Rms Titanic: Gilded Lives On A Fatal Voyage. Collins. ISBN 978-1443405300.

Butler, Daniel Allen (1998). Unsinkable: the full story of the RMS Titanic. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books. ISBN 978-0-8117-1814-1.

Butler, Daniel Allen (2002) [1998]. Unsinkable: the full story of the RMS Titanic. USA: Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-306-81110-4.

Chernow, Ron (2010). The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance. New York: Grove Press. ISBN 978-0-8021-4465-2. Archived from the original on 29 December 2019. Retrieved 15 October 2020.

Chirnside, Mark (2004). The Olympic-class Ships: Olympic, Titanic, Britannic. Stroud, England: Tempus. ISBN 978-0-7524-2868-0. Archived from the original on 6 January 2021. Retrieved 15 October 2020.

Crosbie, Duncan; Mortimer, Sheila (2006). Titanic: The Ship of Dreams. New York, NY: Orchard Books. ISBN 978-0-439-89995-6.

Eaton, John P.; Haas, Charles A. (1987). Titanic: Destination Disaster: The Legends and the Reality. Wellingborough, UK: Patrick Stephens. ISBN 978-0-00-732164-3.

Eaton, John P.; Haas, Charles A. (1994). Titanic: Triumph and Tragedy. Wellingborough, UK: Patrick Stephens. ISBN 978-1-85260-493-6.

Eaton, John P.; Haas, Charles A. (1995). Titanic: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-03697-8.

Eaton, John P.; Haas, Charles A. (1999). Titanic: A Journey Through Time. Sparkford, Somerset: Patrick Stephens. ISBN 978-1-85260-575-9.

Gill, Anton (2010). Titanic : the real story of the construction of the world's most famous ship. Channel 4 Books. ISBN 978-1-905026-71-5.

Halpern, Samuel (2011). "Account of the Ship's Journey Across the Atlantic". In Halpern, Samuel (ed.). Report into the Loss of the SS Titanic: A Centennial Reappraisal. Stroud, UK: The History Press. ISBN 978-0-7524-6210-3.

Halpern, Samuel; Weeks, Charles (2011). "Description of the Damage to the Ship". In Halpern, Samuel (ed.). Report into the Loss of the SS Titanic: A Centennial Reappraisal. Stroud, UK: The History Press. ISBN 978-0-7524-6210-3.

Heyer, Paul (2012). Titanic Century: Media, Myth, and the Making of a Cultural Icon. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-0-313-39815-5.

Howells, Richard (1999). The Myth of the Titanic. United Kingdom: MacMillan Press. ISBN 978-0-333-72597-9.

Hutchings, David F.; de Kerbrech, Richard P. (2011). RMS Titanic 1909–12 (Olympic Class): Owners' Workshop Manual. Sparkford, Yeovil: Haynes. ISBN 978-1-84425-662-4.

Landau, Elaine (2001). Heroine of the Titanic: The Real Unsinkable Molly Brown. New York. pp. 22–23. ISBN 978-0-395-93912-3. Archived from the original on 6 January 2021. Retrieved 15 October 2020.

Lord, Walter (1976). A Night to Remember. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-004757-8.

Lord, Walter (1997) [1955]. A Night to Remember (3rd ed.). New York: Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 978-0-553-27827-9.

Lord, Walter (2005) [1955]. A Night to Remember. New York: St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 978-0-8050-7764-3.

Lynch, Don (1992). Titanic: An Illustrated History. New York: Hyperion. ISBN 978-1-56282-918-6.

Maniera, Leyla (2003). Christie's Century of Teddy Bears. London: Pavilion. ISBN 978-1-86205-595-7.

McCarty, Jennifer Hooper; Foecke, Tim (2012) [2008]. What Really Sank The Titanic – New Forensic Evidence. New York: Citadel. ISBN 978-0-8065-2895-3.

McCluskie, Tom (1998). Anatomy of the Titanic. London: PRC Publishing. ISBN 978-1-85648-482-4.

Merideth, Lee W. (2003). 1912 Facts About Titanic. Sunnyvale, CA: Rocklin Press. ISBN 978-0-9626237-9-0.

Mowbray, Jay Henry (1912). Sinking of the Titanic. Harrisburg, PA: The Minter Company. OCLC 9176732.

Parisi, Paula (1998). Titanic and the Making of James Cameron. New York: Newmarket Press. ISBN 978-1-55704-364-1.

Piouffre, Gérard (2009). Le Titanic ne répond plus (in French). Larousse. ISBN 978-2-263-02799-4.

Rasor, Eugene L. (2001). The Titanic: historiography and annotated bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-31215-1.

Reade, Leslie (1993). The Ship That Stood Still: The Californian and Her Mysterious Role in the Titanic Disaster. Edited by Edward de Groot. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 9780393035377.

Spignesi, Stephen J. (1998). The Complete Titanic: From the Ship's Earliest Blueprints to the Epic Film. Secaucus, New Jersey: Birch Lane Press. ISBN 978-1-55972-483-8.

Spignesi, Stephen J. (2012). The Titanic For Dummies. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-118-20651-5.

Verhoeven, John D. (2007). Steel Metallurgy for the Non-Metallurgist. Materials Park, OH: ASM International. ISBN 978-0-87170-858-8.

Ward, Greg (2012). The Rough Guide to the Titanic. London: Rough Guides Ltd. ISBN 978-1-4053-8699-9.

Wels, Susan (1997). Titanic: Legacy of the World's Greatest Ocean Liner. Del Mar, California: Tehabi Books. ISBN 978-0-7835-5261-3.

Journals and news articles

Broad, William J. (8 April 1997). "Toppling Theories, Scientists Find 6 Slits, Not Big Gash, Sank Titanic". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 31 August 2020. Retrieved 5 November 2011.

Broad, William J. (15 April 2008). "In Weak Rivets, a Possible Key to Titanic's Doom". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 31 August 2020. Retrieved 13 March 2012.

Canfield, Clarke (8 March 2012). "Full Titanic site mapped for 1st time". The Associated Press. Archived from the original on 2 January 2013. Retrieved 9 March 2012.

Felkins, Katherine; Leighly, HP; Jankovic, A (1998), "The Royal Mail Ship Titanic: Did a Metallurgical Failure Cause a Night to Remember?", JOM, 50 (1): 12–18, Bibcode:1998JOM....50a..12F, doi:10.1007/s11837-998-0062-7, S2CID 109593098, archived from the original on 30 June 2018, retrieved 10 January 2015

Foecke, Tim (26 September 2008). "What really sank the Titanic?". Materials Today. Elsevier. 11 (10): 48. doi:10.1016/s1369-7021(08)70224-4. Archived from the original on 31 August 2020. Retrieved 4 March 2012.

Ryan, Paul R. (Winter 1985–1986). "The Titanic Tale". Oceanus. 4 (28).

"New Titanic Belfast complex opens". BBC News. 31 March 2012. Archived from the original on 6 January 2021. Retrieved 9 April 2012.

"Is this the last chance to see the Titanic?". BBC News. 2 October 2018. Archived from the original on 6 January 2021. Retrieved 9 January 2020.

Investigations

"Report on the Loss of the "Titanic." (s.s.)". British Wreck Commissioner's Inquiry, Final Report (Watertight Compartments). 30 July 1912. Archived from the original on 3 January 2014. Retrieved 14 April 2012.

Mersey, Lord (1999) [1912]. The Loss of the Titanic, 1912. The Stationery Office. ISBN 978-0-11-702403-8.

External links

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Ruhlow, Tina (December 2020). "50 Images From The Titanic You Have To See To Believe". Reference.com. Archived from the original on 26 December 2020.

Titanic Footage and Survivors Interviews – YouTube

Titanic Footage: Leaving Belfast – British Pathé

References to the Titanic in European Historic Newspapers

Rare Postcard from the Titanic

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Titanic

First class facilitiesSecond and Third class facilitiesGrand StaircaseAnimals aboardMusicians

Sinking

Conspiracy theoriesChanges in safety practicesLegends and mythsLifeboatsLifeboat No. 1British inquiryUnited States inquiryWreck of the Titanic

Deck officers

Edward J. Smith (Captain)Henry Tingle Wilde (Chief Officer)William McMaster Murdoch (First Officer)Charles H. Lightoller (Second Officer)Herbert Pitman (Third Officer)Joseph G. Boxhall (Fourth Officer)Harold G. Lowe (Fifth Officer)James Paul Moody (Sixth Officer)Joseph Bell (Machine Room Manager)

Crew members

Frederick BarrettHarold BrideWilliam Denton CoxSid DanielsFrederick FleetLuigi GattiRobert HichensViolet JessopArchie JewellCharles JoughinReginald LeeEvelyn MarsdenWilliam MintramJack PhillipsGeorge Symons

Passengers

Fatalities

Allison familyThomas AndrewsJohn Jacob Astor IVDavid John BowenArchibald ButtThomas BylesRoderick ChisholmWalter Donald DouglasAnnie FunkJacques FutrelleSidney Leslie GoodwinBenjamin GuggenheimJohn HarperWallace HartleyCharles Melville HaysEdward Austin KentJoseph Philippe Lemercier LarocheFrancis Davis MilletHarry Markland MolsonClarence MooreEino Viljami PanulaW. T. SteadIda StrausIsidor StrausJohn B. ThayerFrank M. Warren Sr.George Dennick WickGeorge Dunton WidenerHarry Elkins WidenerDuane WilliamsGeorge Henry Wright

Survivors

(last living)

Rhoda AbbottTrevor AllisonLillian AsplundMadeleine AstorRuth BeckerLawrence BeesleyKarl BehrDickinson BishopMauritz Håkan Björnström-SteffanssonElsie BowermanFrancis BrowneMargaret "Molly" BrownHelen Churchill CandeeCharlotte Drake CardezaLucile CarterGladys CherryMillvina DeanSir Cosmo Duff-GordonLucy, Lady Duff-GordonDorothy GibsonArchibald Gracie IVFrank John William GoldsmithEdith HaismanHenry S. HarperEva HartMargaret Bechstein HaysMasabumi HosonoJ. Bruce IsmayEleanor Ileen JohnsonLouise KinkLouise LarocheMargaret MannionMichel Marcel NavratilAlfred NourneyArthur Godfrey PeuchenJane QuickWinnifred QuickEdith RosenbaumNoël Leslie, Countess of RothesEmily RyersonAgnes SandströmBeatrice SandströmFrederic Kimber SewardEloise Hughes SmithJack ThayerMarian ThayerBarbara WestElla Holmes WhiteR. Norris WilliamsMarie Grice Young

Monuments

and memorials

General

Bandstand (Ballarat)

United Kingdom

Engine Room Heroes (Liverpool)Engineers (Southampton)Musicians (Southampton)Titanic (Belfast)Orchestra (Liverpool)

United States

Straus Park (New York City)Titanic (New York City)Titanic (Washington, D.C.)Butt–Millet Memorial Fountain (Washington, D.C.)

Popular culture

(cultural legacy)

Books

The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futility (1898)A Night to Remember (book)Polar the Titanic Bear

Films

Saved from the Titanic (1912)In Nacht und Eis (1912)Atlantic (1929)Titanic (1943)Titanic (1953)A Night to Remember (1958)The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964)Raise the Titanic (1980)Secrets of the Titanic (1986)Titanica (1992)Titanic (1997)The Legend of the Titanic (1999)Titanic: The Legend Goes On (2000)Ghosts of the Abyss (2003)Tentacolino (2004)Titanic II (2010)

Television

A Night to Remember (1956)S.O.S. Titanic (1979)Titanic: The Complete Story (1994)Titanic (1996)No Greater Love (1996)"A Flight to Remember" (Futurama) (1999)Titanic (2012)Titanic: Blood and Steel (2012)Saving the Titanic (2012)

Music

"The Titanic (It Was Sad When That Great Ship Went Down)" (folk song)The Unsinkable Molly Brown (musical)The Sinking of the Titanic (music composition)Titanic (musical)Titanic (soundtrack album)Back to Titanic (soundtrack album)"My Heart Will Go On" (Celine Dion song)"Nearer, My God, to Thee" (song)

Video games

Titanic: Adventure Out of Time (1996)Dive to the Titanic (2010)Titanic VR (2018)Titanic: Honor and Glory (TBA)

Museums

and exhibitions

SeaCity Museum (Southampton)Titanic Museum (Branson, Missouri)Titanic Museum (Pigeon Forge, Tennessee)Maritime Museum of the Atlantic (Halifax)Titanic Belfast

Places

Titanic (Canada)Titanic CanyonTitanic Quarter, BelfastCape Race, NewfoundlandFairview Lawn CemeteryMount Olivet Cemetery (Halifax, Nova Scotia)Arrol GantryTitanic, Oklahoma

Related

Ships

RMS BalticRMS OlympicHMHS BritannicSS Mount TempleRMS CarpathiaSS CalifornianCS Mackay-BennettSS BirmaTitanic IIReplica TitanicRomandisea Titanic

Law

RMS Titanic Maritime Memorial ActAgreement Concerning the Shipwrecked Vessel RMS Titanic

Others

White Star LineDavid BlairArthur RostronStanley LordTitanic Historical SocietyTitanic International SocietyEncyclopedia TitanicaHalomonas titanicaeWomen and children firstSOSCQDRobert BallardLa Circassienne au Bain

 Category

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Olympic-class ocean liners

OlympicTitanicBritannic

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Last remaining survivors from Titanic

Louise Kink (1908–1992)Eva Hart (1905–1996)Eleanor Johnson (1910–1998)Edith Brown (1896–1997)Michel Navratil (1908–2001)Lillian Asplund (1906–2006)Barbara West (1911–2007)Millvina Dean (1912–2009)

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Four-funneled ocean liners

Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse (1897)Deutschland (1900)Kronprinz Wilhelm (1901)Kaiser Wilhelm II (1902)Lusitania (1906)Mauretania (1906)Kronprinzessin Cecilie (1906)France (1910)Olympic (1910)Titanic (1912)Aquitania (1913)Britannic (1914)Arundel Castle (1921)Windsor Castle (1922)

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Timeline of largest passenger ships

Briefly held the title before the preceding ship reclaimed it†Shared record‡

SS Royal William (1831)SS Great Western (1837)SS British Queen (1839)SS President (1840)†SS Great Britain (1843)RMS Atrato (1853)SS Great Eastern (1858)SS City of New York (1888)RMS Campania (1893)‡SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse (1897)RMS Oceanic (1899)RMS Celtic (1901)RMS Cedric (1903)RMS Baltic (1904)RMS Empress of Scotland (1906)RMS Lusitania (1907)RMS Mauretania (1907)RMS Olympic (1911)RMS Titanic (1912)†SS Imperator (1913)SS Leviathan (1914)RMS Majestic (1922)SS Normandie (1935)RMS Queen Mary (1936)†RMS Queen Elizabeth (1946)SS France (1972)MS Sovereign of the Seas (1987)†Sun Princess (1995)MS Carnival Destiny (1996)MS Grand Princess (1998)MS Voyager of the Seas (1999)MS Explorer of the Seas (2000)MS Navigator of the Seas (2002)RMS Queen Mary 2 (2003)MS Freedom of the Seas (2006)Liberty of the Seas (2007)Oasis of the Seas (2009)‡Harmony of the Seas (2016)Symphony of the Seas (2018)Wonder of the Seas (2022)

Waves in pacifica 1.jpg Oceans portal

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White Star Line ships

Surviving ships

Nomadic (1911)

Planned

Olympic (order cancelled)Oceanic (never completed)

Former ships

Red Jacket (1853)Blue Jacket (1854)Tayleur (1854)Oceanic (1870)Atlantic (1871)Baltic (1871)Tropic (1871)Asiatic (1871)Republic (1872)Adriatic (1872)Celtic (1872)Traffic (1872)Gaelic (1872)Belgic (1873)Britannic (1874)Germanic (1875)Arabic (1881)Coptic (1881)Ionic (1883)Doric (1883)Belgic (1885)Gaelic (1885)Cufic (1888)Runic (1889)Teutonic (1889)Majestic (1890)Magnetic (1891)Nomadic (1891)Tauric (1891)Naronic (1892)Bovic (1892)Gothic (1893)Cevic (1894)Pontic (1894)Georgic (1895)Delphic (1897)Cymric (1898)Afric (1899)Medic (1899)Persic (1899)Oceanic (1899)Runic (1900)Suevic (1901)Celtic (1901)Athenic (1902)Corinthic (1902)Ionic (1903)Cedric (1903)Victorian (1903)Armenian (1903)Arabic (1903)Romanic (1903)Cretic (1903)Republic (1903)Canopic (1904)Cufic (1904)Baltic (1904)Tropic (1904)Gallic (1907)Adriatic (1907)Laurentic (1909)Megantic (1909)Zeeland (1910)Traffic (1911)Olympic (1911)Belgic (1911)Zealandic (1911)Titanic (1912)Ceramic (1913)Vaderland (1914)Lapland (1914)Britannic (1914)Belgic (1917)Justicia (1918)Vedic (1918)Bardic (1919)Gallic (1920)Mobile (1920)Arabic (1920)Homeric (1920)Haverford (1921)Poland (1922)Majestic (1922)Pittsburgh (1922)Doric (1923)Delphic (1925)Regina (1925)Albertic (1927)Calgaric (1927)Laurentic (1927)Britannic (1929)Georgic (1931)

Classes

Jubilee classBig FourAthenic classOlympic classOceanic Class

Years indicate year of entry into White Star service.

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Ships that were lost on their maiden voyage

Naval ships

Vasa (1628)Galera Victoria (1729)Georgiana (1863)Flach (1866)Grosser Kurfürst (1878)Posidonia (1940)1Bismarck (1941)1Dinsdale (1942)1Shinano (1944)1

Passenger ships

and cargo liners

Amazon (1851)City of Philadelphia (1854)New Era (1854)Tayleur (1854)Willem III (1871)Geltwood (1875)Castilian (1899)SS Friedrich der Grosse (1896/1922)Titanic (1912)SS City of Honolulu (1896/1922)Georges Philippar (1932)Magdalena (1949)Hans Hedtoft (1959)Zenobia (1980)

Cargo ships

Batavia (1629)Vansittart (1719)2Fortuyn (1723)Zeewijk (1727)Amsterdam (1749)Royal Captain (1773)Hartwell (1787)2George Green (1830)Carrier Pigeon (1852)Schomberg (1855)Crescent City (1871)2Catherine Griffiths (1875)Queensmore (1889)Irex (1890)Brecknockshire (1916)1Dumaru (1918)Mecanicien Donzel (1918)1Hastier (1919)Treveal (1920)Adolf Vinnen (1923)Île de Los (1935)Joseph Medill (1935)Mim (1939)Empire Frost (1941)1Empire Thunder (1941)1Michael E (1941)1Alexander Macomb (1942)1Derryheen (1942)1Empire Clough (1942)1Empire Drum (1942)1, 2Empire Dryden (1942)1, 2Empire Spenser (1942)1Fort Good Hope (1942)1Fort la Reine (1942)1George Calvert (1942)1George Thatcher (1942)1Sam Houston (1942)1San Victorio (1942)1Stangarth (1942)1Stephen Hopkins (1942)1Bloody Marsh (1943)1Empire Florizel (1943)1Fort Cedar Lake (1943)1Haakon Jarl (1943)1John Morgan (1943)1J. Pinckney Henderson (1943)Kherzon (1943)Matt W. Ransom (1943)1, 3Molly Pitcher (1943)1Fort Crevier (1944)John A. Treutlen (1944)1Union Star (1981)2Ranga (1982)Reijin (1988)

Racing yachts

Mohawk (1876)

1 = Due to enemy action. 2 = Maiden revenue-earning voyage. 3 = Constructive total loss

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Shipwrecks and maritime incidents in 1912

Shipwrecks

2 Feb: HMS A329 Feb: H. K. Bedford12 Mar: Oceana20 Mar: Koombana2 Apr: USS Santee15 Apr: Titanic (sinking)20 Apr: Sultaniye12 May: HMS A3May (unknown date): USLHT Armeria, USS Pensacola8 Jun: Vendémiaire26 Jun: Naniwa8 Aug: HMS Holland 517 Aug: Leafield1 Sep: HMS Waterwitch3 Sep: HMS Holland 428 Sep: Kiche Maru4 Oct: HMS B216 Oct: Ralph Creyke, Nicaragua22 Oct: SS Keystorm31 Oct: Feth-i BülendOct: Admiral Lazarev23 Nov: Rouse Simmons28 Nov: FriendshipUnknown date: City of Adelaide, USS Ericsson, Fox

Other incidents

7 Jan: HMS Orion, HMS Revenge18 Jan: Sarah Dixon2 Feb: HMS Hazard12 Mar: Pisagua14-15 Apr: Californian2 Jun: Friendship, Derwent8 Jun: Saint Louis16 Aug: Camano, Sioux4 Oct: Amerika12 Oct: ArabiaDecember (unknown date): Lady Elizabeth, Pelayo

1911 Arrow Blue Left 001.svg Arrow Blue Right 001.svg 1913

Authority control Edit this at Wikidata

General

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National libraries

NorwaySpainFrance (data)CataloniaGermanyIsraelUnited StatesLatviaCzech RepublicAustralia

Other

Faceted Application of Subject TerminologySocial Networks and Archival ContextTrove (Australia) 1

Categories: RMS Titanic1910s in Newfoundland1911 ships1912 in Canada1912 in the United Kingdom1912 in the United StatesFour funnel linersHistory of Halifax, Nova ScotiaOlympic-class ocean linersPassenger ships of the United KingdomShips sunk by icebergsShips built by Harland and WolffShips built in BelfastShips of IrelandShips of the White Star LineShipwrecks of the Newfoundland and Labrador coastSteamships of the United KingdomShipwrecks in the Atlantic Ocean1985 archaeological discoveries

  • Condition: New
  • Modified Item: No
  • Country/Region of Manufacture: United Kingdom
  • Nautical Subtype: Titanic
  • Company: White Star Line
  • Item Type: Souvenirs
  • Sub-Type: Titanic
  • Nautical Type: Ocean Liners/ Cruise Ships

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