 The New York Herald reports the disaster. RMS Titanic (also SS Titanic) was the largest passenger steamship in the world at the time of her launching, and her builders hoped that she would dominate the transatlantic ocean liner business. During her maiden voyage she struck an iceberg and sank, on April 15, 1912, at 2:20 A.M. The sinking resulted in great loss of life, ranking as one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters in history, and by far the most famous.
Construction
 RMS Titanic (left) undergoes sea trials on April 2. Titanic was built in the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland and the hull was launched on May 31, 1911. She was the second ship of the Olympic-class liners of the White Star Line Company built in that shipyard, and was the largest and most prestigious passenger liner of the day. Titanic was 882 ft 9 in (269 metres) long and 92 ft 6 in (28 metres) wide, 46,328 tons. Although she enclosed more space and therefore had a larger gross tonnage, her hull was exactly the same size as her elder sister Olympic. The ship had 899 crewmen and was built for up to 3,300 passengers. Because she carried mail, she was named with the prefix RMS (Royal Mail Steamer) as well as SS (Steam Ship). As big as the ship was, only three of its four funnels were functional. The fourth was a dummy, and its sole practical purpose was to serve as a flue for the main kitchen.
For its time the ship was unsurpassed in its luxury and opulence. While not the first ship to offer onboard swimming pools, exercise rooms, baths and elevators, Titanic pulled out all the stops and offered a level of service never seen before. The ship offered three elevators for use of passengers in first class, and as an innovation, it offered one elevator for those in second. Passengers in steerage were still made to take the stairs.
She was considered a pinnacle of technological achievement, and with her sixteen watertight compartments she was thought to be well protected from sinking. At the ship's sailing, one employee was quoted as saying to Second Class Passenger Sylvia Caldwell, "Not even God himself could sink this ship".
Maiden voyage
The ship began her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York, USA on April 10, 1912, with Edward Smith as its captain. When it left its berth, the liner New York nearly collided with the Titanic's hull due to suction. The near collision caused an hour's delay. The ship called at Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown (known today as Cobh), Ireland.
An iceberg near Newfoundland On the night of April 14, while sailing south of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, lookouts spotted an iceberg directly ahead of the ship. One of the lookouts, Fredrick Fleet, sounded the ship's bell three times and telephoned the bridge. First Officer William Murdoch ordered an immediate turn to port (left). The iceberg brushed the ship's starboard (right) side, denting the hull in several places, popping rivets below the starboard waterline, and flooding the first six watertight compartments. The weight of the water in her bow (front end) pulled it just low enough for the sea to spill over the watertight compartments, which were open at E deck.
On the port side, the lifeboats were loaded with women and children. On the starboard side, men were allowed refuge once women were no longer in the area. Consequently, many more people were rescued on the starboard than port side.
Lifeboat 7 left the ship at around 00:45 on April 15. Collapsible lifeboat D left at 02:05. The two boats left on the sloping deck floated off — one flooded, the other upside-down.
Over a period of three minutes, starting at 02:18, events happened very rapidly. First, at 02:18, the #1 funnel broke away and sank, killing several in the water. A minute later, the ship began to split in two, the completely flooded bow falling away into the depths. The stern (rear end), momentarily freed of the weight of the bow, bobbed back up and momentarily righted itself before beginning its own death plunge at 02:20. There had been enough lifeboats on board for barely half the passengers and crew. In this tragedy — the worst maritime incident during peacetime — only 705 people from a total of 2,228 survived. 1,523 perished.
 Survivors aboard a lifeboat. As the ship fell into the depths, the two sections ended their final plunges very differently. The streamlined bow planed off about 2,000 feet below the surface and slowed somewhat, landing relatively gently. The stern, however, fell violently to the ocean floor and smashed into the bottom at high speed, and then was struck full force by the wake of its fall, causing severe damage and grinding the hull deep into the silty bottom. By some estimates, the bow may have landed as much as ten minutes after the stern.
Captain Lord of SS Californian, which was called on for help, is sometimes accused of not responding quickly enough. He did not respond until many hours after the sinking. The 712 people who did survive the disaster in lifeboats, were picked up by RMS Carpathia of the Cunard Steamship Lines, commanded by Captain Arthur Henry Rostron who was acclaimed for his immediate and decisive action in coming to the aid of Titanic. Of the 330 bodies recovered, the unclaimed were taken to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where the majority of them were buried in the Fairview Cemetery.
Aftermath and consequences
 Extract from US Navy memorandum concerning Titanic. Despite popular belief, the sinking of Titanic was not the first (or even one of the first) time the internationally-recognized Morse code distress signal "SOS" was used. The SOS signal was first proposed at the International Conference on Wireless Communication at Sea in Berlin in 1906. It was ratified by the international community in 1908 — some four years before the sinking of the Titanic — and had been in widespread use since then. The SOS signal was, however, rarely used by British wireless operators, who preferred the older CQD code. Titanic's Chief Marconi Officer John George Phillips began transmitting CQD until Harold Bride, the junior wireless operator, suggested "Send SOS; it's the new call, and this may be your last chance to send it!" Phillips then began to intersperse SOS with the traditional CQD call. The signal was picked up by SS Californian the following morning, as she did not maintain, and was not required to maintain, 24-hour radio watch.
The disaster was a shock to the international community because it proved to some people that man and his technological achievements were inferior to the powers of nature.
Even a century later there are still several myths about Titanic and its sinking. One is that the rudder was too small and having a larger one may have saved the ship. While a larger rudder may have saved her, the dimensions of the rudder were not legally too small for a ship its size, and in fact the dimensions of the rudder for a ship the size of the Titanic would still be compliant with ship regulations in use today. Had the ship started turning even 5 seconds earlier, or 5 seconds later when the iceberg was spotted, the ship probably would not have sunk. Another myth is that the Titanic alone was deficient in its number of lifeboats. In fact the ship was compliant with British law regulating the number of lifeboats on board, which was based not on the number of passengers but the tonnage of the ship. British Board of Trade regulations for lifeboats were written in 1896 for ships up to 10,000 tons, the largest imaginable size in that day. Titanic tonnage was over 46,000 tons. Andrews, one of the design architects of the Titanic called for 64 life boats in his original design; J. Bruce Ismay (of maiden voyage infamy) called for the removal of over half that amount claiming they took up valuable "promenading" deck space. A further design change reduced the numbers to 20 boats. 63 boats would be required to save every soul if the Titanic sailed with a full passenger and crew complement (she was at 55% capacity on her voyage). Ironically, Andrews did not find a seat in a lifeboat that night whereas Ismay saved himself. All other passenger ships at the time were also far short of the lifeboats needed, but the purpose was not to hold all passengers if a ship sank, but as a transfer mechanism from a sinking ship to a rescue ship. The sinking of the Titanic changed this strategy forever. Even if the ship had carried boats for all, they probably would not have saved many more people. The officers were concerned that the lifeboats' davits would not withstand a full load of 65 persons (which they were rated) so erred towards light loads of about 20 passengers for the first launchings expecting to take further passengers from access doors above the waterline.
Further, the Titanic was "unsinkable"; a general opinion was to remain aboard until rescuing ships hove in sight.
Another myth is that the engineering crews stayed at their posts to the bitter end. This myth was unfortunately perpetuated by Titanic discoverer Bob Ballard's book on the ship published in 1988. In reality, all of the engineering spaces were flooded by 01:15 (just over an hour before the ship's final plunge) and at the time of the plunge the engineers and stokers were on the poop deck with the hundreds of others still stuck on board with no hope of rescue. Nonetheless, King George V decreed engineering officers ever after would display their gold braid epaulets
upon a "royal purple" background as a memorial to the Titanic
engineers.
The sinking of Titanic had an enormous impact on ship construction, and wireless telegraphy. It also led to the convening of the First International Conference on the Safety of Life at Sea, in London, England, on November 12, 1913. The treaty that was produced by the conference, resulted in the formation and international funding of the International Ice Patrol, an agency of the United States Coast Guard, which to the present day monitors and reports on the location of North Atlantic Ocean icebergs that could pose a threat to trans-Atlantic sea lane traffic. It was also agreed in the new regulations that all passenger vessels would have sufficient lifeboats for everyone on board, that appropriate drills would be conducted, and that radio communications would be operated 24 hours a day along with a secondary power supply, so as not to miss distress calls. In addition, it was agreed that the firing of red rockets from a ship must be interpreted as a distress signal.
An often-quoted (but unverified) story states that the person who received the radio distress signal from Titanic was David Sarnoff, who would become the founder of media giant RCA. The legend (which was willingly promoted by Sarnoff and his supporters) says that he manned his station for three days, relaying messages of the disaster and its aftermath to land-based radio.
See also: Living Titanic Survivors.
The rediscovery of Titanic
 Titanic bow as seen from the MIR I submersible. The wreck was located on September 1, 1985 by a joint American-French expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel and Dr. Robert Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. It was found at a depth of 3,800 meters, at 41°43′55″N 49°56′45″W, near Newfoundland. The ship was found to have broken in two large pieces, which lie on the bottom of the ocean a few hundred meters apart, separated by a debris field. Scientists believe that the heavy water pressure in the forward compartments began to break the ship down the middle as the bow section filled with water and sank first while the stern remained buoyant before sinking later.
During subsequent dives, scientists took small pieces of the Titanic's iron hull up with them. A detailed analysis of the pieces revealed that the ship's iron plating was of a variety that loses its elasticity and becomes brittle in cold or icy water, leaving it vulnerable to dent-induced ruptures. Furthermore, the rivets holding the hull together were much more fragile than once thought.
Dr. Ballard and his team did not bring up any artifacts from the site, considering it to be tantamount to grave robbing. Under international maritime law, however, the recovery of artifacts is necessary to establish salvage rights to a shipwreck. In the years after the find, Titanic has been the object of a number of court cases concerning ownership of artifacts and the wreck site itself.
Approximately 6,000 artifacts have been removed from the wreck. Many of these are now permanently on display at the maritime museum in Greenwich, England.
Current condition of the wreck
Many scientists, including the discoverer of the wreckage, Bob Ballard, are concerned that visits by tourists in submersibles are hastening the decay of the wreck. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that "the hull and structure of the ship may collapse to the ocean floor within the next 50 years."
Ballard's book Return to Titanic, published by the National Geographic Society, includes photographs depicting the deterioration of the promenade deck and damage caused as submersibles bump the deck while landing; the mast has been stripped of its bell and its brass light is missing. There is a recent gash on the bow section where block letters once spelled Titanic, and part of the brass telemotor which once held the ship's wooden wheel is now twisted.
Comparable maritime disasters
At the time, the sinking of the Titanic amounted to the worst maritime disaster in history (1,514 dead), but it has since been surpassed.
In terms of loss of life in a single vessel, the worst maritime incident in history is recognised as the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff by a Russian submarine in 1945 in which between 5,000 and 7,000 people died. Some recent studies of the disaster estimated that the actual death toll was over 9,000.
The worst maritime incident in history, in terms of loss of life in two vessels, is recognised as the sinking of the Cap Arcona and the Thielbek by RAF Typhoons on May 3 1945 in which around 8,000 deportees died.
On 17 June 1940 HMT Lancastria, evacuating troops and civilians from Saint-Nazaire, France, was sunk by German aircraft. The death toll is estimated at anything between 4,000 to 9,000. The true figure will remain unknown until secret British Government papers are released to the public in 2040.
In the world of fiction, Morgan Robertson's 1898 novella Futility was found to have many parallels with the Titanic disaster; Robertson's work concerned a fictional state-of-the-art ocean liner called Titan, which eventually collides with an iceberg whilst en route to New York, sinking in the dead of night with great loss of life. Both Titan itself and the manner of its demise bore many striking similarities to the eventual fate of Titanic, and Robertson's novella remains in print today as an unnerving curiosity.
Titanic in culture
The sinking of Titanic has been the basis for many novels.
Titanic has featured in a large number of movies and TV movies, most notably:
The most widely-viewed is undoubtedly the 1997 film Titanic, directed by James Cameron and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Confounding expectations that preceded its release, it became the highest-grossing film in history (unadjusted for inflation; Gone with the Wind remains the highest-grossing film in inflation-adjusted dollars). It also won 11 out of 14 Academy Awards, tying with Ben-Hur (1959) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) for the most awards won.
The story was also made into a Broadway musical, Titanic, that ran from 1998 to 2000.
In 1964 the Broadway and film musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown tells Margaret Brown's colorful life story, including the events on Titanic.
Titanic: Adventure Out of Time and Starship Titanic are computer games inspired by the story.
In the hit animated TV series Futurama, one episode saw the cast boarding a space-faring vessel called Titanic. The ship was torn in half by a blackhole on its maiden voyage. The main cast survived, but a female robot who fell in love with Bender was lost.
The Itanium microprocessor has often been jokingly called the "Itanic", since (as of 2004) its sales have fallen far short of the amount of effort that was put into it.
The "Titanic curse"
When Titanic sank, claims were made that a curse existed on the ship. One of the most widely spread legends linked directly into the sectarianism of the city of Belfast, where the ship was built. It was suggested that the ship was given the number 390904 which, when read backwards in a mirror, was claimed to spell 'no pope', a sectarian slogan attacking Roman Catholics that was (and is) widely used provocatively by extreme Protestants in Northern Ireland, where the ship was built. In the extreme sectarianism of northeast Ireland (Northern Ireland itself did not exist until 1920), the ship's sinking, though mourned, was alleged to be on account of the sectarian anti-Catholicism of its manufacturers, the Harland and Wolff company, which had an almost exclusively Protestant workforce and an alleged record of hostility towards Catholics. (Harland and Wolff did have a record of hiring few Catholics; whether that was through policy or because the company's shipyard in Belfast's bay was located in almost exclusively Protestant East Belfast — through which few Catholics would dare to travel — or a mixture of both, is a matter of dispute.)
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