HER size, her beauty; the way Titanic epitomised the Age of Elegance have played their part in keeping her legend alive.
More than anything, of course, it is the manner of her ending; broken, groaning, the icy air filled with the screams of her desperate crew and passengers that fascinates and repels us. She was described as unsinkable but 1,514 people died after she struck that iceberg on April 14 1912.
It was so different on that proud day in March 1909 when they laid her keel at the Harland and Woolf shipyard in Belfast. As her owners, the White Star Line, never stopped repeating one of her most crucial design features was her watertight compartments.
“It is so arranged that any two compartments may be flooded without involving the safety of the ship,” they told The Shipbuilder magazine.
Titanic was launched on May 31, 1911 and arrived in her home port of Southampton on April 3, 1912 to prepare for her maiden voyage, first to Cherbourg and then to Queenstown in Ireland, before racing off to New York.
Breathless news reports vied to describe the grandeur of what White Star declared ‘the Queen of the Ocean’. “There were men and women at Southampton whose hearts were uplifted by a sense of gladness and pride,” trumpeted the Daily Graphic.
“For they knew, as experts and lovers of ships, the power, the splendour and the majesty of the Titanic.” As the ‘most outstanding achievement in naval architecture and engineering’ slipped her moorings at midday on April 10, 1912, the city’s pride was palpable.
It remained so until the first reports started filtering through that their most illustrious daughter had struck an iceberg at 11.40pm on April 14.
The actual impact was felt by most on board as ‘the merest quiver’.
But it wasn’t long before those working below decks heard the sound every sailor dreads – the inward rush of sea-water. As it started to pour in, very gently, the bow started to dip.
At 12.20am on April 15 the order was given to launch the lifeboats and the RMS Carpathia started receiving distress messages.
By 12.45am the lifeboats were being launched in earnest; astonishingly, many women were reluctant to get in – they seemed to feel the vast bulk of the Titanic was safer than the fragile little boats on the calm, freezing sea. Even some crew members felt the whole thing could be an elaborate joke.
As the passengers bickered and dithered on deck, hands were dying down below.
As those on board realised what was happening, the urgency increased, not helped by the increasingly alarming angle at which the ship was positioned; bow down and stern protruding into the sky.
Those on the lifeboats rowed away, fearful of what would happen when she finally went. In the event no life-raft was dragged down. But no one who heard it would ever forget the almighty groan Titanic gave as her stern rose up in the air, the lights went out and the screams of the passengers started as they tumbled into the sea.
It was 4.10am before the Carpathia reached the scene and 8.50am before she set off for New York, arriving on April 18.
Within one day the US Inquiry was opened. Despite this and its UK counterpart reaching their conclusions nine decades ago, it appears that in some ways, inquiries into the fate of the Titanic have never stopped. Following painstaking sonar exploration in 1985, the research vessel Knorr made a remarkable discovery. More than seven decades since she had hit the sea bed Titanic was revealed again. Rusting, covered with seaweed but still recognisable, still a ship of dreams..
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