Manasi Agarwal

It was 109 years ago on 15 April 1912, when the largest British Liner ship afloat “RMS Titanic” sank in the Atlantic Ocean on its maiden voyage. Of the estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, more than 1,500 died, making the sinking the deadliest peacetime sinking of a superliner or cruise ship to date. The name Titanic was derived from the Greek mythology. It was built in Belfast, Ireland. Titanic was 882 feet 9 inches long with a maximum breadth of 92 feet 6 inches. Her total height, measured from the base of the keel to the top of the bridge was 104 feet. It 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, A to G Decks, The Orlop Decks and Tank Top. It had cabins for the First, Second & Third class of passengers with lounges, smoke rooms, reading and writing rooms, dinning saloons, a 7 ft. 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. First-class common rooms were impressive in scope and lavishly decorated. They included a Lounge in the style of the Palace of Versailles. À La Carte Restaurant and the Café Parisien provided luxury dining facilities to First Class passengers. 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. The reference point for design was the Hotel Ritz. Separate compartments and cabins were provided for lifeboats, machinery and tools, cargo, postal mails (the designation RMS-Royal Mail Ship), staff and crew. All possible safety measures prevalent at that point of time were taken care of. 

The ship started its maiden journey on 10 April, 1912 from Southampton, England to New York City with Captain Edward John Smith, the most senior of the White Star Line’s captains on command. Some of the most prominent and rich people of the day booked a passage aboard Titanic along with the managing director of the White Star Line company which owned the Titanic and its designer. They were on board to observe any problems and assess the general performance of the new ship. There were around 885 crew members on board. The first three days of the voyage passed without apparent incident. Titanic received a series of warnings from other ships of drifting ice in the area of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Nevertheless, the ship continued to steam at full speed. At 11:40 p.m. on 14 April, a crewman Frederick Fleet spotted an iceberg immediately ahead of Titanic and alerted the bridge. First Officer William Murdoch ordered the ship to be steered around the obstacle and the engines to be reversed, but it was too late; the starboard side of Titanic struck the iceberg, creating a series of holes below the waterline. The hull was not punctured by the iceberg, but rather dented such that the hull’s seams buckled and separated, allowing water to seep 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. Those aboard Titanic were ill-prepared for such an emergency. The officers did not know how many they could safely put aboard the lifeboats and launched many of them barely half-full. Third-class passengers were largely left to fend for themselves, causing many of them to be trapped below decks as the ship filled with water. The ‘women and children first’ protocol was followed when loading the lifeboats. Between 2:10 and 2:15 a.m., 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. 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, before foundering at 2:20 am.  All remaining passengers and crew were immersed in lethally cold water with a temperature of −2 °C. Sudden immersion into freezing water caused death within minutes, either from cardiac arrest, uncontrollable breathing of water or cold incapacitation. Distress signals were sent by wireless, rockets and lamps, but none of the ships that responded were near enough to reach Titanic before she sank. Around 4 am, RMS Carpathia arrived on the scene in response to Titanic’s earlier distress calls. About 710 people survived the disaster and were conveyed by Carpathia to New York, while at least 1,500 people lost their lives. 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. The death toll has been put at between 1,490 and 1,635 people. The enquiries by the British and the U S into the disaster came to similar conclusion that Captain Smith had failed to take proper heed of ice warnings, 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. The number of lifeboats that ships had to carry were out of date and inadequate. The enquiries also came to the conclusion that 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 and responded eventually at 5.30 am by the time it was too late. 

Titanic has gone down in history as the ship that was called unsinkable. For more than 100 years, she has been the inspiration of fiction and non-fiction. The sinking inspired many ballads such as “The Titanic”. Several survivors wrote books about their experiences but it was not until 1955 that the first historically accurate book – A Night to Remember – was published. 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. The British film ‘A Night to Remember (1958)’ is still widely regarded as the most historically accurate movie portrayal of the sinking. The most successful by far has been Titanic (1997), which became the highest grossing film in history up to that time, as well as the winner of 11 Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director for James Cameron.