Titanic watertight compartments full#
Titanic watertight compartments plus#

The employees attending to this collection of First Class luminaries were mostly traveling Second Class, along with academics, tourists, journalists and others who would enjoy a level of service and accommodations equivalent to First Class on most other ships. Other notable passengers included the elderly owner of Macy’s, Isidor Straus, and his wife Ida industrialist Benjamin Guggenheim, accompanied by his mistress, valet and chauffeur and widow and heiress Margaret “Molly” Brown, who would earn her nickname “ The Unsinkable Molly Brown” by helping to maintain calm and order while the lifeboats were being loaded and boosting the spirits of her fellow survivors. The wealthiest passenger was John Jacob Astor IV, heir to the Astor family fortune, who had made waves a year earlier by marrying 18-year-old Madeleine Talmadge Force, a young woman 29 years his junior, shortly after divorcing his first wife. Morgan had planned to join his associates on Titanic but canceled at the last minute when some business matters delayed him. Morgan, whose International Mercantile Marine shipping trust controlled the White Star Line and who had selected Ismay as a company officer. Bruce Ismay, accompanied by Thomas Andrews, the ship’s builder from Harland and Wolff.Ībsent was financier J.P. First and foremost was the White Star Line’s managing director, J.

After stops in Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown (now known as Cobh), Ireland, the ship set sail for New York with 2,240 passengers and crew-or “souls,” the expression then used in the shipping industry, usually in connection with a sinking-on board.Īs befitting the first transatlantic crossing of the world’s most celebrated ship, many of these souls were high-ranking officials, wealthy industrialists, dignitaries and celebrities. Titanic created quite a stir when it departed for its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912. READ MORE: Titanic by the Numbers: From Construction to Disaster to Discovery Passengers on the Titanic While unthinkably inadequate by today’s standards, Titanic’s supply of lifeboats actually exceeded the British Board of Trade’s requirements.

Titanic watertight compartments full#

Titanic could carry up to 2,435 passengers, and a crew of approximately 900 brought her capacity to more than 3,300 people.Īs a result, even if the lifeboats were loaded to full capacity during an emergency evacuation, there were available seats for only one-third of those on board.

Titanic watertight compartments plus#

A mere 16 boats, plus four Engelhardt “collapsibles,” could accommodate just 1,178 people. The second critical safety lapse that contributed to the loss of so many lives was the inadequate number of lifeboats carried on Titanic. More than 100,000 people attended the launching, which took just over a minute and went off without a hitch. On May 31, 1911, Titanic’s immense hull–the largest movable manmade object in the world at the time–made its way down the slipways and into the River Lagan in Belfast. In March 1909, work began in the massive Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland, on the second of these three ocean liners, Titanic, and continued nonstop for two years. Part of a new “Olympic” class of liners, each ship would measure 882 feet in length and 92.5 feet at their broadest point, making them the largest of their time. Pirrie, chairman of the shipbuilding company Harland and Wolff. Bruce Ismay, chief executive of White Star, discussed the construction of three large ships with William J. The same year that Cunard unveiled its two magnificent liners, J. Lusitania met its tragic end on May 7, 1915, when a torpedo fired by a German U-boat sunk the ship, killing nearly 1,200 of the 1,959 people on board and precipitating the United States’ entry into World War I.ĭid you know? Passengers traveling first class on Titanic were roughly 44 percent more likely to survive than other passengers. Cunard’s other masterpiece, Lusitania, launched the same year and was lauded for its spectacular interiors.