Titanic Icebergs

The tip of the iceberg. Thats what brought down the greatest ship of its day. It’s the reason 1,500 people died in one of the deadliest maritime disasters in the world. The Titanic. When the Titanic was built it was the largest and most luxurious passenger liner at the time. It was also considered to be completely unsinkable.

The hull weighed a total of 25,000 tonnes and used 825 tonnes of coal per day. The Titanic had three bronze propellors that weighed 92 tonnes. So it was obviously a very heavy ship and could not turn rapidly to avoid icebergs. The amount of time between the sighting of the iceberg and of the impact was 30 seconds. 76% of the crew died and 80% of all male passengers aboard died. Only 25% of females aboard died. At the time of Titanic’s destruction, the temperature of the water was -2°C and it took scientists 74 years to discover the wreck of the Titanic.

Throughout much of the voyage, the two wireless radio operators on the Titanic had been receiving iceberg warnings, some were passed along to the bridge and the captain slightly altered the ship's course to head further south. However, he maintained the ship's speed of approximately 40 kilometres per hour. A lot of the warnings were never relayed to the Titanic's bridge. At 10:55 pm a nearby ship sent word that it had stopped after becoming surrounded by ice. Two lookouts were stationed in the crow's nest of the Titanic. At approximately 11:40 pm they sighted an iceberg, and the bridge was notified. The first officer ordered the ship “hard-to-starboard” and the engines to be reversed.

The Titanic began to turn, but it was too close and too heavy to avoid a collision. The ship's side scraped along the iceberg. At least five of its supposedly watertight com...

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...sed on the Ship. The Titanic had its own newspaper which was prepared aboard the ship. In addition to news articles and advertisements, it contained a daily menu, the latest stock prices, horse-racing results, and society gossip. Initial headlines of the Titanic disaster claimed all passengers survived and the ship was being towed to land.

At first most of the passengers did not believe Titanic was really sinking, hence the low number of 19 aboard the first lifeboat, even though it could carry 65. One of the most exotic objects in Titanic’s cargo was “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” a book of ancient sayings. The copy was adorned with 1,050 precious stones, each set in gold.

This is the story of the unsinkable ship that sunk. To finish with I leave you with these famous words “but I’m too involved now. You jump, I jump. Remember?” and “I’ll never let go….I promise.”