During construction, a massive engineering feat for the time: Construction of the Titanic started on the last day of March 1909 at the Harland and Wolf shipyard in the Irish city of Belfast, and it would take more than two years. Harland and Wolf had been building ships for the White Star Line for more than four decades. The Olympic vessels, for their part, were the largest ever built at that point. Artist's rendition of the stricken ship slipping into the depths, still with over 1,000 souls aboard. Yet, by today's standards, she was small..... Royal Carribean's Oasis of the Seas is FIVE TIMES the size of the Titanic!
I've always been fascinated by the Titanic, and I watch all the documentaries about the ship when I find them.
This is imo the Titanic disaster depiction that is closest to the actual story. The Brits made it of course.
@Craig Swanson Greatly enjoyed that, Thank you. Recall seeing it as a kid, just as moving now as it was then. The latest rendition, with today's variety of computer aided scening, cannot hold a candle to the old. Frank
There are certain myths and legends associated with the Titanic disaster. One is that the Titanic was unsinkable. Contrary to popular mythology, Titanic was never described as "unsinkable" either by shipbuilder Harland and Wolff or The White Star Line. Some believe that there was another ship, the Norwegian sealer Samson, in the vicinity of Titanic when she sank. Proponents of the theory argue either that the Samson was a third ship in the area that nite, in addition to the Titanic and the Californian, or that the Californian was not near at all and it was the Samson which Titanic passengers spotted in the distance while the ship was sinking. Another myth is the hymn played by the Titanic's band as she was sinking. Popular believe was it was the hymn Nearer My God to three. But this has been discounted by at least one person, wireless operator Harold Bride claims it was the then-popular waltz "Songe d'Automne. Bride is one of only two witnesses who were close enough to the band, as he floated off the deck before the ship went down. Some consider his statement to be reliable. Another piece of Titanic folklore (or was it) concerns perished first-class passenger William Thomas Stead. According to his account, Stead had foreseen his own death on the Titanic in a vision. This is evidently suggested in two fictional sinking stories, which he penned decades earlier, one of which "From the Old World to the New" (1892) features a White Star Line vessel, Majestic, that rescues survivors of another ship that had collided with an iceberg. Ooh spooky.
We watched this 1997 movie last night on tv and have the DVD of it. Actually, my wife, back in 1997, was a extra in some movies. Her agent called her about being one in this movie, but she knew, most likely, she'd have to be in the water and in Mexico. Mexico was the filming site she was told she be at. She turned down the offer and that ended her "extra" jobs. But, she was in Air Force One and got to see Harrison Ford.
The TITANIC was a sister-ship to the OLYMPIC, and was built in the Harlan & Wolff shipyard in Belfast Ireland, alongside the OLYMPIC which was launched a year earlier. The TITANIC actually had 2 sister-ships, the OLYMPIC and the BRITTANIC. All 3 vessels were exactly the same size and tonnage, with the TITANIC being the more luxuriously outfitted, which gave her a few more tons displacement, due to thicker carpeting and such. My mother came to America from the Ukraine aboard the OLYMPIC in 1923 as an 11-year-old girl, with her father. The OLYMPIC was broken up for scrap in 1935, and the BRITTANIC was sunk by a mine in WW 2. I have 4 films about the TITANIC disaster, one a documentary, with by far the most accurate being the b&w British production: "A Night To Remember" in 1958. Hal
HEY FRANK..... In your excellent photo of the Titanic, shown while being built in the shipyards, the name "TITANIC" was not painted on the hull until after the ship was launched and outfitted. The Photographer supplied the name in the darkroom! (You can see that the lettering is not perfect...the second T, the A, the N, and the C are all imperfectly formed) Hal
Titanic survivors "In this photo, the Titanic‘s “Collapsible D” lifeboat approaches the RMS Carpathia, another transatlantic passenger ship. “Collapsible D” was the last lifeboat to be lowered from the port side of the Titanic during the 1912 disaster. Packed with anywhere from 15 to 25 people (historians can only estimate how many people made it aboard), the small boat is towed toward the Carpathia with the help of another lifeboat. How’s this for a disturbing historical coincidence: Six years after aiding Titanic survivors, the Carpathia would also sink after being struck by a German U-boat".
Titanic could have avoided the Iceberg if: (1) Senior lookout Frederic Fleet had been quipped with binoculars, which would have given Titanic plenty of time and distance to avoid the berg. The officers on the Bridge had binoculars, but they didn't have Fleet's advantage of being high in the crow's nest. (2) The order to "Reverse Engines" after hearing Fleet's warning caused heavy turbulence around Titanic's rudder, spoiling the smooth flow of water and the steering efficiency, which hampered the ship in avoiding the iceberg. (3) Some Marine designers thought Titanic's rudder to be too small in relation to her length and her potential speed of over 20 Knots, which was fast for that era. (4) The decision by Captain Smith to light off all 29 boilers and proceed at full speed through an ice field warned about by other ships in the north Atlantic Atlantic that night, combined with his desire to make a "record crossing" to celebrate his retirement after the voyage took precedence over "safe sailing". The 1958 British film "A Night To Remember", is by far the most accurate portrayal of the tragedy of the 4 movies I have about the sinking. When the rescue ship "Carpathia" reach New York with the 705 survivors and most of the lifeboats, White Star executives put men to work sanding the name "TITANIC" off all the boats. Hal
Recently the pictures of perhaps the last life boat that left the sinking liner surfaced on web shedding the light on some of the last victims of the disaster.(link) The boat was first discovered a month after the Titanic sank, by the crew of RMS Oceanic. On May 13, 1912 crew on board Oceanic spotted a floating piece of wood far off in the distance, some 200 miles away from the site where Titanic sank. After getting to the lifeboat, the crew discovered the bodies of two firemen who worked in Titanic’s engine room and a first class passenger still dressed in his dinner attire, identified later as Thomson Beattie. In the bottom compartment of the boat the crew found a wedding band with engravings of the names ‘Edvard to Gerda’. The detailed account of the discovery and pictures of the recovery mission of the lifeboat named ‘Collapsible A’ helped the researchers to identify the bodies and tell their stories in great detail.