15 Interesting Facts About the RMS Titanic

Without a doubt, one of the most famous ships in nautical history, the RMS Titanic was built in Belfast. She set sail from Southampton on her maiden voyage to New York on the 10 April 1912.

The ship called at Cherbourg in France and Queenstown, Ireland (now known as Cork or Cobh), then headed out across the Atlantic towards North America.

On the night of 14 April 1912, the ship struck an iceberg, and within 3 hours, she had sunk beneath the waves, resulting in many lives being lost.

There has been much speculation raised over the years as to why exactly the ship sank so fast and why so many lives were lost, with blame being apportioned in differing portions to the ship's design, its construction, the behavior of the captain, the crew, and the passengers.

Below are 15 interesting facts about the RMS Titanic.

1. RMS Titanic was the biggest man-made moving object in the world at the time of her launch. She measured 882 feet 9 inches (269.06 m) long with a maximum breadth of 92 feet 6 inches (28.19 m) and had a height of 104 feet (32 m).

2. The ship was constructed in Belfast, Northern Ireland by the Harland and Wolff shipyard. She cost $7.5 million to build. Two workers died during her construction. Thomas Andrews, the ship's architect, would end up dying in the disaster.

3. RMS stands for “Royal Mail Steamer.” As well as carrying an estimated 2,224 passengers and crew, the ship was also delivering 3,423 sacks of mail (7,000,000 individual pieces) for the British postal service.

4. RMS Titanic began her voyage from Southampton, England on 14 April 1912. The plan was for her to land at New York Pier 54 on the morning of 17 April after calling in at Cherbourg and Queenstown and crossing the Atlantic. It was widely believed at the time that large vessels faced negligible threat from icebergs.

5. The ship was designed to carry a maximum of 3,547 people. There were an estimated 2,224 passengers and crew on her maiden voyage, including 13 honeymooning couples. There were 324 passengers in First Class, 284 in Second Class, and 709 in Third Class. Sixty-six percent of the passengers were male and thirty-four percent female. One hundred and seven children were aboard her.

6. Titanic had 4 huge funnels, each painted buff with black tops, but only 3 of them released steam. The fourth one was mainly for show, but also provided some ventilation for the kitchen. There were also two 155 foot (47 m) high masts.

7. The ship’s top speed was 23 knots, which is the equivalent of over 26 miles per hour. She had three main engines, two reciprocating four-cylinder, triple-expansion steam engines and a low-pressure Parsons turbine. Each engine powered its own propeller.

8. Four days into the crossing, 11:40 pm ship's time, Titanic hit an iceberg. She was 375 miles (600 km) south of Newfoundland at the time. Although the hull wasn't punctured by the iceberg, the seams were pulled apart by buckling, letting water seep in.

9. Six ice warnings were received by Titanic on the day of the collision, all of them were ignored. It was a moonless night and the waters were still, making the iceberg difficult to spot. The iceberg was also a “blackberg”, which meant that due to continuous melting, it looked more dark and mirrored in its appearance, rather than white – the phenomenon is similar to the black ice found on roads.

10. After the lookouts sounded the warning, there were only 37 seconds to react. First Officer Murdoch ordered the ship to turn left and for the engine room to put the engines in reverse, but it was not enough to avoid the iceberg, and a number of holes developed below the waterline.

In 1997, James Cameron wrote and co-produced a movie of the shipping disaster. The fictional account of the event starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet and was an enormous commercial and critical success.

Cameron used footage of the actual Titanic wreck for the movie, and a reconstruction of the ship was constructed at Playas de Rosarito in Baja California. The movie also used computer graphics, which were highly advanced for the time to show the ship sinking.

The movie cost $200 million to make and was the most expensive film ever made at the time. Costs were more than recouped, however, and it is still the highest grossing movie ever made.

11. The ship was originally designed to carry 64 lifeboats, but only had 20 on her maiden voyage in order to lower the amount of clutter on the decks. A lifeboat drill was supposed to take place on the day of the disaster, but for some reason, the captain had cancelled it. The crew had not been properly trained to deal with an evacuation and many of the lifeboats were barely half full when launched.

12. It took Titanic two hours and forty minutes to sink after it hit the iceberg. She began sinking bow first, and as the angle became steeper more and more cabins were flooded with water.There were only enough lifeboats for half of the people on board.

13. The protocol of "women and children first" was generally followed, which is why a larger percentage of adult men died. Many of the third class passengers were left below decks as the ship filled with water and so consequently more of them died proportionately, than second class ones.

14. Out of the 2,224 people on board, it is thought that 719 were saved and 1514 were lost. Two dogs also survived the disaster. There is some confusion about the exact numbers of people on board, however. This is due to the passenger list being inaccurate, as some people cancelled at the last minute due to a coal strike, and a smaller amount of people traveled under aliases for various reasons.

15. It took seventy-four years before the wreck of RMS Titanic was found. The ship had split in two at the time of sinking and was at a depth of 12,600 feet below the surface of the ocean. There is now a permanent exhibition of artifacts from the ship at the Luxor Las Vegas hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

• Brewster, Hugh; Coulter, Laurie (1998). 882½ Amazing Answers to your Questions about the Titanic. Madison Press Book. ISBN 978-0-590-18730-5.
• Crosbie, Duncan; Mortimer, Sheila (2006). Titanic: The Ship of Dreams. New York, NY: Orchard Books. ISBN 978-0-439-89995-6.
• Merideth, Lee W. (2003). 1912 Facts About Titanic. Sunnyvale, CA: Rocklin Press. ISBN 978-0-9626237-9-0.