On April 30, 1907, Bruce Ismay and William James Pirrie had an idea to build a ship, the Titanic. “Harland and Wolff of Belfast, Ireland built the ship,” (United States). Within a few days short of five years, the Titanic was then ready to set sail from Belfast to Southampton. There were 2,223 passengers on board making their way to a better life. The Titanic made it to Southampton the next day, and then set sail for New York. The Titanic gave many people a chance to start a new life in America, and it was known as “The Ship of Dreams”. The ship consisted of millionaires all the way down to immigrants. This dream ship was also said to be unsinkable, however, this story is something that literally went down in history. Many sources state that the cause of the Titanic’s demise on April 14, 1912, was due to a variety of causes such as, the way the rivets were placed, the airtight rooms were not airtight, there were not enough lifeboats for the number of passengers present, Captain Smith avoided iceberg warnings, and the weather that night was a major problem altogether. Each of these played a key role in the tragic downfall of the White Star Liner ship, the Titanic, but the rivets and construction of the ship were the main issues at fault. While building the Titanic, “there was absolutely no price limit in which the constructors of the ship needed to be considerate of,” (United States). It should have been conducted of the best quality materials, as well as equipped with everything necessary for survival in case of an emergency. If the boat was said to be “unsinkable”, the constructors should have made sure that was the absolute truth. When constructing the ship, tiny rivets were used to hold it together; however, they were conducted of poor quality material, as well as placed on the ship in a poor manor. They were not uniform in composition or quality, which allowed the body of the ship to be extremely weak and vulnerable to any damage that the journey could potentially bring. When the boat struck the iceberg going 22.5 knots, just a half a knot shy of the top speed, the hull was immediately damaged, and rivets were scraped off as well as destroyed. This opened up seams of the ship, creating an even more
On April 15, 1912 at 11:40 P.M. the Titanic collided with an iceberg and by 2:20 A.M. it was at the bottom of the ocean; over 1,500 people died. The massive loss of life was a shock to the world. The “unsinkable” ship had sunk. Despite the Titanic’s claims about being “unsinkable” and completely safe, many avoidable things led to the immense number of fatalities, such as the shortage of lifeboats, lowered bulkheads, and the lack of binoculars. Bruce Ismay, the designer of the Titanic and director of Whitestar line, often chose the comfort of his passengers over their safety. While Ismay was designing the Titanic he thought that the deck was too cluttered so he decided to keep only a third of the lifeboats needed to save all of the passengers
But in 1912 the Titanic sunk and it was a disaster at that time a lot of people died and the cause was preventable. So the failure was because of a fracture in the Hull steel and the wrought iron rivets. The fracture happened because of the amount of sulphur of the steel and the high speed of the ship as it travel over below freezing water. All these could have been prevented if the captain of the ship listened to the warring about the ice. They could have used a better quality of the riveting and the steel plates.
Before the Titanic even set sail, something with the building of the ship was wrong. They used iron for rivets and used number three iron instead of the normal
Imagine having to balance your weight on a pack of pencils, and that’s how brittle the steel used on the Titanic’s hull was. There was a piece of the hull that had been recovered and scientists had gone forward to examine that piece of steel. They concluded that the steel was of very poor quality. “Jagged and sharp, the edges of the piece of steel appeared almost shattered, like broken china.” (Bassett 44). The Titanic had a sister ship, Olympic, which collided while leaving the harbor on September 20, 1911. A similar outcome had occurred when another cruise ship had collided into Olympic. “A 36-foot high opening was torn into the starboard side of the Olympics’ hull when a British cruiser broadsided her. Failure of the riveted joints and ripping of the hull plates were apparent in the area of impact.” (45). The build of the Titanic was more cheap and bad built than quality made and
The British luxury passenger ship, The Titanic, set sail on April 10, 1912, en route to New York City from Southampton (Lord ch 1). During her maiden voyage, midnight of April 15, 1912, she began to sink (ch 1). The Titanic had a collision with an iceberg that was around 100 feet tall (“Titanic: 40 Fascinating Facts” 3). Regardless to how greatly manufactured the Titanic was, and with beliefs that she was unsinkable, the miscalculation of human error proves that every possible outcome cannot be prevented, disasters can still occur regardless of careful planning.
On April 2,1912 the RMS Titanic set sail on its maiden voyage from Belfast, Ireland to Southampton. The Titanic was 4 days into its exploration when the collision of the iceberg occurred. As the Titanic set sail on it’s maiden voyage, some interior work still needed to be completed. Some areas of the ship had no heating while the others areas where to hot. A team of about 9 harland & wolff employees, including the ship's designer, Thomas Andrews, sailed as members of a guarantee group, to make sure any problems with the ship were attended to. They as well perished in the sinking of the
The RMS Titanic is a passenger liner that sunk in the North Atlantic in 1912 after hitting an iceberg. About 1,500 of the estimated 2,224 passengers died. The ship sailed full speed despite ice warnings, preventing it from stopping or steering away from the berg. Watertight compartments flooded, causing Titanic to go under. These details are supported by accounts and physical evidence, and therefore, widely accepted as truth. However, there's a few alternative conspiracy and architectural theories.
The Titanic was a passenger ship, not a battleship, so it was not built to take on huge icebergs. It states in the article that nothing was wrong in the building of the Titanic, but anything is possible. Man’s error could have been a big factor with the sinking. The ship was built among time pressures, not because of cost, which put a huge strain on the shipyard. If the builders were given more time, then mayne the ship would have been stronger and could have withstanded more. Higher quality rivets and thicker hulls might have kept the Titanic afloat for much longer.
In the day rivets were the main means of putting ships together, three million rivets were used on the Titanic and we can speculate that had the Titanic never hit the iceberg, she may have never sank. The builder of the Titanic struggled for years to obtain enough good rivets and riveters, and ultimately settled on faulty materials that doomed the ship. The steel rivets were of a good enough quality for the ship
When the Titanic was finally launched on May 31, 1911. Bruce Ismay was the chairman of the White Star Line company and Thomas Andrews was the one who designed the Titanic. It started its construction at Harland and Wolff shipyard on May 31, 1909. People thought that the ship was known as “unsinkable” because they believed that they used the most advanced technology of its time in order to make this most magnificent ship built of its time. The company did not claim that the Titanic is “unsinkable”, people just claimed that the ship is unsinkable but it shocked people around the world when the “unsinkable” ship actually sank with hundreds of innocent passengers. However, It was also thought to be the largest man
“The ship had watertight compartments that would allow her to float indefinitely” According to Robert Ballard in Exploring The Titanic. Although, this accusation was unfortunately far from the truth. These compartments quickly filled and abolished the idea of “watertight”, like domino's they flooded one after another The question then is: Who is responsible for the Titanic's sinking that sent 1,500 innocent people to a watery grave?. The consequences of Bruce Ismay and Thomas Andrews faulty design may have been the downfall of this “Unsinkable” ship.
The Titanic was inspired by The Olympic class ship which featured watertight bulkhead compartments.“Titanic stayed afloat for about three hours and in those hours people witnessed acts of craven cowardice and extraordinary bravery”(History).Although deemed the greatest ship of its time, The Titanic had many flaws in the construction of the bulkheads, the treatment of passengers, and the lack of adequate lifeboats which lead to the tragedy and some believe the flaws.
When analyzing this disaster the first thing to consider is the engineer’s design of the Titanic. The Titanic was employing many new and innovative designs that were believed to make the Titanic the safest ship ever built at that time. The engineer’s of the vessel made claims that the Titanic was “unsinkable” and that “even in the worst possible accident at sea, the ship should have stayed afloat for two to three days.” One of the features that lead them to this claim was the 16 watertight compartments in the hull of the ship. The way they were designed allowed for up to four compartments to be breached and they ship would still carry
In the early 1900s ocean liners were a lucrative business. Carrying passengers across the vast ocean was the most efficient way to travel. White Star Lines had to find a way to lure passengers away from their competitor, Cunard Lines (Encyclopedia Britannica). They decided to build bigger ocean liners, which focused on comfort, as opposed to speed. The Titanic’s hull was designed to withstand a breech in four of its watertight compartments; this made many believe that the ship was unsinkable. Sadly, for those on the ship, this couldn’t be further
The construction of the RMS Titanic started on March 31, 1909 in Belfast, North Ireland and cost $7.5 million. The man who designed it was a naval architect named Thomas Andrews. The ship was built to be the world’s largest passenger steamship, along with two other ships, the Olympic and Britanic. Although the ship has always been known to many as unsinkable, it was actually never supposed to be advertised like that. Extra measures were put into the ship to insure safety, for example, if four watertight compartments out of the 16 were flooded, the ship would still stay afloat. Even though all these precautions were made, who would have ever thought that a single iceberg could cause such a huge devastation.