RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912 after colliding with an iceberg during its maiden voyage from Southampton, UK to New York City, US. The sinking of Titanic caused the deaths of 1,502 people in one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in modern history. The RMS Titanic was the largest ship afloat at the time of it entered service. The Titanic was the second of three Olympic class ocean liners operated by the White Star Line, and was built by the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast with Thomas Andrews as her naval architect, Andrews was also lost during the sinking. On her maiden voyage, she carried 2,224 passengers and crew. Under the command of Edward Smith, the ship's passengers included some of the wealthiest people in the world, as well as hundreds of emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland, Scandinavia and elsewhere throughout Europe seeking a new life in North America. The ship was designed to be the last word in comfort and luxury, with an on-board gymnasium, swimming pool, libraries, high-class restaurants and opulent cabins. A wireless telegraph provided for the convenience of passengers as well as for operational use. Though Titanic had advanced safety features such as watertight compartments and remotely activated watertight doors, there was not enough lifeboats to accommodate all of those aboard due to outdated maritime safety regulations. Titanic only carried enough lifeboats for 1,178 people—slightly more than half of the number on board, and one-third her total capacity. Culture The Titanic has gone down in history as the ship that was called unsinkable.[p] For more than 100 years she has been the inspiration of fiction and non-fiction. She is commemorated by monuments for the dead and by museums exhibiting artifacts from the wreck. Just after the sinking memorial postcards sold in huge numbers together with memorabilia ranging from tin candy boxes to plates, whiskey jiggers,and even black mourning teddy bears. Several survivors wrote books about their experiences but it was not until 1955 the first historical accurate book A Night to Remember was published. ship sank and had an actual survivor as its star—the silent film actress Dorothy Gibson. The British film A Night to Remember (1958) is still widely regarded as the most historically accurate movie portrayal of the sinking. but the most successful by far has been James Cameron's Titanic (1997), which became the highest-grossing film in history up to that time. The Titanic disaster was commemorated through a variety of memorials and monuments to the victims, erected in several English-speaking countries and in particular in cities that had suffered notable losses. These included Southampton, Liverpool and Belfast in the United Kingdom; New York and Washington, D.C. in the United States; and Cobh (formerly Queenstown) in Ireland. A number of museums around the world have displays on Titanic. In Northern Ireland, the ship is commemorated by the Titanic Belfast visitor attraction, opened on 31 March 2012, that stands on the site of the shipyard where Titanic was built. RMS Titanic Inc., which is authorised to salvage the wreck site, has a permanent Titanic exhibition at the Luxor Las Vegas hotel and casino in Nevada which features a 22-ton slab of the ship's hull. It also runs an exhibition which travels around the world. In Nova Scotia, Halifax's Maritime Museum of the Atlantic displays items that were recovered from the sea a few days after the disaster. They include pieces of woodwork such as panelling from the ship's First Class Lounge and an original deckchair, as well as objects removed from the victims. In 2012 the centenary was marked by plays, radio programmes, parades, exhibition and special trips to the site of the sinking together with commemorative stamps and coins. Building the Titanic Documentary: Competition spawned the Titanic. In 1907, the White Star Line's rival, Cunard, launched the two fastest passenger ships then in service, the Mauritania and the Lusitania. That same year, the White Star Line's Chairman, J. Bruce Ismay, wanted to top Cunard, and he decided to do so based, not on speed but on size and luxury. To design and build these new ships, dubbed the Olympic class, the White Star Line, turned to Harland & Wollf, its longtime shipbuilder. Naval architect Thomas Andrews, who later perished when the Titanic sank, headed up the design of the new vessels. Construction started on the first such vessel, dubbed the Olympic, in late 1908.

• published: 28 May 2015
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