The Ship of Dreams · 1912
The Full Story of the Titanic
She was the largest ship in the world, a floating palace billed as practically unsinkable. Four days into her first voyage, she was gone. This is her story — told in depth.
Photograph: RMS Titanic leaving Southampton at the start of her maiden voyage, 10 April 1912.
2,224People on board
1,517Lives lost
707Survivors
12,500 ftDepth of the wreck
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Featured Story
The night of 14–15 April 1912, minute by minute
Titanic Articles
History, people, the wreck, and the myths — researched and written for this archive
Timeline of the Disaster
From keel to catastrophe — and the morning after
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The keel is laid in Belfast
Construction of Hull No. 401 begins at Harland & Wolff under the great Arrol Gantry. Around 15,000 men will work on the Olympic-class liners; the build will take nearly three years.
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Titanic is launched
Watched by more than 100,000 people, the hull slides into the River Lagan in just 62 seconds. She is then towed to the fitting-out basin, where her engines, boilers and luxurious interiors are installed.
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Departure from Southampton
Titanic leaves Southampton for New York. As she pulls away, the suction of her propellers tears the liner New York from its moorings — a near-collision delays departure by about an hour. Some on board later called it an omen.
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First stop: Cherbourg, France
The ship anchors off Cherbourg to embark 274 more passengers, including millionaire John Jacob Astor IV and Margaret “Molly” Brown, then sails on into the night.
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Last sight of land: Queenstown, Ireland
After picking up 123 passengers — most of them Irish emigrants in third class — Titanic raises anchor for the open Atlantic. For nearly everyone on board, it is the last land they will ever see.
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Ice warnings begin
All day, wireless operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride receive warnings of ice ahead from other ships. At least six are received; not all reach the bridge. The night turns bitterly cold, starlit and unnaturally calm.
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“Iceberg, right ahead!”
Lookout Frederick Fleet spots the berg and strikes the warning bell three times. First Officer Murdoch orders “hard a-starboard” and reverses the engines — but the ship's side scrapes along the ice for some 300 feet, buckling plates and popping rivets across six compartments.
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The verdict
Designer Thomas Andrews inspects the flooding with Captain Smith and delivers the verdict no one wants to hear: the ship can stay afloat with four compartments flooded, but not five. “She will sink. It is a mathematical certainty.”
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Distress calls go out
Phillips sends the CQD distress call. His junior, Harold Bride, suggests trying the new SOS signal — “it may be your last chance to send it” — and Phillips begins alternating the two. Distress rockets are fired into the clear night sky.
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The first lifeboat leaves — half empty
Lifeboat 7 is lowered with just 28 people, though it could hold 65. Many passengers still refuse to believe the great ship can sink, and the boats leave the brightly lit decks for a black, freezing sea.
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The last boat
Collapsible D, the final boat to be lowered successfully, leaves with about 44 people. Still on board: more than 1,500 men, women and children, and two collapsible boats that will float off the deck as the ship founders.
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Titanic sinks
The ship breaks in two and the stern slips beneath the surface. In water of −2°C (28°F), most of those in the sea die of cold within 15 to 30 minutes. Silence falls over the North Atlantic.
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Carpathia arrives
Having raced 58 miles through the ice field at record speed, RMS Carpathia begins picking up the lifeboats. She takes aboard 707 survivors and turns for New York, arriving on the evening of 18 April to a stunned world.
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The wreck is found
After 73 years on the seabed, a joint French-American expedition led by Dr Robert Ballard and Jean-Louis Michel locates the wreck nearly 13,000 feet down — her bow and stern lying some 600 metres apart on the ocean floor.
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Key Figures of the Titanic
The captain, the designer, the heroes — and those who lived to tell the story
Titanic Facts & Figures
The ship in numbers
882 ft 9 inLength (269 m)
Longer than three football fields — the largest moving object ever built at the time.
46,328 tonsGross tonnage
Her sister Olympic was nearly identical; Titanic was marginally the larger of the two.
23 knotsTop speed (26 mph)
Powered by two giant reciprocating steam engines and a low-pressure turbine.
20 lifeboatsCapacity 1,178
Enough for barely half the people on board — yet more than the outdated Board of Trade rules required.
825 tonsCoal burned per day
More than 170 firemen, trimmers and stokers worked around the clock to feed her 29 boilers.
3 millionRivets
Used in her hull — some in the bow, later analysis suggests, were of inferior iron with high slag content.
$7.5 millionCost to build (1912)
Roughly $240 million in today's money — and a first-class suite ticket could cost $4,350.
14,000+Gallons of water a day
Passengers in first class enjoyed a heated salt-water swimming pool — a first for an ocean liner.
73 yearsHidden on the seabed
The wreck evaded searchers from 1912 until its discovery on 1 September 1985.
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