when was titanic's maiden voyage

Titanic Maiden Voyage

Introduction.

Following her prestigious launch in front of a crowd of around 100,000 spectators and a throng of excited reporters, Titanic began her maiden journey, first collecting the passengers sailing – and even migrating – to America. It was a voyage that would end in disaster amidst the ice-strewn waters of the Atlantic. Read on for a comprehensive summary of the facts about this tragic trip.

Above: Footage of RMS Titanic leaving for her maiden voyage in 1912.

471 miles – the distance of the journey to deliver Titanic from Belfast – the city in which she was built – to Southampton, England – the city from which her maiden voyage would commence.

Where did the Titanic leave from?

Although Titanic initially sailed from Belfast (where she was built) to Southampton, her maiden voyage is considered to have begun in Southampton.

02 April 1912 – the date that Titanic set sail from Belfast to Southampton.

Southampton

6 – the number of days that the Titanic was at rest in Southampton, before the start of her maiden voyage to New York.

Above: The Titanic at Southampton at the beginning of her maiden voyage.

05 April 1912 – the date Titanic was briefly opened for viewing by the paying public, two days after sailing to Southampton. The ship was “dressed overall”, with flags and pennants hung from the rigging in a salute to the people of the city.

07:30 am – the time Captain Smith arrived on board on the morning of the maiden journey, along with the crew. The officers were already on board, having spent the previous night on the ship.

2 – the number of lifeboats employed in a brief safety drill, conducted at 08:00 am; starboard lifeboats 11 and 12.

Where was Titanic going?

The Titanic was on her maiden voyage, a return trip from Britain to America. The outward route was to be Southampton, England – Cherbourg, France – Queenstown, Ireland – New York, USA. The return route was going to be New York – Plymouth, England – Cherbourg – Southampton.

09:30 am – the time the second- and third-class boat trains began to arrive and passengers started to board the Titanic.

11:30 am – the time that the first-class boat train arrived from London.

Did You Know?

At the time of her maiden voyage a coal strike was on, and so coal for Titanic had to be scavenged from other company ships.

06 April 1912 – the date that the strike was ended, however there would not be time to deliver enough coal to Southampton docks before Titanic set sail on her maiden voyage.

84 miles – the length of the first leg of the journey, from Southampton to Cherbourg, France.

12.00 pm – the time Titanic cast off from Southampton Dock, towed out into the River Test by tugboats.

4 feet – the margin by which a collision with the USMS New York was averted, when the undertow from the much larger Titanic caused the smaller boat to be sucked toward the ship, snapping the six mooring ropes holding the New York in place.

60 minutes – the approximate time that departure was delayed by this incident, sailing finally resuming at 1pm.

04:00 pm – the time the boat train from Paris arrived in Cherbourg, around 90 minutes before passengers could be ferried out to the delayed Titanic.

22 – the number of cross-channel passengers who disembarked in Cherbourg.

274 – the number of passengers who boarded at Cherbourg.

08:10 pm – the time Titanic departed Cherbourg and set sail for Queenstown (now known as Cobh) in Ireland.

307 miles – the length of the next stage, from Cherbourg to Queenstown, Ireland.

Queenstown (Cobh)

11:30 am – the time Titanic dropped anchor in Queenstown, on the morning of 11th of April 1912, about 2 miles offshore.

7 – the number of passengers who disembarked in Ireland.

123 – the number of passengers who boarded at Queenstown (3 first-class, 7 second-class and 113 third-class ticket-holders).

63 – the number of male passengers who boarded in Ireland.

60 – the number of female passengers who came aboard.

2 – the number of tenders that ferried the passengers from Heartbreak Jetty to Titanic; they were named PS Ireland and PS America.

1,385 – the number of bags of mail delivered on board during the Queenstown stop.

01:30 pm – the time Titanic raised anchor and set sail on her first and last transatlantic crossing.

The Atlantic Ocean

2,825 miles – the intended distance of the longest leg of the voyage, from Queenstown to New York, USA.

137 hours – the anticipated journey time sailing from Queenstown to New York City.

How many people boarded the Titanic?

There were 2,223 people aboard Titanic for her maiden trip, 1,324 passengers and 908 crew.

116 – the typical number of hours taken to cover the same distance by the Titanic’s rivals, the Cunard liners Lusitania and Mauritania (the idea that the Titanic captain ignored the iceberg warnings because he was trying to set a new time record is just one of the many Titanic myths that endures).

Above: The route of the voyage of the Titanic and the location of her sinking.

4 – days into the crossing when the collision with the iceberg occurred.

How much were Titanic ticket prices?

The average cost for a First Class berth was $150 (£30). A parlour suite would have set you back the princelier sum of $4,350 (£875).

The average cost of a berth in Standard (Second) Class was $60 (£12).

The average cost of a Steerage (Third) Class berth was $15-$40 (£3-£8).

3 – the intended number of legs planned for Titanic’s return voyage (New York to Plymouth to Cherbourg to Southampton).

As she set sail on her maiden voyage, some interior work was still to be completed. For example, some areas of the ship were without heating, whilst others were too hot. A team of nine Harland & Wolff employees, including the ship’s designer, Thomas Andrews, sailed as members of a guarantee group, tasked with ensuring any problems were attended to. All died in the sinking.

More To Explore

Read about the passengers on the Titanic , about the iceberg that was her undoing, and about the spot in the Atlantic Ocean where the Titanic sank .

A Timeline of the Sinking of the Titanic

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From the time of its inception, the Titanic was meant to be gigantic, luxurious and safe. It was touted as being unsinkable because of its system of watertight compartments and doors, which of course proved to be just a myth. Follow the history of the Titanic, from its beginnings in a shipyard to its end at the bottom of the sea, in this timeline of the building of the ship through its maiden (and only) voyage. In the early morning hours of April 15, 1912, all but 705 of its 2,229 passengers and crew lost their lives in the icy Atlantic .

The Building of the Titanic

March 31, 1909: Construction of the Titanic begins with the building of the keel, the backbone of the ship, at Harland & Wolff's shipyard in Belfast, Ireland.

May 31, 1911: The unfinished Titanic is lathered up with soap and pushed into the water for "fitting out." Fitting out is the installation of all the extras, some on the exterior, like the smokestacks and the propellers, and a lot on the inside, like the electrical systems, wall coverings, and furniture.

June 14, 1911: The Olympic, sister ship to the Titanic, departs on its maiden voyage.

April 2, 1912: The Titanic leaves the dock for sea trials, which include tests of speed, turns, and an emergency stop. At about 8 p.m., after the sea trials, the Titanic heads to Southampton, England.

The Maiden Voyage Begins

April 3 to 10, 1912: The Titanic is loaded with supplies and her crew is hired.

April 10, 1912: From 9:30 a.m. until 11:30 a.m., passengers board the ship. Then at noon, the Titanic leaves the dock at Southhampton for its maiden voyage. First stop is in Cherbourg, France, where the Titanic arrives at 6:30 p.m. and leaves at 8:10 p.m, heading to Queenstown, Ireland (now known as Cobh). It is carrying 2,229 passengers and crew.

April 11, 1912: At 1:30 p.m., the Titanic leaves Queenstown and begins its fated journey across the Atlantic for New York.

April 12 and 13, 1912: The Titanic is at sea, continuing on her journey as passengers enjoy the pleasures of the luxurious ship.

April 14, 1912 (9:20 p.m.): The Titanic's captain, Edward Smith, retires to his room.

April 14, 1912 (9:40 p.m.) : The last of seven warnings about icebergs is received in the wireless room. This warning never makes it to the bridge.

Last Hours of the Titanic

April 14, 1912 (11:40 p.m.): Two hours after the last warning, ship lookout Frederick Fleet spotted an iceberg directly in the path of the Titanic. The first officer, Lt. William McMaster Murdoch, orders a hard starboard (left) turn, but the Titanic's right side scrapes the iceberg. Only 37 seconds passed between the sighting of the iceberg and hitting it.

April 14, 1912 (11:50 p.m.): Water had entered the front part of the ship and risen to a level of 14 feet.

April 15, 1912 (12 a.m.): Captain Smith learns the ship can stay afloat for only two hours and gives orders to make first radio calls for help.

April 15, 1912 (12:05 a.m.): Captain Smith orders the crew to prepare the lifeboats and get the passengers and crew up on deck. There is only room in the lifeboats for about half the passengers and crew onboard. Women and children were put into the lifeboats first.

April 15, 1912 (12:45 a.m.): The first lifeboat is lowered into the freezing water.

April 15, 1912 (2:05 a.m.) The last lifeboat is lowered into the Atlantic. More than 1,500 people are still on the Titanic, now sitting at a steep tilt.

April 15, 1912 (2:18 a.m.): The last radio message is sent and the Titanic snaps in half.

April 15, 1912 (2:20 a.m.): The Titanic sinks.

Rescue of Survivors

April 15, 1912 (4:10 a.m.) : The Carpathia, which was about 58 miles southeast of the Titanic at the time it heard the distress call, picks up the first of the survivors.

April 15, 1912 (8:50 a.m.): The Carpathia picks up survivors from the last lifeboat and heads for New York.

April 17, 1912: The Mackay-Bennett is the first of several ships to travel to the area where the Titanic sank to search for bodies.

April 18, 1912: The Carpathia arrives in New York with 705 survivors.

April 19 to May 25, 1912: The United States Senate holds hearings about the disaster; the Senate findings include questions about why there were not more lifeboats on the Titanic.

May 2 to July 3, 1912: The British Board of Trade holds an inquiry into the Titanic disaster. It was discovered during this inquiry that the last ice message was the only one that warned of an iceberg directly in the path of the Titanic, and it was believed that if the captain had gotten the warning that he would have changed course in time for the disaster to be avoided.

Sept. 1, 1985: Robert Ballard's expedition team discovers the wreck of the Titanic .

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By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 12, 2024 | Original: November 9, 2009

The RMS Titanic, a luxury steamship, sank in the early hours of April 15, 1912, off the coast of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic after sideswiping an iceberg during its maiden voyage. Of the 2,240 passengers and crew on board, more than 1,500 lost their lives in the disaster. Titanic has inspired countless books, articles and films (including the 1997 Titanic movie starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio), and the ship's story has entered the public consciousness as a cautionary tale about the perils of human hubris.

The Building of the RMS Titanic

The Titanic was the product of intense competition among rival shipping lines in the first half of the 20th century. In particular, the White Star Line found itself in a battle for steamship primacy with Cunard, a venerable British firm with two standout ships that ranked among the most sophisticated and luxurious of their time.

Cunard’s Mauretania began service in 1907 and quickly set a speed record for the fastest average speed during a transatlantic crossing (23.69 knots or 27.26 mph), a title that it held for 22 years.

Cunard’s other masterpiece, Lusitania , launched the same year and was lauded for its spectacular interiors. Lusitania met its tragic end on May 7, 1915, when a torpedo fired by a German U-boat sunk the ship, killing nearly 1,200 of the 1,959 people on board and precipitating the United States’ entry into World War I .

Did you know? Passengers traveling first class on Titanic were roughly 44 percent more likely to survive than other passengers.

The same year that Cunard unveiled its two magnificent liners, J. Bruce Ismay, chief executive of White Star, discussed the construction of three large ships with William J. Pirrie, chairman of the shipbuilding company Harland and Wolff. Part of a new “Olympic” class of liners, each ship would measure 882 feet in length and 92.5 feet at their broadest point, making them the largest of their time.

In March 1909, work began in the massive Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland, on the second of these three ocean liners, Titanic, and continued nonstop for two years.

On May 31, 1911, Titanic’s immense hull–the largest movable manmade object in the world at the time–made its way down the slipways and into the River Lagan in Belfast. More than 100,000 people attended the launching, which took just over a minute and went off without a hitch.

The hull was immediately towed to a mammoth fitting-out dock where thousands of workers would spend most of the next year building the ship’s decks, constructing her lavish interiors and installing the 29 giant boilers that would power her two main steam engines.

‘Unsinkable’ Titanic’s Fatal Flaws

According to some hypotheses, Titanic was doomed from the start by a design that many lauded as state-of-the-art. The Olympic-class ships featured a double bottom and 15 watertight bulkhead compartments equipped with electric watertight doors that could be operated individually or simultaneously by a switch on the bridge.

It was these watertight bulkheads that inspired Shipbuilder magazine, in a special issue devoted to the Olympic liners, to deem them “practically unsinkable.”

But the watertight compartment design contained a flaw that was a critical factor in Titanic’s sinking: While the individual bulkheads were indeed watertight, the walls separating the bulkheads extended only a few feet above the water line, so water could pour from one compartment into another, especially if the ship began to list or pitch forward.

The second critical safety lapse that contributed to the loss of so many lives was the inadequate number of lifeboats carried on Titanic. A mere 16 boats, plus four Engelhardt “collapsibles,” could accommodate just 1,178 people. Titanic could carry up to 2,435 passengers, and a crew of approximately 900 brought her capacity to more than 3,300 people.

As a result, even if the lifeboats were loaded to full capacity during an emergency evacuation, there were available seats for only one-third of those on board. While unthinkably inadequate by today’s standards, Titanic’s supply of lifeboats actually exceeded the British Board of Trade’s requirements.

Passengers on the Titanic

Titanic created quite a stir when it departed for its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912. After stops in Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown (now known as Cobh), Ireland, the ship set sail for New York with 2,240 passengers and crew—or “souls,” the expression then used in the shipping industry, usually in connection with a sinking—on board.

As befitting the first transatlantic crossing of the world’s most celebrated ship, many of these souls were high-ranking officials, wealthy industrialists, dignitaries and celebrities. First and foremost was the White Star Line’s managing director, J. Bruce Ismay, accompanied by Thomas Andrews, the ship’s builder from Harland and Wolff.

Absent was financier J.P. Morgan , whose International Mercantile Marine shipping trust controlled the White Star Line and who had selected Ismay as a company officer. Morgan had planned to join his associates on Titanic but canceled at the last minute when some business matters delayed him.

The wealthiest passenger was John Jacob Astor IV, heir to the Astor family fortune, who had made waves a year earlier by marrying 18-year-old Madeleine Talmadge Force, a young woman 29 years his junior, shortly after divorcing his first wife.

Other notable passengers included the elderly owner of Macy’s, Isidor Straus, and his wife Ida; industrialist Benjamin Guggenheim, accompanied by his mistress, valet and chauffeur; and widow and heiress Margaret “Molly” Brown, who would earn her nickname “ The Unsinkable Molly Brown ” by helping to maintain calm and order while the lifeboats were being loaded and boosting the spirits of her fellow survivors.

The employees attending to this collection of First Class luminaries were mostly traveling Second Class, along with academics, tourists, journalists and others who would enjoy a level of service and accommodations equivalent to First Class on most other ships.

But by far the largest group of passengers was in Third Class: more than 700, exceeding the other two levels combined. Some had paid less than $20 to make the crossing. It was Third Class that was the major source of profit for shipping lines like White Star, and Titanic was designed to offer these passengers accommodations and amenities superior to those found in Third Class on any other ship of that era.

Titanic Sets Sail

Titanic’s departure from Southampton on April 10 was not without some oddities. A small coal fire was discovered in one of her bunkers–an alarming but not uncommon occurrence on steamships of the day. Stokers hosed down the smoldering coal and shoveled it aside to reach the base of the blaze.

After assessing the situation, the captain and chief engineer concluded that it was unlikely it had caused any damage that could affect the hull structure, and the stokers were ordered to continue controlling the fire at sea.

According to a theory put forth by a small number of Titanic experts, the fire became uncontrollable after the ship left Southampton, forcing the crew to attempt a full-speed crossing; moving at such a fast pace, they were unable to avoid the fatal collision with the iceberg.

Another unsettling event took place when Titanic left the Southampton dock. As she got underway, she narrowly escaped a collision with the America Line’s S.S. New York. Superstitious Titanic buffs sometimes point to this as the worst kind of omen for a ship departing on her maiden voyage.

The Titanic Strikes an Iceberg

On April 14, after four days of uneventful sailing, Titanic received sporadic reports of ice from other ships, but she was sailing on calm seas under a moonless, clear sky.

At about 11:30 p.m., a lookout saw an iceberg coming out of a slight haze dead ahead, then rang the warning bell and telephoned the bridge. The engines were quickly reversed and the ship was turned sharply—instead of making direct impact, Titanic seemed to graze along the side of the berg, sprinkling ice fragments on the forward deck.

Sensing no collision, the lookouts were relieved. They had no idea that the iceberg had a jagged underwater spur, which slashed a 300-foot gash in the hull below the ship’s waterline.

By the time the captain toured the damaged area with Harland and Wolff’s Thomas Andrews, five compartments were already filling with seawater, and the bow of the doomed ship was alarmingly pitched downward, allowing seawater to pour from one bulkhead into the neighboring compartment.

Andrews did a quick calculation and estimated that Titanic might remain afloat for an hour and a half, perhaps slightly more. At that point the captain, who had already instructed his wireless operator to call for help, ordered the lifeboats to be loaded.

Titanic’s Lifeboats

A little more than an hour after contact with the iceberg, a largely disorganized and haphazard evacuation began with the lowering of the first lifeboat. The craft was designed to hold 65 people; it left with only 28 aboard.

Tragically, this was to be the norm: During the confusion and chaos during the precious hours before Titanic plunged into the sea, nearly every lifeboat would be launched woefully under-filled, some with only a handful of passengers.

In compliance with the law of the sea, women and children boarded the boats first; only when there were no women or children nearby were men permitted to board. Yet many of the victims were in fact women and children, the result of disorderly procedures that failed to get them to the boats in the first place.

Exceeding Andrews’ prediction, Titanic stubbornly stayed afloat for close to three hours. Those hours witnessed acts of craven cowardice and extraordinary bravery.

Hundreds of human dramas unfolded between the order to load the lifeboats and the ship’s final plunge: Men saw off wives and children, families were separated in the confusion and selfless individuals gave up their spots to remain with loved ones or allow a more vulnerable passenger to escape. In the end, 706 people survived the sinking of the Titanic.

Titanic Sinks

The ship’s most illustrious passengers each responded to the circumstances with conduct that has become an integral part of the Titanic legend. Ismay, the White Star managing director, helped load some of the boats and later stepped onto a collapsible as it was being lowered. Although no women or children were in the vicinity when he abandoned ship, he would never live down the ignominy of surviving the disaster while so many others perished.

Thomas Andrews, Titanic’s chief designer, was last seen in the First Class smoking room, staring blankly at a painting of a ship on the wall. Astor deposited his wife Madeleine into a lifeboat and, remarking that she was pregnant, asked if he could accompany her; refused entry, he managed to kiss her goodbye just before the boat was lowered away.

Although offered a seat on account of his age, Isidor Straus refused any special consideration, and his wife Ida would not leave her husband behind. The couple retired to their cabin and perished together.

Benjamin Guggenheim and his valet returned to their rooms and changed into formal evening dress; emerging onto the deck, he famously declared, “We are dressed in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.”

Molly Brown helped load the boats and finally was forced into one of the last to leave. She implored its crewmen to turn back for survivors, but they refused, fearing they would be swamped by desperate people trying to escape the icy seas.

Titanic, nearly perpendicular and with many of her lights still aglow, finally dove beneath the ocean’s surface at about 2:20 a.m. on April 15, 1912. Throughout the morning, Cunard’s Carpathia , after receiving Titanic’s distress call at midnight and steaming at full speed while dodging ice floes all night, rounded up all of the lifeboats. They contained only 706 survivors.

Aftermath of the Titanic Catastrophe

At least five separate boards of inquiry on both sides of the Atlantic conducted comprehensive hearings on Titanic’s sinking, interviewing dozens of witnesses and consulting with many maritime experts. Every conceivable subject was investigated, from the conduct of the officers and crew to the construction of the ship. Titanic conspiracy theories abounded.

While it has always been assumed that the ship sank as a result of the gash that caused the bulkhead compartments to flood, various other theories have emerged over the decades, including that the ship’s steel plates were too brittle for the near-freezing Atlantic waters, that the impact caused rivets to pop and that the expansion joints failed, among others.

Technological aspects of the catastrophe aside, Titanic’s demise has taken on a deeper, almost mythic, meaning in popular culture. Many view the tragedy as a morality play about the dangers of human hubris: Titanic’s creators believed they had built an unsinkable ship that could not be defeated by the laws of nature.

This same overconfidence explains the electrifying impact Titanic’s sinking had on the public when she was lost. There was widespread disbelief that the ship could not possibly have sunk, and, due to the era’s slow and unreliable means of communication, misinformation abounded. Newspapers initially reported that the ship had collided with an iceberg but remained afloat and was being towed to port with everyone on board.

It took many hours for accurate accounts to become widely available, and even then people had trouble accepting that this paragon of modern technology could sink on her maiden voyage, taking more than 1,500 souls with her.

The ship historian John Maxtone-Graham has compared Titanic’s story to the Challenger space shuttle disaster of 1986. In that case, the world reeled at the notion that one of the most sophisticated inventions ever created could explode into oblivion along with its crew. Both tragedies triggered a sudden collapse in confidence, revealing that we remain subject to human frailties and error, despite our hubris and a belief in technological infallibility.

Titanic Wreck

Efforts to locate the wreck of Titanic began soon after it sank. But technical limitations—as well as the vastness of the North Atlantic search area—made finding it extremely difficult.

Finally, in 1985, a joint U.S.-French expedition located the wreck of the RMS Titanic . The doomed ship was discovered about 400 miles east of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic, some 13,000 feet below the surface.

Subsequent explorations have found that the wreck is in relatively good condition, with many objects on the ship—jewelry, furniture, shoes, machinery and other items—are still intact.

Since its discovery, the wreck has been explored numerous times by manned and unmanned submersibles—including the submersible Titan, which imploded during what would have been its third dive to the wreck in June 2023.

HISTORY Vault: Titanic's Achilles Heel

Did Titanic have a fatal design flaw? John Chatterton and Richie Kohler of "Deep Sea Detectives" dive the wreckage of Titanic's sister ship, Britannic, to investigate the possibility.

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Mental Floss Presents: Titanic Timeline

By mentalfloss .com | apr 11, 2022, 9:27 am edt.

The sinking of the Titanic on April 15, 1912, is surely history’s most storied shipwreck. On the 110th anniversary of the maritime disaster, Mental Floss is looking back at the people, events, and twists of fate that set the Titanic ’s incredible story in motion, and the legacy we still honor today.

All times are approximate.

The Birth of the Titanic

Titanic might not have existed if not for the rivalry between its shipping company, White Star Line, and its competitor, Cunard. Out of this intense business battle emerged the largest and most opulent ship known at that time.

June 7, 1906

British company Cunard launches the world’s largest and fastest passenger ship, the Lusitania , followed by its sister ship, the Mauretania , on September 20. Both would go on to win the Blue Riband for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic.

In response, Joseph Bruce Ismay , the chairman of Cunard’s rival White Star Line, resolves to build three massive luxury ocean liners: ships that would eventually be called the Olympic , the Britannic , and, of course, the Titanic .

All three would be built by Northern Ireland's Harland & Wolff in its Belfast shipyard. Lord Pirrie, chairman of Harland & Wolff, designs the three Olympic-class ocean liners. Alexander Carlisle, Lord Pirrie’s brother-in-law and Harland & Wolff’s general manager, takes responsibility for the “details, the decorations, the equipments, and general arrangements” for Olympic and Titanic .

March 31, 1909

Construction of the Titanic begins . It’s not just the world’s largest passenger ship at the time—it’s the world’s largest moving, man-made object (which sounds impressive until you try to picture a plane or truck as big as even a medium-sized ship, but still …). It measures 882.75 feet long and 92.5 feet broad, with enormous funnels belching exhaust from its 29 monstrous boilers. Its steel hull is held together with 3 million rivets, collectively weighing 1200 tons. Its main anchor weighs 16 tons, roughly the same as 32 concert grand pianos, and each link in its chain weighs 175 pounds.

June 30, 1910

Alexander Carlisle retires and is eventually succeeded by Thomas Andrews.

May 31, 1911

Before it can go out to sea, Titanic has to make its way from land to water via a large slipway—emphasis on the slip. More than 20 tons of lubricant, primarily rendered animal fat and soap, are applied to the slipway to ease the ship’s transition into the water. It works: in just over a minute, the ship is in the water, “as though she were eager for the baptism,” in the somewhat off-puttingly-anthropomorphizing language of the Belfast News Letter .

Contrary to popular belief, the White Star Line never touts the Titanic as flat-out “ unsinkable ” ahead of its maiden voyage. In fact, it isn’t until after the luxury liner sinks that the term starts to float (ahem) around and is subsequently seized upon by the press. But the Titanic ’s safety features are praised in the lead-up to its official launch; in 1911, The Shipbuilder magazine refers to it as “ practically unsinkable ” on account of its 16 watertight compartments, which are innovative for the era. The idea is that, even if up to four of the compartments are damaged or flooded, the others will keep the ship afloat.

Once the Titanic is in the water, it is fitted out : internal systems are put in place and interior detailing begins. Workers start constructing the swimming pool, squash and tennis courts, exercise rooms, sunrooms, libraries, lounges, fine dining rooms, and the passenger cabins in first, second, and third class.

There are 20 lifeboats aboard the RMS Titanic —enough to accommodate around 1178 people, or roughly half the total passengers and crew members expected on the maiden voyage. The White Star Line isn’t flouting safety regulations, however. According to the Merchant Shipping Act of 1894 and Merchant Shipping Act of 1906 (the only safety requirements in place prior to the disaster), the number of lifeboats required aboard is determined by a ship’s tonnage . At the time, the highest requirement—which applies to ships over 10,000 tons—calls for 16 lifeboats. The Titanic , which has a gross carrying capacity of 46,328 tons (and clocked in at 52,000 tons total when weighed) not only meets the safety requirements of the era, but exceeds them.

Late summer 1911

A large iceberg breaks off from a glacier in southwest Greenland. Over the next several months, it will drift in a southwest direction across the Labrador Sea .

The Titanic Begins Its Maiden Voyage

The maiden voyage of the world’s largest, most luxurious ocean liner brings together a who’s who of early 20th-century tycoons , socialites, and movie stars. But not everyone aboard the Titanic is famous. Most of the passengers are regular folks on a visit to New York or emigrants seeking new opportunities in the United States. 

April 2, 1912

Titanic completes tests to confirm its seaworthiness, then sails from Belfast to its home port of Southampton, UK, from which it will depart on its maiden voyage. Its regular transatlantic service between Southampton and New York City will include stops in Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland, on its outbound journey.

April 3, 1912

The Titanic arrives in Southampton around midnight .

April 10, 1912

Passengers begin boarding the Titanic in the morning . Among them, Macy's co-owner Isidor Straus and his wife, Ida, board the ship after a trip to Europe. Accompanying them on the voyage are Isidor's valet, John Farthing, and Ida's new maid, Ellen Bird.

At noon , the Titanic sets off from Southampton on its way to Cherbourg, France, with great fanfare. As the ship glides past other vessels along the docks, an incident that can be interpreted as a seriously bad omen occurs. Its colossal propellers displace so much water that some of those vessels become unmoored and get pulled toward the Titanic . Realizing that the SS New York will soon collide with the ocean liner’s port side, the Titanic reverses the port propeller—churning water in the opposite direction. Titanic captain Edward Smith's quick thinking (and quick work from a tugboat, which helps restrain the New York ) succeeds in preventing a crash. The tugboat captain claims that the New York had halted just four feet from the Titanic .

At 6:35 p.m. , the Titanic arrives in Cherbourg. John Jacob Astor IV and his wife, Madeleine Force, board the ship before its 8:10 p.m. departure with Astor’s manservant, Victor Robbins; Madeleine’s maid, Rosalie Bidios; and her nursemaid, Caroline Endres (Madeleine is pregnant at the time). The couple had taken a lengthy holiday in Egypt and Paris and are heading back to New York. Astor, who would be Titanic ’s richest passenger, had married the 18-year-old Madeleine in 1911 after divorcing his first wife, Ava Lowle Willing, in 1909. 

Most of the Titanic ’s other first-class passengers board at Cherbourg, including American socialite Margaret “Molly” Brown , Scottish landowners Sir Cosmo and Lucy Duff Gordon, and American mining heir Benjamin Guggenheim.  

April 11, 1912

After departing Cherbourg, the Titanic sails to its last stop before New York: the Irish port of Queenstown (now Cobh). The ship arrives at 11:30 a.m. Seven second-class and 113 third-class passengers come on board, along with multiple bags of mail , fulfilling the Titanic ’s contract as a royal mail ship. Seven lucky passengers also disembark in Queenstown.

The majority of passengers now aboard the Titanic are either American or European. American, British, Irish, and Swedish passengers are the most represented nationalities. But there are people from all over the world, including a large number of Syrian passengers. South African, Portuguese, Australian, and Chinese travelers fill the cabins as well.

At 1:30 p.m. , the Titanic pulls away from the dock. Third-class passenger Eugene Daly plays the traditional tune “ Erin’s Lament ” on his uilleann pipes as the Irish coast fades into the distance.

The Titanic at Sea

Titanic passengers settle in for the next few days at sea. The ocean liner is equipped with every kind of pastime and diversion to entertain guests, from a Turkish bath to sumptuous meals served by attentive stewards.

April 12, 1912

One activity every passenger looks forward to is the Titanic ’s meal service . Each class has its own formal dining room and the first-class passengers also enjoy an à la carte restaurant in which dishes are sold separately. Unlike earlier passenger liners, the Titanic offers plentiful portions of wholesome, expertly prepared foods at three seatings a day, all included in the ticket price. 

To work off all of those extravagant meals, the passengers (at least the rich ones) have access to a pretty impressive gymnasium. Some of the equipment highlights include punching bags; ‘cycle racing machines,’ which are essentially stationary bikes; an electric horse and an electric camel; and access to a squash court. Women are allowed to use the gym in the morning, and men are permitted in the afternoon. One of the more ironically useful pieces of equipment available is a mechanical rowing machine. 

And the Titanic has its own luxurious Turkish bath, mostly available for first-class passengers. It includes steam rooms, massage rooms, and an electric bath, which sounds like a recipe for disaster. In the book Titanic: Building the World’s Most Famous Ship , author Anton Gill describes it resembling an iron lung or “a modern tanning bed, which even sophisticated first-class passengers [view] with suspicion.”

While passengers spend the majority of their time aboard the Titanic eating, socializing, reading in the libraries, sending messages to loved ones by the Marconi wireless , or playing cards in the smoking lounges, they eventually return to their rooms at night to sleep. First-class passengers have their choice of 333 spacious staterooms spread over five decks and placed amidships, where the rocking of the sea is hardly felt, including four extravagant parlor suites.

Second-class passengers stay in rooms a bit lower in the ship with between two or four beds that have a sink and mirror, but no private bathrooms. They do have access to an outdoor promenade, smoking room, and library, however. Third-class passengers sleep near the noisy bottom of the ship, in rooms with bunkbeds that could accommodate between two and 10 passengers. Single men sleep in the bow of the ship, while single women and families are usually in the stern. There are reportedly only two bathtubs for everyone in third class, which (at full capacity) could be over 1000 passengers.

The Beginning of the End

A cold front passes over the Titanic on the morning of April 14, bringing brisk northwesterly winds. The temperature drops from the spring-like upper 50s to about 50°F by noon, but rapid weather changes are par for the course in the North Atlantic in spring. Nothing in the air signals the catastrophe about to occur.

April 14, 1912

The morning begins like the others on the journey, with breakfast. Third-class passengers gather in their dining room for a filling spread of oatmeal, smoked herring, potatoes, bread, butter, and marmalade. Second-class diners probably enjoy a classic British selection of eggs, grilled meats, fried and mashed potatoes, fresh fish, and an array of breads. In first class, the tables groan under the plates of baked and stewed fruits, puddings, smoked fish, grilled and cold meats, eggs cooked several ways, breads, rolls, spreads, and more.

Following the morning meal, passengers write letters, read, or go up on the decks. Captain Edward Smith and the crew keeps the Titanic going at a fast clip : it burns so much coal that roughly 100 tonnes of ash are dumped into the Atlantic Ocean every day of its journey. Over the wireless, other ships report icebergs on the Titanic ’s route. 

Lunch is served at mid-day . For third class, it’s the biggest meal they will have, and they tuck into rice soup, roast beef with gravy, more potatoes, corn, fresh bread, and plum pudding for dessert. Two decks above them, second-class diners likely have a slightly larger variety of soups, appetizers, meat-based entrees, and fruit, nuts, and sweets. Incredibly, first-class passengers are served another gigantic meal just a couple of hours after their breakfast, consisting of clear or hearty soups, numerous fish dishes and a seafood buffet, grilled mutton, potatoes, chicken dishes, sausages, roast beef, tongue, and a cheese selection.

At 5:50 p.m. , maintaining his speed, Captain Smith orders the ship to be turned. (While some accounts say the ship is now traveling to the south to avoid the ice, some modern historians argue that explanation misunderstands the Titanic ’s route.) 

But the passengers are too busy eating to notice the slight change of direction. They’re already well into the dinner hour . For the third-class folks, a rather anemic array of cold meats, bread, pickles, and stewed figs awaits them in the dining room, while second-class patrons can choose from baked haddock, curried chicken and rice, spring lamb with mint sauce, or roast turkey with cranberry sauce along with vegetables, the ever-present potatoes, and “American ice cream” among the desserts. Not to be outdone, the first-class menu positively bursts its buttons with a multicourse meal beginning with hors d’oeuvres, oysters, soups, salmon, filet mignon, chicken, roast duckling, and beef sirloin; side dishes like roast squab and cress, pâté de foie gras, asparagus vinaigrette, and, yes, potatoes; and éclairs, French ice cream, and peaches in chartreuse jelly. 

After dinner, men get together in the smoking lounges for drinks or to play cards, while women go to the libraries or to their rooms to put their children to bed. George Widener, the superrich CEO of a Philadelphia streetcar corporation, and his wife Eleanor host a party attended by Captain Smith and other wealthy passengers. At the same time, a group of second-class passengers sings hymns in their dining room, and a boisterous party takes place in the third-class area. 

About 7:40 p.m. , the Titanic wireless operator Harold Bride receives a message from the Californian , a ship belonging to the Leyland Line that is en route to Boston, warning of ice. Bride later testifies he delivers the message to the bridge. A few hours later, the Californian turns off its engines to avoid collisions with ice in the dark, and they send another warning to the Titanic . The Titanic ’s operator barks, "Shut up, shut up, I am busy; I am working Cape Race!" He’s likely sending messages to the Marconi tower at Cape Race, Newfoundland. 

At 9 p.m. , Captain Smith leaves Widener’s party and goes to the bridge. The sea is so calm it appears like a sheet of glass. The night is clear and moonless, and stars scatter across the bowl of the sky. He leaves the bridge with First Officer William Murdoch in command and turns in at 9:30 p.m.

At 10 p.m. , most passengers retire to their cabins. Crew members Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee climb up to the crow’s nest to take over the watch. They are without binoculars, though it’s unclear how much help they would have been.

Captain Stanley Lord of the Californian , having turned off his ship’s engines earlier in the evening, tells his wireless operator to turn in. The Marconi system is shut off at 11:30 p.m . 

Fleet and Lee glimpse a hazy shape in the distance at about 11:30 p.m. In the pitch-black night , it’s difficult to discern the horizon, and the sea is motionless.

Nine minutes later, the object comes into view—a huge iceberg directly on the Titanic ’s course. Fleet rings the lookout bell and phones the bridge. “Iceberg, right ahead!” he cries. Officer Murdoch tells Quartermaster Robert Hichens to turn the ship’s wheel hard a-starboard. But it’s too late. At 11:40 p.m. the Titanic crashes into the berg, and an underwater tongue of ice gashes the hull.

The Sinking of the Titanic

In the moments after the Titanic collides with the iceberg, only the captain and crew are aware of the immense peril the ship will soon face. Passengers remain calm. Many never imagine that the brand-new ocean liner has a chance of sinking.

Following the impact, bits of ice rain onto the ship’s deck; passengers, unaware of the gravity of the situation, use chunks of the debris to play a game of soccer . Captain Smith emerges onto the deck and learns not only that the Titanic has hit an iceberg, but that six of the ship’s watertight compartments are damaged. The Titanic can handle only four flooded compartments. Thomas Andrews, who is on board for its first voyage, surveys the damage and determines the Titanic will sink within two hours .

Meanwhile, the ship’s sea post clerks are enjoying a small birthday party for their colleague Oscar Scott Woody . They rush to the mail sorting room and find it rapidly flooding. The five men begin lugging the Titanic ’s registered mail sacks—a small portion of the up to 9 million pieces of mail aboard the ship—to the upper decks. None of the clerks would survive the disaster to come.

April 15, 1912

At 12:05 a.m. , the captain orders the crew to begin preparing the lifeboats . Officers are dispatched to stations around the ship to oversee the process. It’ll be hard—the Titanic is only carrying enough lifeboats to fit half the people on board. Passengers are roused from their rooms and told to report to the deck. The ship’s musicians entertain everyone, their attempt at maintaining a sliver of normalcy.

The Titanic ’s radio operators begin sending out distress signals at 12:15 a.m . Use of “SOS” as a Morse code distress signal isn’t commonplace in 1912, though it was adopted by the International Radiotelegraph Convention in 1906 and intended to go into effect internationally in 1908. The wireless operators on the Titanic are employed by the Marconi Company, which still favors using “CQD” for distress calls. Operator Jack Phillips uses both in an attempt to get help, but he isn’t the first to use “SOS”—the practice is already in effect among German liners.

The Frankfurt and the Olympic respond, but are too far to render timely aid. Minutes later, the Carpathia begins to head toward the Titanic —it's still hours away from the sinking ship.

At 12:25 a.m. , women and children are helped into the lifeboats. Passengers are at first unaware that there aren’t enough lifeboats for everyone, and the crowd gathered on the deck is calm; some stand quietly, others pace about. “At no time during this period was there any panic, or evidence of fear, or unusual alarm,” notes one first-class passenger . Men say goodbye to their wives and children, and, as time passes, some attempt to snag a spot on the emergency vessels. Many passengers remain unconvinced the ship will actually sink.

Lifeboat Number 7 is lowered into the icy water at 12:45 a.m . The first to leave the ship, it’s carrying around 27 people, though it can fit 65. Meanwhile, the Titanic begins firing distress rockets, hoping to catch the attention of a nearby ship. The Titanic continues to tilt forward as the bow sinks. More lifeboats enter the water, none loaded to full capacity: Number 5 at 12:55 a.m .; Number 6 a few minutes later, carrying Margaret “Molly” Brown and Frederick Fleet.

Number 3 is lowered around 1 a.m. carrying roughly 39 passengers and crew, followed by Number 1 with the Duff Gordons and only 10 other people.

All eight members of the Titanic’ s band continue playing as the women and children clamber into the boats. Later, many survivors remember them playing "Nearer, My God, To Thee" as the ship sinks, while others dispute these claims and suggest that band leader Wallace Hartley offered more uplifting songs, including ragtime melodies and popular hits like “ Songe d’Automne .”

Just before 1:10 a.m ., Ida Straus refuses to take a place in Lifeboat Number 8; she will not leave her husband, who won’t break the crew’s order of women and children first.

Lifeboat Number 10 hits the water at 1:20 a.m. Among its occupants is the Titanic ’s youngest passenger, Millvina Dean , who is only 9 weeks old.

Benjamin Guggenheim and his valet, Victor Giglio, visit the deck. When they realize the Titanic is sinking, the two head back to their suite and don their most formal attire. Guggenheim reportedly says, “We've dressed up in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.” Guggenheim’s alleged mistress is one of 56 people in Lifeboat Number 9. 

Lifeboats 12, 14, 13, 15, and 16 are lowered between 1:25 a.m. and 1:35 a.m.

At 1:40 a.m. , Collapsible Boat C is lowered with White Star executive J. Bruce Ismay among the occupants.

Five minutes later, Lifeboat Number 2 is set adrift with 20 people, followed by Number 11 with 50, and Number 4 with John Jacob Astor IV’s pregnant wife Madeleine in the group. Astor himself is not permitted to board with her.

At 2 a.m. Captain Smith begins releasing the crew from their duties. People have become more frantic, rushing to load the remaining lifeboats and causing chaos. At 2:05 a.m ., the last lifeboat, canvas-sided Collapsible D, is lowered. More than 1500 people remain on the ship. On the narrow staircases, third-class passengers claw their way up the height of seven decks; first-class passengers begin to slide forward on the slanted floors. Deck chairs, tables, potted plants, dishes, and wine glasses cascade into the sea. The bow continues to flood and sink, while the stern tilts so dramatically that the propellers are lifted above water. 

The Titanic sends its final distress call at 2:17 a.m. : “We are sinking fast. Passengers are being put into boats.” Father Thomas Byles, a Catholic priest, comforts the panicked passengers, hearing their confessions and giving absolution. The ship’s lights finally go out as the electricity fails. Everyone, both on the ship and those who managed to make it onto the lifeboats, is plunged into darkness.

The Titanic ’s bow fully sinks below the surface by 2:20 a.m. , sending the stern higher into the air. The strain causes the ship to snap into two pieces. Freed from the still-buoyant stern, the bow begins to fall to the bottom of the ocean. Passengers and crew alike are thrown into the freezing ocean. 

Then the Titanic ’s stern plummets beneath the surface. Like the bow, it shoots nearly vertically toward the ocean floor, where it remains to this day. The great, celebrated ship is fully lost to the sea .

As the Titanic survivors huddle in lifeboats and others clutch floating debris in the icy water, rescue is still hours away. The nearest ship, the Californian , fails to heed the Titanic 's distress signals. But the Cunard passenger liner Carpathia is steaming toward the Titanic 's last known position, almost 60 nautical miles to the northeast . 

By 2:30 a.m ., hundreds of Titanic survivors are shivering in lifeboats, trying to swim toward the half-empty vessels, or simply hanging on to pieces of debris. The lifeboats' occupants try to reach the survivors clinging to flotsam. A horrifying stillness overtakes the scene. Whether they're first class or steerage, the passengers and crew are alone in the North Atlantic, with every object familiar to them now spiraling 12,000 feet down to the seabed. 

Minutes tick past. The boats are able to pick up only a handful of survivors. The screaming and thrashing of people in the water grows quieter. They begin to die of hypothermia, but remain floating upright in their lifebelts, with their heads and shoulders bobbing above the surface.

Nearby ships, not knowing the nature of the disaster, continue to try to reach the Titanic by wireless. The operators attempt to glean information from other vessels. The SS Birma , belonging to the Russian East Asiatic Steam Ship Co., reports in its wireless log , "several ships calling MGY [the Titanic 's call letters], no reply. Fear it is serious." The Birma 's operator speaks to his counterpart on the German liner Frankfurt , who confirms the distress call came from the Titanic . Several vessels sail toward the Titanic 's last position to render aid.

The Californian remains stationary only 10 or so miles from the Titanic . The wireless operator had turned off the system only 10 minutes before the Titanic struck the iceberg. It receives none of the Titanic 's desperate CQD calls, nor does Captain Lord respond to the Titanic emergency rockets, which he thinks are flares used among ships owned by the same company. 

The Cunard steamship Carpathia continues at full speed to the Titanic ’s last position. Captain Arthur Rostron orders his crew to prepare its lifeboats to receive survivors, tells the galley to prepare hot tea and soup, and starts collecting warm clothes and blankets. 

At 4 a.m. , the Carpathia 's crew sees a green signal flare from the Titanic 's lifeboat 2, which carries 18 survivors : four crew, eight women from first class, and two families from third class. The two vessels make their way toward each other. The Carpathia 's crew lowers rope ladders and slings to hoist people onto the passenger liner's decks. As the day wears on and more lifeboats are rescued, the Carpathia 's passengers wrap the shivering castaways in blankets and offer hot beverages. Nineteen-year-old Bernice Palmer takes photos of the rescued survivors—and the infamous iceberg—with her new Kodak Brownie camera.

At 8:30 a.m. , Charles Lightoller , a deck officer, is the last passenger rescued from the last lifeboat to be brought aboard the Carpathia . The ship's decks teem with 705 wet survivors in varying states of shock and grief. Still, Captain Rostron continues to search the debris field with spotlights, hoping to pick up more victims. But he finds no one alive.

Captain Rostron debates what to do next. Halifax, Nova Scotia, is the closest large port, but sailing there would mean traveling through the same dangerous ice fields that had just sunk the Titanic . Sailing east to the Azores would keep the Carpathia relatively on course, but the ship isn't provisioned for so many passengers and risks running out of food. Roston decides to turn around and go back to New York—the Titanic 's original destination. He orders the crew and passengers not to speak to the press until they arrive.

April 17, 1912

As the Carpathia steams toward New York, the crew of the Mackay-Bennett , a cable ship based in Halifax, appropriates all of the embalming fluid in town for its grim mission: collecting the remains of Titanic victims from the sea. Having been hired by the White Star Line for the task, the Mackay-Bennett also carries a minister, an undertaker, 100 wooden coffins, 100 tons of ice, and 12 tons of iron to weigh down bodies buried at sea. It departs in the morning.

April 18, 1912

The Carpathia arrives in New York City at 9:15 p.m. in the eye of a media hurricane. For three days, the other ships in the vicinity of where the Titanic had gone down had received almost no news since the Carpathia arrived on the scene. Reporters had sent frantic wireless messages to the ships that received no reply. On both sides of the Atlantic, friends and family of the passengers and crew didn't know if their loved ones had survived. Now, as the overloaded Cunarder sails up the Hudson River to Pier 54, journalists and photographers in tugboats follow the Carpathia , shouting questions through megaphones, offering huge sums of money for exclusives, and trying to squeeze scoops out of the Titanic survivors. Despite Captain Rostron's media blackout, one of the Carpathia 's original passengers, St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Carlos Hurd , secretly takes notes and interviews Titanic victims before they get to the pier. Knowing what a bombshell his eyewitness account will be, he seals his notes in a cigar tin, ties champagne corks to the box for buoyancy, and flings it overboard, where it is fished out of the river by a colleague in a boat. Hurd's story is splashed across the paper's front page the following day.

April 22, 1912

The White Star Line hires a second mortuary ship, the Minia , when the Mackay-Bennett finds far more bodies than expected in the Titanic debris field. The Minia departs Halifax and meets with the Mackay-Bennett at sea to transfer supplies. The Mackay-Bennett steams back to Halifax with its grim cargo. 

Meanwhile, John Jacob Astor IV’s son Vincent contacts the Merritt-Chapman Wrecking Company to do whatever it takes to retrieve his father’s body. They have little interest in salvage, though—the plan is to drop 400 pounds of gun cotton in the wreck and use the explosion to bring bodies to the surface. The scheme does not go further because Astor’s body is recovered the same day by the Mackay-Bennett . Families of the wealthier passengers will continue to investigate ways to raise the Titanic , but experts consider it impossible .

April 30, 1912

The Mackay-Bennett arrives in Halifax at 9:30 a.m . and begins unloading the Titanic victims' remains. The crew found a total of 306 bodies , each carefully catalogued according to the clothing, appearance, and personal effects. Not all are able to be identified. While at sea, the crew embalmed and placed the first 100 bodies in coffins; when the coffins ran out, the crew selected those who appeared to be from first class to be embalmed and placed in ice. Apparent Titanic crewmembers and third-class passengers were buried at sea. In total, 190 victims are brought to Halifax for burial and 116 are buried at sea. Of the latter, around 56 were able to be identified. Over the next six weeks, the Minia and two more mortuary ships attempt to pick up the victims' remains. The Minia finds 17 bodies, the Montmagny recovers four, and the Algerine finds one, that of saloon steward James McGrady.

The Aftermath

The public’s fascination with the Titanic only grows stronger in the months and years following the disaster. Movies and books scrutinize the facts and romanticize the survivors’ stories , while discussions about finding and salvaging the Titanic begin almost as soon as the ship goes down. 

May 14, 1912

The first film about the disaster, Saved From the Titanic , is shot and released just 29 days after the ship sank. It stars Dorothy Gibson, a well-known actress and model who was an actual Titanic survivor (she and her mother had been in Lifeboat 7). The film kicks off a century-long trend. More films dramatize the Titanic sinking, including Atlantic (1929), an early talkie; Titanic (1943), a Nazi propaganda film smearing Great Britain; and Titanic (1953), which won an Oscar for screenwriting in 1954.

August 1, 1953

Newspapers report that Southampton-based company Risdon Beazley Ltd. makes what is usually considered the first serious attempt to find and salvage the Titanic . Investigators used explosives underwater to detect the shipwreck’s location via soundwaves. When asked by a reporter from the Liverpool Echo , Risdon Beazley officials neither confirm nor deny whether they’re also looking to recover the Titanic ’s reported “fortune in art treasures, including a priceless gem-set copy of Omar Khayyam.” They fail to locate the ship. (Today, some experts claim Risdon Beazley was looking for a completely different ship, the Empire Manor .)

November 21, 1955

A Night to Remember , a thrilling minute-by-minute telling of the Titanic ’s sinking, hits bookstores . Author Walter Lord interviewed dozens of Titanic survivors still alive in the early 1950s for his fact-based account. The Chicago Tribune gushes that “all the drama, horror, tragedy of that grim, heartbreaking night are here, never before presented in such superb narrative style,” while The New York Times ’s reviewer calls it “a stunning book, incomparably the best on its subject and one of the most exciting books of this or any year.” A Night to Remember lands on bestseller lists and sparks renewed interest in the Titanic saga.

July 3, 1958

A British movie based on Lord’s book, also called A Night to Remember , premieres in London. Widely praised for its accuracy, the film stars British actors Kenneth More as second officer Charles Lightoller and Michael Goodliffe as the ship’s architect Thomas Andrews.

January 23, 1960

Explorers Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh descend in the bathyscaphe Trieste —a blimp-shaped, deep-sea research vessel with a spherical observation chamber—to Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, some 36,000 feet below the ocean’s surface, the deepest known point on Earth. And make it back alive. The expedition proves it is possible to get equipment and people down to the bone-crushingest depths of the ocean.

The Rediscovery

Scientists may now have the technology to find the Titanic , which one expert pinpoints as being 500 miles from Halifax and 70 miles south of the Grand Banks, at a depth of two miles. The question is, who will get there first?

August 19, 1977

Newspapers report that scientists may launch an expedition to the Titanic to take photos of the wreck. Team leader Robert Ballard, a seafloor geologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, is inspired by Piccard and Walsh’s groundbreaking voyage, and, after a career in the military, develops submersible prototypes of his own. 

Ballard tells the Boston Globe that it would be possible to locate the wreck in a newly available vessel, the Alcoa Seaprobe , which can hold machinery capable of scanning the seabed with sonar. It can also take photos of any objects it detects and send them back to the scientists on the ship. “Finding the Titanic wouldn’t, to my mind, be difficult,” Ballard says. “The real challenge in something like this is the photography.” But when they get ready to go, a pay dispute with a drilling contractor means they have to use a cheaper replacement crew—which leads to an accident and the loss of $600,000 of equipment. 

July 17, 1980

Jack Grimm —who has also searched for Bigfoot and Noah’s Ark — departs Port Everglades, Florida, on his first unsuccessful expedition to find Titanic . According to Titanic Belfast , his ship passes over the shipwreck, but sonar fails to detect it. Grimm nevertheless pieces together a documentary about the expedition, Search for the Titanic , narrated by Orson Welles. 

June 28, 1981

Grimm once again heads out to the North Atlantic, this time with a documentary crew in tow. He claims that his expedition did snap a photo of the Titanic ’s propellers, but experts disagree.

July 16, 1983

Grimm makes his third and final attempt to find the Titanic . He also claims that computer enhancement of images proves it is a propeller, but in his memoir Into the Deep , Robert Ballard writes that when he checked it out there was nothing there. Grimm will go to his grave (in 1998) claiming to have found the ship first.

Summer 1984

Robert Ballard sets off on a mission to test his new submersible, a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) called the Argo , and to hopefully find the Titanic . This story, however, is just a cover; Ballard is actually checking out two nuclear submarines — USS Thresher and the USS Scorpion —that had sunk in the North Atlantic in the 1960s. The U.S. Navy tells Ballard that if he can examine the subs, he can spend the remaining time on the expedition doing whatever he wants. In summer 1984, he maps and photographs the Thresher . Ballard later tells CNN, “What they wanted me to do was go back and not have the Russians follow me, because we were interested in the nuclear weapons that were on the Scorpion and also what the nuclear reactors (were) doing to the environment.”

August 17, 1985

Ballard maps and examines the Scorpion . His primary mission accomplished, he has just 12 days to search for Titanic before he has to return to shore. With help from a French ship called Le Suroit , he looks for the world’s most famous shipwreck.

Using a concept they learned from mapping the wreckage of the subs—which had imploded under pressure and spread wide debris fields—Ballard’s team begins to scan the seafloor looking not for the Titanic ’s hull, but for its trail of metal parts and objects. The items provide a much bigger target than the ship itself, and will hopefully lead explorers right to the motherlode.

The crew works around the clock. As the days pass, Ballard thinks this mission might also be a failure.

September 1, 1985

At about 2 a.m. , Ballard is in his cabin reading when he hears a knock on the door. The ship’s cook tells him that he’s needed in the command center. Ballard recalls later, “I knew something had happened, so I flew out of my bunk and blew past him. It took me about four seconds to slide down six banisters of stairs.”

The crew monitoring the feed had seen the Titanic ’s debris field come into view. At the moment Ballard enters the room, the ROV glides over one of Titanic ’s boilers, sending images of the long-lost artifact to the stunned researchers. After an initial celebration, the mood quickly turns somber. The researchers realize it’s about the same time of night that the Titanic finally sank in 1912. Ballard tells 60 Minutes , “We were embarrassed we were celebrating … all of a sudden we realized that we should not be dancing on someone’s grave.”

In his memoir Into the Deep , Ballard would later write, “a world tragedy had played itself out on this spot, and now the site itself took hold of me. Its emotion filled me and never let go.”

September 2, 1985

The Titanic itself is discovered at approximately 41°43’57” N, 49°56’49” W—nearly 15 miles from the position given during distress calls. It rests in two pieces on the ocean floor more than 12,000 feet below the surface. The ship appears to be in mostly good condition, with the hull standing upright and little growth from marine organisms.

July 9, 1986

Ballard and crew from Woods Hole set off for the Titanic site to make the first crewed trip down to the wreck in a three-person submersible called the Alvin . Eleven dives total yield nearly 60,000 high-quality photos and hours of video footage. From examining the wreck, they determine that—contrary to popular belief—the iceberg hadn’t created a gash in the Titanic . Rather, the collision had caused the seams in that area to split apart, flooding the ship . They also find that the ship is quite rusty , which leaves it in a fragile state. The rust is caused by ocean microbes feeding on the iron and forming long “rusticles.”

July 18, 1986

Photos and video of the Titanic wreck are released to the public while Ballard’s crew is still at sea . The three major television networks and other media outlets pool funds to charter a helicopter to Ballard’s ship to retrieve the images and tapes, which are flown to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution under a shroud of secrecy. Reporters get the first glimpses of the storied ship, “ sheathed in icicles of iron ,” that evening.

July 28, 1986

Ballard and crew return to Woods Hole with thousands of photographs and videotapes of the Titanic . “The Titanic can finally rest in peace,” he tells UPI. Over the next few days, the photos are printed in newspapers across the country.

October 21, 1986

The R.M.S Titanic Maritime Memorial Act of 1986, which designates the site as an international maritime memorial, becomes law . The act also regulates research, exploration, and salvage activities regarding the ship. "The R.M.S. Titanic is the premier symbol in modern times of both the perils of the sea and the need for high standards of ship safety," President Ronald Reagan says in a statement . "The significance of the R.M.S. Titanic stems not only from the durable imprint of the disaster upon the consciousness of succeeding generations but also from the enormous strides made by the international community in promoting safety of life at sea, the study and observation of ice conditions, the maintenance of ice patrols in the North Atlantic Ocean, and the development and improvement of standards for the design and construction of vessels."

The Titanic Becomes a Touchstone

After discovering Titanic , Robert Ballard balks at questions about bringing up artifacts from the wreck—doing so, he believes, is like desecrating a gravesite: "I just hope we can somehow rise above the way we have behaved in the past and preserve the Titanic ," he says . Survivor Louise Pope— who was 4 when Titanic sank — takes on the salvage issue when testifying before Congress in 1985, saying, "I do not like the benefit of salvaging for commercial purposes, but if they can use it for research or something on there for museums, I would be more than willing." Over the years, a number of dives are made to the wreck—some for research purposes, some for documentary purposes, and some for the purposes of retrieving objects for exhibitions that traveled around the world. And perhaps more than any artifact brought up from the deep, James Cameron’s feature film Titanic does more to keep the spirit of the ocean liner alive well into the 21st century.

July 25, 1987

Titanic Ventures Limited Partnership (TVLP), in partnership with L'Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer, makes its fir st salvage trip to the wreck. Among the 1800 artifacts it returns with is the bronze bell that lookout Frederick Fleet rang to warn of the iceberg and a bronze cherub from one of the ship's staircases.

November 12, 1992

Marex Inc.—which counts Jack Grimm among its leaders — seeks sole salvage rights to Titanic but is denied. Instead, TVLP is awarded sole salvage rights. The decision is eventually reversed on appeal.

RMST Inc., the successor of TVLP,  visits Titanic again, making "15 trips in 15 days," according to Titanic, Triumph and Tragedy , adding 800 new artifacts to its collection.

June 7, 1994

RMST Inc. is awarded exclusive salvage rights by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, provided that it remains “in possession” of the wreck. RMST must mount regular expeditions to ensure its status. RMST Inc. makes another trip to Titanic , spotting a huge piece of the hull they mark for future salvage; more than 1000 artifacts are brought to the surface in July and put on display at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London. 

August 1996

RMST Inc. heads to the wreck's debris field again; this time, the company tries to bring up the piece of the hull spotted two years earlier, but the cable snaps mid-salvage, sending the piece back down to the ocean floor.

James Cameron’s Titanic begins principal photography with a budget of $110 million and almost immediately runs aground . The entertainment media maligns it for its exorbitant budget, which grows to over $200 million before marketing costs, and delays. It is originally scheduled to open in July 1997 as a summer blockbuster to compete with Men in Black . A Night to Remember author Walter Lord is a consultant on the film.

Among those who audition for Cameron’s Titanic is Matthew McConaughey, who loses out on the role of Jack Dawson when Cameron opts for Leonardo DiCaprio. “Walked away from there pretty confident that I had it,” McConaughey later recalls. “I didn’t get it. I never got offered that.”

November 1, 1997

Cameron’s Titanic finally premieres—in Japan. The movie has its world debut at the Tokyo International Film Festival. DiCaprio is big in Japan, so much so that the studio deploys 49 personal security guards for both the actor and director. At the screening, the excited audience keeps shouting “Leo!” There’s no word on their reaction when his character (spoiler alert!!) dies.

December 14, 1997

Titanic premieres in the U.S. and goes on to be the blockbuster studios had hardly dared to hope for. Critics and audiences fall for its sweeping romance set against heart-stopping cinematography and effects. It becomes the first film to make more than $1 billion and sets a record as the highest-grossing film of all time (until 2010, when it is dethroned by Avatar , another Cameron creation).

March 23, 1998

Titanic is the most-nominated film at the 70th Academy Awards with 14 nods in all of the major categories, tying the record set by 1950’s All About Eve . It wins 11 Oscars (tying the number won by Ben-Hur in 1960), including Best Picture, Directing, Score, Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Visual Effects and more, but is shut out of the acting categories.

August 10, 1998

On this trip down to the debris field, RMST Inc. succeeds in nabbing the piece of hull dropped during the previous attempt. Weighing in at 15 tons, it becomes known as "The Big Piece." It is the largest piece of the ship recovered and still has glass in its portholes .

August 2000

RMST Inc. makes another trip to Titanic , salvaging perfume samples that once belonged to first-class passenger Adolphe Saalfeld.

September 2001

Cameron dives to Titanic to film his 3D documentary Ghosts of the Abyss. The documentary is released in 2003.

June 22, 2003

NOAA embarks on an 11-day mission to dive to the wreck and check the condition of the ship.

May 27, 2004

Ballard returns to study the wreck for the first time in 18 years. Over the course of 11 days, Ballard and a team use ROVs to examine the deterioration of the ship, which Ballard believes is accelerating due to visits by submersibles and salvage missions. "The deep sea is the biggest museum in the world ... yet there's no lock on the door," Ballard tells NPR .

August 25, 2004

RMST Inc. heads to Titanic again. By this point, the seven salvage dives to the wreck's debris field have resulted in the recovery of 5500 artifacts.

December 2010

Scientists announce that a new bacterium has been found in samples of rusticles brought up from the ship. They name the bacterium Halomonas titanicae .

August 15, 2011

RMST Inc. is granted title to the Titanic artifacts it has salvaged, provided the company follows conditions that "ensure that the collection of artifacts recovered from Titanic will be conserved and curated consistent with current international and U.S. historic preservation standards," according to NOAA .

January 31, 2012

Government agencies including NOAA, the U.S. National Park Service, and the U.S. Coast Guard release a circular advising ships not to jettison waste or garbage within the area surrounding the wreck. Submersibles are asked not to land on the wreck itself or leave plaques behind.

April 4, 2012

James Cameron’s Titanic remains unsinkable when it's re-released in theaters to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the real-life disaster. Presented in 3D in select theaters, the film takes in a staggering $100 million internationally in one weekend, putting its overall grosses at over $2 billion.

The Future of the Titanic

A century after the RMS Titanic sinks on its maiden voyage and makes the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean its final resting place, a new ship—dubbed the Titanic II —makes headlines. Envisioned as an almost exact replica of the doomed luxury liner by Australian billionaire and politician Clive Palmer , it becomes something of an iceberg looming on the modern-day legacy of the Titanic . For maritime scholars and fans of Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster alike, it might go down in history as one of the biggest publicity stunts of all time—provided it ever actually gets built or sets sail .

April 30, 2012

The same day he announces his bid for political office in his native Australia, mining mogul Clive Palmer reveals his plans to build a nearly exact replica of the Titanic , to be christened Titanic II . "It will be every bit as luxurious as the original Titanic but of course it will have state-of-the-art 21st-century technology and the latest navigation and safety systems," Palmer says in a press conference. He adds that he hopes the planned liner—to be built by Chinese company CSC Jinling Shipyard as the flagship of Palmer's cruise company, Blue Star Line —will set sail from England to New York in 2016.

October 2012

Titanic experts Steve Hall and Daniel Klistorner, co-authors of Titanic: The Ship Magnificent and Titanic in Photographs , are appointed to work on the forthcoming ship. Descendants of Titanic survivors Joseph Bruce Ismay and Margaret "Molly" Brown later join the ship's advisory board.

February 26, 2013

Palmer releases blueprints for the design of Titanic II at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York. The proposed ship will have first-, second-, and third-class accommodations and the capacity to carry 2600 passengers and 900 crew members, with enough lifeboats for all those aboard. Additionally, it's revealed that the ship will serve meals from the original Titanic menu and that crew members will don uniforms similar to those worn in 1912. Structurally, Titanic II will differ from the Titanic in key ways: It will be diesel-powered but have four smoke stacks to recreate the look of the original liner and have an enlarged rudder and bow thrusters, so as to better maneuver around whatever obstacles might come its way.

April 16, 2013

Finnish engineering firm Deltamarin signs a deal with Blue Star Line to manage the development of Titanic II and ensure it meets modern-day safety regulations and construction guidelines. "Deltamarin will be responsible for coordinating the various parties involved in the project including the shipyard, architects, interior designers and operations managers," Palmer says in a statement.

September 16, 2013

Palmer files a U.S. federal trademark for "Titanic II Blue Star Line," as well as " Titanic Two " and " RMS Titanic ."

September 19, 2013

A wooden prototype of the Titanic II is tested at the Hamburg Ship Model Basin in Germany at speeds up to 23 knots per hour.

The Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) partners with Blue Star Line to promote Titanic II from within China, with plans to launch the ship from the country .

Deltamarin, the Finnish engineering firm responsible for the development of Titanic II , reveals that work on the project has come to a halt, as a spokesperson for Palmer claims that he has retired from business to focus on his political career. Workers at the CSC Jinling Shipyard tell The Australian that little work has been done on the project, with one saying: "That ship was just a proposal. It's never been carried out and the project has never launched."

March 21 and 26, 2015

The U.S. federal trademarks for " Titanic II Blue Star Line ," " Titanic Two ," and " RMS Titanic " are classified in status as "Abandoned - Failure to respond or late response," per Trademarkia, a search engine for trademarks held in the U.S.

August 2015

A spokesperson for James McDonald, the global marketing director for Blue Star Line, reveals that the launch date for Titanic II has been pushed back to 2018 , two years after it was originally planned.

Queensland Nickel, a nickel refinery that Palmer purchased in 2009 , alleges amid financial troubles that close to AUD $6 million was taken from the company for the marketing and development of Titanic II ; Palmer denies these allegations.

September 27, 2018

Palmer reveals in a statement that work on Titanic II was suspended because of a financial dispute between the Chinese government-owned Citic Limited and Mineralogy, the parent company of Blue Star Line. He adds that the dispute has since been resolved and the building of Titanic II will resume, with plans to offer a two-week maiden voyage to Dubai, and offer another from Dubai to Southampton.

October 2018

Titanic II , which has still yet to be built, is set to make its maiden voyage in 2022, officially starting in China and traveling to Singapore and Dubai, from where it will sail to Southampton, and then follow the Titanic ’s original 1912 route all the way to New York City.

November 9, 2018

Deltamarin confirms it has recommenced work on the project; in January 2019, the engineering firm reveals Blue Star Line has contracted the company to further handle the design for the proposed ship.

April 16, 2019

The official Twitter account for Titanic II —as linked to by the official Titanic II website —posts about a gala dinner held in honor of the proposed ship in February 2019. This is the last public post made from the account as of April 2022.

August 21, 2019 A group of explorers make the first crewed dive to Titanic in over a decade and find that the wreck is rapidly deteriorating . " Titanic is returning to nature," historian Parks Stephenson tells the BBC .

October 1, 2019

Palmer files a U.S. federal trademark for "Titanic II."

January 21, 2020

RMST Inc. announces plans to dive to Titanic to retrieve the Marconi radio from the wreck. In May, a judge rules that the salvage trip can proceed, against the wishes of NOAA, UNESCO, and many archaeologists.

January 2021

Funding and logistical issues due to the COVID-19 pandemic derail plans to dive to the wreck for the radio.

June 30, 2021

The U.S. federal trademark for "Titanic II" is classified in status as " Abandoned - Failure to respond or late response ," per Trademarkia.

As of April 8, the Titanic II official website notes : "Tickets are not yet available for purchase. Ticketing information including the date of the maiden voyage and ticket prices will, when released, be made available on this website."

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Titanic: Voyage To The Past

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April 4, 1912: The Titanic leaves Southampton, England, on her ill-fated first voyage. Southampton City Council/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

The Two-Way

Australian billionaire says he's building 'titanic ii;' would you go aboard.

April 30, 2012 • "Of course it will sink if you put a hole in it," says mining magnate Clive Palmer. He says he's contracted with Chinese shipbuilders and that the liner will be ready to sail in 2016. First voyage: From London to New York.

Laurie and Dan Castaneda from Long Beach, Calif., walk the pool deck of the Azamara Journey on a Titanic Memorial Cruise. Preparation for their costumes involved several weeks of research, last-minute purchases and even home-sewn clothing from vintage patterns. Richard Drew/AP hide caption

A Dispatch From The Titanic Memorial Cruise

April 15, 2012 • One hundred years ago, the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank into the Atlantic on its maiden voyage. At that very spot today is another luxury liner, there to mark the centennial of the disaster. Writer Lester Reingold is on board the memorial cruise, and he sends us this report.

Tennis shoes lay on the beach on Terschelling island, Netherlands, Feb. 10, 2006. They were from a shipping container that fell off a ship during a storm. Marleen Swart/AP hide caption

Krulwich Wonders...

The strange persistence of shoes at sea.

April 14, 2012 • When explorer Robert Ballard discovered the Titanic on the sea floor in 1985, he also found a pair of leather shoes sitting on the deck near the stern of the ship.

Surviving officers of the Titanic recalled ship's doctor John Edward Simpson as perfectly calm in the face of death, even giving his pocket flashlight to one of the lifeboat captains. Courtesy of Kate Dornan hide caption

History Lost And Found: A Letter From Titanic

April 14, 2012 • John Edward Simpson was a ship's doctor aboard the Titanic. He wrote a letter to his mother back home in Belfast, a few bits of news and fond wishes. The letter, sent from the great ship's last port of call, made it home. Simpson did not.

Celine Dion sings "My Heart Will Go On" at the 1998 Academy Awards. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

15 Years After 'Titanic,' Does The Power Ballad Go On?

April 13, 2012 • From the tootle of its opening pennywhistle, "My Heart Will Go On" became Titanic 's third co-star, and no power ballad since has matched it for size or emotion.

The cast and crew of Titanic , as pictured in my 2001-2002 yearbook. I'm standing in the third row back on the right side, in front of the "captain." Courtesy of Dana Farrington hide caption

I Died On The Titanic

April 13, 2012 • Titanic the musical, that is. NPR.org's Dana Farrington played a drowning victim as an eight-grader in 2002. The costumes and set were memorable in a good way, she says. But portraying the tragic ordeal was a bit creepy.

Portraits of Wallace Hartley (top center) and the other musicians aboard the Titanic, published after the ship sank in 1912. Wikimedia Commons hide caption

Remembering The Titanic's Intrepid Bandleader

April 13, 2012 • Wallace Hartley left work as a bank teller to become a conductor. He spent his final moments on the deck of the Titanic, leading the ship's seven musicians in song as they sank into the North Atlantic.

Planet Money

Why didn't passengers panic on the titanic.

April 12, 2012 • People behaved very differently on another ship that sunk around the same time. An economist thinks he knows why.

The bow railing of RMS Titanic, illuminated by the Mir 1 submersible. Read more about the wreck in a National Geographic report . Emory Kristof/National Geographic Stock hide caption

Wreck Explorer: Titanic's Captivating Heroes, Villains

April 10, 2012 • On April 10, 1912, the Titanic set sail for New York City. The rest of the story has been the subject of countless books, shows and films about the legend of the "unsinkable" ship. Bob Ballard, who discovered the wreckage, talks about why the story is still so fascinating.

Why 'Titanic' Is So Hard To Find

April 9, 2012 • I'm working on a radio story about the sinking of the Titanic, and I need to grab a few audio clips from the movie. That's harder than I thought.

The ill-fated Titanic rests at Harland and Wolff's shipyard, Belfast, in February 1912. Topical Press Agency/Getty Images hide caption

100 Years Later, Titanic Lives On In Letters

April 6, 2012 • It's been 100 years since the sinking of the RMS Titanic, and the anniversary brings with it a barrage of literature. Former NPR editor Rachel Syme has been keeping track of the new releases and lists her favorites here. Do you have a favorite Titanic book? Let us know in the comments.

Museum Tracks Titanic Mania Over Unsinkable Ship

April 4, 2012 • The world seems obsessed with the Titanic, which went under nearly 100 years ago. At a museum in Britain, you can study Titanic products. Items include: Iceberg Beer, a Titanic Barbie doll which looks like Kate Winslet's character from the movie and a Tubtanic bathtub plug.

James Cameron's 1997 epic Titanic is being rereleased in 3-D. Paramount Pictures/AP hide caption

James Cameron: Diving Deep, Dredging Up Titanic

March 30, 2012 • Filmmaker James Cameron has just returned from a successful submersible expedition to the deepest spot in the ocean — and he's also gearing up for the 3-D rerelease of his 1997 epic, Titanic . Cameron says that for him, filmmaking and exploring are two aspects of the same basic impulse.

Auction House To Sell Titanic Collection

March 28, 2012 • Next month marks the centennial of the sinking of the Titanic. A collection of more than 5,500 objects amassed during seven expeditions to the site is up for sale. Items range from binoculars and tea cups to a giant slab of the ship's hull. The collection has been appraised at $189 million. David Greene talks to Arlen Ettinger, president of Guernsey's, the auction house managing the sale.

The Titanic, which sank 100 years ago in April. Central Press/Getty Images hide caption

All Deck Chairs Are Filled: Titanic 100th Anniversary Cruise Is Fully Booked

January 11, 2012 • A ship will leave Southampton on April 8 and stop at the site of the Titanic's sinking on the 100th anniversary of that tragedy. Then, it is to finish the voyage that the Titanic couldn't.

Currency is among the artifacts salvaged from the wreck of the Titanic. Stanley Leary/ASSOCIATED PRESS hide caption

Titanic Artifacts To Be Auctioned

December 29, 2011 • The company that salvaged thousands of artifacts from the Titanic will auction them together next April, on the 100th anniversary of the ship's sinking.

White Star Line heir J. Bruce Ismay was one of 325 men to survive the sinking of the Titanic.

'How To Survive The Titanic,' And Sink Your Reputation

October 15, 2011 • In 1912, J. Bruce Ismay was one of the most hated men in America: He owned the Titanic; gave the ship just 20 lifeboats; and — unlike so many — lived through its maiden voyage. Frances Wilson tracks the scandal of Ismay's survival in How to Survive the Titanic .

Titanic Victims Honored With A Watery Memorial

August 7, 2011 • NPR's summer road trip series continues with a tribute to two influential Washington, D.C., figures from the early 1900s. A 12-foot fountain in the nation's capital honors the friends, who took an ill-fated trip in 1912 aboard a brand-new ocean liner called the Titantic. Emily Friedman reports.

Lesson Learned: Don't Name Your Boat Titanic

June 9, 2011 • Mark Wilkinson of Birmingham, England, may have invited a bit of bad luck when he named his used 16-foot cabin cruiser Titanic 2. When the boat returned to harbor from its maiden voyage, it sank. The harbormaster took Titanic 2 in tow, and pulled Wilkinson out of the water.

A London newspaper boy sells copies of the Evening News with a story about the sunken ship. Topical Press Agency/Getty Images hide caption

Classics in Concert

Gavin bryars' 'sinking of the titanic' in concert.

March 31, 2008 • Bryars' first major composition, The Sinking of the Titanic, still sounds as vital, fresh and forward-thinking as it did when it was written in 1969. The piece was performed in 2008 as part of the Wordless Music Series recorded by WNYC in New York City.

History of the Titanic: 10 questions about the ill-fated ship

More than a century after the titanic sank, the ship maintains its grip on the public imagination, by mike gavin • published june 20, 2023 • updated on june 20, 2023 at 8:32 pm.

More than a century after the sinking of the Titanic, another ocean search and rescue operation is taking place in the vicinity of the ship's wreckage.

A submersible carrying five people went missing Sunday during its mission to explore the remains of the Titanic, the wreckage of which is nearly 13,000 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

The sinking of the Titanic - along with the countless books, documentaries and movies that followed - generated a seemingly insatiable fascination. In recent years, the box office record-breaking 1997 film “Titanic” was rereleased in 3D; the "Titanic. The Exhibition" opened in New York; and a modern-day replica of the Titanic was slated to set sail along the ill-fated ship's path.

OceanGate Expeditions began offering tours of the ship's wreckage onboard a submersible called "Titan" for $250,000 per person, creating an underwater tourist attraction for the wealthy.   

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"You can dive to the bottom of the ocean to explore the Titanic," it said on the OceanGate Expeditions' website. "Dive with us to see the world's most famous shipwreck with your own eyes."       

As the ship continues to maintain its grip on the public imagination, here are 10 questions about the Titanic, with answers based on information from History and Britannica .

When was the Titanic built?

U.s. & world.

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Construction on the Titanic began in March 1909 amid rising competition between rival shipping lines White Star and Cunard. The latter had released two ships that set speed records for crossing the Atlantic Ocean. White Star chairman J. Bruce Ismay met with William J. Pirrie, chairman of Belfast shipbuilding company Harland and Wolff, and agreed to build three luxury vessels that, at 882 feet in length, were set to become the largest of their time. 

One of those vessels was the Titanic. Designed by Thomas Andrews, the ship’s hull was completed and launched on May 31, 1911. In June of 1911, the Titanic's sister-ship Olympic - which had been constructed alongside the Titanic - set sail on its maiden voyage. Over the next year, work continued on the Titanic's decks and interiors. 

The Titanic's maiden voyage began on April 10, 1912.   

Where did the Titanic's journey begin?

The Titanic departed from Southampton, England. It was captained by Edward J. Smith. In an ominous sign while departing the dock in Southampton, the Titanic nearly collided with the America Line’s S.S. New York.

The ship went on to make stops in Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown, Ireland (now Cobh) before leaving for New York with approximately 2,200 people on board, including roughly 1,300 passengers. 

How much did it cost to travel on the Titanic in 1912? How much did a ticket on the Titanic cost in today’s money?

The cost of a third-class ticket aboard the Titanic cost 7 pounds, which translated to $35 at the time, according to Cruise Hive . Second-class tickets were 12 pounds, or $60. First-class berths started at 30 pounds, or $150. Those who purchased a first-class suite paid 105,000 pounds, or over $130,000. 

By today's prices, first-class berths would cost $4,591, second-class tickets would be $1,834, and third-class tickets would be $1,071.

Why did the Titanic sink?

The Titanic's starboard side struck an iceberg just before midnight on April 14, 1912 -- opening gashes in the hull of the ship below the waterline. 

The Titanic was billed as a "practically unsinkable" ship because it featured watertight bulkhead compartments with watertight doors that could be quickly opened or closed by the bridge individually or simultaneously if needed. But the ship had a design flaw. 

The bulkheads, separated by walls only a few feet above the water line, were not designed to withstand the ship listing or pitching forward. When the ship did so, the walls were not tall enough to prevent water from spilling over the top and into the neighboring compartment, which contributed to the sinking of the ship.  

Where did the Titanic sink?

The Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean, 370 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. The wreckage is 12,500 feet, or almost 2.5 miles, below the surface of the ocean. 

The remains are about 13 nautical miles from the position given in the ship's distress signals.

How far is the Titanic from the U.S.?   

The Titanic wreckage is 900 nautical miles east of Cape Cod, Mass.  

How many people died on the Titanic?

More than 1,500 people died during the sinking of the Titanic. Of the more than 2,200 on board, 705 survivors were rescued from lifeboats by the ship Carpathia, which arrived an hour after the Titanic sank. 

The Titanic had 16 lifeboats designed to hold 65 people, and four Engelhardt “collapsibles.” Even if filled to capacity, the lifeboats could hold 1,178 people -- well below the Titanic's 3,000-plus capacity. 

When was the Titanic wreckage found?

The wreckage of the Titanic was discovered in 1985 after decades of expeditions attempted to find the ship. American oceanographer Robert Ballard, who worked with the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea, is credited with locating the wreckage. 

The search for the Titanic was used as a means to test the Argo, a submersible with a remote-controlled camera capable of transmitting live images from the ocean floor to a monitor aboard the research ship "Knorr" at the surface.

On Sept. 1, 1985, the Argo captured the first underwater images of the Titanic, showing the ship’s boilers.       

Are any survivors from the Titanic still alive? 

The last living survivor of the Titanic died in 2009. Millvina Dean, who was 2 months old when aboard the ship, died at 97 in Southampton.

Dean's family was on board the Titanic to depart Southampton and start a new life in the United States. Her two-year-old brother Bertram and her mother Georgette also survived thanks to what Dean said was the quick action of her father, who died in the tragedy. 

She said her father felt the ship hit the iceberg and quickly got the family out of their third-class quarters and towards a lifeboat.  

"That's partly what saved us — because he was so quick," Dean told the British Broadcasting Corp. in 1998. "Some people thought the ship was unsinkable."

Can the Titanic be raised or preserved?

Because of the water depth, and the fragile state of the ship itself, the Titanic cannot be raised from the ocean floor for preservation. 

The ship is succumbing to metal-eating bacteria called Halomonas, with sections subject to collapse or disintegration.

The Associated Press reported in 2021 that the Titanic could vanish in a matter of decades.    

“The ocean is taking this thing, and we need to document it before it all disappears or becomes unrecognizable,” Stockton Rush, president of OceanGate Expeditions, said at the time.

Rush is one of five passengers on board the submersible that went missing during a voyage to explore the Titanic's wreckage. 

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Map of the Titanic’s maiden and final voyage

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There are still secrets to be found on Titanic. These graphics explore them

It sank 112 years ago Monday, but our obsession with the RMS Titanic continues.

History's most famous ship slipped beneath the North Atlantic at 2:20 a.m. on April 15, 1912 , but we continue to explore its maiden voyage, iceberg, sinking and undersea decay through a seemingly endless stream of photographs, books , documentaries and movies , and museum exhibits.

Fascination has led to tragedy. A submersible carrying five passengers to view the Titanic imploded near the wreck , killing all aboard, in June 2023.

It also has brought technological advances. In May 2023, a new type of digital scanning, using multiple images, gave us a three-dimensional view of the ship as it would look if it were lifted out of the water .

Why are people drawn to Titanic?

"There isn’t a simple answer," says Karen Kamuda, president of the Titanic Historical Society , which operates the Titanic Museum in Indian Orchard, Massachusetts.

Those who join the society are of "all ages and occupations, and their interests are multivariable," Kamuda says. Aside from their fascination with Titanic and its passengers and crew, their curiosity might include the sister ships Olympic and Britannic, the White Star Line, artifacts, and TV and movies.

"James Cameron’s 1997 film, ' Titanic ,' opened up a brand-new interest," Kamuda says. "The internet has helped spread the story worldwide."

Here are a few things you may not know about Titanic:

Titanic traveled less than 3,000 miles

Titanic was built at the Harland & Wolff shipbuilding company in Belfast, Ireland. After outfitting and sea trials, the ship left port for her maiden voyage.

From Belfast to the fatal iceberg strike, Titanic traveled about 2,555 nautical miles, or 2,940 land miles:

April 2, 1912 | 8 p.m.: Titanic leaves Belfast, sails to Southhampton, England (577 nm).

April 10, 1912 | noon: Titanic leaves Southhampton, sails to Cherbourg, France (88 nm).

April 11, 1912 | 8:10 p.m.: Titanic leaves Cherbourg, sails to Queenstown ( now known as Cobh ), Ireland (341 nm).

April 11, 1912 | 1:30 p.m.: Titanic leaves Queenstown for New York.

April 14, 1912 | 11:40 p.m.: Titanic strikes iceberg 1,549 nm from Queenstown.

April 15, 1912 | 2:20 a.m.: Titanic sinks about 400 miles south of Newfoundland, Canada.

Titanic's lifeboats were not filled to capacity

15-ton piece of wreckage recovered.

The largest piece of wreckage recovered from Titanic, above, is a 15-ton section of the hull measuring 26 feet by 12 feet. It's on display at Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition at the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas

The hull section was part of the starboard side of the ship , between the third and fourth funnels. It was lifted to the surface in 1998.

Museums keep Titanic's memory alive

A  number of museums offer visitors a look at hundreds of objects recovered from the wreck site. Here are a few:

And if you can't get to a Titanic museum, a traveling exhibit, Titanic. The Exhibition , with 200 items, may be coming to you after it leaves New York.

Thousands of artifacts have been salvaged

Titanic was much smaller than today's cruise ships, want to learn more about titanic.

Historical associations are a good source of information.

• Titanic Historical Society:  https://titanichistoricalsociety.org/
• Titanic International Society:   https://titanicinternationalsociety.org/
• Belfast Titanic Society:   https://www.belfast-titanic.com/
• British Titanic Society:   https://www.britishtitanicsociety.com/

SOURCE USA TODAY Network reporting and research; Titanic Historical Society; titanicfacts.net; titanicuniverse.com; National Geographic; encyclopedia-titanica.org

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The High Hopes of the Titanic ’s Maiden Voyage

The infamous passenger liner was fitted with advanced safety features—lulling her crew into a false sense of security.

• Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic is arguably the most infamous shipwreck to date. Over a century later, its story lives on through films, books, and memorials. The world remains captivated with uncovering the truth behind the ship's unfortunate fate, as well as the stories of the people who were on board.

Built by the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Northern Ireland, the RMS Titanic was the largest passenger liner in service, and it was the second of three Olympic -class ocean liners. On April 10, 1912, the Titanic set out on her maiden voyage from Southampton, England across the Atlantic Ocean to New York City. 

Related: 11 Captivating Titanic Books

Four days into the journey, the ship collided with an iceberg. What was initially assumed to be a minor scratch ended up causing the deadliest sinking of an ocean liner to date. Ironically, the ship had advanced safety features for the time, and was deemed “unsinkable” before facing her disastrous end. 

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Of the estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard the Titanic, over 1,500 lives were lost—including the ship's captain, Edward Smith, who adhered to the maritime tradition of going down with the ship. One critical issue was the amount of lifeboats available. The Titanic set sail with only enough tenders to hold a total of 1,178 passengers—leaving about half of the people onboard with no chance of escape. 

Historian Walter Lord took a closer look at the maritime disaster in his book, A Night to Remember . Originally published in 1955, this classic book recreates the last night aboard the ship with intimate details from personal accounts and interviews with survivors. 

Related: Walter Lord is the Pop Historian All History Lovers Should Read

Lord continued his investigative work in 1976 with The Night Lives On. Combining over 30 years of research with updated insights on some of the most puzzling aspects of the wreck, including the conditions that contributed to its disaster, The Night Lives On provides readers with a deeper look into the sinking of the Titanic .

Thorough and well-researched, these books stand the test of time and are as readable today as when they were first published. Y ou can get your hands on both New York Times bestsellers with The Complete Titanic Chronicles . Including both A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On , this book bundle is the definitive account of the passenger liner’s fate.

Read an excerpt from The Night Lives On, then download The Complete Titanic Chronicles .

____________________

The Complete Titanic Chronicles

By Walter Lord

Not one word about slowing down. Why was this most obvious of all precautions not even mentioned? The usual answer is that Captain Smith thought the Titanic was unsinkable. But even if the ship were unsinkable, the Captain surely didn’t want to hit an iceberg.

Actually, he didn’t slow down because he was sure that on this brilliantly clear night any iceberg could be spotted in time to avoid it. In reaching that decision, Smith did not feel he was doing anything rash. He was following the practice of all captains on the Atlantic run, except for a few slowpokes like James Clayton Barr of the Cunarder Caronia , whose legendary caution at the slightest sign of haze had earned him the derisive nickname “Foggy.”

Knuckling under the competitive pressure of keeping schedule, most captains ran at full steam, despite strong evidence that ice was not as easily sighted as generally claimed. Especially noteworthy was the harrowing ordeal of the Guion Liner Arizona in November 1879. Like the Titanic, she was the largest liner of her day. Eastbound off the Banks of Newfoundland, she raced through a night that was cloudy, but with good visibility. Taking advantage of the calm seas, the passengers gathered in the lounge for a concert.

Suddenly there was a fearful crash, sending everybody sprawling among the palms and violins. The Arizona had smashed head on into a giant iceberg, shattering 30 feet of her bow. But the forward bulkhead held; there were no casualties; and two days later she limped into St. John’s. In a curious twist of logic, the accident was hailed as an example of the safety of ships, rather than the dangers of ice.

Related: 7 Books About Disastrous Shipwrecks in History

There were other close calls too. In 1907 the North German Lloyd Liner Kronprinz Wilhelm dented her bow and scarred her starboard side, brushing a berg in the pre-dawn darkness. In 1909 the immigrant Ship Volturno barely escaped damage, running through a huge ice field. In 1911 the Anchor Liner Columbia struck a berg off Cape Race, driving her bow plates back ten feet. The jar injured several crewmen and broke one passenger’s ankle. It was foggy at the time; so perhaps the accident was discounted.

Such incidents were ignored; most captains continued to run at full speed. Always dangerous, the practice became even more so with the vast leap in the size of ships at the turn of the century. It was one thing to dodge an iceberg in the 10,000-ton Majestic , Captain Smith’s command in 1902, but quite a different matter only ten years later in the 46,000-ton Titanic . The momentum of such a huge ship was enormous, and she just couldn’t stop suddenly or turn on a dime.

The Titanic tested making an emergency stop only once during those brief trials in Belfast Lough, and that at the very moderate speed of 18 knots. Her turning tests seem almost as minimal: she apparently made two complete circles at 18-20 knots and then carried out three other turns at 11, 19½, and 21¼ knots. Her performance at maximum speed remains a mystery.

Captain Edward Smith.

Once again the question arises: how much did Captain Smith really know about the great vessel under his feet?

Arguably, the practice of maintaining speed might have been a practical necessity in the days before wireless, for who knew where the ice really was? The sightings came from vessels reaching port several days later, and by that time the information was too stale to pinpoint the danger. But Signor Marconi’s genius changed everything. The reports reaching the Titanic told exactly where the ice could be found, only hours away.

Why couldn’t Captain Smith and his officers see the difference? Certainly they knew the importance of wireless in an emergency. The help summoned by the sinking liner Republic in 1909 proved that. But no one on the Titanic ’s bridge seemed to appreciate the value of wireless as a constant, continuous navigational aid. Basically, they still thought of it as a novelty—something that lay outside the normal running of the ship. It was a mindset tellingly illustrated by the way the wireless operators were carried on the roster of the crew. Phillips and Bride were not listed with the Deck Department; they came under the Victualling Department—like stewards and pastry chefs. 

So the Titanic raced on through the starlit night of April 14. At 10 P.M. First Officer Murdoch arrived on the bridge to take over Second Officer Lightoller’s watch. His first words: “It’s pretty cold.”

Related: The Secret Cold War Mission That Helped America Find The Titanic

“Yes, it’s freezing,” answered Lightoller, and he added that the ship might be up around the ice any time now. The temperature was down to 32°, the water an even colder 31°. A warm bunk was clearly the place to be, and Lightoller quickly passed on what else the new watch needed to know: the carpenter and engine room had been told to watch their water, keep it from freezing…the crow’s nest had been warned to keep a sharp lookout for ice, “especially small ice and growlers”…the Captain had left word to be called “if it becomes at all doubtful.”

Lightoller later denied that the sudden cold had any significance. He pointed out that on the North Atlantic the temperature often took a nose dive without any icebergs in the area. Indeed this was true. The sharp drop in temperature did not necessarily mean ice, but it was also true that it could mean ice. It was, in short, one more signal calling for caution. After all, that was the whole point of taking the temperature of the water every two hours.

There’s no evidence that either Lightoller or Murdoch saw it that way. The bitter cold and the reported ice remained two separate problems. Lightoller had passed on all the information he could; so now he went off on his final rounds, while Murdoch pondered the empty night.

A few yards aft along the Boat Deck, First Wireless Operator Phillips dug in to a stack of outgoing messages. His set had a range of only 400 miles during daylight, and the American traffic had piled up. Now at last he was in touch with Cape Race and was working off the backlog. Some were passenger messages for New York—arrival times, requests for hotel reservations, instructions to business associates. Others were being relayed for ships no longer in direct touch with the land.

At 11 P.M. the steamer Californian suddenly broke in: “I say, old man, we’re stopped and surrounded by ice.” She was so close that her signal almost blasted Phillips’s ears off.

“Shut up, shut up,” he shot back, “I’m busy. I’m working Cape Race.” Then he went back to the outgoing pile—messages like this one relayed to a Los Angeles address from a passenger on the Amerika :

NO SEASICKNESS. ALL WELL. NOTIFY ALL INTERESTED. POKER BUSINESS GOOD. AL.

In the crow’s nest Lookouts Fleet and Lee peered into the dark. There was little conversation; they were keeping an extra-sharp lookout. At 11:40 Fleet suddenly spotted something even blacker than the night. He banged the crow’s-nest bell three times and lifted the phone to the bridge. Three words were enough to explain the trouble: “Iceberg right ahead.”

Now it was Murdoch’s problem. He put his helm hard astarboard, hoping to “port around” the ice, and at the same time pulled the engine room telegraph to STOP, and then REVERSE ENGINES. But it was too late: 37 seconds later the Titanic brushed by the berg with that faint, grinding jar that every student of the disaster knows so well.

Related: Lost at Sea: What Happened to the Mary Celeste ?

The 37 seconds—based on tests later made with the Olympic —are significant only for what they reveal about human miscalculations. At 22½ knots the Titanic was moving at a rate of 38 feet a second…meaning that the berg had been sighted less than 500 yards away. But all the experts agreed that on a clear night like this the ice should have been seen much farther off. Lightoller thought at least a mile or so, and this undoubtedly reflected Captain Smith’s opinion, for they both had gone over this very point on the bridge shortly after 9:00. The search immediately began for some extenuating circumstance that could explain the difference.

Suspicion focused first on the lookouts. How good were their eyes? Fleet’s had not been tested in five years, and Lee’s not since the Boer War. Yet tests after the collision showed both men had sound vision. Nor were they inexperienced. Unlike most lines, White Star used trained, full-time lookouts, who received extra pay for their work.

Next it was the lookouts’ turn to complain. They charged that there were no binoculars in the crow’s nest. A pair had been supplied during the trip from Belfast to Southampton, but during a last-minute shake-up of personnel they had been removed and never replaced. After hearing numerous experts on the subject, the British Inquiry decided that it really didn’t matter. Binoculars were useful in identifying objects, but not in initially sighting them. That was better done by the naked eye. Here, there was no problem of identification; Fleet knew all too well what he had seen.

The Titanic departs from Southampton on April 10, 1912.

Then Lookout Lee came up with a “haze” over the water. He described dramatically how Fleet had said to him, “Well, if we can see through that, we will be lucky.” Fleet denied the conversation and said the haze was “nothing to talk about.” Lightoller, Boxhall, and Quartermaster Hitchens, who had been at the wheel, all described the night as perfectly clear. In the end, the British Inquiry wrote off Lee’s “haze” as an understandable bit of wishful thinking.

Lightoller himself contributed what became known as the “blue berg” theory. He argued that the iceberg had recently capsized and was showing only the dark side that had previously been under water, making it almost invisible. But this theory did not seem to fit the recollections of the few survivors who actually saw the berg. It was anything but invisible to Quartermaster Rowe, standing on the after bridge. He estimated that it was about 100 feet high, and he initially mistook it for a windjammer gliding along the side of the ship with all sails set.

The only explanation left was “fate.” As Lightoller put it, the Titanic was the victim of an extraordinary set of circumstances that could only happen once in a hundred years. Normally there would have been no problem, but on this particularly freakish night “everything was against us.”

Related: The Deadly Collision Between SS Andrea Doria and MS Stockholm

But this explanation implies that Captain Smith didn’t know—and couldn’t be expected to know—the nature of the night he was up against. But he did know. He fully realized that the sea was flat calm, that there was no moon, no wind, no swell. He understood all this and took it into account in deciding not to reduce speed. Under these circumstances the collision quickly loses its supernatural quality and becomes simply a case of miscalculation.

Given the competitive pressures of the North Atlantic run, the chances taken, the lack of experience with ships of such immense size, the haphazard procedures of the wireless room, the casualness of the bridge, and the misassessment of what speed was safe, it’s remarkable that the Titanic steamed for two hours and ten minutes through ice-infested waters without coming to grief any sooner.

“Everything was against us”? The wonder is that she lasted as long as she did.

Want to keep reading? Download The Complete Titanic Chronicles now!

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Titanic’s Maiden Voyage: The Queenstown Connection

Although it has been over 100 years since rms titanic set sail her story still endures, capturing hearts and minds throughout the world..

Continue the ship’s journey

Read the next story in the series ‘The Transatlantic Crossing’ here, and don't forget to follow along with our A Night To Remember event on social media on the evening of April 14th, marking the anniversary of Titanic’s sinking.

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Maiden voyage

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Cross-Channel

No less than 1647 passengers embarked at Southampton. Only 24 of them paid for a trip to France; disembarking in Cherbourg. Titanic arrived one hour late into Cherbourg because of a near-collision in Southampton with the SS  New York . One passenger, scheduled to embark in Cherbourg, still missed the boat despite the hour delay. Frank Carlson 's car broke down and Titanic left without him, however his name remained on the passenger list and was erroneously added to the list of missing people after the disaster.

These 24 people disembarked in Cherbourg:

• H. V. Davies
• J. De Grasse
• Thomas Dyer Edwardes
• Clementina Georgina Lucy Drummond Dyer Edwardes
• N. Fletcher
• Miss Kneese
• Barbara Josephine Lenox-Conyngham
• Dennis Hugh Lenox-Conyngham
• Eileen Lenox-Conyngham
• Harriet Alice Katherine Lenox-Conyngham
• Gerard Thomas Noel
• William Henry Middleton Noel
• Miss Remesch
• Henry Swaffin Wotton

On the second part of the Maiden Voyage, some steering trials were undertaken. It seemed Titanic could turn very sharply once a maneuver was initiated. However, because Titanic was 883 feet long, it took the necessary time to start turning due to her length (which was about to be put to a life-altering critical test). At Queenstown, most of the 123 embarking passengers were steerage or Third Class. 7 passengers, all First Class passengers who boarded at Southampton, left the ship. Fireman John Coffey also left the ship: he basically only wanted a free trip to Ireland and deserted his crew duties. These 8 people would later find out they escaped from one of mankind's greatest maritime disasters.

Atlantic westbound

The 1911-1912 winter had been one of the warmest in ages and there was much more drifting ice than normally at that time of year, even on the more southern shipping lane route that Titanic followed across the North Atlantic. Captain Smith must have known the area was dangerous even for the largest moving object ever made by the hand of man in all of human history that was thought to be "practically unsinkable." However, Smith had no choice but to go to New York, 2208 passengers & crew were counting on him to bring them there. There was also Titanic 's grandeur which would boost the White Star Line 's reputation for being more comfortable and luxurious, against rival Cunard Line , whose duo Mauretania and Lusitania were faster but the ships would vibrate more thanks to their four direct-acting Parsons steam turbine engines, which was part of the reason they were so rapid.

• 1 Goodwin family
• 2 Rose DeWitt Bukater
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‘Digital Twin’ of the Titanic Shows the Shipwreck in Stunning Detail

Researchers hope new 3-D images will provide clues about what happened to the ocean liner when it sank on its maiden voyage in 1912.

By April Rubin

An ambitious digital imaging project has produced what researchers describe as a “digital twin” of the R.M.S. Titanic, showing the wreckage of the doomed ocean liner with a level of detail that has never been captured before.

The project, undertaken by Magellan Ltd., a deepwater seabed mapping company, yielded more than 16 terabytes of data, 715,000 still images and a high-resolution video. The visuals were captured over the course of a six-week expedition in the summer of 2022, nearly 2.4 miles below the surface of the North Atlantic, Atlantic Productions, which is working on a documentary about the project, said in a news release.

The researchers used two submersibles, named Romeo and Juliet, to map “every millimeter” of the wreckage as well as the entire three-mile debris field. Creating the model, which shows the ship lying on the ocean floor and the area around it, took about eight months, said Anthony Geffen, the chief executive and creative director of Atlantic Productions.

“We’re now going to write the proper science of the Titanic,” he said.

Previous images of the wreckage, which was found less than 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland in 1985, suffered from low light and murky water. The new images have effectively removed the ocean water, allowing the wreckage to be viewed in “extraordinary detail,” Atlantic Productions said, noting that a serial number can be seen on a propeller.

The Titanic, the largest passenger ship built at the time, sank on April 15, 1912, after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage. Many details of the disaster, in which more than 1,500 people perished, have remained a mystery ever since.

The models offer new details about the shipwreck that hadn’t previously been known, Mr. Geffen said. For example, he said, one of the lifeboats was blocked by a jammed metal piece and couldn’t be deployed.

The submersibles captured images of personal artifacts, such as watches, top hats and unopened champagne bottles, that were strewn across the debris field. Experts hope they will be able to match personal items to Titanic passengers using artificial intelligence, Mr. Geffen said. He added that people someday would also be able to witness the shipwreck through virtual reality and augmented reality.

“In accordance with tight regulations in place, the wreck was not touched or disturbed,” Atlantic Productions said, adding that the site was treated “with the utmost of respect, which included a flower-laying ceremony in memory of those who lost their lives.”

“This was a challenging mission,” Richard Parkinson, Magellan’s founder and chief executive, said in a statement. “In the middle of the Atlantic we had to fight the elements, bad weather and technical challenges to carry out this unprecedented mapping and digitalization operation of the Titanic.”

April Rubin is a breaking news reporter and a member of the 2022-2023 New York Times fellowship class. More about April Rubin

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Photos show how 700 of Titanic's 2,200 passengers were saved by the Carpathia when the ship sank 112 years ago

Posted: April 12, 2024 | Last updated: April 12, 2024

• The RMS Titanic sank on April 15, 1912 — almost 112 years ago — after it hit an iceberg.
• The RMS Carpathia, which was three hours away, came to the rescue of the stranded survivors.

Of the 2,200 or so people aboard the Titanic, only around 700 people made it into lifeboats.

The sinking of the Titanic  on April 15, 1912, has captured the world's fascination for 112 years. 

The stories of those plucked from the icy waters — or those who narrowly missed being aboard the ship — dominated headlines for months following the sinking. In the decades since, the discovery of the wreckage , ill-fated attempts to visit it, and 1997's "Titanic" — history's first billion-dollar film — all proved the tragedy's enduring legacy.

Around 2,200 people were aboard the RMS Titanic when it set sail across the Atlantic Ocean toward New York City. Of those people, only around 700 survivors made it into lifeboats after the ship collided with an iceberg off the coast of Greenland.

The RMS Carpathia, which was three hours away at the time of the sinking, came to the rescue of the stranded survivors.

These photos show how the Titanic passengers were rescued from the icy waters.

The "unsinkable" Titanic set sail on its ill-fated voyage on April 10, 1912, with around 2,200 people aboard.

A British passenger liner, the Titanic was operated by White Star Line and was traveling from Southampton, England, to New York City. 

At 11:40 p.m. on April 14, an iceberg was spotted 400 nautical miles south of Newfoundland, Canada, but it was too late for the ship to change course.

The two lookouts, Fredrick Fleet and Reginald Lee, failed to spot the iceberg in time.

Fleet and Lee were contending with an unusually calm ocean, which made icebergs less visible since there would be no breaking water at the base. Their binoculars were also locked in a cabinet , which meant the lookouts were tasked with spotting icebergs using their eyes alone.

However, lookouts were trained to spot objects with the naked eye first, and 1912-era binoculars were not much more advanced than the trained eyesight of the lookouts, according to Encyclopedia Titanic . Given the short amount of time between when the lookouts saw the iceberg and the time of impact, binoculars still likely wouldn't have prevented a collision.

The Titanic attempted to avoid the iceberg, but it failed to turn in time. As the ship scraped the iceberg, it tore a hole in the side of the ship, rupturing at least five of the watertight compartments.

By 2:20 a.m., the stern of the Titanic slipped under water, and the surviving passengers never saw it again.

After just an hour, the ship was quickly filling with water, and passengers began to panic, Britannica reported. Due to the water, the ship's bow continued to sink, causing the stern to rise into the sky.

By 2 a.m., the crew was released by the captain. Shortly after, the Titanic's lights went out , the ship broke into two pieces, and the bow sank beneath the waves. Twenty minutes later, the stern followed suit, sending hundreds of crewmembers and passengers into the sea.

As the ship began to take on water, the lifeboats were launched with women and children only. There were only 20 lifeboats aboard the Titanic, according to Britannica, which could carry up to 1,178 people, only half of the ship's passengers and crew.

These boats were launched below capacity, for fear that the device lowering the boats would break if the boats were full. For instance, the first lifeboat to leave Titanic had the capacity for 65 people but was carrying only 27 when it launched, Britannica reported.

After the ship sank, people in lifeboats returned to search for survivors, but they found most people who entered the water had not drowned. Instead, they had frozen to death.

There were not enough lifeboats to hold the number of passengers that needed to evacuate.

No lifeboat or fire drills were carried out before the ship's sinking. In fact, a lifeboat drill had actually been planned for the morning before Titanic's sinking but it was canceled.

Loading passengers into the lifeboats turned to chaos. While some boats launched half full, others got stuck as they were being lowered into the water and were swarmed by people desparate to get on, Prologue magazine reported, per the National Archives .

The SS Californian was near the Titanic when it sank, but its radio was shut off for the night.

When flares from the Titanic woke the captain, he assumed they were "company rockets," or signals passed between ships owned by the same company, not distress signals, the BBC reported.

Instead, the RMS Carpathia responded to the Titanic's distress call and changed course to help.

The Titanic's distress call reached the Carpathia, a transatlantic passenger liner manned by Captain Arthur Rostron, at 12:20 a.m., but it was more than three hours away. 

Another ship, the Olympic, was too far away to help.

Arriving at 3:30 a.m., the Carpathia came to the rescue of the survivors in the lifeboats.

Lifeboat No. 2 was the first to reach and board the Carpathia, Britannica reported. It would take several hours for the ship to pick up all of the survivors. 

By 8:30 a.m., the final person from Titanic's lifeboats had boarded the Carpathia.

The ship was then ordered by the captain to search the wreckage and frigid waters for any other survivors, but none were found. The ship did discover four bodies, which crew members buried at sea, according to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic . 

The passengers and crew of the Carpathia tried to accommodate the survivors once they were aboard, but for many, the life-changing experience had rendered them inconsolable.

The Carpathia's crew and fellow passengers gave their beds to survivors and offered them warm clothing and blankets, the Maritime Executive reported. Many of the survivors were upset and could do nothing but cry, or were shell-shocked by what they had experienced. 

Rather than continuing along their original course, Carpathia's captain chose to return to New York City.

The closest destination was Halifax, Nova Scotia, but it required traveling through more ice, and there wasn't enough food on board to meet the needs of the Titanic passengers in addition to Carpathia's if the ship sailed on to its original destination. 

The ship's captain decided to head back to New York, which had been the Titanic's original destination. 

Halifax later became the main port for ships retrieving bodies from the wreckage. According to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, three ships dispatched from Halifax were able to retrieve 328 bodies from the wreckage, or only one in five victims. 

Roughly half of the Titanic victims' bodies are buried in Halifax, 119 bodies were buried at sea, and only 59 bodies were claimed by victims' relatives and returned home. A majority of the bodies buried at sea were damaged beyond recognition or belonged to crew members or third-class passengers.

The main vessel charged with retrieving bodies, the Mackay-Bennett, also ran out of embalming supplies — the ship didn't expect to find so many bodies in the water — forcing crew members to bury more people at sea than intended. 

Rumors of the Titanic's sinking created a public frenzy at the White Star Line's office.

The White Star Line office in New York was flooded with people wanting confirmation on the fate of the Titanic, but White Star initially refused to confirm if the ship had sunk, according to the New York Daily News .

Even as publications began to report on the sinking, White Star Line wouldn't confirm the news to the public until almost two days after the ship went down. 

As the Carpathia made its journey into New York, reporters hired tug boats to sail alongside the ship to talk to survivors.

Captain Rostron ordered his crew to ignore all calls from the press regarding the Titanic. So to get the scoop, journalists shouted questions at the passengers and crew through megaphones from the tugboats.

The Carpathia eventually docked at Pier 54 on April 18 at 9:30 a.m.

The ship had left from the same dock, only seven days earlier, according to the Maritime Executive. 

Around 30,000 people were waiting to welcome the survivors.

Families of passengers arrived hoping to be reunited with loved ones, according to the New York Daily News. Ambulances and hearses lined the streets waiting to tend to the survivors or cart away any of the dead. 

As the survivors of the Titanic left the Carpathia, they were greeted by the thousands of people.

Families reunited with each other, while others learned their loved ones had perished. 

Among the casualties, the crew and third-class passengers suffered the greatest losses with 700 and 536 fatalities, respectively, according to Britannica. 

The Carpathia's crew returned 13 of Titanic's lifeboats to White Star Line.

According to Titanic Universe, the Carpathia did not have the space for all 20 and left seven lifeboats in the North Atlantic.

The 13 lifeboats they brought back were placed in the possession of the White Star Line.

For his rescue efforts, Rostron received a Congressional Gold Medal.

Rostron was reluctant to speak publicly about his role in the Titanic rescue, and he avoided any spotlight for the rest of his life.

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The incredible life of Titanic's youngest survivor, who lived to 97 and refused to see James Cameron's movie

• Millvina Dean was only 9 weeks old when her family boarded the Titanic in 1912.
• She never publicly spoke about the Titanic until September 1, 1985, when the wreck was found.
• She lived to be 97 years old, dying in 2009. She was the last living survivor of the ship.

The RMS Titanic and its doomed voyage have captured people's interest since the tragedy in April 1912.

The ship and its passengers were once again brought back into the spotlight when the wreckage was found on September 1, 1985, over 73 years after it sank.

Among those passengers was Millvina Dean, who was just 2 months old when the ship went down. She was the youngest survivor of the tragedy.

Learn more about Dean's remarkable life, including her service during World War II, her relationship with her newfound fame, and why she never saw "Titanic," one of the highest-grossing films ever.

Millvina Dean was just 9 weeks old when she boarded the Titanic in 1912 with her parents and older brother.

As reported by the Los Angeles Times, she was the youngest passenger aboard. She boarded the Titanic with her mother, Georgette, her father, Bertram Frank, and her brother, Bertram Vere, before the ship set sail from Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912.

But she wasn't supposed to be on the Titanic at all. The Dean family boarded the ship after a coal strike canceled their original trip.

The family was supposed to cross the Atlantic on a different White Star Line ship, according to the Los Angeles Times' obituary of Dean. However, a coal strike led to the cancellation of their original voyage. The White Star Line offered them third-class tickets on the Titanic instead.

Her family was leaving the UK to move to Kansas City, Missouri, to join her father's cousin.

The Deans were going to Missouri to be with her father's cousin, who owned a store in Kansas City, according to Millvina Dean's obituary in The New York Times . Her father was going to co-own the store after the Deans sold the pub they owned in England.

On April 14, 1912, the Titanic hit an iceberg and later sank. Dean, her mother, and 2-year-old brother survived, but her father died with the many other third-class men who weren't allowed on lifeboats.

According to Dean, her father felt the ship collide with the iceberg, which might have saved his family's lives.

"I think it was my father who saved us," Dean said in 2002, according to the Los Angeles Times. "So many other people thought the Titanic would never sink, and they didn't bother. My father didn't take a chance."

Dean, her mother, and brother were put on lifeboat 13, as reported by BBC News.

The survivors on lifeboats were later picked up by the RMS Carpathia and taken to New York City. But Dean's father was among the more than 1,500 people who died in the tragedy. 

Dean said she believed it was true that White Star Lines employees had prevented third-class passengers from going above deck and potentially escaping the sinking ship, The New York Times reported.

"It couldn't happen nowadays, and it's so wrong, so unjust. What do they say? 'Judy O'Grady and the colonel's lady are sisters under the skin.' That's the way it should have been that night, but it wasn't," she said.

When the Deans returned to England aboard the Adriatic, passengers lined up to hold the baby. The demand was so high an officer made a rule that each person could only hold her for 10 minutes.

Three weeks after the sinking of the Titanic, the RMS Adriatic took some survivors back to England. Dean, her mother, and brother were on board.

"Passengers who knew what the family had been through lined up to hold baby Millvina, the youngest survivor of the Titanic. To keep the line moving, a ship's officer ordered that no one could hold the baby for more than 10 minutes," wrote Mary Rourke of the Los Angeles Times in Dean's obituary.

Dean didn't learn about the true horrors of the Titanic until she was 8 years old when her mother finally told her.

"My mother would never speak of it, because it was her husband and they were only married four years. He was strikingly handsome. I didn't know anything about it until I was 8 years old. And then my mother got married again. That's when I first heard about the Titanic, and about my father going down, everything like that," she told the Belfast Telegraph in 2009.

In another interview with the Irish Times, the Los Angeles Times reported, Dean said that her mother suffered severe headaches every day after the sinking.

Millvina and Bertram Dean were educated using money from the Titanic Relief Fund, a charity formed in England to support survivors.

The White Star Line rather infamously didn't accept any liability for the Titanic's sinking for years, even though the tragedy left almost all of its passengers with no money, no possessions, and in many cases, no breadwinner — many families lost their husbands and fathers since they couldn't get on lifeboats.

The Wall Street Journal reported in 2003 that four years after the crash, the White Star Line agreed to pay the US $665,000, or roughly $430 per passenger.

In 2024, that'd be around $12,700 each.

During World War II, she worked in the British Army's map-making office.

After the war, she worked as a secretary in an engineering office for 20 years, reported the Los Angeles Times.

She never publicly spoke about the Titanic until 1985, when the shipwreck was found.

"Nobody knew about me and the Titanic, to be honest, nobody took any interest, so I took no interest either," she said, according to The New York Times. "But then they found the wreck, and after they found the wreck, they found me."

For decades after, Millvina Dean attended many Titanic exhibitions, conventions, and events. She also traveled to different schools to tell her life's story.

Dean never watched James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster "Titanic" because she was worried it would make her think about what her father had been doing in his final moments.

Even though Dean had said she didn't feel a huge connection to her father, since she never really knew him, she couldn't watch any movies or documentaries relating to the Titanic.

"Because that's the ship on which my father went down. Although I didn't remember him, nothing about him, I would still be emotional. I would think: 'How did he go down? Did he go down with the ship or did he jump overboard?'" she told the Belfast Telegraph in May 2009, weeks before her death.

Her brother Bertram, pictured right, died on the 80th anniversary of the iceberg collision in 1992. He was 81.

Her mother lived to be 96, dying in 1975, according to The New York Times.

In 1997, Millvina Dean finally successfully crossed the Atlantic from Southampton to New York City aboard the Queen Elizabeth II.

Eighty-five years after the ill-fated maiden voyage of the Titanic, Dean finally completed the journey from Southampton to New York City, reported the Deseret News .

According to United Press International , after she arrived in NYC in August, she then journeyed to Kansas City to visit the neighborhood that would've been hers, if everything had gone to plan.

She auctioned off some of her Titanic memorabilia later in life, including the mailbag her mother carried their possessions in after the sinking.

After breaking her hip in 2006, Dean began living in a nursing home. To help with expenses, she auctioned off some items that had been with her family on the Titanic, including a suitcase that sold for $18,650. In total, she raised $53,906, according to NBC News.

James Cameron and "Titanic" stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio donated thousands of dollars toward Dean's nursing-home costs in 2009.

Reuters reported that the trio behind "Titanic" donated $30,000 to Dean after her longtime friend Don Mullan challenged them to.

"I laid down the challenge to the 'Titanic' actors and directors to support the Millvina Fund and I was delighted with the generosity they have shown in meeting that challenge," Mullan told the Irish Examiner in 2009.

Millvina Dean died in 2009 at 97. She was the last living survivor of the Titanic.

Millvina Dean's ashes were scattered by her partner, Bruno Nordmanis, at the Southampton Docks, where the Titanic left for its first and only voyage, NBC News reported.

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As it happened: How local news reported the Titanic sinking

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When the Titanic launched from Southampton, England on April 10, 1912 on her maiden voyage, the ship was already the stuff of legend.

Famously, and ultimately ironically, dubbed “unsinkable,” the RMS Titanic was designed lavishly, with luxurious First Class accommodations and amenities such as gyms, pools, cafes, smoking rooms and more.

The ship, operated by the White Star Line, featured the height of new technology, such as radiotelegraph equipment and an electrical plant that was said to be capable of producing more power than an average city’s power station.

What happened on the Titanic’s crossing of the Atlantic Ocean cemented its tragic place in history.

At 11:40 p.m. on April 14, an iceberg was spotted directly ahead of the Titanic’s path. The ship struck the iceberg, critically damaging the hull. Less than three hours later, the Titanic was at the bottom of the ocean, taking around 1,500 lives with it.

Between the ship’s lofty reputation, its star studded passenger list and the sheer scale of the loss, the tragedy landed on the front page of newspapers around the world. However, the earliest reports were riddled with misinformation and inaccuracies. The survivors had not yet been returned to shore and rumors ran rampant with what little information was known.

In the April 16, 1912 edition of the Petoskey Evening News, it was reported that the Titanic sank while being towed to Halifax, which was untrue.

“The very latest reports say that more than twelve hundred persons, it is feared, sank to death, when four hours after she crashed into an iceberg, the mammoth White Star line steamer Titanic, bound from Liverpool to New York, on her maiden voyage, went to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, off the New Foundland banks, while being towed to Halifax,” the story reads.

“Of the 2,200 persons on board, some of them of world wide prominence, only a few hundred are known to have been saved.

“Accepting the early estimate of the fatality list as accurate, the disaster is the greatest in the marine history of the world.”

The Petoskey paper included a list of some of the more well known passengers, a veritable who’s who of the rich and famous of the early 20th century.

“The passenger list is a notable one, including Mr. and Mrs. John Jacob Astor, Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, Major Archibald Butt, aide to President Taft; F.D. Millet, artist; Mr. and Mrs. Isador Strauss, J.G. Widener of Philadelphia; J. Bruce Ismay, managing director of the White Star line steamer; C. M. Hays, president of the Grand Trunk railway; Benjamin Guggenheim, W.T. Stead and others.

“Steamship men here today characterized the disaster as ‘the most startling news which has come in from the sea since the event of wireless telegraphy.’”

Strangely, the Petoskey paper also ran a small item of celebrity gossip directly next to this list about Mr. and Mrs. John Jacob Astor.

“Col. John Jacob Astor and his bride, the former Miss Madeline Force, who have been honeymooning in Egypt and Europe, are now homeward bound and are due to arrive in New York tomorrow.”

This was also untrue. John Jacob Astor died in the sinking, while his wife survived.

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By April 19, news outlets had reported that the Carpathia had arrived in New York with the survivors, and people finally began to definitively learn who had lived and who had died.

For Northern Michigan residents, they grieved a 30-year-old railroad brakeman who was a former summer resident of Petoskey.

“There is little doubt that William Caldwell, aged about thirty, a brakeman on the G.R. & I. between Grand Rapids and Mackinaw City, was one of the ill-fated passengers of the steamship Titanic, which found a watery grave off the Newfoundland banks Monday morning after colliding with an iceberg,” read a story in the Evening News. “Every year Mr. Caldwell has made a trip to South Hampton, England, for a visit with his parents, and letters received in this city are to the effect that upon returning he would accompany the Titanic on its maiden voyage. As his name is not among those saved, it is believed he perished when the vessel foundered.”

But, just a few days later, Caldwell arrived safely home and was perplexed to find his death had been prematurely reported. He had never even been onboard the Titanic.

The April 23 story is titled “Reads about his own death.”

“William Caldwell, G.R. & I. brakeman, did not go down with the Titanic, as was believed, and he has arrived at his Grand Rapids home, shaking hands with himself and his friends over his fortunate escape, which was by the merest accident,” the story reads. “Because Caldwell wrote home from England that he intended sailing on the Titanic, and as no further word had been received from him, it was believed he had perished with the 1,601 unfortunate persons who were unable to escape from the liner. The circumstances which in all probability saved Caldwell’s life was the mistake of a steamship clerk at Liverpool, who secured him a berth on the Mauritania instead of the Titanic … Mr. Caldwell is one of those few individuals who are able to read about their own deaths and see what people think about them, for many newspapers reported his demise in the ocean as almost certain. The report was indeed well founded, but Caldwell refused to seek a watery grave just to satisfy the press.”

As the full extent of the disaster became known, questions about accountability and safety quickly found their way into newspapers.

In an April 19 report, a survey of Lake Michigan boats found them to be “inadequately provided with life saving apparatus.”

The story reads: “‘Most of the passenger steamers that ply Lake Michigan are inadequately provided with life saving apparatus,’ declared Roy L. Peck, federal inspector for the district of steam vessels, here today. ‘Laws referring to provision for life boats and rafts are entirely inadequate and as applied to some of the lake boats are absurd,’ he added.”

Along with its long cultural significance, the Titanic’s sinking left a legacy in improving marine safety across the world. New standards regarding lifeboats, radio communications and the formation of the International Ice Patrol all came about as a direct result of the tragic disaster.

— Contact Jillian Fellows at [email protected].  

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: As it happened: How local news reported the Titanic sinking

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Titanic survivor descendants honored at Skokie exhibit

By patrick fazio • published april 10, 2024 • updated on april 10, 2024 at 5:21 pm.

Wednesday marks 112 years since the maiden voyage of the Titanic. Days later, it would hit an iceberg and sink.

Descendants of one of the survivors came to a ceremony at the Titanic travelling exhibit at Old Orchard Mall in Skokie, which has just been extended to July 7.

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“My grandma was really just a grandma. She did not talk about the Titanic,” said Linda Schwenzfeier, granddaughter of Bertha Lehmann. “Her whole life, she would not get on another boat.“

Cousins Linda Schwenzfeier and Randy Luhrs came from Minnesota for the ceremony. Their grandmother, Bertha Lehmann, survived the Titanic as a 17-year-old immigrating to Iowa.

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“The ship is hit. She initially thought it didn’t sound like much. She looked outside and said well, nothing happened and went back to bed,” said Randy Luhrs, Lehmann’s grandson.

Lehmann later woke up to people shouting, but she didn’t speak English.

“One of the orchestra members who did speak French, communicated with her and told her to go get her jacket,” Luhrs said. “The orchestra member helped her get her life jacket on and guided her to one of the last lifeboats that were lowered.”

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The creative producer behind the exhibit said it's meant to convey the messages of hope for those that were boarding the ship.

“I think it speaks to all of us. It started out with such hope, such optimism. It was a practically unsinkable ship. It was going to change the world,” Mark Lach said.

Lach says we can learn lessons from the Titanic 112 years later, including the danger of overconfidence.

“Even the recent dive to the Titanic where that submersible didn’t make it. A good friend of mine was inside that submersible,” Lach said, who also went on a previous submersible to the Titanic wreckage.

“We always have to be cautious and we always have to remember how fragile life can be.”

Chicago had its own sinking disaster in 1915, when the Eastland rolled over on the Chicago River, killing 844 people. 

Randy Luhrs and Linda Schwenzfeier’s grandmother was among about 700 survivors from the Titanic.

“She came very close to not getting off that ship. So, we wouldn’t be here. Randy and I wouldn’t be here if she hadn’t,” Schwenzfeier said.

“We’re very fortunate that the orchestra member, knowing he was not going to make it, took the time to help her for her to survive,” Luhrs said.

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Ryan Reynolds Shares ‘Titanic’ Birthday Message for Wrexham AFC Co-Owner Rob McElhenney | Video

The “Deadpool” star jokes that he financed a mission to the ship’s wreckage to retrieve bottles of Wrexham lager to celebrate with his pal

“Deadpool” star Ryan Reynolds is no stranger to practical jokes and funny messages, and on Saturday he shared a Titanic-themed birthday message for “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” star and creator Rob McElhenney, Reynolds’ Wrexham AFC co-chair. McElhenney’s birthday is April 14, which is also the date the Titanic sank in 1912. And the message would end up being about not just the ship, but the beloved romantic film/box-office smash.

Dressed in his Deadpool costume, Reynolds explained, “As some of you may know, today is April 14, the birthday of my beloved cochairman Mr. Rob McElhenney. It also happens to be the day the Titanic went down.”

He accidentally posted it early, as he got his dates mixed up, but explained that it’s now April 14 in Wrexham, so, close enough.

“So, for his big day this year, I financed an expedition to the ocean floor to retrieve a few bottles of Wrexham Lager, which was actually on that maiden voyage, to use in an epic birthday toast,” he continued. “We searched and searched, and while unfortunately we didn’t find any drinkable Wrexham Lager, what we did find was even more beautiful.”

The expedition, Reynolds said, uncovered… a drawing of a shirtless McElhenney wearing a heart-shaped necklace, in the style of the one Jack Dawson made of Rose Dewitt Bukater in the epic 1997 film.

“So join me in celebrating the heart of of our Wrexham AFC family by sending Rob all the birthday love we can,” Reynolds continued. “But please, don’t embarrass him by going to Vistaprint.com/Wrexham to purchase, gift and share items customized in all of Rob’s splendor — and soft, delicate chest hair.”

“And don’t put it all over social media,” Reynolds added. “Nor should you visit the Ty Pawb Gallery in Wrexham, where this picture will actually hang among genuine works of art. No, just do as I am, and simply wish Rob a happy birthday. We’ll see you in League One.”

That last reference is thanks to McElhenney and Reynolds’ Welsh soccer team that they co-own, which spent years in the fifth English football division, having a huge run of success with the backing of the two celebs — and their pocketbooks. That includes rising through the ranks and getting to play against higher profile teams thanks to winning their league.

Reynolds and McElhenney’s journey alongside Wrexham has been shared in the Hulu docuseries “Welcome to Wrexham.”

This isn’t the first time Reynolds has had fun celebrating McElhenney’s birthday. In 2023 the actor decided to teach the rest of the world how to pronounce McElhenney’s last name — via song .

Watch the birthday message from Reynolds in the video above.

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Ryan Reynolds Celebrates Rob McElhenney's Birthday with Hilarious Titanic -Inspired Prank Video

Reynolds surprised his Wrexham AFC co-chairman by unveiling a special work of art for his 47th birthday

Charlotte Phillipp is a Weekend Writer-Reporter at PEOPLE. She has been working at PEOPLE since 2024, and was previously an entertainment reporter at The Messenger.

Getty;Courtesy of Maximum Effort

Ryan Reynolds is celebrating Rob McElhenney’s 47th birthday in the traditional manner — with a prank!

Ahead of the actor's April 14 birthday, Reynolds — who is co-chairman of Welsh soccer club Wrexham AFC alongside McElhenney — shared a video celebrating the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia star.

April 14 isn't just McElhenney's birthday, either — April 14, 2024, marks the 112th anniversary of the date the Titanic sank, as Reynolds, 47, explained in a hilarious video of himself speaking directly to the camera as he wore his Deadpool suit.

"So, for his big day this year, I financed an expedition to the ocean floor to retrieve a few bottles of Wrexham Lager, which was actually on that maiden voyage, to use in an epic birthday toast," he joked, referencing the real beer made by a company sharing the same name as his football club (which was served on the real 1912 Titanic voyage).

In the video, Reynolds showed clips of underwater footage of the Titanic vessel, before admitting that they couldn't find any of the lager.

"We searched and searched, and while unfortunately we didn't find any drinkable Wrexham Lager, what we did find was even more beautiful..."

In the video, he unveiled the real prank — a hand-drawn portrait of McElhenney in the style of Kate Winslet 's nude drawing in the 1997 movie Titanic , featuring a shirtless image of the actor wearing the fictional Heart of the Ocean necklace.

Courtesy of Maximum Effort

"So join me in celebrating the heart of our Wrexham AFC family by sending Rob all the birthday love we can," Reynolds continued, before introducing the team's partnership with printing company Vistaprint.

"But please, don't embarrass him by going to Vistaprint.com/Wrexham to purchase, gift and share items customized in all of Rob's splendor and soft, delicate chest hair," he joked.

Reynolds also announced that the drawing of McElhenney is set to hang in the Tŷ Pawb Gallery in Wrexham — an art museum in the Welsh city — among actual works of art.

"Just do as I am, and simply wish Rob a happy birthday," he finished the video. "We'll see you in League One."

This is just the latest in a series of escalating pranks between the Wrexham co-chairmen. Last year, Reynolds celebrated  McElhenney 's birthday through song — explaining how to pronounce the last name of his fellow actor and business partner.

As Reynolds crooned, "It's McElhenney," clips of the actor and prominent figures mispronouncing his last name are woven throughout the video.

In 2022, McElhenney honored Reynolds on his 46th birthday with the debut of the " Ryan Rodney Reynolds Memorial Blimp " — a red blimp with Reynolds' face as his  Deadpool  character without a mask.

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"A hideous, but surprisingly inexpensive way for the world to finally see Ryan Reynolds as he's meant to be seen," the actor said in a video at the time. The blimp then began to rise as McElhenney wished Reynolds a happy birthday and the team members clapped in the background.

This year's birthday prank comes on the heels of the announcement that Wrexham AFC was officially promoted to League One, the second-highest division of the English Football League.

"A few years ago, if you had told me I would be crying tears of joy over a football match taking place in North Wales, you would be @robmcelhenney,” Reynolds wrote on  Instagram  on April 13, celebrating the team's win and its promotion. “Congrats to @wrexham_afc and to my co-chairman in crime. Double up the town! This is the ride of our lives."

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