The Titanic was 882 feet long 92 feet wide she was taller than a ten story block
of flats, and weighted 46,328 tonnes, she had 29 boilers to drive the four
engines and had a top speed of 24 knots or 28 M.P.H. She was one of the most famous and biggest ships of her time, the Titanic was built in the shipyard of Harland and Wolff, it was one of the biggest projects carried out at this time and involved thousands of men. This memorial in the Belfast City Hall grounds is in memory of the people who were drowned in this tragedy. The ship was built to carry at least 2,500 passengers and comprised three classes upper, middle and steerage or third class. The cost of a first class ticket was £870 this would have been a tradesman's wages for a year; there were 322 people in first class of whom 202 were saved. The second class section carried 277 people of whom 115 were saved and third class carried 709 people of whom 176 were saved, the crew numbered 944 of whom 210 were saved. The ships captain was Edward Smith, and the name of the lookout who first spotted the iceberg was Frederick Fleet. The Titanic struck an iceberg on the evening of the 14th April 1912 of the coast of Newfoundland at 40 minutes to midnight, she sank in less than three hours, all of the passenger's had life jackets but there were only 20 lifeboat's, and some of these were launched half full; with the result there was a great loss of life, over 1500 passengers and crew drowned, after this disaster the law was changed and all seagoing vessels must now carry more life boats than they need. The ships builders and designers never claimed the Titanic was "Unsinkable" this was down to newspaper report's of the time that made this claim. The Titanic's designer Thomas Andrews who died in this disaster (his body was never found) was from Comber Northern Ireland. |
Titanic. |
