Titanic

About the Titanic

The Titanic was an Olympic-class passenger liner owned by the White Star Line and built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard. On the night of April 14, 1912, during her maiden voyage, Titanic struck an iceberg, and sank two hours and forty minutes later in early April 15, 1912. At the time of her launching in 1912, she was the largest passenger steamship in the world. The sinking resulted in the deaths of 1,517 people, ranking it as one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters in history and by far the most infamous.

The Titanic used some of the most advanced technology available at the time and was popularly believed to be “unsinkable” - indeed, in a 1910 White Star Line brochure advertising the Titanic, it was claimed that she was "designed to be unsinkable". It was a great shock to many that despite the advanced technology and experienced crew, the Titanic still sank with a great loss of life.

The media frenzy about Titanic's famous victims, the legends about what happened on board the ship, the resulting changes to maritime law, and the discovery of the wreck in 1985 by a team led by Robert Ballard have made Titanic persistently famous in the years since.

2008-08-09