Titanic – Belfast beginnings

Titanic Belfast is a visitor attraction in Northern Ireland, which is a monument to Belfast’s maritime heritage on the site of the former Harland & Wolff shipyard in the city’s Titanic Quarter where the RMS Titanic was built.

Titanic Belfast tells the stories of the Titanic, which hit an iceberg and sank during her maiden voyage in 1912, and her sister ships RMS Olympic and HMHS Britannic. The building contains more than 130,000 sq ft of floor space.

RMS Titanic was a British ocean liner that sank in the early hours of 15 April 1912 as a result of striking an iceberg on her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, United States.

It was the second time White Star Line had lost a ship on its maiden voyage, the first being the RMS Tayleur in 1854. Of the estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, approximately 1,500 died (figures vary), making the incident one of the deadliest peacetime sinkings of a single ship.

Titanic, operated by the White Star Line, carried some of the wealthiest people in the world, as well as hundreds of emigrants from the British Isles, Scandinavia, and elsewhere in Europe who were seeking a new life in the United States and Canada.

RMS Titanic was The largest ocean liner in service at the time, Titanic was four days into her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, when she struck an iceberg . She sank two hours and forty minutes later , making it one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history.

Titanic received six warnings of sea ice on 14 April but was travelling at a speed of roughly 22 knots (41 km/h) when her lookouts sighted the iceberg. Unable to turn quickly enough, the ship suffered a glancing blow that buckled the steel plates covering her starboard side and opened six of her sixteen compartments to the sea. Titanic had been designed to stay afloat with up to four of her forward compartments flooded, and the crew used distress flares and radio (wireless) messages to attract help as the passengers were put into lifeboats. In accordance with existing practice, the Titanic’s lifeboat system was designed to ferry passengers to nearby rescue vessels, not to hold everyone on board simultaneously; therefore, with the ship sinking rapidly and help still hours away, there was no safe refuge for many of the passengers and crew, as the ship was equipped with only twenty lifeboats, including four collapsible lifeboats. Poor preparation for and management of the evacuation meant many boats were launched before they were completely full.

Titanic sank with over a thousand passengers and crew still on board. Almost all of those who ended up in the water died within minutes due to the effects of cold shock and incapacitation. RMS Carpathia arrived about an hour and a half after the sinking and rescued all of the 710 survivors. The disaster shocked the world and caused widespread outrage over the lack of lifeboats, lax regulations, and the unequal treatment of third-class passengers during the evacuation. Subsequent inquiries recommended sweeping changes to maritime regulations, leading to the establishment in 1914 of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) which still governs maritime safety today.

Destination: Northern Ireland / Ireland/ England/ Canada / New York City / Scotland