The Titanic Essay, Research Paper
Titanic
The titanic, a wonderful, beautiful, big unsinkable way to America. A
story of triumph and tradgedy. On April 10, 1912 the miraculous boat was
ready to sail. it was owned by the White Star Line and was built at Harland
and Wolff Shipbuilding company. The Titanic was 882 ft. long and weighed
45,000 tons. It could hold 3200 passengers, but it only had
enough life boats for abuot 1200 people. That did not matter
because even God could not sink this ship.
The price for a ticket varried greatly, the highest price being $870.00 for
a first class ticket all the way down to $2.00 for a third class ticket .
Most people were third class. This was really an amazing ship, too bad it went
down on it’s maiden voyage. On the boat there were 28 stateroooms and suites
for the first class passnegers (Titanic, p.2). Special staterooms located on decks
B and C of the shop were designed with different motiefs. The upperclass
passengers had about eight different styles to choose from, so they could better
enjoy the voyage (Titanic, p.2). Some of the suites had fire places that burned
coal in the sitting room and gigantic beds in the bedroom. the most expensive
suite had five rooms and a private bathroom, this truly was a luxury liner. Must
upper class people had dinner at a huge restaurant on deck D (Titanic, p.2). It
was 92 ft. wide and 114 ft. long. (Titanic, p.2) . The restaurant sat about 500
people (Titanic, p.2). There were a few other places to have dinner on the boat,
even a real French restuarant called, “Cafe Parisien” (Titanic, p.2). During the
day many rich people went to the Lounge at the Promenade deck, the walls were
similar to the ones at Versailles Castle near Paris, it was truly magnificent. Next to
this was the Georgian reading and writing room for women and next to that was
the Smoking room for men. The Titanic had a sense of space and openess
(Titanic, p.2)
Exactly 860 people worked on board the Titanic. (RMS Deck Crew p.1).
340 of them worked below decks in the ngine department as engineers, timmers,
boiler makers, grease men, window cleaners, or line keepers (RMS Engineering
p.2). Only a few dozen of them were engaged in the seamanship directly. Even
fewer were officers. The captian of the boat was E. J. Smith. He had sailed over
two million miles with the White Star Line before the Titanic, which was to be his
last ship before he retired, but he never got the chance because like a good
Capitan should, he went down with the ship.
The ship set sail and traviled 386 miles on the first day, then 519 miles
on the second day (Titanic, p.4). the ship was on the way to New York from
Great Britian and everyone was eager to get there. So again the Captian increased
their speed. The fourth day was April 14, 1912, the day the unsinkable ship sunk.
They hit an iceberg at the speed of 22.5 knots (Titanic, p.4). The icepberg made
a huge hole in the ships double bottoms. No one beleived the ship would go
down and it wasn’t until half an hour later that the first call for help went out. At
least five other ships got the distress signal, among the was the ship, Carpathia.
This ship was competing with the Titanic for passengers, but never the less they
quickly changed course to save the people aboard the shinking ship. Only 700
people, mostly women and children boarded the life boats, most women would
not leave their husbands behind (Lord, p.7). Some men dressed in women’s
clothing to get off the ship, I guess in a life and death situation some people are
shameless.
One of the more famous things about the Titanic was the Orchestra, which
kept on playing while the shiop went down. There are some speculations as to
which song they were playing, but most say it was happy to help raise people’s
spirits.
The Carpathia arrived around dawn. A lot of people were saved, but so
many would die in the moments to come. The second officer of the Carpathia
wrote these words as he watched the ship go down, and I quote… “Slowly and
almost magestially, the emense stern reared itself up, with propellers and rudders
clearing the water of the cold Atlantic…. Like a prayer as the disappeared, the
word were breathed, ’she is gone” end quote (Anderson, p.2). The unsinkable
ship had sunk on her maiden voyage.
Among the loss of a beautiful ship about 1495 trusting lives had been
taken by the awful diseaster (Titanic, p.2). There were exactly 2207 people
aboard the Titanic and only 712 made it off the boat alive (Titianic, p.3). The
last known survivor, a Swedish lady named Mrs. Beatrice Sandstrum who was
only two years old when she and her mother and sister were aboard the Titanic.
recently died at the age of 85 years old (Billnitzer, p.1). The three were in their
cabin when the iceberg hit the boat. They stayed there until a steward came and
told them to put on their life jackets and to the to upper deck to board the life
boats. They were on one of the last boats to leave the ship to go to safety and 40
minutes later the Titanic sank to the bottom of the cold dark sea (Billnitzer, p.1).
The Titanic was a true story of triumph and tradgedy. A ship that was so
big and beautiful that nothing could bring it down. Then on it’s maiden voyage
this incredible ship that could withstand any thing but nature, hit an iceberg and
went down. The Titanic is still at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean in between
Great Britian and the United States (Davis, p.1)