Today, the incredible shipbuilding heritage and maritime historic city of Belfast marks the launch of the RMS titanic 100 years on. The 'unsinkable ship' hit an iceberg and fell prey to the sea en route to New York claiming the lives of 1, 500 passengers with just 700 survivors.
Yes the voyage has been reminisced through such films as ‘Titanic’ starring Kate and Leo and the karaoke sound of Winslets ‘my heart will go on’. But at 00:13am this morning, exactly 100 years after Titanic rolled down her slipway, a single flare was fired over Belfast's docklands in commemoration. All boats in the area around the Harland and Wolff shipyard then sounded their horns and the assembled crowd applauded for exactly 62 seconds, the time it had originally taken for the liner to roll down the slipway in 1911.
The Reverend Chris Bennett, chaplain of Titanic Quarter, read a passage from an eyewitness account of the launch of the ship and spoke about the centenary.
He said: “The reason we are gathered here is to celebrate the Titanic. We know what happened to it was a tragedy but the Titanic herself was not. It was a beautiful ship, well built by skilled Belfast craftsmen, right here on this runway."
I’ve compiled a brief photo journey of the titanic and her voyage in order to celebrate the ships 100 year anniversary and remember those 1500 lives that were lost at sea.
The titanic was built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast; funded by American J.P Morgan whose team began construction on the ship on March 31st 1909. Her dimensions were as follows: Her length overall was 882 feet 9 inches (269.1 m), the moulded breadth 92 feet 0 inches (28.0 m),the tonnage 46,328 GRT, and the height, from the water line to the boat deck, 59 feet.
Indeed, the ships full capacity, including staff as well as passengers would be 3547- she was a ship beyond her time. Both big and magnificent- the Titanic's design and construction featured luxury and opulence. The First-class section featured a swimming pool, a gymnasium, a squash court, Turkish baths, an Electric bath and a Verandah Cafe. First-class passengers paid a hefty fee for such amenities; the most expensive one-way trans-Atlantic passage was £875.
The vessel began her maiden voyage from Southampton 100 years ago today, bound for New York City on 10 April 1912, with Captain Edward J. Smith in command. On the maiden voyage of Titanic some of the most prominent people of the day were travelling in first class. Among them were millionaire John Jacob Astor IV and his wife Madeleine Force Astor, industrialist Benjamin Guggenheim, Macy's owner Isidor Straus and his wife Ida,Denver millionairess Margaret "Molly" Brown (known afterward as the "Unsinkable Molly Brown" due to her efforts in helping other passengers while the ship sank) among various other sports men, authors, producers and actresses.
On the night of Sunday, 14 April 1912, the temperature had dropped to near freezing and the ocean was calm. The moon was not visible and the sky was clear. Captain Smith, in response to iceberg warnings received via wireless over the preceding few days, had drawn up a new course which took the ship slightly further southward. That Sunday at 1:45 pm, a missed message from the steamer Amerika warned that large icebergs lay in Titanic's path, later that evening, another report of numerous large icebergs also failed to reach the bridge.
At 11:40 pm, while sailing about 400 miles (640 km) south of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, lookouts Fredrick Fleet and Reginald Lee spotted a large iceberg directly ahead of the ship. Sounding the ship's bell three times, Fleet telephoned the bridge exclaiming, "Iceberg, right ahead!” The ship made its fatal collision at an estimated 37 seconds after Fleet sighted the berg. The iceberg scraped the ship's starboard (right) side, buckling the hull in several places and popping out rivets below the waterline over a length of 299 feet (90 m). This opened the first six compartments to the sea as we see in the film ‘Titanic’ where the decks begin to flood. While the ship was designed to remain afloat with the first four compartments flooded, the collision caused flooding of the six forward compartments. The fifth and sixth water-filled compartments weighed down the ship's bow enough to allow more water to flood the vessel this caused the ship to begin to sink. The lifeboats were ordered to be readied and a distress call was sent out an it was estimated the ship would go down within an hour to an hour and a half. At 00:05, 25 minutes after the collision, Captain Smith ordered all the lifeboats uncovered; five minutes later, at 00:10, he ordered them to be swung out; then, at 00:25, he ordered them to be loaded with women and children and then lowered away. At 00:50, 4th Officer Joseph Boxhall fired the first white distress rocket. The rest is history.
The Titanic sunk at 2.20a.m. on the morning of 15th April, 1912. Back in Dublin, the initial reaction to the news was one of despair. As in Montreal, New York and Boston, the Dublin evening newspapers carried a very inaccurate version of the story. The headlines in the evening Telegraph ran:
Terrible disaster in mid-Atlantic
Ill-fated maiden voyage
Collision with an iceberg
Women taking off by lifeboats
all the passengers saved
Titanic on her way to Halifax.
Monuments commemorating the Titanic and its victims have been erected in several locations.
This final photograph by Frank Browne shortly after the ship sank of this Titanic memorial catches the sadness of the collision and yet the marvel a ship.
100 years on and still not forgotten.
-ZB
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