The Titanic was built by the White Star
Line. The owners of the company thought that if ocean liners were big
and luxurious enough more people would travel with them.
The ship was built in Belfast, Ireland. The Titanic was designed to be the
largest in a series of three ships made by the White Star line, the others were
the RMS Olympic
and the HMHS Britannic (originally named Gigantic).
In March 1909, work began in the massive Harland and Wolff shipyard on the
second of these ships, Titanic, and
continued nonstop until the spring of 1911. On May 31, 1911, Titanic’s immense
hull–at the time, the largest movable man-made object in the world–moved into
the River Lagan in Belfast. More than 100,000 people attended the launching,
which took just over a minute and went off without a hitch/problem. The hull
was immediately moved to a dock where thousands of workers would spend most of
the next year building the ship’s decks, constructing her
lavish/luxurious/extravagant interiors. The Titanic
had 29 giant boilers that would power her two main steam engines.
The ship was 268 meters long, 28 meters wide,
and weighed 45,000 tons. It produced enough power to travel at a speed
of 24 knots (about 40km per hour).
The bulk of the ship (Most of the ship)
was divided into compartments. They were separated by
steel doors that did not let any water through. The ship could still move and float
if 3 or 4 of the 16 compartments were filled with water.
The Titanic was more like a floating hotel
than a ship. It cost $7.5 million and it was unlike any other ship that had
ever been built. Palm trees and other expensive plants decorated the luxurious
hallways and corridors. The ship could carry 2,600 passengers and a crew
of 900. One of the biggest mistakes/errors in the design of the ship was that it
only had one small bathroom and only two Xbox games for all the children.
Titanic Sets Sail (zarpar)
The
largest passenger steamship ever built, Titanic departed for its maiden voyage
from Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912. After stops in Cherbourg, France,
and Queenstown (now known as Cobh), Ireland, the ship set sail for New York
with 2,240 passengers and crew—or “souls,” (almas) the expression then used in
the shipping industry, usually in connection with a sinking—on board.
Many
of these “souls” were high-ranking officials, wealthy industrialists,
dignitaries and celebrities. First and foremost was the White Star Line’s
managing director, J. Bruce Ismay, accompanied by Thomas Andrews, the ship’s
builder from Harland and Wolff. (Missing was J.P. Morgan, whose International
Mercantile Marine shipping trust controlled the White Star Line and who had
selected Ismay as a company officer. The financier had planned to join his
associates on Titanic but canceled at the last minute when some business
matters delayed him.)
The
wealthiest passenger was John Jacob Astor IV, who had made waves a year earlier
by marrying 18-year-old Madeleine Talmadge Force, a young woman 29 years his
junior (younger than he), not long after divorcing his first wife. Other
millionaire passengers included the elderly owner of Macy’s, Isidor Straus, and
his wife Ida; industrialist Benjamin Guggenheim, accompanied by his mistress,
valet and chauffeur; and widow and heiress Margaret “Molly” Brown, who would
earn her “unsinkable” nickname by helping to maintain calm and order while the
lifeboats were being loaded and boosting/raising the spirits of her fellow
survivors.
The
largest group of passengers was in Third Class: more than 700, exceeding the
other two levels/classes combined. Some had paid less than $20 to make the
crossing. It was Third Class that was the major source of profit for shipping
lines like White Star and Cunard, and Titanic was designed to offer these
passengers better accommodations than those found in Third Class on any ship up
to that time.
Many of the Third Class passengers were immigrants
who saved all their money for the journey. First class passengers had to pay
between $2,500 and $4,500 for a private room and a bath, third class passengers
had to share rooms and paid $35 each. I hope that the White Star Line
returned passengers' money if they bought a round-trip ticket on the Titanic.
Although the ship’s owners said the
Titanic was unsinkable many problems before the first voyage were
overlooked/ignored. Safety regulations at that time were not very strict.
Titanic carried a total of 20 lifeboats: 14 standard wooden Harland and
Wolff lifeboats with a capacity of 65 people each and four Englehardt
"collapsible" (plegable) lifeboats with a capacity of 47 people
each. In addition, she had two emergency cutters with a capacity of 40 people each. At
the time, lifeboats were intended to move survivors from a sinking ship to a
rescuing ship – not keep afloat the whole population or carry them to shore.
Had the SS Californian responded to the Titanic's
distress calls, the lifeboats would have been adequate to ferry the passengers
to safety as planned. The Titanic
was only tested for a few hours and never went at full speed. The telegraph
system on board was new and not many people knew how to operate it.
Titanic's passengers numbered around
1,317 people: 324 in First Class, 284 in Second Class and 709 in Third
Class. 869 (66%) were male and 447 (34%) female. There were 107 children
aboard, the largest number were in Third Class. The ship was considerably under
capacity on her maiden voyage, as she could accommodate 2,566 passengers –
1,034 First Class, 510 Second Class and 1,022 Third Class.
During the night of April 14, 1912 the waters of
the North Atlantic had a temperature of about -2° C (two degrees below zero or
minus two degrees). At noon on that day the radio operators received messages
from other ships about icebergs that were nearby. The Titanic's captain, Edward
Smith, did not care about these warnings. He was captain of a steel
giant that could not sink. The only thing he cared about was setting a new
world speed record. The Titanic was to be the fastest ship that ever sailed
from Southampton to New York.
The collision with the iceberg was so slight
that the passengers hardly heard it. Most of them didn’t notice and
continued dancing and having fun. It's all fun and games until you are swimming in freezing water in the middle of the ocean. Some passengers were asleep in their cabins and many more were waiting in line to use the bathroom.
When Captain Smith realized that the
Titanic was going to sink he sent a distress signal to other boats but the nearest
ship was a hundred kilometers away. The first five compartments of the ship quickly filled with water. The bow of the ship sank
under the water’s surface and the stern (back part of the ship) began to
rise. After a short time the Titanic broke into two pieces.
When everyone realized that the ship was going to
sink there was chaos on the Titanic. Passengers rushed to the boat deck. Many
people left the Titanic bars without paying their checks and other people stole
towels from the bathroom. Women and children were allowed on the lifeboats
first. Lights flickered/blinked and electricity
was finally gone. At 2:20 a.m. the Titanic disappeared into the Atlantic
Ocean. It is now at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean at a depth of 3,784
meters.
The Carpathia, which was the nearest ship, came
to the scene about two hours later and picked up the freezing passengers
in their lifeboats. By early morning the news of the disaster had gone
around the world. The world’s largest ocean liner, the Titanic, had sunk on its maiden
voyage, killing 1513 people.
- although = while Mientras
- board = to go on a ship Embarcar
- boat deck = the level of the ship where the lifeboats were Cubierta
- bow = the front part of a ship Proa
- bulk = the main part of Grandes Cantidades
- bulkheads = a wall that divides the ship into many compartments
- collision = crash
- compartment = sections, big rooms
- corridor = hallway
- crew = all the people who work on a ship
- decorate = to make something look very attractive by putting something pretty on it
- design = make
- dip = to go under
- disappear = to go away so that you cannot see it any more
- disaster = catastrophe, tragedy
- distress signal = to send a signal out when you are in danger
- divide = separate
- electricity =the power that is in wires and cables. It is used to give us light and run machines
- emerge = come up, start
- first officer = the officer who is just below the captain of a ship
- flicker = to go on and off
- float = to stay on the surface of the water
- flood = to cover with water
- full speed = as fast as something can go
- hull = the part of the ship that is in the water
- immigrant = a person who goes to another country to live or work there
- lower = to bring down
- luxurious = expensive
- maiden voyage = the first trip of a ship
- message = note
- ocean liner = a big ship that could carry many passengers and sail from one continent to another
- operate = work, function
- owner = the company that built the ship
- pickup = rescue
- realize = see
- rip = tear
- rise = to go up
- rush = hurry, run fast
- safety regulations = things that are done so that something is safe
- sail = to move on water
- separate = divide
- share = to use together
- shut down = stop
- sight = to see
- slight = small, not important
- speed = how fast something moves
- stay clear = not get into contact with; to be far away from
- steel = a very strong metal
- strict =exact
- surface =the top layer of something
- take notice = to realize that something happened
- telegraph = an old method of sending messages using radio signals
- unsinkable = it could not sink
- voyage = a journey by ship
- weigh = how heavy something is
- wide =broad