The Titanic

The RMS, Royal Mail Steamer, Titanic was the largest ship that had ever been created during the 19^th century, which was owned by the White Star Line company. This ship was built with special compartments designed to bring flooding resistance. As there were 16 compartments in all, it was estimated that 4 of them could be filled with water and the ship would still float. As well the compartments had electric doors able to be sealed shut, so that no water could get through, and newspapers all over the country told of how the Titanic was an unsinkable ship, although, it is notable that the designers never said that the ship was unsinkable, (it was found that the water in an individual compartment could flow into other compartments which proved to be a destructive flaw in the designing of the Titanic.) The Titanic was one of the first large ships to be made from steel, which was a new industry recently mastered by the Industrial Revolution and especially by Carnegie Steel. The ship was 882 feet and 9 inches long and it could carry roughly 3,327 people.

 It has now been about 100 looking back, since the Titanic sank, and it is still a mysterious and popular historical event. The ship began its fatal voyage on April 11, 1912, traveling quite a way out into the ocean, and sailed for 5 days. On the 5^th night the ship was going through a danger zone, the operator had received a warning about icebergs from other ships that had gone through the area that night, the watchmen did not have any lights that night, only binoculars and they did not notice the gigantic iceberg heading straight towards them until it was very close. When the captain got the news, he had 2 choices, he could try to hit the iceberg head on, which had been successfully done before, or he could try to steer around it. He made the fatal decision to attempt to dodge the megalith of frost. As the ship began to turn, still coming ever closer to the mountain of death, the front managed to miss the iceberg but the side of the ship was sheered and a massive seem was opened; as water began to pour in people rushed to the lifeboats. The passengers had limited time to escape, the women and children were the first to board the lifeboats and be lowered into the icy water. However, there were not enough lifeboats to hold all of the passengers on board, and many would be left to die. After all of the lifeboats were filled up and lowered into the water the ship was left to sink with whoever was left on board, meanwhile those who escaped awaited the morning, every minute hoping to see a flicker of light from a coming rescue boat. The rescue ship arrived at sunrise and collected all of the survivors, out of 3,327 passengers aboard the Titanic, only 705 survived, a total of 1,500 deaths occurred in this tragedy and out of those only 333 of the bodies were ever recovered. The sinking of the Titanic is one of the most well known disasters in American history and it serves as a reminder that no matter how far technology reaches it will never be completely safe from the elements that it will face.

Information gathered from Wikipedia and the Ron Paul curriculum 8^th grade history class.