On this Day : The ‘Unsinkable’ Titanic sank almost more than 100 years ago today

The Titanic was a luxury British steamship that sank in the early hours of April 15, 1912 after striking an iceberg, leading to the deaths of more than 1,500 passengers and crew, resulting in the world’s worst peacetime shipping disaster, on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York. The White Star Line had spared no expense in assuring her luxury. A legend even before she sailed, her passengers were a mixture of the world’s wealthiest basking in the elegance of first class accommodations and immigrants packed into steerage.

She was touted as the safest ship ever built, so safe that she carried only 20 lifeboats – enough to provide accommodation for only half her 2,200 passengers and crew. This discrepancy rested on the belief that since the ship’s construction made her “unsinkable,” her lifeboats were necessary only to rescue survivors of other sinking ships. Additionally, lifeboats took up valuable deck space.

End of a splendid journey
Four days into her journey, at 11:40 P.M. on the night of April 14, she struck an iceberg. Her fireman compared the sound of the impact to “the tearing of calico, nothing more.” However, the

collision was fatal and the icy water soon poured through the ship. It became obvious that many

would not find safety in a lifeboat. Each passenger was issued a life jacket but life expectancy would be short when exposed to water four degrees below freezing. As the forward portion of the ship sank deeper, passengers scrambled to the stern. The great ship slowly slid beneath the waters two hours and forty minutes after the collision. The next morning, the liner Carpathia rescued 705 survivors. One thousand five hundred twenty-two passengers and crew were lost.

Depiction of the real events in the movie ‘Titanic‘

Titanic has inspired countless books, articles and films, and her story has entered the public consciousness as a cautionary tale. 

On November 18 1997, famous Hollywood director, James Cameron, made and released an epic movie “Titanic”, which is an action-packed romance set against the ill-fated maiden voyage of the R.M.S. Titanic; the pride and joy of the White Star Line and, at the time, the largest moving object ever built. She was the most luxurious liner of her era — the “ship of dreams” — which ultimately carried over 1,500 people to their death in the ice cold waters of the North Atlantic, starring Leonardo Di Caprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, and others. ‘Titanic’ is the fifth-highest-grossing film of all time in Canada and the US (135,551,900 estimated admissions). 

Today marks one of the major saddest days in the history of human deaths.