Description
The RMS Titanic was the brainchild of the famous White Star Line, which specialized in luxury passenger vessels, and Harland & Wolff, the Irish shipyard which designed and built her.
One-sixth of a mile long, Titanic was not only the largest moving object ever built by man, she was also the most opulent.
More than 14,000 laborers and craftsmen poured their hearts and souls into her design, construction and appointment, toiling on her for four long years. So mighty was Titanic, with her sheer size and cutting-edge watertight features, she was promptly touted as "unsinkable."
That epithet proved particularly ironic the night of April 14, 1912, when Titanic, just days into her maiden transatlantic crossing, struck an iceberg and immediately began to take on water. Within a few short hours, the greatest ship in the world had come to rest on the bottom of the ocean, taking with her the lives of more than 1,500 people.
The mystique surrounding the Titanic disaster has diminished little over time. Each generation has held the memory close, preserving it in books, music and movies.
Today, the story stands as modern myth: a luxurious dream ship brimming with the Gilded Age's celebrities and its steerage class; a technological wonder so sophisticated, so sound, as to be deemed invulnerable.
Add to that the tragic elements of human error and the inexorable power of Nature and the tale of Titanic, with its myriad stories of heartbreak and heroism, becomes a poignant chapter in humanity's collective history.
Now you can behold that history.