RMS Titanic

RMS Titanic is the titular iconic ship and a main setting of the movie. The RMS Titanic was built by Thomas Andrews who was the Naval Architect running the Harland & Wolff Shipbuilding company in Belfast in Northern Ireland because The White Star Line were in direct competition for Passengers and Cargo from The Cunard Line during the early Twentieth Century. Cunard had the fastest ships but The White Star Line intended to own record breaking ships in terms of Size and Comfort and Luxury. The Titanic Disaster was predicted in 1898 when American author Morgan Robertson wrote a novel called Futility or The Wreck Of The Titan which told the story of an imaginary Ocean Liner that suffered the similar grim fate as the Titanic. The background story of Angelica and Williams story that occurred during the 3 days of Titanic's maiden voyage to New York City. The Captain EJ Smith was receiving several Radio Warnings from other ships reporting ice in the vicinity. Smith altered Course and headed further south in a blind attempt to avoid the danger but kept the ship going at top speed through the Ice Field ''I can't imagine any condition that could cause a ship to founder. Modern ship building has gone beyond that. Captain Smith'' But his confidence was soon to be dashed. At twenty minutes to midnight on Sunday evening 14.4.12 lookouts high in the crow's nest spotted an Iceberg looming in the misty haze. Frederick Fleet who spotted it rang the warning bell 3 times and picked up the telephone to signal telephone 6th Officer James Moody who was on duty on the bridge. The Titanic was turned Hard-A-Starboard. But it was too late. Captain Smith sent Harland and Wolff's Shipbuilder Thomas Andrews to assess the damage. Heading toward the forward compartments, Andrews makes a thorough inspection. What he saw was devastating. The Ship's steel plates were pierced by the Iceberg and was now flooding unevenly in 6 compartments. Although Titanic and her sister ships Olympic and Britannic were designed to survive some flooding Andrews was very uneasy indeed. He told Captain Smith that in his opinion the ship could be stable for an hour or two before she sank. the Titanic was doomed. Where you heard the Titanic hit the Iceberg depended were you were. In First Class passengers could not fell anything. In Second Class, Passengers did notice some vibration. In Third Class, Passengers did fell the vibration. One of Angelica and Williams fellow survivors was an eyewitness to the Iceberg damage Fireman Frederick Barrett in Boiler Room 6. Today Barratt's testimony proves critical to understanding to happened as the ship went down. At Twenty Minutes past Midnight One hour after impact, Wireless Operator Jack Phillips and his junior assistant Harold Bride send out the first CQD and SOS distress signals, although the Leyland Liner SS Californian (Which was on route from London to Boston Massachusetts) was 19 miles away from the RMS Titanic (Wireless operator Cyril Evans was off duty with the Wireless gear turned off) it was the Cunard Liner RMS Carpathia (which was on route from New York to Gibraltar ) and its Captain Arthur Rostron and Wireless Operator Harold Cottam that responded to the distress call and came to their rescue, meanwhile people walking along the promenade commented that they were walking downhill and although the watertight doors were capable of containing the flooding in one compartment, but with 6 compartments flooding total containment was impossible for the ship had now taken 8,000 tonnes of water at every 10 seconds and the flooded compartments had filled to the top. Unaware of the pending danger, five men trying to drag the mail onto higher ground became trapped in the flooding and drowned. However there was room on the Lifeboats as they were tested in Belfast to hold up to 70 people at a time but were launched half-full. However Captain Smith knew that time was quickly deteriorating. He gave the order for distress rockets to be fired while the Wireless Operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride frantically signalled for help, all in vein for the already grim situation took a turn for the worst. Down in the engine room the brave crewmen and engineers who were supplying power to the lights of the ship now had to scramble for their lives. At Quarter-past two in the morning as the last of the Lifeboats being launched, tremendous forces were steadily building, forces that were strong enough to tear the Titanic to pieces. The 2nd Officer Charles Lightoller gave a first hand account in his testimony. ''Just then, the ship took a slight but definite plunge. those who did not disappear underwater right way instinctively started to climb towards the Stern which was rising steadily out of the water. I knew only too well of the utter futilities of climbing towards the Stern. There was one thing to do. Striking the water was like a hundred knives being driven into ones body.'' as William and his fellow survivors Jack Thayer and Colonel Archibald Gracie IV swam out for the last Collapsible Lifeboats A and B, from the icy water Lightoller described an astonishing Drama. ''The Bow of the Ship was rapidly going down and the Stern by then had risen higher and higher out of the water. the terrific strain of that huge hull caused to open the expansion joint near No 1 Funnel, causing the funnel to fall......narrowly missing me by inches''. At twenty minutes past Two on the morning of 15.4.12 the Titanic was lost beneath the waves of the North Atlantic, and Angelica, William and 705 other survivors remained on the surface. At Three O'clock in the morning William was on collapsible Lifeboat A with 10 other men and one lady Rosa Abbott when he was rescued by fellow survivor 5th Officer Harold Lowe. Four days later when after Angelica and William were reunited on the rescue ship Carpathia, Senator William Smith of Michigan began an investigation. Each theory into Titanic's loss pointed fingers at a particular person, Captain Smith for going so fast into Ice, White Star Line Chairman Joseph Bruce Ismay for the number of lifeboats and pressuring the Captain into top-speed and if designs and rivets were defective, Harland and Wolff's shipbuilder Thomas Andrews. When the investigations into Titanic's loss took place, Angelica and William knew that the courts and a problem the did not bargain for because the only person who could have told the about the ship and what happened that night Thomas Andrews was lost. However Angelica and Williams testimonies as well as there fellow survivors were riddled with contradictions and inconsistencies because each of them had a different version to what happened. But there was one expert at the enquiry who believed he knew what happened that night. Navel Architect Edward Wilding worked for the shipyard that built Titanic. Wilding proposed that the key to understanding the sinking could be found in the nature of the flooding. He also put forward to the investigators that the amount of damage could have been small and that each compartment could have suffered in its own unique way. But the press would not listen. They wanted people to believe that the great ship could have been destroyed by a massive gash in her side. However when Angelica and William arrived in New York, Bruce Ismay had been plotting with the White Star Line to shade the entire truth of the disaster. During the investigations, the surviving 167 crew members of the RMS Titanic were sent back to England to the Duke of Cornwall Hotel in Plymouth and were kept under strict confinement because Ismay did not want the surviving crew members revealing the full details to the English public and to the Press. The Witness to give their testimonies were Angelica and Williams rescuers Captain Arthur Rostron, 1st Officer Horace Dean and the RMS Carpathia crew, Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi and Captain Stanley Lord and the crew of the SS Californian. In 1955 Walter Lord wrote his most famous novel A Night To Remember. Although the attempt to recover the Titanic began right after the sinking, the wreck site was discovered by Robert Ballard in the summer of 1985 off the coast of Newfoundland during The Cold War. Ballard's team discovered one of the Titanic's Boilers on the Ocean Floor and the wreck was in two pieces.