Titanic (tītăn`ĭk), British liner that sank on the night of Apr. 14–15, 1912, after crashing into an iceberg in the N Atlantic S of Newfoundland. More than 1,500 lives were lost. The
Titanic, thought to be the fastest ship afloat and almost unsinkable, was on her maiden voyage and carried many notables among the more than 2,200 persons aboard. These circumstances made the loss seem the more appalling to the public in England and the United States.
Official and other investigations revealed that messages of warning had been sent but had either not been received by the commanding officers or had been ignored by them. The ship had continued at full speed even after the warnings were sent. She did not carry sufficient lifeboats, and many of the lifeboats were launched with only a few of the seats occupied. Other vessels in the vicinity were unable to reach the Titanic before she sank; one, only 10 mi (16 km) away, did not respond because her wireless operator had retired for the evening.
The disaster brought about measures to promote safety at sea, particularly the establishment of a patrol to make known the location of icebergs and of stringent regulations about the proper number and proper equipment of lifeboats to be carried by vessels. The catastrophe inspired a large literature. An expedition led by Robert D. Ballard Ballard, Robert Duane (băl`ərd), 1942–, American marine geologist, b. Wichita, Kans.; Ph.D. Univ. of Rhode Island, 1974.
..... Click the link for more information. discovered the wreck in 1985.
Bibliography
See L. Beesley, The Loss of the S.S. Titanic (1912, repr. 1973) A. Gracie, The Truth about the Titanic (1913, repr. 1973), W. Lord, A Night to Remember (1959), and R. Brown, Voyage of the Iceberg (1983).
Titanic
The Titanic.
(credit: The Bettmann Archive)
British luxury passenger liner that sank on April 15, 1912, en route to New York from Southampton, England, on its maiden voyage. Over 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers were lost. The largest and most luxurious ship afloat, it had a double-bottomed hull divided into 16 watertight compartments. Because four of these could be flooded without endangering its buoyancy, it was considered unsinkable. Shortly before midnight on April 14, it collided with an iceberg southeast of Cape Race, Newfoundland; five compartments ruptured and the ship sank. As a result, new rules were drawn up requiring that the number of places in lifeboats equal the number of passengers (the Titanic had only 1,178 lifeboat places for 2,224 passengers) and that all ships maintain a 24-hour radio watch for distress signals (a ship less than 20 mi [32 km] away had not heard the Titanic's distress signal because no one had been on duty). The International Ice Patrol was established to monitor icebergs in shipping lanes. In 1985 the wreck was found lying upright in two pieces at a depth of 13,000 ft (4,000 m) and was explored by American and French scientists using an unmanned submersible (
see Robert Ballard).
titanic of or containing titanium, esp in the tetravalent state
Titanic
British passenger ship sinks on maiden voyage (1912). [Br. Hist.: NCE, 2753]
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