Sinking of The RMS Titanic - Background

Background

At the time of her entry into service on 2 April 1912, RMS Titanic was the largest ship in the world: she and her sister Olympic had almost half again as much gross register tonnage as Cunard's Lusitania and Mauretania, the previous record holders, and were nearly 100 feet (30 m) longer. Titanic could carry 3,547 people in speed and comfort, and was built on a hitherto unprecedented scale. Her reciprocating engines were the largest that had ever been built, standing 40 feet (12 m) high and with cylinders 9 feet (2.7 m) in diameter, and she could generate more steam than any previous ship, requiring the burning of 600 long tons (610 t) of coal per day.

Her passenger accommodation was said to be "of unrivalled extent and magnificence". First Class accommodation included the most expensive seagoing real estate ever, with promenade suites costing $4,350 ($103,485 at 2012 prices) for a one-way passage. Even Third Class was unusually comfortable by contemporary standards and was supplied with plentiful quantities of good food, providing its passengers with better conditions than many of them had experienced at home.

Titanic's maiden voyage began shortly after noon on 10 April 1912 when she left Southampton on the first leg of her journey to New York. A few hours later she reached Cherbourg in France, a journey of 80 nautical miles (148 km; 92 mi), where she took on passengers. Her next port of call was Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland, which she reached around midday on 11 April. She left in the afternoon after taking on more passengers and stores.

By the time she departed westwards across the Atlantic she was carrying 892 crew members and 1,320 passengers. This was only about half of her full passenger capacity of 2,435, as it was the low season and shipping from the UK had been disrupted by a coal miners' strike. Her passengers were a cross-section of Edwardian society, from millionaires such as John Jacob Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim, to poor emigrants from countries as disparate as Armenia, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Syria and Russia seeking a new life in America.

The ship was commanded by 62-year-old Captain Edward John Smith, the most senior of the White Star Line's captains. He had four decades of seafaring experience and had previously served as captain of Titanic's sister ship, RMS Olympic, from which he was transferred to command Titanic. The vast majority of the crew who served under him were not trained sailors, but were either engineers, firemen, or stokers, responsible for looking after the engines; or stewards and galley staff, responsible for the passengers. The 6 watch officers and 39 able-bodied seamen constituted only around 5 percent of the crew, and most of these had been taken on at Southampton so had not had time to familiarise themselves with the ship.

The ice conditions were attributed to a mild winter that caused large numbers of icebergs to shift off the west coast of Greenland. In addition, it is now known that in January 1912, the Moon came closer to the Earth than at any time in the previous 1,400 years, at the same time as the Earth made its closest annual approach to the Sun. This caused exceptionally high tides that may have resulted in a larger number of icebergs than usual reaching the shipping lanes a few months later. The weather improved significantly during the course of the day, from brisk winds and moderate seas in the morning to a crystal-clear calm by evening, as the ship entered an arctic high pressure system. There was no moon on the clear night.

Just before the centenary of the sinking, Tim Maltin, an amateur historian, published a book of research, conducted with the aid of an academic expert, concluding that the weather conditions also favoured the creation of a mirage effect over the calm sea known as the Fata Morgana or cold water mirage optical phenomenon, and that this facilitated the tragedy. It theoretically would have limited the ability of the ship's lookouts to see an approaching iceberg, and the ability of observers on the nearby ship, the SS Californian, which could see the Titanic in the critical hours, to recognise the distress the Titanic was in due to the collision, and the ability of both ships to recognise the Morse signals they tried to send to each other. The scientific world has not weighed in on this new theory.