The R.M.S Titanic was a symbol of human’s industrial achievements. Unfortunately, it sank on its maiden journey along with fifteen hundred passengers. People heard lofty stories about the most luxurious ship, its comfortable voyage, and above all the ‘unsinkable lifeboat’, and then it went down to the bottom in its first journey.
The construction of Titanic was started on March 31, 1909, by Messrs. Harland and Wolf at their shipbuilding works at Queens’ Island in Belfast, side by side with her sister ship the Olympic. The construction was completed after two years and after passing its trails Titanic arrived at Southampton on April 5 and sailed the following Wednesday.
On April 10, 1912, the Titanic made its maiden voyage to New York City with 2,208 passengers and crew. The journey was never completed and it collided with an iceberg on Sunday at 11:45 PM and sank two hours and a half later. A total of 1,503 people died including 815 passengers and 688 crew members and 705 were rescued.
When the Titanic was struck by an iceberg, the fight for rescue boats was started because they were only 20 boats for 2,208 passengers. These boats were launched below capacity, the first lifeboat to leave Titanic had the capacity for 65 people, but held only 25 when it launched. After the ship sank people returned to search for the survivors, but most of them were frozen to death in the icy waters and some of them were rescued.
The survivors were rescued by Carpathia at around 4:00 am, on 15 April. When the Carpathia arrived at Pier 54 in New York, some 40,000 people were standing on the wharves, alerted to the disaster by a stream of radio messages from Carpathia and other ships. People gathered outside the White Star offices in Southampton for news of their loved ones. Belfast, churches were packed, and shipyard workers wept in the streets. The heaviest losses were in Southampton, homeport to 699 crew members and also home to many of the passengers.
Here below are some historical photos that show the aftermath and the survivors of the Titanic.
These are fantastic, most of these I had never seen until today! Thanks for the share of these rare pictures!