The Titanic represented the pinnacle of Edwardian shipbuilding. The quarterly trade journal Shipbuilder enthused about the new vessel; 882ft. 9in. long, 92ft. 6in. wide vessel, 104ft. high from her keel to navigation bridge, displacing 52,250 tons of water, and with a gross registered tonnage of 46,328 tons she was held together by three million rivets weighing some 1,200 tons in total. Her name was appropriate; she was truly titanic.

April 14th 1912. 11:40pm. High above the fo'c'sle deck Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee were in the crows nest. On the bridge a shrill ring from the crow's nest telephone pierced the calm. Sixth officer James Moody responded to Fleet's call of "iceberg dead ahead, sir!", immediately informing First Officer William Murdoch who ordered evasive action. Five hundred yards, some thirty seven seconds she struck, a glancing blow. In the boiler rooms a cacophonous racket signified disaster. Warning bells rang out and watertight doors slid shut as the starboard side of the ship appeared to give way as a torrent of black icy-cold water cascaded in. The iceberg had pierced six of the watertight compartments, but the Titanic was built to withstand damage to her first four compartments only. With water in the first five watertight compartments, the excess weight would be sufficient to sink the bow low enough so that water would repeatedly flow over the top of one watertight compartment into the next. She would sink.

By 2:20 am she had sunk. The Titanic was certificated to carry 3,547 people but only had twenty lifeboats, capable of carrying 1,178 people. This number exceeded British Board of Trade regulations. In the disaster which befell the Titanic, 1,523 men, women and children died. Theirs wasn't a decent or honourable death, but a slow and painful one. The water temperature around freezing point made their inevitable deaths even more painful. Most bodies recovered showed no signs of drowning, their deaths attributed to exposure. The cries for help and and the cries of pain of the Titanic victims and the dreadful silence that followed would haunt survivors for the rest of their lives. Then the survivors had to wait for what must have seemed like an eternity, hoping for help, praying for salvation, and alone in their thoughts, the full enormity of the disaster only just dawning upon them.

On the morning of 15th April the Carpathia, captained by Arthur Henry Rostron, encountered small boats dotted about on the ocean. The Carpathia has picked up a distress call sent out by the Titanic's wireless operators hours earlier and had raced to the scene. In four hours those in the lifeboats had been taken aboard, and the vessel was underway. As the Carpathia headed back to New York the weather became inclement. First the fog, and thunderstorm that greeted the vessel, and then the rain and cold as she arrived off New York cruelly symbolised the mood of those aboard.

Some 30,000 New York residents had turned out on Thursday night, despite the weather and the late hour, to witness the extraordinary. This night it wasn't the latest ocean going leviathan which captured their imagination. A small ship, neither the largest, nor the fastest was the subject of intense interest and speculation. Excitable journalists, press photographers and curious New Yorkers peered at the extra passengers on the Carpathia who lined the vessels decks. To those people, illuminated by the glare of photographers flashlights, it seemed that the whole world had turned out to see their arrival. For days the whole world had been holding its breath since it had learnt the unimaginable; the Titanic had sunk.

The statistics show that 61% of first class, 41% of second class, 37% of third class and 23% of the crew survived; 32% in total. Searches during the following weeks only found three-hundred and twenty-eight bodies. The bodies of 1,195 passengers and crew were never found. The Titanic was not the ultimate ship, but provided a timely reminder of the fallibility of progress. It appeared that the faith in technology represented not confidence but complacency. On this occasion the boundaries of science had not been pushed to the limit, they'd been exceeded.

Now her name is synonymous with legend and tragedy. She should have had an unremarkable career and all too easily recollections of her should have faded from memory. However a unique set of circumstances conspired to ensure an ignominious fate for the liner, and an unenviable place in history.

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