R.M.S Titanic

I originally posted this on my old website in November 2002.

T I T A N I C

The story of the R.M.S. Titanic has fascinated me for much of my life.  Today, many people know of the Titanic thanks to the motion picture produced by James Cameron, but I knew the story before Cameron’s film was ever planned.  What follows is a research paper I wrote in the Eighth Grade in 1995 or 1996.  I was very proud of this paper at the time, and I still think it is very informative, though of course it could be written and constructed a little better.  I have not modified the paper from its original form, beyond formatting and correcting some spelling errors.  (The computer I originally typed this on had no spellchecker)  Essentially all of the information in this paper is from The Discovery of the Titanic by Dr. Robert D. Ballard, published by Warner Books, 1995.  I highly recommend this book to anyone interested at all in the Titanic.

R.M.S. Titanic
by Robert West

    The Royal Mail Ship Titanic was the largest ship of its time, its sinking was one of the worst disasters of the twentieth century, and its discovery was one of oceanography's greatest feats.

    Construction on the R.M.S. Titanic began March 31, 1911, at the Harland & Wolff shipyards in Belfast, Ireland as Harland & Wolff number 401.  The hull was launched on May 31, and the outfitting began.  The outfitting was completed on March 31, 1912.

    The R.M.S. Titanic weighed 46,328 gross tons and had 52,250 tons of displacement.  The Titanic was 882 feet 9 inches long, 94 feet wide at its widest point, and 175 feet high to the top of the funnels.  The hull was 92 feet wide.  The ship was 100 feet tall to the bridge level.  The ship's 29 boilers and 159 furnaces created 46,000 horsepower running three propellers capable of propelling the ship at an estimated 24 knots.  Its four funnels were 73 feet high from the boat deck.  The ship cost 1,500,000 pounds or $7,500,000.

    On Wednesday, April 10, 1912, in Southampton, England, the crew boarded at 7:30 a.m. and the first passengers boarded from 9:30-11:30 a.m.  The ship departed Southampton at 12:00 and as it left, the mooring ropes of the steamer New York broke, causing it to drift towards the Titanic.  Quick action avoided a collision by only 4 feet. The ship went to Cherbourg, France, staying from 6:30-8:10 p.m. when it departed for Queenstown, Ireland.  The Titanic arrived in Queenstown on April 11, at 11:30 a.m.  At 1:30 p.m. it departed with 2,227 passengers and crew aboard.

    The Titanic received many ice warnings, especially on April 14, including warnings from the Caronia, the Noordam, the Baltz, the Athinai, the Amerika, the Californian, and the Mesaba.

    On Sunday, April 14, 1912 at 11:40 p.m., an iceberg was sighted by lookout Fredrick Fleet.  The ship was turned and the engines were reversed.  37 seconds after the sighting, the iceberg brushed along the starboard side of the ship.  The impact was not noticed by most of the ship's passengers.

    At midnight, Captain Edward J. Smith and the ship's builder Thomas Andrews made an inspection of the ship.  The first distress call was sent and the boilers were shut down.  The Titanic's position was 41 degrees 46 minutes North, 50 degrees 14 minutes West.  At 12:05, the lifeboats were ordered uncovered.  At 12:45, the first rocket was launched and the first lifeboat, starboard # 7, was lowered with 28 people aboard.  It could hold 65.  At 12:55, port lifeboat # 6 was lowered with 28 people aboard, including Molly Brown, who would later take command of this boat.  At this time, Fifth Officer Lowe chastised J. Bruce Ismay, President of the White Star line, for interfering with his command of starboard lifeboat # 5, lowered with 41 people aboard.  It could carry 65.  At 1:00, starboard lifeboat # 3 was lowered with 32 people aboard, 11 of which were crewmembers.  At 1:10, starboard lifeboat # 9 was lowered with 56 aboard.  At 1:25 ,port lifeboat # 12 was lowered with 42 aboard.  At 1:30, port lifeboat # 14 was lowered with 60 aboard.  At 1:35, port lifeboat # 16 was lowered with 50 aboard.  Also at 1:35, starboard lifeboat # 13 is lowered with 64 people.  30 seconds later, starboard lifeboat # 15 is lowered right on top of it with 70 people and a collision is barely avoided.  At 1:40, as passengers move towards the stern, J. Bruce Ismay and 38 others are lowered in Collapsible C, the last starboard lifeboat.  At 1:45, as the last words heard from the Titanic, "Engine room, full up to boilers," is received by the Cunard liner Carpathia.  Port lifeboat   # 2 is lowered with 25 aboard.  It could carry 40.  At 1:55, port lifeboat # 4 is lowered with 40 passengers and some crew aboard, leaving 20 places empty.  At 2:05, Collapsible D, the last lifeboat lowered by davits, was lowered with 44 people aboard.  It could hold 47.  The crew had to encircle it to prevent a rush.

    At 2:17, the Titanic's bow went under.  Collapsible B floated clear upside down and people grabbed on to it.  The forward funnel collapsed, crushing swimming passengers.  Collapsible A floated clear and 2 dozen people grabbed on to it.  It was right side up, but swamped and overloaded.  At 2:18, all moveable objects crashed towards the bow.  The ships lights blinked once then went out.  The ship broke in two and the bow half sank.  At 2:20, the stern righted itself and pivoted around before it tilted almost vertical as it sank.

    Lifeboats # 4, # 10, # 12, # 14 and Collapsible D were tied together during the night.  Fifth Officer Lowe moved survivors from   # 14 so he could return for survivors.  At 3:30, the Carpathia's rockets were sighted by the Titanic's lifeboats.  At 4:10, the first lifeboats were picked up.  From 5:30-6:30 Collapsible A was rescued by boat # 14 and Collapsible B by boats # 4 and # 12.  The last lifeboat was picked up at 8:30 and by 8:50 the Carpathia was heading to New York with 705 survivors.  On April 18, at 9:00 p.m. the Carpathia arrived in New York where 10,000 people watched it arrive.  First the Titanic's lifeboats were unloaded at the White Star Piers.  Then the survivors were unloaded at the Cunard Pier (#54).

    On April 17, the Mackay-Bennett was sent by White Star from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, to search for bodies.  It had found 306 by April 22 when the Minia was sent from Halifax.  The Minia found 17 more after a week.  On May 6, the Montmagny was sent from Sorel, Quebec, Canada, and recovered 4 bodies.  The Algerina was sent from St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada, and found 1 body.  From April 19 to May 25, the United States Senate Inquiry was conducted.  It was headed by Senator William A. Smith and had 82 witnesses called.  From May 2 to July 3, the British Board of Trade Inquiry was conducted.  It consisted of 25,622 questions and 92 witnesses including Marconi, the inventor of radio, Sir Earnest Shackleton regarding icebergs, passengers Sir Cosmo and Lady Duff Gordon, J. Bruce Ismay, Captain Lord of the Californian, members of the Titanic's crew, the ships owners, members of the British Board of Trade and Second Officer Lightoller who was asked 1,600 questions alone.

    One of the mysteries of that night is why the Californian, which had stopped for the night in an ice field and shut down its boilers close enough to the Titanic to see its lights, didn't know the Titanic was sinking.  After being cut off by the Titanic's radio officer, Jack Phillips, the Californian's radio operator, Cyril Evans, went to sleep at about 12:15.  Soon after, the Californian's Third Officer, Charles Grove, tried to contact the anonymous ship (actually the Titanic) coming from the southeast but was unsuccessful.  At about 12:45, the Californian's Second Officer, Herbert Stone, on duty on the bridge, saw rockets being fired from the ship to the southeast.  They had been unable to contact the ship by morse lamp and no one wanted to wake up Evans, who had worked 16 hours straight.  When Stone informed Captain Walter Lord, he told Stone to keep trying to communicate with the morse lamp. After more rockets were seen, Stone sent Apprentice Gibson to inform the Captain, who told Gibson to continue signaling with the morse lamp.  Between 2:00 and 2:20, the ship appeared to sail out of sight to the southeast.  It is presumed that even if Captain Lord had awakened the radio operator at the first rocket sighting, learned that the Titanic was sinking, fired up the boilers, headed for the nearby ship, and discovered it was the Titanic, he would have arrived in time to rescue only a few half dead bodies from the water.  The fact still remains though, that Lord and his crew did nothing when action was called for.

    In 1977, Dr. Robert D. Ballard tested Alcoa Aluminum's salvage ship, Alcoa Seaprobe, as a possible search ship for the Titanic.  The tests ended when the Seaprobe's drill pipe broke, destroying Ballard's borrowed equipment.

    Between 1980 and 1983, Jack Grimm made 3 expeditions to find the Titanic.  In the 1980 expedition, the research ship Fay used the sonar system Sea MARC I to search a 500 square nautical mile area.  14 possible Titanic's were detected, most or all of which could have been eliminated with the magnetometer which was lost 1 1/2 days into the expedition.  In the 1981 expedition, the R/V Gyre and the Scripps Deep Tow searched for three weeks and found nothing, but on the way back while testing Bill Ryan's Deep Sea Color Video System, they found what appeared to be one of the Titanic's propellers.  In the 1983 expedition, Grimm & Ryan used the R/V Robert D. Conrad to search the propeller site and very little else. They returned finding nothing.

    In 1985, Dr. Ballard arranged a joint expedition between the French National Institute of Oceanography or IFREMER and America's Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to search for the Titanic. IFREMER'S ship Le Suroit spent 4 weeks searching with the SAR Sonar System, and found nothing.  The Americans then used the research vessel Knorr and the Argo camera sled to search for the Titanic's debris field.  Argo was launched on August 25.

    On September 1, 1985, at 12:48 a.m., wreckage began appearing on the monitors.  As the Knorr's cook went to get Dr. Ballard, a perfectly round object appeared.  It was confirmed as one of the Titanic's boilers.  With the remainder of the time Dr. Ballard had, the wreck was passed over with the Argo and ANGUS camera sleds.  They discovered that the ship was in two pieces and where its location is.  The bow is at 49 degrees 56 minutes 49 seconds West, 41 degrees 43 minutes 57 seconds North. The stern is at 49 degrees 56 minutes 54 seconds West, 41 degrees 43 minutes 32 seconds North.  The center of the boiler field is at 49 degrees 56 minutes 54 seconds West, 41 degrees 43 minutes 32 seconds North.

    On July 12, 1986, Dr. Ballard returned to the site of the Titanic aboard the Atlantis II.  They planned to explore the wreck with the submersible Alvin and the underwater robot Jason Junior or J.J.

    On the first dive, several problems occurred.  First, at 1,500 feet, Alvin's sonar stopped working.  At 6,000 feet, a salt-water leak was discovered in the battery pack.  As Alvin neared the bottom, the Atlantis II's sonar started malfunctioning.  When Alvin reached the bottom, its crew guessed where the Titanic was until Atlantis II's sonar was fixed.  Then they went towards the wreck and got a brief glimpse of it before heading to the surface.

    On the second dive, one of J.J.'s motors flooded, making the robot useless.  On this dive, the hull was discovered to be partially buried and the wood deck planking was gone.  In addition, several landing sites were tested.  When Alvin reached the surface, J.J. was knocked from its garage but it was rescued before it sank.

    On dive 3, after repairing J.J., the robot was sent down the First Class Staircase.  J.J. was taken down as far as C-deck before it was brought back and Alvin started heading for the surface.

    Dive 4 started after repairing one of Alvin's cameras in fog.  On the Titanic, Alvin was landed on the remains of the bridge and boat deck so J.J.'s pilot, Martin Bowen, could use the robot to look in windows and explore the bow, in addition to going back down the staircase.

    Due to high currents, J.J. was useless and Alvin was hard to maneuver during dive #5.  Still, this was the dive in which the decks were seen to have collapsed at the breaking point.

    Dive #6 was to the debris field.  Most of the field had already been photographed by ANGUS so Alvin's crew had a chart to help them.

    Dive #7 was delayed one day because Alvin's charger was not turned on.  This dive accomplished very little because J.J.'s video wasn't working.

    Dive #8 was to the stern section, where one of J.J.'s motors malfunctioned.  Alvin was piloted under the stern's overhang to look unsuccessfully for the propellers.  A plaque was placed on the stern in memory of those who died on the Titanic.

J.J. was still malfunctioning on dive #9 so the entire exterior of the bow was photographed.  Vertical buckles from the impact with the ocean floor and separated hull plates which may have been the cause of the sinking were discovered.

    On dive #10, an open gangway door to D-deck was discovered but J.J. wouldn't work.

    After finally repairing J.J., the final dive #11 was complete.  A plaque from the Explorers Club was left on a bow capstan. J.J. was sent through a B-deck gangway opening to find nothing and the ship was discovered to have cracked along the expansion joint just aft of the number 1 funnel opening and officers quarters.

    In 1987, after the U.S. Congress called for the wreck to become an international memorial and left undisturbed, IFREMER used its submersible Nautile and salvage equipment on 32 dives in 54 days in order to bring up approximately 900 artifacts.  The ship was damaged in the process of bringing up the artifacts and the U.S. Congress has banned anyone from making a profit from selling them in the U.S. The expedition discovered a hole in the starboard bow and the port propeller sticking up out of the mud.

    The Titanic's sinking was one of the greatest disasters of the 20th century and its finding was a big step in the exploration of the world's oceans.

Since this paper was written, many more artifacts have been retrieved from the Titanic, including a section of the hull, by R.M.S. Titanic, Inc.  This company was granted exclusive salvage rights by a United States Court, and has made several expeditions to the ship to retrieve artifacts.  Many of these artifacts are in a traveling exhibit to let them be viewed by people around the world.  Since finding the Titanic, Dr. Ballard had found and explored several other shipwrecks, including Titanic’s sister ship Britannic.

© Robert D. West: 1996, 2003.