A Ship of Dreams – The Titanic in Her Day
The Titanic set sail on her maiden voyage April 10, 1912 to New York, caring some of the richest, most powerful industrialists of her day. All together, their personal fortunes added to the very large sum of six million dollars in 1912. The Titanic didn’t just carry the wealthy; she also carried the poor emigrants from Europe and the Middle East seeking economics and freedom in the new world.
The ships crew was warned about icebergs by several other ships that evening, their warnings did not interest Titanic crew. She was traveling 20.5 knots (23.6 miles) when an iceberg gazed her side, sending the ship off balance and to its doom. The iceberg struck the massive ship at 11:40pm and she had completely disappeared to her watery grave 12,460 feet under the sea at approximately 2:18am. The Titanics short journey ended April 14, 1912. She also took 1,523 of her guest with her.
The Titanic was holding twenty lifeboats; each lifeboat could hold up to 65 passengers. Only 705 passengers survived the horrifying experience of the sinking ship. The lifeboats should have been able to rescue 1,300 people, but in the chaos of the sinking ship lifeboats were launched that only had a couple passengers aboard them.
And fate sat waiting for the other remaining 1,523 men, women, teens, children and babies. The cries for help by the remaining passenger pierced the night as the ships first half began to sink. The passengers left aboard the Titanic froze to death in the cold waters.
Seventy-three years later in 1985, Dr Bob Ballard found the remains of the Titanic 1,000 miles east of Boston, Massachusetts. She was broken in two. The bow and stern were found nearly 2,000 feet apart. Survivors of Titanic said that the ship snapped into two while it was sinking.
One year after Bob found the ship, on his last descent, he left a plaque honoring the 1,523 passenger that were killed that night, on the plaque he also asked subsequent explorers to leave their grave undisturbed.
