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Abstract

This project is about the RMS Titanic, one of the most luxurious ships you could ever hope to get on. The project will explain the building, the sinking, and the aftermath of the RMS Titanic. The project will also include myths about Titanic that are about things that occurred that could have caused her to sink on the fateful night of April 15, 1912.

The information for this project was taken from various resources, including books, websites, and encyclopedias.

This project intends to give people a closer insight into the disaster of the Titanic.




































Building the Ship

    While the idea of the luxury liner came up in J. Bruce Ismay’s head in 1907, they didn’t start building the Titanic until March 31st, 1909. The construction was handled by Harland and Wolff. Harland and Wolff is a northern Irish heavy industrial company that specialized in shipbuilding and offshore construction located in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
    The Titanic was built next to its sister ships, the Olympic and the Gigantic (soon to be renamed the Britannic), which bore a striking resemblance to Titanic. The Britannic and most of its passengers were sunk by a U-Boat. The Olympic crashed, but the damage was well above the water line, so she survived the crash.
    Part of the reason it took so long to build Titanic is the fact that it weighed 45,000 tons and was 883 feet long. It was also a ship with MANY rooms and lots of lighting. To get so much lighting, it would take a lot of time back in 1912, and getting it to work in the water was much harder.
    It took three years to build the Titanic and more than 3,000 people were hired. Skilled workers earned $2 ($10 in 2011 money) per week. Unskilled workers earned a dollar or less ($5 or less in 2011 money) per week. In the end, Titanic cost $7.5 million dollars! Mr. Ismay, Harland and Wolff, and the White Star Line put out the money. That would be about $400 million today. All of that work just to see her go down, pulling many people with her miles below the sea.
    The people who worked on Titanic worked about 14 hours a day, 6 days a week with only 7 minutes for a bathroom break every day! It was also very hot in the shipyard, and the workers were allowed to have as much water as they wanted. But with only 7 minutes for a bathroom break per day, the workers tried not to drink too much water. Some workers got very dehydrated, but as far as anybody knows, only a couple actually died.
    Aside from being huge and having a weak, but strong for the time, double-steel hull, most of the cost came from the fact that the people building Titanic had kept in mind that not all passengers would be American. There were many things that were put on the ship so people who were not American could keep to tradition.   
There are myths going around about workers being trapped in the hull and dying there. This myth even went as far as to say that their ghosts cursed the ship and haunted the passengers! This myth, of course, is untrue. When the day was over and the workers returned home, the ship was thoroughly checked to ensure no workers were trapped inside. If one was still inside, they would be let out. Nobody who worked on Titanic got trapped and died.
A “dummy funnel” was put on the Titanic to make her look faster and more powerful. There were only three real funnels; the fourth “funnel” was never used to release steam. It was used as ventilation for the kitchen’s stoves instead. Smoke was released from the “dummy funnel” because it was a vent, making it look like a real funnel. Not much smoke came out, however. This funnel added weight to the Titanic, which could have been the cause of her sinking so fast.
    Titanic’s hull was launched May 31, 1911 to make sure it was not too heavy for the water and determine how many passengers could stay on the ship. The other parts of the ship were being worked on as the hull was on the water.


                                          Setting Sail

The Titanic left dock at Southampton on April 10, 1912 with a fire in the coal bunker. Not a small fire, but a large one that took a few days to put out. Some say the fire was put out a day before she sank, some say it was put out the day that Titanic sank.
    Very shortly after she left dock, Titanic managed to pull a smaller ship, the New York, near her because of Titanic’s  huge propellers. They almost collided, which set a few nerves on edge. That near-collision was nothing compared to the collision with the iceberg. Some survivors say they wish that the Titanic and the New York had collided.

Sorry for any big spaces; those are page breaks.