100 years of Titanic: Memories

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The sinking of the RMS Titanic caused the deaths of 1,517 of its 2,229 passengers and crew (official numbers vary slightly) in one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history. The 712 survivors were taken aboard the RMS Carpathia. Few disasters have had such resonance and far-reaching effects on the fabric of society as the sinking of the Titanic. It affected attitudes toward social injustice, altered the way the North Atlantic passenger trade was conducted, changed the regulations for numbers of lifeboats carried aboard passenger vessels and created an International Ice Patrol (where commercial ships crossing the North Atlantic still, today, radio in their positions and ice sightings). The 1985 discovery of the Titanic wreck on the ocean floor marked a turning point for public awareness of the ocean and for the development of new areas of science and technology. April 15, 2012 will mark the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster. It has become one of the most famous ships in history, her memory kept alive by numerous books, films, exhibits and memorials. -- Paula Nelson.

 The British passenger liner RMS Titanic leaves from Southampton, England on her maiden voyage, April 10, 1912. Titanic called at Cherbourg, France and Queenstown, Ireland before heading westward toward New York. Four days into the crossing, she hit an iceberg at 11:40 p.m., 375 miles south of Newfoundland. Just before 2:20 am Titanic broke up and sank bow-first with over a thousand people still on board. Those in the water died within minutes from hypothermia caused by immersion in the freezing ocean.(Frank O. Braynard Collection) 

A 1912 photograph of a dining room on the Titanic. The ship was designed to be the last word in comfort and luxury, with an on-board gymnasium, swimming pool, libraries, high-class restaurants and opulent cabins. (The New York Times Photo Archives/American Press Association)

Captain Edward John Smith, commander of the Titanic. The ship he commanded was the largest afloat at the time of her maiden voyage. Titanic was a massive ship - 883 feet long, 92 feet wide, and weighing 52,310 long tons (a long ton is 2240 pounds). It was 175 feet tall from the keel to the top of the four stacks or funnels, almost 35 feet of which was below the waterline. The Titanic was taller above the water than most urban buildings of the time. (The New York Times Archives)

 

This is believed to be the iceberg that sank the Titanic on April 14-15, 1912. The photograph was taken from the deck of the Western Union Cable Ship, Mackay Bennett, commanded by Captain DeCarteret. The Mackay Bennett was one of the first ships to reach the scene of the Titanic disaster. According to Captain DeCarteret, this was the only berg at the scene of the sinking when he arrived. It was assumed, therefore, that it was responsible for the sea tragedy. The glancing collision with the iceberg caused Titanic's hull plates to buckle inward in a number of locations on her starboard side and opened five of her sixteen watertight compartments to the sea. Over the next two and a half hours, the ship gradually filled with water and sank. (United States Coast Guard)

A photograph released by Henry Aldridge & Son/Ho Auction House in Wiltshire, Britain, 18 April 2008, shows an extremely rare Titanic passenger ticket. They were the auctioneers handling the complete collection of the last American Titanic Survivor Miss Lillian Asplund. The collection was comprised of a number of significant items including a pocket watch, one of only a handful of remaining tickets for the Titanic's maiden voyage and the only example of a forward emigration order for the Titanic thought to exist. Lillian Asplund was a very private person and because of the terrible events she witnessed that cold April night in 1912 rarely spoke about the tragedy which claimed the lives of her father and three brothers. (Henry Aldridge & Son/Ho)

R.M.S. Titanic's bow in 1999. (P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology) 

This Sept. 12, 2008 image shows one of the propellers of the RMS Titanic on the ocean floor during an expedition to the site of the tragedy. Five Thousand artifacts are scheduled to be auctioned as a single collection on April 11, 2012, 100 years after the sinking of the ship. (RMS Titanic, Inc., via Associated Press)

  This Aug. 28, 2010 image, released by Premier Exhibitions, Inc.-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, shows the starboard side of the Titanic bow. (Premier Exhibitions, Inc.-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Artifacts on display at "TITANIC The Artifact Exhibit" at the California Science Center: Binoculars, a comb, dishes and a broken incandescent light bulb, Feb. 6, 2003. (Michel Boutefeu/Getty Images,Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times)  

 Currency, part of the artifacts collection of the Titanic, is photographed at a warehouse in Atlanta, Aug. 2008. (Stanley Leary/Associated Press) 

With her rudder cleaving the sand and two propeller blades peeking from the murk, Titanic’s mangled stern rests on the abyssal plain, 1,970 feet south of the more photographed bow. This optical mosaic combines 300 high-resolution images taken on a 2010 expedition. (COPYRIGHT© 2012 RMS TITANIC, INC; Produced by AIVL, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)  

Two of Titanic’s engines lie exposed in a gaping cross section of the stern. Draped in “rusticles”—orange stalactites created by iron-eating bacteria—these massive structures, four stories tall, once powered the largest moving man-made object on Earth. (COPYRIGHT© 2012 RMS TITANIC, INC; Produced by AIVL, WHOI)

Source and more at: boston.com 
  

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