The tragedy of the Titanic teaches us to be ever vigilant!

100 years ago on this day, the night of 14th April and early hours of 15th April 1912, the gigantic luxury ship RMS TITANIC hit an iceberg and sank. And in this unfortunate tragedy, remembered even after 100 years, 1522 members drowned along with the ship, only 713 people and 2 dogs could be rescued.

Royal Mail Ship TITANIC an Olympic-class Ocean Liner was a huge one with a passenger capacity of 2435 and a crew of 892. From bow to stern, it was 882.9 feet long with four smokestacks as you can see in the above original photographs of the Titanic. From its keel to the top of the bridge, it was 104 feet that is 7 ½ stories high and weighed 46,328 tons. Its cruising speed was 21 knots with the maximum at 24 knots that is 44 kmph or 28 mph. And for this it consumed 600 tons of coal per day.  

TITANIC started from Southampton on 10th April 1912 on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. TITANIC then called at Cherbourg in France and Queenstown in Ireland before heading westwards to New York City. And on 14th April 1912 at 11:40 PM (time in the ship) the ship collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean. The collision caused the hull plates to buckle inwards in a number of locations on the starboard side and opened five of the ship’s sixteen watertight compartments to the sea. Over the next two and a half hours, the ship gradually filled with water and sank. Passengers and some crew members were evacuated in lifeboats, many of which were launched only partly filled. Many passengers travelling Second Class were left aboard due to ‘women and children first’ protocol followed by the officers supervising rescue operations. At about 2:20 AM the TITANIC broke up and sank bow-first with over a thousand people still on board. Those in the water died within minutes due to the freezing ocean. The 713 survivors on the lifeboats were rescued a few hours later by RMS Carpathia.

The huge loss of life and the tragic stories behind those who died and of the survivors continues to hurt the people of the world even today. Many families lost their bread-winners in this disaster and many survivors lost all of their money and possessions and were left to face a very rough life. Movies, novels, stories, some autobiographies and news about TITANIC are keeping the memories of this tragedy afresh year after year. All the news channels in India are telecasting about the TITANIC since a few days and especially today. And all over the world there are several events taking place to mark the TITANIC centenary and even above the final resting place of the TITANIC in the North Atlantic Ocean.

The tragedy of the TITANIC teaches us to be ever vigilant in every respect.