The Unsinkable Ship
What hits your head when you hear the word “Titanic”? Is it Jack? Rose? Love? or James Cameron? Well, almost 100 years ago, Titanic was a British passenger liner, and was referred to as “the unsinkable ship”, but ironically, sank during its maiden voyage, in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912 after striking an iceberg.
It’s a “3 years to build” and “less than 3 hours to sink”, the most iconic shipwreck in history. It weighed a record breaking 46,000 tons and was built by 15,000 people.
The cruise ship carried some of the wealthiest people in the world, as well as hundreds of emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland. It was designed to be the culmination of comfort and opulence, with a gymnasium, swimming pool, libraries and high-class restaurants. Bizarrely, the ship boasted many of the safety features of its day. It was believed to be indestructible, and as an ominous consequence of this overconfidence, during its voyage, there were no passenger safety drills to give instructions on where to go and which lifeboats to board in case of emergency. Also, there weren’t enough lifeboats to begin with.
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Now over 100 years later, the Titanic has been hidden in darkness, lying over 12,000 feet deep in the Atlantic ocean.
But how did the “unsinkable” ship end up at the bottom of the ocean? On April 14 1912, the ship entered a region of icebergs, which tore a gigantic 300-foot gash on the ship’s starboard side, ripping over 1/3rd of its entire whole, with over 1000 people still aboard.
But, what was even more surreal was, it took 2 hours 40 minutes for the ship to sink, but a liner of that size would have certainly caused it to sink much faster.
As far as the movie shot by James Cameron is concerned, the main characters, Jack and Rose, weren’t real. Like all films “based on a true story,” the movie added its own fictional elements to historical events.
The story of Titanic leaves us all with a melancholic stigma. No wonder that it holds an astounding stature in history!
