Thursday 12 April 2012

Vintage Titanic: 100 years on


100 years ago on the 15th April 1912 RMS Titanic fatally struck  an iceberg and sunk in the North Atlantic Ocean on it's maiden voyage. The Titanic was the largest passenger liner in the world at the time and set off on it's trip from Southampton, England to New York, America with 2,223 crew and passengers on 10th April. Many were visiting the grand country of the United States for a holiday and others dreamed of starting a new life, but their trip aboard the Titanic would change all of their lives for good.

The Titanic was said to be an engineering marvel and infamously 'unsinkable' however as we all know after hitting an iceberg and 5 of it's compartments becoming breached this statement wouldn't be lived down.

Front Page of The Times 1912

Largely thanks to the 1998 movie release Titanic the ship has been highly romanticised and will be brought alive once again in 3D marking 100 years since she sank. RMS Titanic still lies at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean and was left untouched until being rediscovered once again in 1985 with many expeditions to uncover artefacts.

A look typical of 1912 from a Women's catalog of the time

The ship was highly luxurious even to today's standards and passengers would be allowed access to certain parts depending on their class ticket as well as having access to better facilities. A number of millionaires and connections to royalty were aboard the Titanic. The first classes were treated overwhelmingly better than the third classes which unfortunately may be the reason for the huge discrepancies in deaths between the classes. 

Grand Staircase in first class

Titanic Interior

A bedroom on the Titanic

How some of the higher classes may have looked

It's nice to look back at a beautiful ship both mechanically and decoratively despite it's ill fated ending and see how we should never be content with our own greatness and should always be cautious of nature.
We'll be remembering all of those who lost their lives this week and a great ship.

Follow these for live tweets on the night the ship sunk from 11.30pm 14th April:

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