The mighty ship stood
bolt upright, an unforgettable and terrible sight, with the din
of all its riches smashing inside, as
black as death itself against the starry night sky...Then all noise from the
ship stopped...And at last, always gaining speed, Titanic slid beneath the sea
like a collapsing skyscraper.
Titanic
witnessed mankind at its
heroic best and selfish worst. why and how did the Titanic ultimately sink on
its first and last expedition? Neither the design nor the structure of the
Titanic was accountable for the Titanic’s unforeseen demise. Rather the main
reason was a lack of understanding of the limitations of technology on the part
of those who should have known better.
In 1912, At the time of her
launch, the Royal Mail Steamer
(R.M.S) Titanic was the largest man-made moving object on Earth with build cost
$7.5 million.The Titanic was the newest and most technologically advanced liner
in the world. Despite all of its innovative technology, the ship sank on a
clear night on its maiden voyage with the loss hundreds of lives. The
unsinkable Titanic sank. R.M.S. Titanic, perhaps the most famous ship that ever
sailed, hit an iceberg was about 100 feet tall spawned from a glacier in
Greenland. The ship's doom was hastened when crewman opened a gangway door to
try to load life boats from a lower level. They couldn't reclose it, and sea water rushed in. And the next morning - April 15,
1912 - sank beneath the North Atlantic waves. She took 1,517 women, men and
children to the bottom of the ocean with her,
including some of the most famous names of her time. It was great ever disaster of nineteenth century. Only 706 passengers and
crew would survive the disaster.
One
recent scientific theory holds that the moon's extremely close approach to
Earth on Jan. 4, 1912, created such strong tides that it sent an array of
icebergs south into the Titanic's path.
Technological change is very evident in the Titanic disaster. In
an effort to prevent repeating their mistakes, the White Star Line modified
several of their existing ships following the Titanic disaster. The changes
were based on the design flaws that were assumed to have contributed to the
disaster. Along with these design changes, the White Star Line, and all
shipbuilding companies at the time, had newly established safety regulations,
agreed upon by both the British and American governments, that they had to follow.
Wreck
of the RMS Titanic
When the ship split in two at the surface, the stern section
plummeted into the seabed, the stern itself facing the ripped opening of the bow section. The wreck of the RMS Titanic
is located about 370 miles (600 km) south-southeast of the coast of
Newfoundland, lying at a depth of about 12,500 feet (3,800 m). Until 1
September 1985, the location of the wreck was unknown. The wreck of RMS Titanic
was discovered more than 73 years after its sinking, south of Newfoundland in
the North Atlantic ocean, by a joint American-French expedition, led by
oceanographer Jean-Louis Michel (Ifremer) and Dr. Robert Ballard (WHOI). The
most notable discovery the team made was that the ship had split apart.
Approximately 5,500 artefacts have been removed from the wreck. In 1993, 1994,
1996, 1998 and 2000, RMS Titanic Inc. carried out an intensive series of dives
that led to the recovery of over 4,000 items in the first two expeditions
alone.
Display
in Museums
Many of these recoveries were put on display at the National
Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, and later as part of a travelling museum
exhibit. The Merseyside Maritime Museum in the Titanic's home port of Liverpool
also has an extensive collection of artefacts from the
wreck located within a permanent exhibition named 'Titanic, Lusitania and the Forgotten
Empress'.
Visitors
flow
Tourist and scientific visits to Titanic are still continuing.
By April 2012, 100 years since the
disaster and nearly 25 since the discovery of the wreck, around 140 people had visited.
On 14 April 2012 (the 100 th anniversary of the ship's sinking), the wreck of
the Titanic became eligible for protection as a UNESCO World Heritage
Site, and in the same month, Robert Ballard, the wreck's discoverer, has
announced of a plan to preserve the
wreck of the Titanic by using deep-sea robots to paint the wreck with
anti-fouling paint, to help keep the
wreck in its current state for all time.
Many scientists, including are concerned that visits by tourists in submersibles
and the recovery of artifacts are hastening the decay of the wreck. Under water
microbes have been
eating away at Titanic's steel since the ship sank,
but because of the extra damage caused by visitors the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that `the
hull and structure of the ship may
collapse to the ocean floor within the
next 50 years.`
