A Titanic Tragedy

Design & Construction

To construct this Olympic class vessel, the White Star Line hired Harland & Wollf in 1909 to build the 25-story-high ship. The construction process took two years to finish with over 2,000 steel plates and three million rivets! Though an impressive number, it may have been a place for cutting corners by using substandard iron rivets that were sheared off by the iceberg and caused many compartments to buckle. While the design did boast of including safety features such as watertight compartments, these compartments were lower in height than they should have been so as not to cut into the living quarters of the first class rooms. Designed by architect Thomas Andrews, the 16 watertight compartments could have up to four flooded and still stay afloat. Because of the height issue, too many compartments flooded on the night of April 14th, forcing the bow of the ship to dip into the ocean. Titanic also carried far fewer lifeboats than it needed to accommodate all the passengers. In fact, the designers changed the original plan from a capacity of 32 boats and reduced it to only 20 boats to avoid the appearance of a cluttered deck. By April 10th when it set sail from Southampton, England to Cherbourg, France, it was so new that it is rumored there was still wet paint!