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The Titanic and the Passengers Who Boarded It: Research and Assignment Guide

The Titanic is one of the most famous ships in history: leaving England on April 10th, 1912, it was only on the water for three days before it collided with an iceberg and sank on April 15th, 1912. In this guide, we provide research and information on the ship, it’s passengers, and the fateful night it crashed, as well as a list of discussion questions and additional resources. To see a video lecture of this presentation from our Presidential Primary Sources distance learning series, click here.

Built between 1909 and 1911, the luxury British steamship Titanic was so big, they had to create a new workspace before they could even start to build it. Measuring 882 feet long, the length of two and a half football fields, it was intended to travel almost 3,000 miles from Southampton, England to New York City.

Known for its comfort instead of speed, the Titanic and its sister ships the Olympic and the Britannic were filled with an ornate interior like a large first class dining room, four elevators, a swimming pool and a grand staircase. Even the most modest third-class offerings were still noted for their comfort and beauty. It was built with 15 supposedly watertight compartments that could be closed from the bridge in case water came aboard during a hull breach. All of these exciting features gave the Titanic nicknames like the “Unsinkable Ship” and the “Wonder Ship.”

Over 900 people worked on the Titanic, including crew members, cooks and servers in the dining room, and the Captain himself, Captain Edward John Smith. Adding the number of passengers to the 900 workers, the Titanic was carrying around 2200 people when it left England.

The passengers aboard the Titanic were placed into three classes: first, second and third.

The first class was for the wealthy. Ladies wore laced corsets, expensive gowns, long gloves and satin shoes. Men were dressed in tuxedos or suits, top hats, and nicely polished shoes. People in first class would change several times a day. They would wear different clothes for breakfast, afternoon tea, exercising, or dinner, when they wore their fanciest clothing. One of the most famous first class passengers was “The Unsinkable” Molly Brown (pictured above), an American socialite who survived the Titanic sinking by bravely assisting other survivors into lifeboats and later helping to steer her own, Lifeboat No. 6.

Second class women dressed in nice gowns and accessorized with bracelets and necklaces. Men would wear fine suits and leather shoes. Some of the most famous second-class passengers are the eight musicians who played uplifting music throughout the night to try and calm passengers as the ship sank.

Third class passengers might have been workers, or immigrants who were going from England to America for a new life. They would only have one or two outfits, and might wear some of the same clothes during the whole trip. Women would wear long skirts, high collared blouses and boots. Men would dress in britches, ironed shirts or ties. At two months old, Millvina Dean was the youngest survivor. She, along with her older brother and parents, boarded the ship as third-class passengers planning to emigrate to America from Britain. Millvina Dean died in 2009, and was the last living survivor of the Titanic .

Throughout the voyage, warnings of icebergs had been coming through the wireless radio, but the final messages were not given to the bridge. On April 14, after four days at sea the Titanic collided with a jagged iceberg at 11:40 p.m. Because it was dark that night, and the lookouts in the crow’s nest didn’t have binoculars with them since they were locked up, they didn’t see the iceberg until it was too late. At first, they thought the boat had simply scraped the iceberg, but they soon realized the iceberg had actually slashed a 300-foot gash in the hull, filling the lower compartments with seawater.

The ship had the legally required number of lifeboats, but 20 boats wasn’t enough for all the passengers. One of the reasons for this is that they believed if something happened they could call another ship and move people a few at a time. But the other ships were too far away and didn’t arrive before the ship sank. Women and children were given first priority for the lifeboats, and the boats were being launched under-filled, some with only 20 or so passengers when they could actually3 fit 65. In the end only 706 passengers survived, picked up by the Carpathia . The other 1500 people were lost at sea as the Titanic went underwater at 2:20 a.m.

For Students and educators:

Discussion Questions:

Why was the Titanic given nicknames such as “The Wonder Ship?”
How would you have felt if you were on the Titanic ?
Have you and your family ever been on a long trip? Where did you go? What did you wear?
Which of the three passengers’ stories talked about above stands out to you the most? Why?
Why didn’t the crew of the Titanic see the iceberg in the distance?

Assignments for Further Research:

Look more into the distinctions between the three social classes aboard the Titanic . How did first class passengers spend their time on the Titanic versus how third class passengers spent theirs? Were first, second, or third class passengers more likely to survive?
Many notable and famous people were passengers on the Titanic. Look more into some of them and find out their stories, such as: what class did they belong to? What was their profession? Why were they onboard the ship?
There were multiple ships on the water at the time of the Titanic sinking – the Carpathia, the Olympic, and the Californian, to name a few. Why were each of them unable to reach the Titanic in time? Was it because of their radio being turned off, the distance, or something else?
What impact did the Titanic crash have on current ship safety procedures such as lifeboats, drills, etc.?

Additional Resources:

Molly Brown and 11 Other Famous Titanic Passengers

Information on the Titanic from the History Channel

Information on the Titanic from Britannica

The Building of the RMS Titanic

The Titanic was the product of intense competition among rival shipping lines in the first half of the 20th century. In particular, the White Star Line found itself in a battle for steamship primacy with Cunard, a venerable British firm with two standout ships that ranked among the most sophisticated and luxurious of their time.

Cunard’s Mauretania began service in 1907 and quickly set a speed record for the fastest average speed during a transatlantic crossing (23.69 knots or 27.26 mph), a title that it held for 22 years.

Cunard’s other masterpiece, Lusitania , launched the same year and was lauded for its spectacular interiors. Lusitania met its tragic end on May 7, 1915, when a torpedo fired by a German U-boat sunk the ship, killing nearly 1,200 of the 1,959 people on board and precipitating the United States’ entry into World War I .

Did you know? Passengers traveling first class on Titanic were roughly 44 percent more likely to survive than other passengers.

The same year that Cunard unveiled its two magnificent liners, J. Bruce Ismay, chief executive of White Star, discussed the construction of three large ships with William J. Pirrie, chairman of the shipbuilding company Harland and Wolff. Part of a new “Olympic” class of liners, each ship would measure 882 feet in length and 92.5 feet at their broadest point, making them the largest of their time.

In March 1909, work began in the massive Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland, on the second of these three ocean liners, Titanic, and continued nonstop for two years.

On May 31, 1911, Titanic’s immense hull–the largest movable manmade object in the world at the time–made its way down the slipways and into the River Lagan in Belfast. More than 100,000 people attended the launching, which took just over a minute and went off without a hitch.

The hull was immediately towed to a mammoth fitting-out dock where thousands of workers would spend most of the next year building the ship’s decks, constructing her lavish interiors and installing the 29 giant boilers that would power her two main steam engines.

‘Unsinkable’ Titanic’s Fatal Flaws

According to some hypotheses, Titanic was doomed from the start by a design that many lauded as state-of-the-art. The Olympic-class ships featured a double bottom and 15 watertight bulkhead compartments equipped with electric watertight doors that could be operated individually or simultaneously by a switch on the bridge.

It was these watertight bulkheads that inspired Shipbuilder magazine, in a special issue devoted to the Olympic liners, to deem them “practically unsinkable.”

But the watertight compartment design contained a flaw that was a critical factor in Titanic’s sinking: While the individual bulkheads were indeed watertight, the walls separating the bulkheads extended only a few feet above the water line, so water could pour from one compartment into another, especially if the ship began to list or pitch forward.

The second critical safety lapse that contributed to the loss of so many lives was the inadequate number of lifeboats carried on Titanic. A mere 16 boats, plus four Engelhardt “collapsibles,” could accommodate just 1,178 people. Titanic could carry up to 2,435 passengers, and a crew of approximately 900 brought her capacity to more than 3,300 people.

As a result, even if the lifeboats were loaded to full capacity during an emergency evacuation, there were available seats for only one-third of those on board. While unthinkably inadequate by today’s standards, Titanic’s supply of lifeboats actually exceeded the British Board of Trade’s requirements.

Passengers on the Titanic

Titanic created quite a stir when it departed for its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912. After stops in Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown (now known as Cobh), Ireland, the ship set sail for New York with 2,240 passengers and crew—or “souls,” the expression then used in the shipping industry, usually in connection with a sinking—on board.

As befitting the first transatlantic crossing of the world’s most celebrated ship, many of these souls were high-ranking officials, wealthy industrialists, dignitaries and celebrities. First and foremost was the White Star Line’s managing director, J. Bruce Ismay, accompanied by Thomas Andrews, the ship’s builder from Harland and Wolff.

Absent was financier J.P. Morgan , whose International Mercantile Marine shipping trust controlled the White Star Line and who had selected Ismay as a company officer. Morgan had planned to join his associates on Titanic but canceled at the last minute when some business matters delayed him.

The wealthiest passenger was John Jacob Astor IV, heir to the Astor family fortune, who had made waves a year earlier by marrying 18-year-old Madeleine Talmadge Force, a young woman 29 years his junior, shortly after divorcing his first wife.

Other notable passengers included the elderly owner of Macy’s, Isidor Straus, and his wife Ida; industrialist Benjamin Guggenheim, accompanied by his mistress, valet and chauffeur; and widow and heiress Margaret “Molly” Brown, who would earn her nickname “ The Unsinkable Molly Brown ” by helping to maintain calm and order while the lifeboats were being loaded and boosting the spirits of her fellow survivors.

The employees attending to this collection of First Class luminaries were mostly traveling Second Class, along with academics, tourists, journalists and others who would enjoy a level of service and accommodations equivalent to First Class on most other ships.

But by far the largest group of passengers was in Third Class: more than 700, exceeding the other two levels combined. Some had paid less than $20 to make the crossing. It was Third Class that was the major source of profit for shipping lines like White Star, and Titanic was designed to offer these passengers accommodations and amenities superior to those found in Third Class on any other ship of that era.

Titanic Sets Sail

Titanic’s departure from Southampton on April 10 was not without some oddities. A small coal fire was discovered in one of her bunkers–an alarming but not uncommon occurrence on steamships of the day. Stokers hosed down the smoldering coal and shoveled it aside to reach the base of the blaze.

After assessing the situation, the captain and chief engineer concluded that it was unlikely it had caused any damage that could affect the hull structure, and the stokers were ordered to continue controlling the fire at sea.

According to a theory put forth by a small number of Titanic experts, the fire became uncontrollable after the ship left Southampton, forcing the crew to attempt a full-speed crossing; moving at such a fast pace, they were unable to avoid the fatal collision with the iceberg.

Another unsettling event took place when Titanic left the Southampton dock. As she got underway, she narrowly escaped a collision with the America Line’s S.S. New York. Superstitious Titanic buffs sometimes point to this as the worst kind of omen for a ship departing on her maiden voyage.

The Titanic Strikes an Iceberg

On April 14, after four days of uneventful sailing, Titanic received sporadic reports of ice from other ships, but she was sailing on calm seas under a moonless, clear sky.

At about 11:30 p.m., a lookout saw an iceberg coming out of a slight haze dead ahead, then rang the warning bell and telephoned the bridge. The engines were quickly reversed and the ship was turned sharply—instead of making direct impact, Titanic seemed to graze along the side of the berg, sprinkling ice fragments on the forward deck.

Sensing no collision, the lookouts were relieved. They had no idea that the iceberg had a jagged underwater spur, which slashed a 300-foot gash in the hull below the ship’s waterline.

By the time the captain toured the damaged area with Harland and Wolff’s Thomas Andrews, five compartments were already filling with seawater, and the bow of the doomed ship was alarmingly pitched downward, allowing seawater to pour from one bulkhead into the neighboring compartment.

Andrews did a quick calculation and estimated that Titanic might remain afloat for an hour and a half, perhaps slightly more. At that point the captain, who had already instructed his wireless operator to call for help, ordered the lifeboats to be loaded.

Titanic’s Lifeboats

A little more than an hour after contact with the iceberg, a largely disorganized and haphazard evacuation began with the lowering of the first lifeboat. The craft was designed to hold 65 people; it left with only 28 aboard.

Tragically, this was to be the norm: During the confusion and chaos during the precious hours before Titanic plunged into the sea, nearly every lifeboat would be launched woefully under-filled, some with only a handful of passengers.

In compliance with the law of the sea, women and children boarded the boats first; only when there were no women or children nearby were men permitted to board. Yet many of the victims were in fact women and children, the result of disorderly procedures that failed to get them to the boats in the first place.

Exceeding Andrews’ prediction, Titanic stubbornly stayed afloat for close to three hours. Those hours witnessed acts of craven cowardice and extraordinary bravery.

Hundreds of human dramas unfolded between the order to load the lifeboats and the ship’s final plunge: Men saw off wives and children, families were separated in the confusion and selfless individuals gave up their spots to remain with loved ones or allow a more vulnerable passenger to escape. In the end, 706 people survived the sinking of the Titanic.

Titanic Sinks

The ship’s most illustrious passengers each responded to the circumstances with conduct that has become an integral part of the Titanic legend. Ismay, the White Star managing director, helped load some of the boats and later stepped onto a collapsible as it was being lowered. Although no women or children were in the vicinity when he abandoned ship, he would never live down the ignominy of surviving the disaster while so many others perished.

Thomas Andrews, Titanic’s chief designer, was last seen in the First Class smoking room, staring blankly at a painting of a ship on the wall. Astor deposited his wife Madeleine into a lifeboat and, remarking that she was pregnant, asked if he could accompany her; refused entry, he managed to kiss her goodbye just before the boat was lowered away.

Although offered a seat on account of his age, Isidor Straus refused any special consideration, and his wife Ida would not leave her husband behind. The couple retired to their cabin and perished together.

Benjamin Guggenheim and his valet returned to their rooms and changed into formal evening dress; emerging onto the deck, he famously declared, “We are dressed in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.”

Molly Brown helped load the boats and finally was forced into one of the last to leave. She implored its crewmen to turn back for survivors, but they refused, fearing they would be swamped by desperate people trying to escape the icy seas.

Titanic, nearly perpendicular and with many of her lights still aglow, finally dove beneath the ocean’s surface at about 2:20 a.m. on April 15, 1912. Throughout the morning, Cunard’s Carpathia , after receiving Titanic’s distress call at midnight and steaming at full speed while dodging ice floes all night, rounded up all of the lifeboats. They contained only 706 survivors.

Aftermath of the Titanic Catastrophe

At least five separate boards of inquiry on both sides of the Atlantic conducted comprehensive hearings on Titanic’s sinking, interviewing dozens of witnesses and consulting with many maritime experts. Every conceivable subject was investigated, from the conduct of the officers and crew to the construction of the ship. Titanic conspiracy theories abounded.

While it has always been assumed that the ship sank as a result of the gash that caused the bulkhead compartments to flood, various other theories have emerged over the decades, including that the ship’s steel plates were too brittle for the near-freezing Atlantic waters, that the impact caused rivets to pop and that the expansion joints failed, among others.

Technological aspects of the catastrophe aside, Titanic’s demise has taken on a deeper, almost mythic, meaning in popular culture. Many view the tragedy as a morality play about the dangers of human hubris: Titanic’s creators believed they had built an unsinkable ship that could not be defeated by the laws of nature.

This same overconfidence explains the electrifying impact Titanic’s sinking had on the public when she was lost. There was widespread disbelief that the ship could not possibly have sunk, and, due to the era’s slow and unreliable means of communication, misinformation abounded. Newspapers initially reported that the ship had collided with an iceberg but remained afloat and was being towed to port with everyone on board.

It took many hours for accurate accounts to become widely available, and even then people had trouble accepting that this paragon of modern technology could sink on her maiden voyage, taking more than 1,500 souls with her.

The ship historian John Maxtone-Graham has compared Titanic’s story to the Challenger space shuttle disaster of 1986. In that case, the world reeled at the notion that one of the most sophisticated inventions ever created could explode into oblivion along with its crew. Both tragedies triggered a sudden collapse in confidence, revealing that we remain subject to human frailties and error, despite our hubris and a belief in technological infallibility.

Titanic Wreck

Efforts to locate the wreck of Titanic began soon after it sank. But technical limitations—as well as the vastness of the North Atlantic search area—made finding it extremely difficult.

Finally, in 1985, a joint U.S.-French expedition located the wreck of the RMS Titanic . The doomed ship was discovered about 400 miles east of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic, some 13,000 feet below the surface.

Subsequent explorations have found that the wreck is in relatively good condition, with many objects on the ship—jewelry, furniture, shoes, machinery and other items—are still intact.

Since its discovery, the wreck has been explored numerous times by manned and unmanned submersibles—including the submersible Titan, which imploded during what would have been its third dive to the wreck in June 2023.

HISTORY Vault: Titanic's Achilles Heel

Did Titanic have a fatal design flaw? John Chatterton and Richie Kohler of "Deep Sea Detectives" dive the wreckage of Titanic's sister ship, Britannic, to investigate the possibility.

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April 4, 2012

Titanic : Resonance and Reality

A century ago a great ship struck an iceberg and sank, earning a permanent place among the stories we tell—and lessons we should learn

By Daniel C. Schlenoff

The tragedy One hundred years ago, during the night of April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg, and in the small hours of the next day went down into the cold Atlantic Ocean with the loss of 1,517 lives.

There have been worse tragedies in history. Some were more violently spectacular, some still govern the daily routines of the survivors. Yet the Titanic disaster has strongly resonated with us for a century. Why? Because it is a tale of humanity as classic as a Greek tragedy. The story has been told and retold for the past century in movies , books , songs and magazine articles. Even James Cameron made a film using the Titanic saga as a backdrop.

Hubris—an excess of pride and confidence—is central to any classical tragedy. The Titanic set out from Queenstown, Ireland, on April 11, 1912, as a grand symbol of modernity and comfort. As she steamed at high speed through the dark of night her captain ignored the Cassandra-like warnings that icebergs lurked nearby, and through hubris the ship collided with one.

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Within the tale of the sinking are interwoven many ( mostly true ) vignettes of human suffering—and also some cathartic scenesof triumph. Benjamin Guggenheim and his valet shucked off their life belts and donned their formal wear, saying, "We've dressed up in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen." Thomas Andrews , the designer of the flawed ship, sat forlornly in the opulent smoking lounge awaiting death, perhaps contemplating this awful reversal of fortune. J. Bruce Ismay , chairman of the White Star Line (which owned the Titanic ), quietly slunk into a lifeboat and was later widely excoriated by the public for taking up a place when so many women and children were left to die on his ship. Charles John Joughin , the kitchen staff's chief baker, provides the comic relief in our retelling: He was the last person to step off the sinking ship into the ice-cold water, but was so well-fortified with liquor he survived to be picked up, his hair still dry. The " Unsinkable Molly Brown " was arguably the ship's most famous survivor: she defied convention and in an act of compassion commandeered her lifeboat to go back and look for survivors in the frigid water.

Heroes and villains. The quick and the dead. And all of this pathos communicated to the world by radio and by newspaper within hours of the tragedy.

The reality Over the past century, a more prosaic reality has appeared in our path and the mythic tale has collided with it. Every detail mentioned here has been endlessly disputed (or fabricated) since April 15, 1912. With the growth of the Internet, a host of Titanic experts have become newly obsessed with the details down to the nanoscopic level. Google shows there are now 11 million sites with "Titanic" in the URL. (There are only 1.9 million for "gigantic.")

With every assertion and counterclaim, a pattern emerges, one that is not far different from the one that Scientific American reported two weeks after the ship went down . Despite some wonderfully creative conspiracy theories that have been floated in the past 100 years, the building and sinking of the ship is a study in failure: of engineering systems, of law, of design, of private profit versus public safety.

Unsinkable The ship was never touted by the White Star Line as unsinkable—the term " practically unsinkable " appeared in a couple of admiring reviews of the ship beforehand and was played up for ironic effect afterward. The perception in the public mind was that the ship exuded modernity and comfort, giving a great impression of solidity and safety—the same way a bank built of solid masonry does even as it founders from unstable finances. The article "Wreck of the White Star Liner Titanic " from Scientific American from April 27, 1912, shows how the ship was designed with safety in mind. Unfortunately the ship was not designed with safety as the first priority . There were watertight doors and bulkheads, but even in 1912 engineers recognized that the bulkheads did not rise high enough—some were only three meters above the waterline. But such barriers cut up the interior space and made it harder to accommodate the easy flow of fare-paying passengers, and so they were discouraged. The ship had a double bottom for safety, but the company decided to save money and interior space and not build double sides. After the sinking, engineers immediately retrofitted the Titanic ’s sister ship Olympic with a double hull.

Lifeboats These days we believe there must have been a special kind of Dionysian madness to send a ship into the ocean without enough lifeboats to carry every soul on board. Early designs for the Titanic did in fact call for 64 lifeboats, but by the time the ship was launched, the company had whittled that complement down to 20.

Astonishingly, the number of boats carried was actually above and beyond what was legally required by the British Board of Trade for seagoing ocean liners. One argument said that a full complement of lifeboats would have made the ship too top-heavy, perhaps risking capsize. Another argument was that in an emergency the lifeboats would not have time to be loaded and launched, especially if the ship was heeling over. But the main reason for dispensing with lifeboats may have been to provide plenty of room for luxurious sundecks and sumptuous parlors for the pleasure of the well-to-do passengers. There were certainly plenty of technical fixes available: the front cover of Scientific American from April 27, 2012 , shows one possible solution of stacking all the boats on the top deck.

Speed in ice fields The Titanic was never designed to be as fast as more powerful competitor ships. A fast first crossing, though, made for good media image and better business for the White Star Line in the highly competitive transatlantic steamer business. Therefore, quite possibly, the chairman of the company, J. Bruce Ismay, pushed the venerable Capt. Edward John Smith to steam ahead with all possible speed. Other ships in the area had radioed that they had seen icebergs, and Smith may have altered course slightly to avoid possible locations of these known hazards, but in the balance between speed and risk, the company line won out. Yet there was no shortage of knowledge about the perils of ice, as you can see from this April 27, 1912, Scientific American article . Sonar was developed within the next two years as a way to avoid icebergs.

The blow For many years it was widely believed that only a giant ripping gash torn by the iceberg could have doomed such a magnificent ship. A " 300-foot gash in the hull " was often mentioned—just like the image we show in our issue from two weeks after the tragedy:

Later calculations looked at the rate with which water flooded the ship during the two hours and 40 minutes it stayed afloat after the collision and showed that "the gash" in reality would have resulted in only slight damage to the hull, perhaps amounting a dozen square meters in total. This deduction was confirmed in 1985 when submersibles imaged the hull of the Titanic resting on the ocean floor four kilometers down. The images revealed several small gashes, or perhaps several hull plates had popped apart giving the illusion of gashes. (Historians have suggested that the wrought iron rivets holding the plates together were not as strong as they should have been.)

Conclusion As the complexity of engineering projects increases exponentially, so does the focus on safety. Within any system there is no danger more potent, more capable of causing harm, than human frailty. In January of 2012 the Costa Concordia, the largest luxury liner built in Italy, manufactured at the Fincantieri shipyards in the ancient seafaring city of Genoa to the highest standards of safety specified by law, struck a reef in the Mediterranean, and partially capsized, killing dozens of people. The ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, seems to have steered his ship onto the rocks in a moment of weakness : The courts and the tabloids as well as armchair experts of the Internet are still disputing whether that weakness had anything to do with a comely 25-year-old Moldovan ex-dancer —and a Roman god called Cupid.

Prologue Magazine

They Said It Couldn’t Sink

Nara records detail losses, investigation of titanic’ s demise.

Spring 2012, Vol. 44, No. 1

By Alison Gavin and Christopher Zarr

The Titanic during sea trials. (306-NT-1308-91560)

View in National Archives Catalog

Perhaps no other maritime disaster stirs our collective memory more than the sinking of the RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912.

The centennial of this event brings to mind the myriad films, books, and electronic media the disaster engenders. The discovery of the ship at the bottom of the sea in the 1980s brought to view intriguing artifacts.

The National Archives holds Titanic -related "treasures" as well: Senate investigation records, documents pertaining to Titanic passengers from limited liability suits, and congressional resolutions. These records tell the stories of the survivors in their own words.

When Titanic set sail from Southampton, England, for New York City on April 10, 1912, no one, especially its builders, dreamed of its demise. The ship's owners, the White Star Line, boasted of the size and stamina of the largest passenger steamship built until that time. Yet the "ship that could never sink" sank less than three hours after the crew spotted an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on April 14. Of the 2,223 people aboard, 1,517 perished.

The lack of sufficient lifeboats was chief among the reasons cited for the enormous loss of life. While complying with international maritime regulations ( Titanic carried more than the minimum number of lifeboats required), there were still not enough spaces for most passengers to escape the sinking ship.

The Carpathia was the lone ship to respond to Titanic' s distress signals, risking a field of icebergs in a daring rescue. The Carpathia' s passenger manifest includes the names of the 706 persons it picked up from Titanic' s lifeboats on the morning of April 15, 1912. The manifests collected by the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization list 29 categories of questions asked of all persons entering the United States, from birthplace to where the person would be staying in the United States.

The Titanic Relief Fund, set up by Ernest P. Bicknell in his capacity as director of the American Red Cross, raised $161,600.95 for Titanic survivors and families of the victims. (the British component raised $2,250,000). According to Red Cross "Titanic Relief Fund" documents in the National Archives:

The Director and other representatives of the Red Cross Committee were present when the Carpathia landed its passengers [at the port of New York on April 18]. The office of the committee was opened on the following morning, equipped with telephone service, printed stationery, the necessary blank forms and record cards, and with a staff of visitors and clerks supplied by the Charity Organization Society. Within two days substantially all the survivors of the third cabin passengers and many of the second cabin passengers had been visited and interviewed in their places of temporary shelter or at the Committee's Office. . . . This was extremely important. because comparatively few of the third cabin passengers remained in New York City.

A third-class (steerage) passenger's contract ticket for the White Star Line, similar to those used on the Titanic. (Records of District Courts of the United States, RG 21)

The highest percentage of victims were steerage, or "third cabin" passengers, who were mainly poor immigrants coming to America. The ethical question of why first-class passengers were allowed to get into lifeboats ahead of those in second and third class became an issue for future investigation.

The unimaginable scale of the disaster led many people to write to the President of the United States. Dozens of letters came to President William H. Taft from citizens who were angered, inspired, or moved by the loss of the Titanic. They demanded an investigation into the sinking, shared ideas for the prevention of such disasters in the future, or expressed sympathy for the death of President Taft's military aide, Maj. Archibald Butt. Butt, one of Taft's closest friends, was returning from a six-week vacation aboard the Titanic, and his leave of absence papers and a copy of a letter of introduction from Taft to Pope Pius X are also in the National Archives.

Congressional Hearings Lead to Legislation, Regulations

Almost immediately after the disaster, a congressional hearing was convened on April 19, 1912. Extensive documentation of the Titanic' s voyage is contained within the proceedings of the U.S. Senate's "Titanic Disaster Hearings." The report's 1,042 pages document what a commerce subcommittee learned over its 17-day investigation of the causes of the wreck. The subcommittee's chairman, Senator William Alden Smith (R-Michigan), spoke fervently of why he wished to document the event quickly:

Our course was simple and plain–to gather the facts relating to this disaster while they were still vivid realities. Questions of diverse citizenship gave way to the universal desire for the simple truth. . . . We, of course, recognized that the ship was under a foreign flag; but for the lives of many of our own countrymen had been sacrificed and the safety of many had been put in grave peril, it was vital that the entire matter should be reviewed before an American tribunal if legislative action was to be taken for future guidance on international maritime safety.

The subcommittee interviewed 82 witnesses and investigated everything from the inadequate number of lifeboats to the treatment of passengers riding steerage to the newly operational wireless radio machines. Smith also wanted to know why warnings of icebergs had been ignored.

The Navy Hydrographic Office's daily memorandum notes both ice reports in the North Atlantic and the Titanic' s collision with an iceberg. (Records of District Courts of the United States, RG 21)

One of the themes emerging from the " Titanic Disaster Hearings" is the excesses of the "Gilded Age"—wealth, power, and business in a newly technological world gone wild. The hearings were held in the glamorous Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan. (Ironically, John Jacob Astor IV, who perished aboard the Titanic, had built the Astoria Hotel, which later became part of the Waldorf-Astoria.)

Opposite the senators sat the first witnesses, White Star's managing director J. Bruce Ismay and other company officials. Ismay was also president of the International Mercantile Marine Company, White Star's American parent company. He was vilified in the press as a monster, as one who had put his own life and safety before that of women and children as the lifeboats were launched.

Throughout the hearings, he remained confident, almost hubristic, regarding the ship's stamina under pressure. In explaining how Titanic' s disaster could have been averted, he stated simply, "If this ship had hit the iceberg stern on, in all human probability she would have been here to-day [the stern being the most reinforced part of the ship]."

Instead, he said, the iceberg made "a glancing blow between the end of the forecastle and the captain's bridge." He remained sentimental regarding the ship's demise. In the lifeboat, he rowed the opposite direction of the sinking Titanic: "I did not wish to see her go down. . . . I am glad I did not."

Ismay said the trip was a voluntary one for him, "to see how [the ship] works, and with the idea of seeing how we could improve on her for the next ship which we are building." He told the subcommittee, "We have nothing to conceal, nothing to hide." He was grilled again on the 10th day of the investigation, when he denied reports of speeding up the ship to "get through" fields of ice; other eyewitnesses, however, would contradict him.

Also interviewed the first day was Arthur Henry Rostron, the captain of the Carpathia. Rostron gave detailed information about the circumstances under which Titanic' s distress signals had been heard: the wireless operator was undressing for the night but still had his headphones on as the signal came across.

Rostron also related the details of how he prepared the Carpathia to receive the hundreds of survivors in the lifeboats. He came alongside the first lifeboat at 4:10 a.m. on April 15 and rescued the last at 8:30 a.m. He then recruited one of the Carpathia' s passengers, an Episcopal clergyman, to hold a prayer service of thankfulness for those rescued and a short burial service for those who were lost.

The Carpathia was the only ship to respond to the Titanic' s distress signals. The Carpathia' s manifest records the names of the 706 person it rescued from lifeboats on the morning of April 15, 1912. (Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, RG 85)

Rostron would later receive a special trophy as a symbol of gratitude from the survivors of the Titanic. It was presented to him by the legendary "Unsinkable Molly [Margaret] Brown," a wealthy Denver matron who assisted with the lifeboats. Rostron received many other memorials and a Medal of Honor from President Taft.

The outcome of the hearings was a variety of "corrective" legislation for the maritime industry, including new regulations regarding numbers of lifeboats and lifejackets required for passenger vessels. In 1914, as a direct result of the Titanic disaster, the International Ice Patrol was formed; 13 nations support a branch of the U.S. Coast Guard that scouts for the presence of icebergs in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans.

Survivors, Families Seek Millions from White Star

Beyond simply seeking corrective legislation to prevent future disasters, the survivors and the families of victims also sought redress for loss of life, property, and any injuries sustained. The limited liability law at the time, however, could restrict their claims significantly. The Titanic' s liability was protected by an 1851 law ("An Act to limit the Liability of Ship-Owners, and for other Purposes," 9 Stat. 635) designed to encourage shipbuilding and trade by minimizing the risk to owners when disasters occurred.

Under this law, in cases of unavoidable accidents, the company was not liable for any loss of life, property, or injury. If the captain and crew made an error that led to a disaster, but the company was unaware of it, the company's liability was limited to the total of passenger fares, the amount paid for cargo, and any salvaged materials recovered from the wreck. The 706 survivors and the families of the 1,517 dead therefore might be entitled to only a total of $91,805: $85,212 for passengers, $2,073 for cargo, and a $4,520 assessment for the only materials salvaged from the Titanic —the recovered lifeboats.

In October 1912, the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company (more commonly known as the White Star Line) filed a petition in the Southern District of New York to limit its liability against any claims for loss of life, property, or injury. In this petition, the White Star Line claimed that the collision was due to an "inevitable accident." "In the Matter of the Petition of the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, Limited, for Limitation of its Liability as owner of the steamship TITANIC" (A55-279) is a part of the National Archives holdings in New York City.

Profiles of the Titanic and its decks. (Records of District Courts of the United States, RG 21)

The only way to remove limits on the company's liability would be to prove that the captain and crew were negligent and the ship's owners had knowledge of this fact.

Those individuals seeking payments slowly began to build their case against the White Star Line. They held that although the crew had received wireless messages about the presence of icebergs, the Titanic had maintained its speed, stayed on the same northern course, posted no additional lookouts, and failed to provide the lookouts with binoculars.

In addition, they faulted the White Star Line for not properly training the crew for evacuation, leading to the launching of partially filled lifeboats and the loss of even more lives. For these reasons, combined with the fact that the managing director of the White Star Line, Ismay, was on board the Titanic, claimants believed the liability should be unlimited.

After White Star filed its petition, several notices were placed in the New York Times between October 1912 and January 1913, asking people who claimed damages to prove their claims by April 15, 1913. Hundreds of claims totaling $16,604,731.63 came from people around the world. Claims were divided into four groups: Schedule A: Loss of Life, Schedule B: Loss of Property, Schedule C: Loss of Life and Property, and Schedule D: Injury and Property.

The Schedule D claims for injuries and property detail the harrowing experiences of many survivors of the Titanic. In nearly 50 claims, survivors describe how they lived through the disaster and the physical and mental injuries they sustained.

Anna McGowan of Chicago, Illinois, was unable to get on a lifeboat and jumped from the Titanic onto a lifeboat and sustained permanent injuries from the fall, shock, and frostbite. The experience left her in a state of "nervous prostration" (most likely something similar to post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD) and unable to provide for herself.

Survivors of the Titanic disaster aboard a lifeboat on April 15, 1912. (Records of District Courts of the United States, RG 21)

Patrick O'Keefe of Ireland also jumped overboard to save his life, but he remained in the cold Atlantic waters for hours before being rescued by lifeboat B.

Bertha Noon of Providence, Rhode Island, asked for more than $25,000 due to injuries she sustained after being pushed onto a lifeboat and being exposed to the cold for several hours before being rescued by the Carpathia . Her injuries included an injured back and spine that left her "unable to wear corsets," severe nervous shock, a "misplaced womb," and a recurring congestion in her head and chest that left her delirious and unconscious for days at a time.

Though the Schedule A claims filed by family members for loss of life did not include first-hand accounts of the accident, they document tragic losses of entire families. Finnish immigrant John Panula was preparing for a reunion with his family in Pennsylvania when his wife and four children died on the Titanic. The Skoogh family with their four children Carl, Harold, Mabel, and Margaret Skoogh (ages 12, 9, 11, and 8 respectively) were returning to the United States aboard the Titanic.

Claims for Losses Reveal Class Differences

The loss of life claims also reveal the variety of values assigned to a human life. While Alfonso Meo's widow, Emily J. Innes-Meo, asked for only £300 (approximately $1,500 at the time), Irene Wallach Harris, the widow of Broadway producer and theater owner Henry B. Harris, sought $1 million in her claim. Some of the documents state the ages and annual salaries of the deceased to justify the amounts they were seeking in their claims. The most detailed claim involved the $4,734.80 claim filed by the family of 41-year-old James Veale:

That the said James Veale was by profession a granite carver; that he was earning at the time of his death $1,000 per year or more. That according to the Northampton Table of Mortality, the said James Veale, deceased probably would have lived, except for his death aforesaid, 11.837 years more; that the said James Veale did not expend upon himself more than $600 a year; that his personal estate has been damaged in the sum of $400 per year during the period of 11.837 years and to the extent of $4,734.80 by reason of the aforesaid breach of contract committed by the petitioner herein as aforesaid.

Charlotte Drake Cardeza's claim is the largest and most detailed claim among the Schedule B claims for loss of property. In nearly 20 pages, she itemized the lost contents of 14 trunks, 4 suitcases, and 3 crates. (Records of District Courts of the United States, RG 21)

The claims also reveal the vast class differences apparent among the passengers of the Titanic. This is most apparent in the Schedule B claims for loss of property. The most detailed and largest property claim belongs to socialite Charlotte Drake Cardeza, who occupied the most expensive stateroom on the ship. After surviving the sinking of the Titanic aboard lifeboat 3, Cardeza filed a claim for the lost contents of her 14 trunks, 4 suitcases, and 3 crates of baggage (a total of at least 841 individual items) for a sum of $177,352.75. The nearly 20-page itemized claim includes objects such as her 6 7 / 8 -carat pink diamond ring valued at $20,000. On the other end of the spectrum, Yum Hee of Hong Kong filed a claim for $91.05. His most expensive item: a suit of clothes valued at £2.5 (approximately $12.50 at the time).

From the claims for loss of property, we also discover that Margaret ("Molly") Brown's three crates of ancient models destined for the Denver Museum, Col. Archibald Gracie's documents concerning the War of 1812, and over 110,000 feet of motion picture film owned by William Harbeck are all now at the bottom of the Atlantic. The most expensive individual item lost during the sinking was H. Bjornstrom-Steffanson's four-foot-by-eight-foot oil painting La Circasienne Au Bain by Blondel, valued by him at $100,000.

Schedule C claim 72 was filed on July 24, 1913, by Mabelle Swift Moore, widow of businessman Clarence Moore. Moore had been a member of a Washington, DC, brokerage firm W. B. Hibbs and Company and owned extensive real estate. A "master" of the hunt, he had been in England looking for a pack of 50 hounds. (The dogs, however, were not carried on the Titanic.) Mrs. Moore sued for $510,000.

Survivors Give Eyewitness Accounts of the Sinking

Though the White Star Line filed its petition in October 1912 and individual claims were due by April 1913, hearings were not held in the Southern District of New York until June 1915. Depositions filed with the court throughout 1913 and 1914 provide conflicting reports on blame for the disaster.

In June 1914, White Star Line's Ismay was questioned about the speed of the Titanic, its lifeboats, the lookout, and other issues that may have contributed to the disaster. Throughout his testimony, Ismay restated many of the same opinions given during the congressional hearing—that all decisions were made by Capt. Edward Smith and he was onboard to consider passenger accommodation improvements for the White Star Line's next ship, the Britannic.

The "Unsinkable Molly Brown" filed a claim for lost property that included an extensive collection of gowns, hats, and jewelry as well as "ancient models for Denver Museum." (Records of District Courts of the United States, RG 21)

Statements by two of the survivors, Elizabeth Lines and Emily Ryerson, seemed to contradict Ismay's statements. Lines declared that she overheard parts of a two-hour conversation between Captain Smith and Ismay on Saturday, April 13. Sticking in her mind was Ismay's statement, "We will beat the Olympic and get in to New York on Tuesday," meaning they would arrive one day earlier than originally planned. The following day, Ryerson recalled Ismay holding a message and stating to her that "We are in among the icebergs." Despite this, he told her that they would be starting up extra boilers that evening to surprise everyone with an early arrival.

Other depositions filed by survivors give us eyewitness accounts to the dramatic and tragic final moments aboard the Titanic. Ryerson described the bitter cold of that April night before being told by a fellow passenger to put on her life belt. Though she described the initial scene on the boat deck as without confusion, the situation changed quickly. Passengers were thrown by crew into the lifeboats; Ryerson even describes falling on top of someone. After lifeboat no. 4 was loaded with 24 women and children (far below the 65 it could hold), it was lowered toward the water. Before being fully lowered, the lifeboat jammed, and men swarmed into the boat, which was intended for women and children only. After being lowered, the survivors and crew began to row for their lives, fearing that the sinking Titanic might suck them down with it. Later on that night, near dawn, Ryerson's boat returned to the site of the sinking and began rescuing some 20 survivors.

Among those rescued survivors was George Rheims, who remained for some five hours in waist-high water on a partially submerged collapsible lifeboat. In his deposition he recounts how hours earlier, after Rheims noticed "a slight shock" when returning from the bathroom, he looked out the nearest window and saw a massive white iceberg pass by. He then reported witnessing several lifeboats launching that were between half and three-quarters full. He also described seeing men scrambling onto lifeboats as they were lowered and hearing pistols being shot during his last hour aboard the ship. In the final minutes before Titanic disappeared into the depths, Rheims jumped into the cold waters and waited for his rescue.

Over several days in June and July 1915, testimony continued. Negotiations carried on outside of court led to a tentative settlement with nearly all of the claimants in December 1915. The settlement was for a total of $664,000 to be divided among the claimants. A final decree, signed by Judge Julius M. Mayer in July 1916, held the company guiltless of any privity and knowledge and not liable for any loss, damage, injury, destruction, or fatalities.

In a page from her testimony, passenger Elizabeth Lines recounts overhearing Bruce Ismay remark to Captain Smith on the speed of the ship's crossing, saying that they will beat the Olympic and get in to New York on Tuesday. (Records of District Courts of the United States, RG 21)

George Rheims recalled that as he swam away from the sinking Titanic, he looked back and saw the screws [propellers] out of the water in the air; she went down perfectly straight. He was rescued the next morning. (Records of District Courts of the United States, RG 21)

The Titanic' s tragic story fascinated people both at the time of the disaster and for generations after. For more than 70 years, the exact location of the ship's remains was unknown. On September 1, 1985, a joint American and French expedition team found the vessel under more than 12,400 feet of water off the coast of Newfoundland. On November 21 of the same year, Rep. Walter Jones, Sr., of North Carolina, chairman of the House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, submitted a report to accompany House Resolution 3272. It recommended that the shipwreck Titanic be designated "as a maritime memorial and to provide for reasonable research, exploration, and, if appropriate, salvage activities."

Perhaps in the end, the 1986 Memorial Act sums it up best by stating, where marine resources are concerned, at least, "we must maintain a sense of perspective regarding man's abilities and nature's powers." Nature's power, in the form of an iceberg in the frigid north Atlantic Ocean one April night in 1912, seems to impress us all the more 100 years later.

Alison Gavin received her M.A. in history from George Mason University in 2004; she was the 2003 Verney Fellow for Nantucket Studies. She has worked in the National Archives since 1995, and her work has appeared in New England Ancestors, Historic Nantucket, Quaker History, and Prologue.

Christopher Zarr is the education specialist for the National Archives at New York City. He works with teachers and students to find and use primary sources in the classroom.

Note on Sources

Learn more about:

Other Titanic records online
Stories from the Titanic on the Prologue blog
The sinking of the Christmas tree ship in Lake Michigan

Additional research for this article was conducted by William Roka at the National Archives at New York City.

The Carpathia' s passenger manifests listing survivors of the Titanic are in Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, RG 85, at the National Archives Building (NAB), Washington, DC. They have been microfilmed as T715, Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, 1897–;1957, roll 1883.

The letters to President Taft regarding the disaster are in "Letters Sent by President Taft to the Department of Commerce and Labor," Entry 15, General Records of the Department of Commerce, Record Group (RG) 40, National Archives at College Park, MD (NACP).

Archibald Butts's leave of absence and a copy of his letter of introduction to Pope Pius X are in Records of the Adjutant General's Office, RG 94, NAB.

The largest and most far-reaching of the documents NARA has concerning the sinking of Titanic (at 1,176 pages) can be found in the United States Congressional Serial Set (serial 6167): U.S. Senate, Subcommittee of the Committee on Commerce, " Titanic " Disaster: Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Commerce United States Senate, pursuant to S. Res. 283 directing the Committee on Commerce to investigate the causes leading to the wreck of the White Star Liner " Titanic ," S.Doc. 726, 62nd Congress, 2nd sess., 1912 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1912), Publications of the U.S. Government, RG 287, NACP.

A more accessible source for the Senate hearings, at only 571-pages, is The Titanic Disaster Hearings: The Official Transcripts of the 1912 Senate Investigation, edited by Tom Kuntz (New York: Pocket Books, 1998). It gives accounts of the 17 days of hearings, an introduction and epilogue, an appendix, a list of witnesses, and a digest of testimony.

The records from the limited liability suits are in the case file "In the Matter of the Petition of the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, Limited, for Limitation of its Liability as owner of the steamship TITANIC"; Admiralty Case Files Records of District Courts of the United States, Record Group 21; National Archives at New York City.

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Visualising the Titanic Disaster

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Michael Friendly, Jürgen Symanzik, Ortac Onder, Visualising the Titanic Disaster, Significance , Volume 16, Issue 1, February 2019, Pages 14–19, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2019.01229.x

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The sinking of the Titanic has inspired books, movies and documentaries. But it has also motivated data visualisation designers to tell the story of the tragedy in new ways. Michael Friendly, Jürgen Symanzik and Ortac Onder review the first graph of the disaster and some recent history

T he sinking of the RMS Titanic is one of the most storied shipwrecks in maritime history. Touted as the ultimate in transatlantic travel and said to be “unsinkable”, the Titanic collided with an iceberg on 14 April 1912 on her maiden voyage and sank shortly thereafter on 15 April, killing 1502 out of 2224 passengers and crew. The sinking of the Titanic is not the largest in terms of lives lost. But it is the one that has been documented most thoroughly – in government reports and personal accounts of survivors, and in numerous books and several popular movies.

This is one legacy of the Titanic disaster, but it left another: a wealth of data, comprising details of passengers and crew, many with names, ages, passenger class, and even cabin numbers for those in first and second class.

We recently discovered an early and relatively unknown graph showing survival among the Titanic passengers and crew, published less than one month after the disaster. This graph had a surprisingly modern look. It prompted us to review the history of this graph and the variety of uses to which the Titanic data have been put in the two decades since the data set became available in machine-readable form.

The Sphere was a popular British illustrated weekly newspaper, published by the Illustrated London News Group from January 1900 until June 1964. It was dedicated to worldwide reporting on popular issues. On 4 May 1912, only three weeks after the Titanic disaster, it published a chart (Figure 1 , page 16) by the graphic artist G. Bron using data released the week before by the House of Commons.

G.Bron's chart of “The Loss of the ‘Titanic'”, from The Sphere , 4 May 1912. Each subgroup is shown by a bar whose area is proportional to the numbers of cases. © Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans.

Bron's graph shows the breakdown of survival among the passengers and crew – by passenger class, gender and age (comparing adults and children) – in what is clearly an early innovation in data display. It combines back-to-back bar charts for those who lived and those who perished, using area of the bars to convey the actual numbers. Within the passenger classes, the numbers and bars are subdivided by gender for adults, while children are shown as a separate group. It also includes two similar summary panels, showing the totals for all passengers and for all passengers and crew.

Today, we might describe this as an early form of a mosaic plot, or as an area-proportional back-to-back array of bar charts. Whatever name we give, it deserves to be admired as an exceptional early example of data visualisation and a tribute to the skills of the illustrator.

G. Bron was a prolific technical illustrator who worked for The Sphere , the Illustrated London News and similar publications between about 1910 and 1925. Today, he would be called a data-graphic or info-vis designer, one far ahead of his time. Little about him was previously known, not even his first name. A search in the British Newspaper Archive ( bit.ly/2Rzv5dm ) turned up over 20 examples of his work, most published in The Sphere . In the course of writing this article we discovered that G. Bron was most likely the pseudonym adopted by William B. Treeby, born in London, but further biographical details are still sketchy (see supplementary material at bit.ly/titanicvis ).

Bron's use of back-to-back proportional bar charts to show death versus survival was a stroke of graphic genius

By and large, Bron's illustrations were graphic stories, designed to convey an interesting but possibly complex topic visually, in ways in which mere words and numbers could not compete. It is difficult to know what led him to produce his remarkable chart of the Titanic . Sometime between the sinking on 15 April and the publication of his Sphere graph on 4 May, he became aware of a numerical table classifying passengers and crew that would shortly be published by the House of Commons. We can imagine that he looked at this and asked himself how he could make it comprehensible to his readers. His use of back-to-back proportional bar charts was novel and a stroke of graphic genius. Just a glance showed that, overall, two-thirds of the passengers and crew perished. The separate conditional panels for class showed directly to the eye that survival was greatest in first class and least among the crew. The reader could “drill down” to examine the breakdown by gender and age within each class.

The primary sources of data on the Titanic derive from official inquiries launched in Britain and the USA. (Complete documents can be found at titanicinquiry.org .) Shortly after the disaster, the British Parliament authorised the British Board of Trade Inquiry with Lord Mersey as chair. The committee interviewed over 100 witnesses over 36 days of hearings. Their report, issued on 30 July 1912, contained extensive tables of passengers and crew, broken down by age group, gender, class and survival, as well as details on the launching of the 20 lifeboats. In April–May 1912 a similar inquiry was initiated in the US Senate which interviewed 82 witnesses over 18 days. Among other things the report (over 1000 pages) contained lists of the names and addresses of most passengers and crew.

As far as we are aware, the first public data set appeared in 1995 in an article by Robert Dawson, titled “The ‘Unusual Episode’ Data Revisited”, in the Journal of Statistics Education . 1 Its classroom use was illustrated by an exercise in statistical thinking, where students were shown tables of deaths and death rates – classified by economic status, age and gender – for an “unusual episode” (without context) and asked to reason about what the causes might have been. The data set contains 2201 observations and the variables Class, Age, Sex and Survived.

In September 1995, Phillip Hind launched encyclopedia-titanica.org , the first publicly available database on all passengers and crew aboard the ship. At the time, it was the only reasonably complete individual list giving details of name, actual age, profession, cabin number, lifeboat number, and so forth. Two surviving canine pets (one named Sun Yat Sen) were also listed. 2 The website now includes photos and biographies on many of the passengers and crew.

Popular interest in the Titanic surged with the release of James Cameron's movie in November 1997. Immediately following this, Random House released a boxed set, Titanic: The Official Story , containing the Mersey report and facsimiles of 18 original documents from London's Public Record Office. 3 These included the Titanic deck plans, the final telegram sent from the ship just prior to sinking, newspaper articles excoriating the White Star Line for criminal negligence, lists of deaths recorded in official logs, and so on. It is not explicitly clear what the goal or purpose was, but these materials serve as a model case for courses in history of statistics and archival research.

The Titanic data, taken from Dawson, made their first public appearance in a software package in R, version 0.90.1, in December 1999, expressed as a four-way contingency table of counts, classified by Class, Age, Sex and Survived. A variety of other data sets are available in contributed R packages, including TitanicSurvival (in the car package), which gives details (name, sex, age, class, survived) on 1309 passengers, and Lifeboats (in the vcd package), which gives data on the composition and launch times of the lifeboats. Passenger data from the Titanic , split into training and test samples, is also used in a Kaggle prediction competition ( bit.ly/2RxcwGU ).

The significance of the disaster and the availability of information regarding the passengers and crew made the Titanic data attractive for various uses. The range of disciplines gives a sense of the appeal of these data as a compelling example of popular interest, of a novel graphical method or illustration of some statistical technique. The context makes it easy to tell an interesting story to illustrate a new method or graph.

In statistics, narrowly defined, the data have been used to illustrate graphical methods for categorical data and their use as a visualisation method for log-linear models and related generalised linear models. Recursive partitioning methods (also known as classification and regression trees, or CART models) is another area where the Titanic data provide an easily understood concrete example, and this has led to tree-based visualisations.

In a wider scope, encompassing computer science and data science, with an emphasis on predictive modelling and cross-validation, the Titanic data provide an important test case; while in the InfoVis community, the data provide a challenge – and opportunity – for graphic designers to try to tell the story of the disaster in a single sheet, containing words, numbers, pictures and data visualisations.

What follows is a selection of a few highlights to illustrate the themes described above.

Mosaic-type plots

Bron's initial graphic idea, to show deaths and survival on the Titanic , broken down by passenger class, gender and age group, was brilliant at the time, and perhaps underappreciated in the history of data visualisation. He was on to something important: how to display the proportions of survivors, classified by the other variables he had available. His solution anticipated modern methods.

In the 1990s two new ideas for graphical analysis of categorical data arose for this problem. The Titanic data provided great examples because they gave a context and a story to appreciate these new methods.

First, mosaic plots, proposed by Hartigan and Kleiner, provided a new graphic method for visualising multivariate frequency tables, in a single view rather than a collection of oneway or two-way diagrams. 4 The essential idea was a mosaic of rectangles (“tiles”), with the area of each made proportional to the cell frequency. Friendly connected these with log-linear models by shading the cells in relation to residuals in a given model. 5 , 6 For example, Figure 2 shows the result of fitting two models to the Titanic data. The left-hand panel shows the fit of the model with the symbolic formula [CGA][S], which asserts that Survival ([S]) is independent of Class, Gender and Age jointly. This is the baseline, null model. The pattern of shading (blue for positive residuals, red for negative) shows that important associations remain unaccounted for: that is, one or more of Class, Gender and Age affects Survival. The right-hand panel shows the fit of the model [CGA][CS][GS][AS], which allows “main effect” associations of each of Class, Gender and Age with Survival. This model fits much better, but still shows significant lack of fit. The pattern of residuals here suggests some interactions are present: adding the term [GAS] would allow an interaction of Gender and Age (“women and children first”); adding the association [CGS] would allow Survival to depend on the combinations of Class and Gender.

Mosaic plots for two log-linear models fitted to the Titanic data. Left: joint independence model [CGA][S]; right: main effects model [CGA][CS][GS][AS]. Source: author graphic, based on Friendly (1999). 6

Second, interactive software for visualising and manipulating multivariate contingency tables was developed. MANET 7 and MONDRIAN 8 from the Augsburg lab are notable here. Hofmann illustrated how selecting a category of one variable (Survived) highlighted those cases in all other views. 9 Valero-Mora et al . used the Titanic data to illustrate ViSta , a system combining multiple interacting windows, using both log-linear models and multiple correspondence analysis. 10

Figure 3 shows a double-decker plot, a variation of a mosaic plot in which the tiles for all predictors (Class, Gender and Age) are split horizontally and the response variable (Survived) is split vertically. 11 In this type of plot, the widths of the bars are proportional to the joint frequencies of C, G, and A. When each bar is split vertically by Survived, the heights of the black bars are proportional to the conditional probabilities of S given C, G, and A. If Survival were independent of all predictors (the model [CGA][S] shown in the left panel of Figure 2 ), the black bars would all have the same height. Note that showing the bars for survivors and those who perished back-to-back would give something similar to Bron's chart.

Double-decker plot of the Titanic data. Each bar has an area proportional to the frequency in the table. The proportion that survived is shaded black. Source: author graphic, recreated from Meyer et al . 12

Tree diagrams

Cross-classified data can also be displayed as tree diagrams of various types, with branches corresponding to splits of the categories for variables in some order. Tree-maps are a simple example, similar to mosaic plots in that they also display a measure of size by areas of rectangles. 13

Other graphical methods The Titanic data served to illustrate, or even motivate, a wide variety of graphical and analytic methods. A few are mentioned in this article, but more can be found online at bit.ly/titanicvis , including Venn diagrams, trilinear plots and nomograms.

A more powerful use arises in connection with classification trees as models for an outcome variable such as survival. For a binary response, these are similar to a series of logistic regression models, where predictors are chosen to maximise predictive accuracy at each step. Pruning methods and cross-validation are used to control model complexity and minimise out-of-sample classification error. Varian was among the first to use the Titanic data for this purpose. 14

Figure 4 gives the result of fitting a conditional inference tree (“ctree”) predicting survival from sex, class, age and a measure of family size (sibsp = number of siblings plus spouse aboard). The first node splits the data by sex. The second divides by class. The third node (in the right branch) splits males by age, and those aged 9 and under are further split by sibsp. The bars at the bottom show the survival rate in each terminal node. As opposed to log-linear models and generalised linear models, classification trees are somewhat more intuitive when shown visually, and have the additional advantage that what might be complex interaction terms in linear models can be easily fitted by successive splits on the branches to improve prediction.

Graphic representation of a conditional inference tree, predicting survival from sex, passenger class, age and family size. 14 © American Economic Association; reproduced with permission of the Journal of Economic Perspectives .

Information visualisation

Following in the footsteps of Bron, modern graphic designers continue to be inspired by the tragedy of the Titanic and challenge themselves to tell the story of the disaster in ways that are both visually appealing and provide sufficient details. Unlike statistical graphs which usually focus on just one aspect, an information graphic often attempts to tell the entire story all on one sheet, as in a poster presentation.

The best example we have found of this genre is the graphic produced by Andrew Barr and Richard Johnson for the National Post (Figure 5 , and bit.ly/2RyjdbL ). This illustration strikes us as a tour de force of visual storytelling: numbers, words and pictures (both images and graphs) are woven seamlessly into a narrative. The top portion contains back-to-back bar plots of the passengers by age and class, showing the age distributions of those who survived and those who died, with pie charts summarising survival by class. It uses colours keyed to the locations of cabins for the classes in the dominant graphic of the ship. The bottom portion shows the loading of the lifeboats in the order they were launched, shaded to show the proportion of seats that were filled. It is clear that those launched early and those launched just before the ship sank were only partially filled. Other charts at the lower right give the death rates by gender and class and by nationality of the passenger. A text box gives an interpretation of survival, including the ideas of “women and children first” and the declining survival according to class.

Infographic by Barr and Johnson ( bit.ly/2RyjdbL ) telling a graphic story of survival on the Titanic . Notable is the integration of rich numerical information shown in graphs with images providing context and visual explanation. Material republished with the express permission of: National Post, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.

The sinking of the Titanic was surely a tragedy, but, unlike other historical events resulting in great loss of life, it left behind detailed information on the individuals involved – both victims and survivors – whose stories attracted wide interest. Bron's 1912 chart should be appreciated as an attempt at visual explanation far ahead of its time: the idea that survival could be understood through graphic displays.

We started this project with the discovery of Bron's chart, and the thought that it would be useful to collect and catalogue the various ways in which the Titanic data had been depicted in graphs over the past century. We were pleasantly surprised by the wide range of graphical methods and other applications we found. This attests to the compelling nature of the Titanic disaster and to the desires of modern graphical developers and designers to illustrate their methods and skills by continuing to tell the Titanic story. We believe that the Titanic data still have much to offer to graphic designers and visual storytellers.

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Home — Essay Samples — Entertainment — Titanic — The Titanic Research Paper

The Titanic Research Paper

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Introduction, the construction of the titanic, the maiden voyage, the aftermath.

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The Titanic

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Primary Sources: Major Events: The Titanic

Irish Famine
USS Maine Explosion
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
The Titanic
The Lusitania
Mississippi Flood of 1927
Great Depression (1930s)
Hindenburgh
Tacoma Narrows Bridge
Pearl Harbor
Bay of Pigs
Cuban Missile Crisis
Munich Olympics Massacre
Iran-Contra Affair
September 11, 2001

Online Sources: The Titanic

Fire & Ice: Hindenburg and Titanic more... less... Contains various images related to the disaster and a video of an interview with Frank Ward, a Ground Crew Member.
R. M. S. Titanic in Newspapers more... less... A collection from the Library of Virginia containing digital reproductions of newspaper articles related to the sinking of the Titanic.
RMS Titanic: Nova Scotia Archives more... less... This site from the Nova Scotia Archives includes a virtual exhibit, news-magazines, and a list of bodies.
Survivors of the Titanic: BBC more... less... "At 11.40pm on 14 April 1912, the famously 'unsinkable' ocean liner, Titanic, struck an iceberg. Two hours and 40 minutes later she sank deep into the freezing Atlantic waters. Less than a third of the people on board survived. Over the years, the BBC has heard from some of the men and women who lived through that 'night to remember'. Their memories are gathered together here to tell the story of the disaster. Hear the survivors describe a night they could never forget."
Survivors of the Titanic: NARA more... less... Partial list of survivors who were taken aboard the Carpathia
Titanic Inquiry Project more... less... Electronic copies of British and American inquiries into the disaster
Titanic Memorandum more... less... An exhibit from the NARA; it includes a link to search the ARC database for more items.
U.S. Senate: The Titanic Disaster Hearings more... less... This site provides access to the final report issued by the panel.

Book Sources: The Titanic

A selection of books/e-books available in Trible Library.
Click the title for location and availability information.

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Suggested terms to look for include - diary, diaries, letters, papers, documents, documentary or correspondence.
Combine these these terms with the event or person you are researching. (example: civil war diary)
Also search by subject for specific people and events, then scan the titles for those keywords or others such as memoirs, autobiography, report, or personal narratives.
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90 Titanic Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best titanic topic ideas & essay examples, 📌 good essay topics on titanic, 🔎 most interesting titanic topics to write about, ❓ titanic research questions.

Social Inequality in the Titanic Movie Even when she rejects the privileges that her class offers in order to be with the one she loves, she is eventually separated from him because of the consequences of social inequality.
The Role of Music in the Film “Titanic” Also, it will discuss the content and themes of the movie and explain the role played by music in the movie. We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts 808 writers online Learn More
A Rhetorical Analysis of the Titanic Film The close-up shots used in the scene add to the emotional effect of the scene and create a sense of intimacy between the audience and characters, making the intended viewers experience the scene as if […]
“Titanic” by James Cameron: The Design of the American Epic Romance Film The custom building of the ship was meant to validate the historical detail of the movie. The detailed design of the ship was meant to support the narrative such that the occurrences could be as […]
“Titanic” by James Cameron: Storyline, Language & Characters Analysis The head of the excursion is Brock Lovett and is just exploring to find valuables, which might have been carried to the ship. With the story developing, the ship, on the other hand, is pushed […]
The Titanic: Preconditions, the Trigger, the Crisis, Post-Crisis The sinking of the RMS Titanic is the subject of this report and seeks to analyze the tragedy through the lens of risk and crisis management.
Would 1997 Movie Titanic Be Considered a Great Epic? Griffith, the “father of film technique”, “the man who invented Hollywood” and “the Shakespeare of the screen,” “a film is a cooperative effort between the director and the audience.
“Titanic” by James Cameron Movie Analysis Therefore, there is indeed a good reason in referring to Cameron’s film, as such that promotes a thoroughly humanistic idea that the measure of people’s actual worth has very little to do with what happened […]
Historical Romance: “An Affair to Remember” and “Titanic” The primary aspect of the two films’ social environment is the characters’ ability to get involved in romantic antics and affairs. Love is the central theme in the movie and is signified by the Heart […]
The Titanic: Risk Management The vehicle’s high speed at the time of the collision and delayed evacuation can be explained by the captain’s attempt to save the prestige of the ship.
The Role of the Social Institution in the Cameron’s “Titanic” Most of the movie is about the encounter and relationships of this boy with the members of the aristocratic family mentioned above.
Titanic Sinking in Poetic and Oral History Genres In the opening he takes aim at the claim that the ship was unsinkable, calling that an example of “human vanity” and the “Pride of life” from which the ship now lies far removed.
Black Vernaculars in “Sinking of the Titanic” by Hughes and “Shine and the Titanic” by Abraham In both poems, the main character is a black man named Shine who works in the boiler room of the Titanic and attempts to inform the captain of the impending disaster.
“My Best Friend’s Girl” and “Titanic” Film Analysis As a result, it can be argued that the time difference between these two films is significant in terms of understanding the changes in the depiction of the theme of love by the producers of […]
The Significance and the Esteem of the Film “Titanic” It is hard to believe that James Cameron envisaged the love narrative involving the two characters and ultimately decided the ideal backdrop would be the sinking of the Titanic.
Gender Propagation in Titanic Miniseries In spite of the film indicating that the people travelling in the Titanic are divided based on their social status, the film goes ahead to show a high level of interaction among the different classes […]
Technological Catastrophe: Titanic in 1912 The events leading to the sinking of the ship and the finding of its wreckage in the Atlantic Ocean led to in-depth analysis of technology with a clear line between advantages and disadvantages of technological […]
Rhetorical Criticism of the Titanic Jack and Rose develop a friendship They walk round the ship and explore all the hidden areas The people of the high class treat and see the employees and people from the lower societies There […]
My Opinion on the Movie Titanic Upon the knowledge of the portray, Dawson Calvert contacted Lovett, she was asked if she knew about the necklace and she said that indeed she was the one Rose DeWittone of the passengers deemed to […]
Loss of RMS Titanic (1912): Significant Events of the 20th Century The loss occurred while the ship was on its Maiden voyage from Southampton, United Kingdom to the New York City in the United States causing one of the deadliest maritime disasters of the 20th century.
Similarities and Differences Between the Movies “Titanic” and “Romeo and Juliet”
The Night That Changed Everything for the “Titanic”
Analysis of the Use of Mise-En-Scène to Convey Narrative in “Titanic”
Acting and Emotions in “Titanic” Movie
Elegant Production Design and Surprising Visual Outcomes: “Titanic”
The History and Sinking of the “Titanic”
“Titanic”: The Most Fascinating and Well-Known Ship in History
Archetypal and Mythic Patterns in the “Titanic”
“Titanic”: The Birth of a New Generation and Its Terrible Destruction
The Events That Led to the Sinking of the “Titanic” in 1912
Flaws, Failures, and Fractures of the “Titanic”
Human Neglect as a Reason Behind the Sinking of the “Titanic”
A Tragic Love Story in “Titanic” Movie
“Titanic” and “Lusitania”: The Ships That Have Changed History
Historical Decision: The Incident of the “Titanic”
“Titanic”: Standout Ship and Legendary Fail
Comparative Analysis of American Independent Films: “Clerks” and “Titanic”
“Titanic” and Its Poetics Elements
Structural Weakness and the Hull of the “Titanic”
Factors of Success of the Film “Titanic” by James Cameron
Hollywood Elite and “Titanic” Film by Director James Cameron
The Size, Shape, and Design of the “Titanic”
The Theme of Social Classes and Inequalities in the Movie “Titanic”
The Age-Old Mystery Surrounding the Sinking of the Maiden Ship “Titanic”
Regarding the “Titanic” and What Should Be Done With the Remains
Themes and Motives in James Cameron’s “Titanic”
Impact of Sinking of the “Titanic” on the U.S. Capital Markets
The Life and Works of Thomas Andrews, the Designer of “Titanic”
The Wild Conspiracy Theory That the “Titanic” Never Sank
Various Social Classes and How They Were Treated on the “Titanic”
Captain Edward J. Smith on Trail for Sinking of the “Titanic”
The Most Famous Survivor Passenger on “Titanic”
How the Movie “Titanic” Relates to Suffering and Death
Engineering and Construction Factors That Caused the “Titanic” to Fail
James Cameron’s Presentation and Adaptation of “Titanic” for the Cinema
Comparison of the Movies “Titanic” and “Pearl Harbor”
The Real Story Behind the Discovery of “Titanic’s” Watery Grave
Survival Prediction for “Titanic” Data Using Machine Learning Algorithms
Comparing the “Titanic” Movie and the Real “Titanic” Story
What Engineering and Construction Factors Caused the Sinking of the “Titanic”?
Could Such an Accident as “Titanic” Happen Again?
Why Were the “Titanic” and “Lusitania” Ships That Changed History?
How Were Different Social Classes Treated on the “Titanic”?
How Can the Film “Titanic” Be Considered From a Formalist Point of View?
What Would Be the Survival Prediction of “Titanic” Data Using Machine Learning Algorithms?
Who Was the Most Famous “Titanic” Survivor?
How Has James Cameron Presented and Adapted the True Story of “Titanic” for the Cinema?
Could Anything Have Saved the “Titanic”?
What Critical Approach Is Used in the Movie “Titanic”?
How Does James Cameron Represent the “Old World” and the “New World” in His Film “Titanic”?
Why Did They Say That God Couldn’t Even Sink the “Titanic”?
Did Any of the 3rd Class Passengers Survive on the “Titanic”?
What Could Have Prevented the “Titanic” From Sinking?
How Does Thomas Hardy Present the Tragedy of the Sinking of the “Titanic” in the Poem “The Convergence of the Twain”?
Was Captain Smith Responsible for the Sinking of the “Titanic”?
Has the Real “Titanic” Been Found?
What Changed as a Result of the Sinking of the “Titanic”?
Is There a Difference Between the Movie “Titanic” and the Real Story of the “Titanic”?
Why Was the “Titanic” One of the Greatest Shipping Disasters of All Time?
Is the Story of the “Titanic” a True Story of Life?
What Events Led to the Sinking of the “Titanic” in 1912?
What Is the Essence of the Inequality of Different Social Classes in the Story “Titanic”?
How Much Was a First-Class Ticket on the “Titanic”?
Was the “Titanic” the Most Fascinating and Well-Known Ship in History?
Are There Similarities Between the Films “Titanic” and “Pearl Harbor”?
What Events Led to the Discovery of the “Titanic”?
How Accurately Does the Movie “A Night to Remember” Depict the Actual Sinking of the Ship “Titanic”?
Why Will the “Titanic” Always Hold Significance?
What Were the Causes and Consequences of the “Titanic” Disaster?
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New research reports on buckling: When structures suddenly collapse

by Laurie Fickman, University of Houston

Under examination: Buckling – when structures suddenly collapse

Last summer, when the Titan submersible suffered a catastrophic implosion on its way to take passengers to see the Titanic shipwreck, it was a dramatic example of the failure of a thin-walled structure. Those structures, which may be in the shapes of spherical or cylindrical shells, can efficiently carry relatively large loads, but their slenderness makes them susceptible to buckling-induced collapse.

The submersible is not the only thin-walled structure you may interact with. Whenever you step into a car or hop aboard a plane, you are entering one. They all looked perfectly formed on the drawing board, but when manufactured, they don't all come out quite so perfectly and can contain geometric imperfections. The structures will buckle at much smaller forces because of these imperfections than they would if they were perfectly shaped.

Until now it has been impossible to accurately predict the detrimental effects of geometric imperfections, but Roberto Ballarini, Thomas and Laura Hsu Professor and department chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is changing that. He reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) a theoretical equation, based on the results of computer simulations , that predicts the average buckling strength of a shell based on the parameters that describe the imperfections.

Of course, advanced math is involved.

"We derived equations that allow us to predict the resistance to buckling of structures in terms of the parameters that are involved including the shapes and distribution of their imperfections," reports Ballarini. "Given the parameters that describe the imperfections, the equations we constructed using the results of the simulations 'spit out' the average buckling resistance of the structures."

Ballarini coauthored the PNAS paper with doctoral student Zheren Baizhikova and Jia-Liang Le, a professor at the University of Minnesota.

"Localized deformation and randomly shaped imperfections are salient features of buckling type instabilities in thin-walled load-bearing structures. However, it is generally agreed that their complex interactions in response to mechanical loading are not yet sufficiently understood, as evidenced by buckling-induced catastrophic failures which continue today," the authors wrote.

Ballarini added, "One must not forget that a structure's resistance to buckling failure is also affected by the strength and stiffness of the material from which it is made."

Consider for example the tragic failure of the Titan submersible.

"Its integrity may have been compromised by the damage to the material used for its hull that accumulated during the many trips it took prior to collapse. The material used for the Titan's hull was a carbon fiber composite. It is well known that under compression, loading the fibers in such composites are susceptible to micro-buckling and that they may delaminate from the matrix that surrounds them," Ballarini said

"If the Titan's hull experienced such damage under the extreme compressive pressures it experienced during its dives, then its stiffness and strength would have significantly decreased, and together with the inevitable geometric imperfections introduced during its manufacturing, may have contributed to its buckling-induced implosion."

For a given shell, buckling initiates where the geometric imperfection is most severe, and since the spatial distribution of geometric imperfections is random, so is the location of the initial buckling zone.

"This randomness has profound implications for the statistics of the critical buckling pressure of the shell," said Ballarini, whose computer simulations and theoretical analysis allowed the research team to craft a probabilistic model for the statistical distribution of buckling resistance that offers promise for creating lightweight and sustainable structures while ensuring their structural reliability without unnecessary over-design.

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Live updates, titan sub might have imploded from ‘micro-buckling,’ new study suggests.

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The mystery of the Titan submersible implosion may soon be solved.

The five people who perished aboard the OceanGate vessel as it plunged thousands of feet below sea level could have been victims of “micro-buckling,” a new study suggests.

Small imperfections in the thin-walled structure may have become more damaged with every trip the vessel took to visit the Titanic’s final resting place until it finally gave way to the immense pressure of the ocean on the doomed June 18, 2023 trip, researchers from the University of Houston theorized.

A submarine descending into the sea, connected by a blue rope for a Titanic exploration expedition

In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this month, the experts examined how the “slenderness” of a hemispherical shell with random imperfections — much like the submersible itself — is extra susceptible to a buckling-induced collapse.

“Buckling in the simplest explanation: you take a long spaghetti and you push on it with two fingers. What’s going to happen? It’s going to buckle essentially, it’s going to snap,” Roberto Ballarini, one of the paper’s authors and the university’s department chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering, told The Post.

“That’s what buckling is. It’s when you compress something and it deforms by a significant amount because it’s an instability.”

Ballarini emphasized that the study did not directly examine whether micro-buckling contributed to the Titan failure , but studied vessels of similar shape and material.

Coast Guard marine safety engineers surveying the wreckage of Titan and recovering an endcap from the North Atlantic Ocean seafloor in 2023

There are still several other potential causes for the disaster — including issues with the hull’s carbon fiber composite material — but the buckling effect could be one.

Much like a car or a plane, the spherical shell of the submersible was designed to carry large loads, but small imperfections — even those invisible to the eye — provide a weak point for pressure to congregate, ultimately collapsing the thin walls of the vessel.

The Titan submersible had made more than 50 dives without any issues before its infamous implosion — but each trip may have caused more damage to the hull until it ultimately lost its integrity.

The possibility that the hull — made of carbon fiber composite — had degraded in some way is something for experts to consider, Ballarini told The Post.

The University of Houston team used computer simulations to determine the Titan’s susceptibility to micro-buckling based on its shape.

Although the simulations did not analyze whether micro-buckling caused the Titan implosion, the research may reveal what caused the disaster.

A group of people on a boat during Ocean Gate Expeditions, Titan Mission III, featuring Jake, also known as Dallmyd on YouTube, and Fuzati.

The buckling may have begun at the point of the most severe imperfection, but since the flaws are randomly distributed around the shell of a vessel like the Titan, it’s still impossible to know where the failure might have occurred.

“This randomness has profound implications for the statistics of the critical buckling pressure of the shell,” said Ballarini.

Ballarini teased that his team might do a separate investigation into the cause of the Titan failure.

OceanGate CEO and Titan pilot Stockton Rush, 61, French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58, prominent Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his 19-year-old son, Sulaiman Dawood were killed in the tragedy.

Officials are still investigating the evidence recovered from the sub wreckage.

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Under Examination: Buckling – When Structures Suddenly Collapse

New Model Can Guide Better Design to Avoid Catastrophe

By Laurie Fickman — 713-743-8454

Science, Energy and Innovation

Last summer when the Titan submersible suffered a catastrophic implosion on its way to take passengers to see the Titanic shipwreck it was a dramatic example of the failure of a thin-walled structure. Those structures, which may be in the shapes of spherical or cylindrical shells, can efficiently carry relatively large loads, but their slenderness makes them susceptible to buckling-induced collapse.

The submersible is not the only thin-walled structure you may interact with. Whenever you step into a car or hop aboard a plane, you are entering one. They all looked perfectly formed on the drawing board , but when manufactured, they don’t all come out quite so perfectly and can contain geometric imperfections. The structures will buckle at much smaller forces because of these imperfections than they would if they were perfectly shaped.

Until now it's been impossible to accurately predict the detrimental effects of geometric imperfections, but Roberto Ballarini, Thomas and Laura Hsu Professor and department chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is changing that. He is reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) a theoretical equation, based on the results of computer simulations, that predicts the average buckling strength of a shell based on the parameters that describe the imperfections.

Of course, advanced math is involved.

"We derived equations that allow us to predict the resistance to buckling of structures in terms of the parameters that are involved including the shapes and distribution of their imperfections,” reports Ballarini. “Given the parameters that describe the imperfections, the equations we constructed using the results of the simulations “spit out” the average buckling resistance of the structures.”

Ballarini coauthored the PNAS paper with doctoral student Zheren Baizhikova and Jia-Liang Le, a professor at the University of Minnesota.

“Localized deformation and randomly shaped imperfections are salient features of buckling type instabilities in thin-walled load-bearing structures. However, it is generally agreed that their complex interactions in response to mechanical loading are not yet sufficiently understood, as evidenced by buckling-induced catastrophic failures which continue today,” the authors wrote.

Ballarini added, “One must not forget that a structure’s resistance to buckling failure is also affected by the strength and stiffness of the material from which it is made."

Consider for example the tragic failure of the Titan submersible.

“ Its integrity may have been compromised by the damage to the material used for its hull that accumulated during the many trips it took prior to collapse. The material used for the Titan’s hull was a carbon fiber composite. It is well known that under compression loading the fibers in such composites are susceptible to micro-buckling and that they may delaminate from the matrix that surrounds them. If the Titan’s hull experienced such damage under the extreme compressive pressures it experienced during its dives, then its stiffness and strength would have significantly decreased, and together with the inevitable geometric imperfections introduced during its manufacturing, may have contributed to its buckling-induced implosion,” Ballarini said.

“This randomness has profound implications for the statistics of the critical buckling pressure of the shell,” said Ballarini, whose c omputer simulations and theoretical analysis allowed the research team to craft a probabilistic model for the statistical distribution of buckling resistance that offers promise for creating lightweight and sustainable structures while ensuring their structural reliability without unnecessary over-design.

Editor’s Clarification (May 2, 2024) : The Titan submersible is an example of a thin-walled structure and was not included in Dr. Ballarini's research. The research conducted by the University of Houston was not specific to this structure or catastrophe. It is used to illustrate the types of structures researchers studied. Researchers can provide more context upon request.

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UH celebrated the efforts of those professors who have gone above and beyond their roles as educators in demonstrating a commitment to both campus and community. The 2024 Faculty Awards were presented on Thursday, April 25 to spotlight excellence in teaching, research and service.

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Researchers uncover kinky metal alloy that won't crack at extreme temperatures at the atomic level

by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

$A map of the crystal structure of the alloy made with electron backscatter diffraction in a scanning electron microscope. Each color represents a section of the crystal where the repeating structure changes its 3D orientation. Credit: Berkeley Lab$

A metal alloy composed of niobium, tantalum, titanium, and hafnium has shocked materials scientists with its impressive strength and toughness at both extremely hot and cold temperatures, a combination of properties that seemed so far to be nearly impossible to achieve.

In this context, strength is defined as how much force a material can withstand before it is permanently deformed from its original shape, and toughness is its resistance to fracturing (cracking). The alloy's resilience to bending and fracture across an enormous range of conditions could open the door for a novel class of materials for next-generation engines that can operate at higher efficiencies.

The team, led by Robert Ritchie at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley, in collaboration with the groups led by professors Diran Apelian at UC Irvine and Enrique Lavernia at Texas A&M University, discovered the alloy's surprising properties and then figured out how they arise from interactions in the atomic structure. Their work is described in a study that was published in Science .

"The efficiency of converting heat to electricity or thrust is determined by the temperature at which fuel is burned—the hotter, the better. However, the operating temperature is limited by the structural materials which must withstand it," said first author David Cook, a Ph.D. student in Ritchie's lab. "We have exhausted the ability to optimize further the materials we currently use at high temperatures, and there's a big need for novel metallic materials. That's what this alloy shows promise in."

The alloy in this study is from a new class of metals known as refractory high or medium entropy alloys (RHEAs/RMEAs). Most of the metals we see in commercial or industrial applications are alloys made of one main metal mixed with small quantities of other elements, but RHEAs and RMEAs are made by mixing near-equal quantities of metallic elements with very high melting temperatures, which gives them unique properties that scientists are still unraveling.

Ritchie's group has been investigating these alloys for several years because of their potential for high-temperature applications.

"Our team has done previous work on RHEAs and RMEAs, and we have found that these materials are very strong but generally possess extremely low fracture toughness , which is why we were shocked when this alloy displayed exceptionally high toughness," said co-corresponding author Punit Kumar, a postdoctoral researcher in the group.

According to Cook, most RMEAs have a fracture toughness of less than 10 MPa√m, which makes them some of the most brittle metals on record. The best cryogenic steels, specially engineered to resist fracture, are about 20 times tougher than these materials. Yet the niobium, tantalum, titanium, and hafnium (Nb 45 Ta 25 Ti 15 Hf 15 ) RMEA alloy was able to beat even the cryogenic steel, clocking in at over 25 times tougher than typical RMEAs at room temperature.

But engines don't operate at room temperature. The scientists evaluated strength and toughness at five temperatures total: -196°C (the temperature of liquid nitrogen), 25°C (room temperature), 800°C, 950°C, and 1200°C. The last temperature is about 1/5 the surface temperature of the sun.

The team found that the alloy had the highest strength in the cold and became slightly weaker as the temperature rose but still boasted impressive figures throughout the wide range. The fracture toughness, which is calculated from how much force it takes to propagate an existing crack in a material, was high at all temperatures.

Unraveling the atomic arrangements

Almost all metallic alloys are crystalline, meaning that the atoms inside the material are arranged in repeating units. However, no crystal is perfect; they all contain defects. The most prominent defect that moves is called the dislocation, which is an unfinished plane of atoms in the crystal. When force is applied to a metal, it causes many dislocations to move to accommodate the shape change.

For example, when you bend a paper clip that is made of aluminum, the movement of dislocations inside the paper clip accommodates the shape change. However, the movement of dislocations becomes more difficult at lower temperatures, and as a result, many materials become brittle at low temperatures because dislocations cannot move. This is why the steel hull of the Titanic fractured when it hit an iceberg.

Elements with high melting temperatures and their alloys take this to the extreme, with many remaining brittle up to even 800°C. However, this RMEA bucks the trend, withstanding snapping even at temperatures as low as liquid nitrogen (-196°C).

To understand what was happening inside the remarkable metal, co-investigator Andrew Minor and his team analyzed the stressed samples alongside unbent and uncracked control samples, using four-dimensional scanning transmission electron microscopy (4D-STEM) and scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) at the National Center for Electron Microscopy, part of Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry.

The electron microscopy data revealed that the alloy's unusual toughness comes from an unexpected side effect of a rare defect called a kink band. Kink bands form in a crystal when an applied force causes strips of the crystal to collapse on themselves and abruptly bend.

The direction in which the crystal bends in these strips increases the force that dislocations feel, causing them to move more easily. On the bulk level, this phenomenon causes the material to soften (meaning that less force has to be applied to the material as it is deformed).

The team knew from past research that kink bands formed easily in RMEAs but assumed that the softening effect would make the material less tough by making it easier for a crack to spread through the lattice. But in reality, this is not the case.

"We show, for the first time, that in the presence of a sharp crack between atoms, kink bands actually resist the propagation of a crack by distributing damage away from it, preventing fracture and leading to extraordinarily high fracture toughness," said Cook.

The Nb 45 Ta 25 Ti 15 Hf 15 alloy will need to undergo a lot more fundamental research and engineering testing before anything like a jet plane turbine or SpaceX rocket nozzle is made from it, said Ritchie, because mechanical engineers rightfully require a deep understanding of how their materials perform before they use them in the real world. However, this study indicates that the metal has the potential to build the engines of the future.

Journal information: Science

Provided by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

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Report: Tragic Titan sub may have imploded from 'micro-buckling'

Posted: May 3, 2024 | Last updated: May 3, 2024

Experts have revealed the explanation for why the doomed Titan submarine imploded on its expedition to the bottom of the Atlantic ocean. OceanGate 's Titan submersible disappeared on June 18, 2023, after it plunged into the ocean to explore the wreck of the Titanic.

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TITANIC OPTIMISM: Shakespeare in Tempestuous Times

CFP: Titanic Optimism: Shakespeare in Tempestuous Times

Editors: Craig Dionne, Tim Francisco, and Sharon O’Dair

Seeking essays for an edited collection

In December 2021, a kerfuffle played out across the pages of The New York Times , The New Yorker , and The Chronicle of Higher Education . The topic: two books that defend “Great Books” courses taught by generalists. Especially piqued was Louis Menand in The New Yorker who, according to Leonard Cassuto in the Chronicle , “lost his cool” by insisting on the superior importance of specialist research and pedagogy for these works. Academics badly need a conversation about this topic, says Cassuto: we face uncertain, possibly grim futures.

But, as is too often the case, debates about the current and future states of academia circulate among elite professors, far from the majority working in higher education. What the conversation so far lacks are perspectives of those teaching at regional publics, small liberal arts colleges, HBCUs and community colleges, the institutions that educate the majority of students. These perspectives, and the challenges they address, are important, as James Shapiro wrote in 2019, because they “are likely to be visited soon upon those who teach at research universities,” and evidence suggests that they already are, in states like Florida and Nebraska…

In contrast to the situation at elite institutions, where the generalist is under fire, at many institutions, the specialist is under fire. These colleagues, often trained at elite institutions, are becoming generalists, or even do not teach literature at all; the “Great Books” are long gone and so, too, are many single-author or even survey courses in our field.

Titanic Optimism: we mean the double-entendre of titanic/Titanic for faculty at the many institutions who struggle with the goals of the discipline in what feels like the final hour. Forced to make difficult decisions about what sections of creative writing or literature or technical writing to cut given stretched budgets and declining admissions, we do not get to choose, if you will, our place on the deck—arranging chairs, as the adage goes. We don’t have the luxury of choice. This the hand we are dealt, which we must play whether we acknowledge it, see it as a double bind, or choose to ignore it altogether.

On the Titanic, the small orchestra played familiar but upbeat pieces as the ship went down, trying to prevent panic among the passengers. Heroic, true, but what this collection will explore is whether preventing panic by reciting what's familiar is the answer we need.

Most of us face enrollment declines—which equals funding declines for state-supported institutions—which the continuing pursuit and promotion of STEM and other “practical” subjects, and legislative backlash to CRT and DEI.

Countless opinion pieces have appeared on how we got here with no shortage of antagonists or culprits, so we seek papers that do not finger-point. That said, analyses of root causes, surprising connections between the material, the political, and the pedagogical, and radical strategies for intervention are welcome—and encouraged.

We seek papers that assess the situation, either broadly across institutions or on the ground of one’s home institution: what is changing, what has changed, what do colleagues do in response, what do you do in response? How is your institution representative of broader trends and issues—or not? What, ultimately, do we envision as the future of the discipline, of disciplinary study writ large, and what strategies exist to survive—or even thrive—in tempestuous times?

Abstracts of no more than 300 words due 1 June 2024.

Completed drafts of 4-6000 words 1 January 2025.

Email: [email protected] , [email protected] , [email protected]

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Titanic Research Articles
Titanic. Titanic Research Articles. Encyclopedia Titanica present cutting edge research papers from the world's finest Titanic and maritime historians. Few historical subjects provoke the same level of interest and controversy as the Titanic and lively discussions about these papers can be found on our message board and in our Facebook group.
The Titanic and the Passengers Who Boarded It: Research and Assignment
The Titanic is one of the most famous ships in history: leaving England on April 10th, 1912, it was only on the water for three days before it collided with an iceberg and sank on April 15th, 1912. In this guide, we provide research and information on the ship, it's passengers, and the fateful night it crashed, as well as a list of discussion ...
The Titanic: Sinking, Notable Passengers & Facts
The Titanic was a luxury British steamship that sank in the early hours of April 15, 1912 after striking an iceberg, leading to the deaths of more than 1,500 passengers and crew. Read about the ...
Titanic: Resonance and Reality
One hundred years ago, during the night of April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg, and in the small hours of the next day went down into the cold Atlantic Ocean with the loss of ...
They Said It Couldn't Sink
One of the themes emerging from the "Titanic Disaster Hearings" is the excesses of the "Gilded Age"—wealth, power, and business in a newly technological world gone wild.The hearings were held in the glamorous Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan. (Ironically, John Jacob Astor IV, who perished aboard the Titanic, had built the Astoria Hotel, which later became part of the Waldorf-Astoria.)
Titanic
Titanic, British luxury passenger liner that sank on April 14-15, 1912, during its maiden voyage, en route to New York City from Southampton, England, killing about 1,500 people. One of the most famous tragedies in modern history, it inspired numerous works of art and has been the subject of much scholarship.
Visualising the Titanic Disaster
The sinking of the RMS Titanic is one of the most storied shipwrecks in maritime history. Touted as the ultimate in transatlantic travel and said to be "unsinkable", the Titanic collided with an iceberg on 14 April 1912 on her maiden voyage and sank shortly thereafter on 15 April, killing 1502 out of 2224 passengers and crew. The sinking of the Titanic is not the largest in terms of lives ...
(PDF) Predicting Survival on Titanic by Applying Exploratory Data
Research papers [14,15] and [16] explore the regression of machine learning applied in the traditional determination of cause-effect relationships between variables. Thus, the standard category of ...
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The Titanic. The Titanic was a White Star Line steamship carrying the British flag. She was built by Harland and Wolff of Belfast, Ireland, at a reported cost of $7.5 million. Her specifications were: On 10 April 1912, the Titanic commenced her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York, with 2,227 passengers and crew aboard.
Exploring the myth: The sinking of the Titanic
On the 1st of September 1985 a joint US-French research team discovered. the wreck of the RMS Titanic on the bottom of the Atlantic where it had lain. since that fateful night in April 1912 when the ship struck an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage. The ship sank with some 1,517 people still on board.
(PDF) The Unsinkable Titanic Data
tanic data is a complete list of passengers and crew members on the RMS Titanic. It. includes a variable indicating whether a person did survive the sinking of the RMS. Titanic on April 15, 1912 ...
Exploring the myth: The sinking of the Titanic
1 There is some confusion concerning the total number of passengers on the Titanic. Harrison points out that the US inquiry stated that there were some 1,517 deaths out of a total of 2,223 whereas the UK inquiry put the figure at 1,490 out of 2,201. Booth and Coughlan give the figure of total persons on board as 2,227 passengers and crew.
A Cultural and Historical Narrative of the Titanic
Titanic was a 1980 film adaption of a book by the same name with a plot that required finding. and raising the Titanic in order to retrieve radioactive materials in the midst of the Cold War.198. The movie takes place before the discovery of the wreck in 1985 because the characters.
[PDF] The Sinking of the Titanic
The Titanic was a British luxury passenger ship completed in 1912 that was one of the largest of its kind at the time. When built it was widely deemed to be virtually unsinkable, but the ship met with disaster after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage. This resulted in the sinking of the vessel and the deaths of over 1,500 of the 2,224 passengers and crew. Although impact with the iceberg ...
Research Guides: Sinking of the Titanic: Topics in Chronicling America
On April 15, 1912, over 1,300 people died in one of the worst maritime disasters in history. This guide provides information on researching the topic of the "sinking of the Titanic" in the Chronicling America digital collection of historic newspapers.
Sinking of the Titanic: Topics in Chronicling America
The Titanic hits an iceberg. The following morning, newspapers offer conflicting reports. April 16, 1912: News reports confirm that the Titanic has sunk and that over 1,300 people are missing. April 17, 1912: All Titanic survivors are aboard the RMS Carpathia, headed for New York. April 19, 1912: The U.S. Senate opens an inquiry into the disaster.
The Titanic Research Paper: [Essay Example], 574 words
The sinking of the RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912, remains one of the most infamous maritime disasters in history. The loss of over 1,500 lives shocked the world and sparked widespread debate on issues such as maritime safety, class distinctions, and the hubris of mankind. This research paper aims to explore the events leading up to the sinking ...
(PDF) A Comparative Study on Machine Learning Techniques Using Titanic
The Titanic disaster resulting in the sinking of the British passenger ship with the loss of 722 passengers and crew occurred in the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912. ... In research papers [7 ...
The Titanic: A Research Paper On The Titanic
Coleman Hardee February 16, 2018 US History Research Paper 1st Period The Titanic The RMS Titanic was a luxury steamship sailing from Southampton to France and Ireland then on to New York. The ship could occupy 2,435 passengers and about 900 crew members, which is a total of 3,300 people on board. The ship never made it to its final stop.
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Twice Accused of Murder, This Writer Later Foresaw the Sinking of the Titanic. Under the pseudonym Mayn Clew Garnett, author Thornton Jenkins Hains published a maritime disaster story with eerie ...
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Call Number: G530.T617 B415. ISBN: 1421818965. Written by a passenger on the SS Titanic. The Story of the Titanic, as Told by its Survivors by Jack Winocour. Call Number: G530.T617 W776. Titanic, the official story [kit] : April 14-15, 1912. Call Number: Oversize G530.T6 T573 1997. ISBN: 0375501150.
90 Titanic Essay Topic Ideas & Examples
Love is the central theme in the movie and is signified by the Heart […] The Titanic: Risk Management. The vehicle's high speed at the time of the collision and delayed evacuation can be explained by the captain's attempt to save the prestige of the ship. The Role of the Social Institution in the Cameron's "Titanic".
New research reports on buckling: When structures suddenly collapse
Last summer, when the Titan submersible suffered a catastrophic implosion on its way to take passengers to see the Titanic shipwreck, it was a dramatic example of the failure of a thin-walled structure. Those structures, which may be in the shapes of spherical or cylindrical shells, can efficiently carry relatively large loads, but their slenderness makes them susceptible to buckling-induced ...
Predicting the Likelihood of Survival of Titanic's Passengers by
March 17 - 18, 2021, Amity University Du bai, UAE. 978-1-6654-2921-4/21/$3 1.00 ©2021 IEEE. PREDICTING THE LIKELIHOOD OF SURVIVAL. OF TITANIC'S PASSENGERS BY. MACHINE LEARNING. Anasuya ...
Titan sub might have imploded from 'micro-buckling'
Titan sub might have imploded from 'micro-buckling,' new study suggests. The mystery of the Titan submersible implosion may soon be solved. The five people who perished aboard the OceanGate ...
Under Examination: Buckling
Last summer when the Titan submersible suffered a catastrophic implosion on its way to take passengers to see the Titanic shipwreck it was a dramatic example of the failure of a thin-walled structure. ... Ballarini coauthored the PNAS paper with doctoral student Zheren Baizhikova and Jia-Liang Le, a professor at the University of Minnesota ...
Researchers uncover kinky metal alloy that won't crack at extreme
Yet the niobium, tantalum, titanium, and hafnium (Nb 45 Ta 25 Ti 15 Hf 15) RMEA alloy was able to beat even the cryogenic steel, clocking in at over 25 times tougher than typical RMEAs at room ...
Report: Tragic Titan sub may have imploded from 'micro-buckling'
The Titan submersible lost communications with its support vessel on Sunday, June 18 , during a descent to the wreck of the Titanic 12,500 feet beneath the surface. Days later, its debris was ...
cfp
CFP: Titanic Optimism: Shakespeare in Tempestuous Times. Editors: Craig Dionne, Tim Francisco, and Sharon O'Dair Seeking essays for an edited collection In December 2021, a kerfuffle played out across the pages of The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. The topic: two books that defend "Great Books ...