National Titanic Remembrance Day is observed on April 15 every year to honour the more than 1,500 people onboard the British luxury passenger liner who met their tragic end in the dark and icy waters.
History of the Titanic
The Titanic was a British-registered four-funnelled ocean liner constructed by the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It was built for transatlantic passenger and mail service and at the time of its maiden voyage in 1912, the Titanic was the largest ship afloat.
On April 10 that same year, the Titanic set sail, traveling from Southampton, England to New York City. The ship was captained by Edward J Smith and onboard were a number of prominent and wealthy people.
At the point of setting sail for New York City there were 2,200 people on board the Titanic, made up of around 1,300 first-, second- and third-class passengers and 900 crew members, including waitstaff, engineering crew and deck crew.
However, just four days into the voyage, at 11:40 pm on April 14 to be precise, the Titanic hit an iceberg.
The powerful collision caused the ship’s starboard to scrape along the iceberg, rupturing at least five of its watertight compartments, causing water to gush in, and thereby sealing the ship’s fate.
On April 15, the Titanic, known as “the unsinkable ship” broke into pieces upon impact with the iceberg and sank beneath the waters of the North Atlantic Ocean.
Only 700 people survived, with more than half of the passengers going down with the fast-sinking ship. Approximately 1,500 people lost their lives that tragic night mainly due to an insufficient number of lifeboats onboard the ship to bring the passengers to safety.
Based on reports, out of all the people who perished, only 33 bodies were recovered. Years later in 1985, the wreckage that was once the mighty Titanic was recovered and later displayed in museums.
The story of the Titanic remains a heartbreaking and mesmerising one. Since the day it sank, many people from journalists to ocean explorers, survivors and family members of those who did not survive, have tried piecing together the details of what led to the accident.
Hours of documentation, expeditions and interviews have been conducted to explore every angle and myth of what took place.
A tragedy never to be forgotten
The last recorded survivor of the sinking of the Titanic was Eliza Gladys ‘Millvina’ Dean, a British civil servant and cartographer. She was only two months old at the time of the tragedy, and the youngest passenger on board the ship.
She lived to a ripe old age of 97, and died of pneumonia on May 31, 2009 at a care home in Ashurst, Hampshire in the UK.
However, even with the passing of Dean, the story of the Titanic has remained one of the most famous tragedies in modern history, inspiring a string of in-depth documentaries as well as fiction based on the actual events.
Among the documentaries about the Titanic are “Waking the Titanic” (2012) directed by Francis Delany and “Secrets of the Titanic” (1986) by National Geographic.
Besides the 1958 film by Walter Lord called “A Night to Remember”, James Cameron’s “Titanic” (1997) is arguably the most well-known and loved, earning 14 Oscar nominations and winning 11, including for Best Director and Best Picture. Starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio as lovers, the romantic-disaster movie is based on actual events about the tragedy that revolve around a fictional love story.
While Rose and Jack were imaginary characters, the film did include the real-life characters of Margaret Brown, Captain Edward Smith and Joseph Bruce Ismay among a few others.