On the night of April 14,1912 the luxury line R.M.S. Titanic sank in to the cold North Atlanic ocean. Although the collison with an iceburg was the main cause of ship's sinking, a closer examanation of the events that lead up to the historic tragedy revealed that other factors were involves. Crew neglegienc, construction oversights, inspection errors, and even the unpreventable played parts in the most famous shipwerck in history.

The Titanic was built by Harland and Wolfe shipyards and owned by the White Star Line Company, of Liverpool, England whose owner was American millionaire J. Pierpont Morgan. The main reason that the Titanic was built was to beat out the other large luxury liner competition. Its main purpose was to be the biggest and the best. Ironically, this goal turned out to be one of the Titanic's downfalls. The Titanic weighed approximately 46,328 tons, was 882.5 feet long, measured 60.5 feet from the waterline to her boat deck, 175 feet from keel to the top of her four massive funnels, and was 92.5 feet wide. Capable of achieving 22 knots Titanic was not only the fastest moving man made object in the world, but also one of the largest.

nic disaster may have been foreshadowed by a struggling young author in 1898 (Lord, 97). It was that year when Morgan Robertson wrote of a large luxury liner called the Titan in a book called Futitlity. The Titan was a vast, luxurious ship that sank after a collision with an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean and had less than enough life boats for its passengers. The similarities between Robertson's Titan and the Titanic are uncanny. In fact, every detail of the fictional Titan matched with the real Titanic, including the amount of lifeboats, the iceberg in the North Atlantic and the size of the boat itself (Robertson, n.p.).

A small part of the blame can be attributed to the people who were not directly involved with her or were not on the ship long enough to do much to her. The inspection of the life boat drills was definitely not sufficient to pass an inspection. The investigating officer, Captain Maurice Clark, openly admitted that it was custom to overlook this "minor" deficiency. The Californian saw Titanic just before she hit the iceberg ( Lord, 25). When Titanic fired distress rockets they were seen by the Californian. The Californian did not, however, respond. In fact, at one point the captain was informed that the rockets that had been reported were definitely not distress rockets. That, however, is not possible as the rockets were reported by Titanic officer Charles Lightoller to be definite signs of distress. He added that they could in no way be interpreted as company signals ( United States Senate, 140, 271). The rockets were fired from about 12:25 a.m. until almost 1:30 a.m.. This gave the Californian over an hour to figure it out.

The closest reported ship in the area that night was the Californian. Her captain testified that they were nineteen miles away and were surrounded by an ice field. The Californian, in fact, had no idea what had happened. They thought that the rockets they saw were anything but distress signals and their radio had been shut down for the night (Lord, 23). Other ships however had not shut down their radios just yet. Titanic gave these ships her reported position. Any ship near this position was to respond to her for aid. The nearest ship was over four hours away at top speed. She started to head to this position. Approximately 15 minutes later, Titanic called in with a corrected position which put her farther west than originally stated (United States Senate, 92). This delayed the rescue ships even longer because they had started to head into the wrong direction. The first ship to arrive on the scene found a horrid sight of debris and bodies strewn among the sea when she arrived more than eight hours after the first S.O.S. in history was sent out by Titanic.

On April 14, 1912 the Titanic struck an iceberg in the cold North Atlantic. With only enough lifeboats for less than half of the passengers, man's ultimate dream became an utter nightmare. Although the iceberg was the most important ca

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Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)