You may already know that the Titanic hit an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on the night of April 14, 1912, and that it sank two hours and forty minutes later. Did you know that there were only two bathtubs for third class passengers or that the crew had only seconds to react to the iceberg? These are just a couple of the interesting facts about the Titanic that we’re going to explore.
1. It was the most expensive moving object of that time. At the time of her launch, the Royal Mail Steamer Titanic was the largest man-made moving object on Earth. The ship cost $7.5 million to build. Fun Fact: James Cameron’s 1997 movie about the disaster had a production budget of $200 million.
2. It was definitely not a one-man job. More than 15,000 men worked on the ship during its construction in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
3. It was over 882 feet (269 meters) long. That’s almost three football fields. It also weighed 52,310 tons. The Titanic featured an onboard swimming pool, a gymnasium, a squash court. It had a gross registered tonnage (i.e., carrying capacity) of 46,328 tons, and when fully laden the ship displaced (weighed) more than 52,000 tons. The Titanic was approximately 882.5 feet (269 metres) long and about 92.5 feet (28.2 metres) wide at its widest point.
4. One of the funnel didn’t work. Only three of the funnels were actually functional. The extra one was just to make the ship look more impressive because the ship designers thought three 4 funnels will give a more aggressive look to Titanic.