Sinking of the Titanic — Launch at Belfast · 130

Titanic was not the first liner lost to ice. It was the first whose passenger lists, wireless traffic and two governments’ transcripts made the failure of Edwardian safety rules impossible to bury. Harland & Wolff launched Titanic at Belfast on 31 May 1911. The liner carried twenty lifeboats with a combined capacity of about 1,178 people, a figure that met the British Board of Trade’s 1894 scale based on tonnage rather than headcount. About 2,200 passengers and crew were aboard on the maiden crossing.

Watertight bulkheads rose only as high as E Deck. Naval architect Edward Wilding later told the British inquiry that a long side-grazing tear along plate seams could flood several compartments. The design assumed a head-on or limited-compartment breach, not a running wound along the starboard side.

On 14 April the ship received multiple ice warnings, including from SS Californian and SS Mesaba. Captain Edward J. Smith kept a near-full speed of about 21–22 knots on a clear, moonless night. Lookouts in the crow’s nest had no binoculars. The iceberg was seen at about 23:40; the helm order came too late to clear it.