• Question: Have you ever looked into the titanic we are doing the titanic as a school project can you tell me any cool facts ?

    Asked by jamima to Tom, Chris, Gina, Jack, Laura, Yetty on 15 Jun 2017. This question was also asked by Dancer2918, gnome.
    • Photo: Christopher Bullock

      Christopher Bullock answered on 15 Jun 2017:

      You are in luck, I did actually look into this in the first year of my engineering degree at university. The Titanic was designed to be unsinkable, indeed when they launched it they named it “the unsinkable ship”….a bit awkward in hindsight.

      There wasn’t really anything wrong with the physical design of the ship, it was a materials engineering problem: The type of steel that they used to build it was the best available at the time and was really strong at room temperature. The problem was that it was actually much weaker when it got cold and the North Atlantic where it sank is very, very cold. It was because of the steel being much weaker at these cold temperatures that the iceberg was able to tear through the ship so easily and sink it. If the Titanic had struck a rock in the Caribbean (where the sea is much warmer) instead of the iceberg, it might not have sunk.

    • Photo: Laura Walker

      Laura Walker answered on 15 Jun 2017:

      Not engineering related but – The Titanic could carry 64 lifeboats. they thought it look cluttered so they only carried 20 were actually aboard.

    • Photo: Tom Rooney

      Tom Rooney answered on 15 Jun 2017:

      Yes, James Cameron went down in a manned submersible to film the wreck and gather research material for his film “Titanic” (spoiler alert… it sinks in the end!)
      Here’s a cool fact she had 3 boilers but 4 funnels… the rear funnel was a fake one added because it made her look much more grand!

    • Photo: Yetunde Kolawole

      Yetunde Kolawole answered on 17 Jun 2017:

      Hi Jamima,

      I haven’t looked into it but I know that it was going from England to America and sank in the North Atlantic Ocean.

    • Photo: Gina Schade

      Gina Schade answered on 20 Jun 2017:

      I actually visited the Titanic museum in Belfast (where the Titanic was built). I read a couple funny stories from the exhibit, here is the one I remember best: A notable victim was Benjamin Guggenheim, an American businessman. Realising that the ship was going down, he and his valet, Victor Giglio, reputedly changed into their evening wear while he remarked: “We’ve dressed up in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.” They were last spotted on deck chairs drinking brandy and smoking cigars.

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