50 Insane Facts About Titanic You Didn't Know

  The most iconic ship of all time, the RMSTitanic is also the most tragic vessel ever launched. Lauded as unsinkable by her designer and Captain, it took just one disastrous encounter with a stray iceberg to prove the folly of man. You're probably familiar with the story of the Titanic, but how much do you really know about this iconic vessel and its disastrous voyage? Hello and welcome to another episode of the Infographics Show- today we're taking a look at 50 incredible facts about the Titanic.

1. The RMS Titanic was the largest moveable man-made object of her day, 882 feet and 9 inches (269.1 meters) long, 92 feet (28 meters) wide, and175 feet (53.3 meters) high. She could move at 23 knots, making her fast for her size.


2. The Titanic had 840 cabins for passengers,416 in First Class, 162 in Second Class, and 262 in Third Class. She could carry up to 900 tons worth of freight and baggage.


3. She was powered by 29 triple-furnace coal-fired boilers burning 825 tons of coal per day, with a storage capacity of 6,611 tons of coal-just enough for a round trip across the Atlantic.


4. The Titanic was hardly an environmentally-friendly ship, however, dumping 100 tons of into each day.


5. The Titanic had four giant funnels reaching up 81.5 feet (25 meters) above the deck, the purpose of which was to ensure the passengers weren't covered in the soot that she ejected.


6. The fourth funnel was only added for aesthetic reasons, to make the ship look powerful and majestic, and used for ventilation.


7.The Titanic had 10 decks total, and strung along those decks were 10,000 light bulbs.


8. Two engines powered three propellers- two were at her rear and weighed 38 tons combined, and one was at her center and weighed 22 tons.


9. The Titanic was originally the SS Titanic-SS meaning Screw Steamer, as in driven by propellers or screws and also standing for steamship. She only became the RMS Titanic after marrying British Royal Mail, thus becoming Royal Mail Steamer Titanic.




10. Two anchors each weighing 15 tons were used to hold the mighty ship in place when docked. 20 horses were used to transport a single anchor during her construction.


11. In 1955 Walter Lord published A Night To Remember, a nonfiction account of the Titanic tragedy which was soon released as a movie in 1958. The story regenerated public interest in the tragedy after waning substantially over the years and is likely the only reason we still talk about her today.



12. The Titanic took two years to construct and cost an equivalent of 166 million dollars in today's money. That's 34 million dollars less than the cost of the 1997 movie Titanic, which was $200 million.


13. A 228 foot (69 meters) tall gantry was built over the Titanic to construct her, the largest ever built at the time, from which up to 15,000men would work during her construction. 


14.3,000,000 rivets were used to join together the pieces of the hull, however, unlike many other ships built at the time, to cut costs, the Titanic's rivets were a mix of iron and steel.

15. Even weaker iron rivets were used on the bow of the ship, which would be the section that later struck the iceberg.


16.8 construction workers were killed during the construction of the Titanic, and 246 were injured. An unwritten expectation from back in her time was of one death per 1 million pounds spent, which put her death total of 8 well under budget and was considered a great success.


17. The Titanic carried 75,000 pounds (34,000kilograms) of fresh meat, 40,000 eggs, 6,000 pounds (2700 kilograms) of butter, 15,000bottles of beer, 1,000 bottles of wine, 850 bottles of liquor, and 8,000 cigars.


18. Her crew and passengers drank 14,000 gallons(53,000 liters) a day.


19. For her last on the night of April14th, 1912, passengers in First Class enjoyed Oysters,, Filet Mignon, Saute of ChickenLyonnaise,  in mint sauce, roast, chocolate, and vanilla eclairs, and franchise cream. Passengers in Third Class had the option of gruel, cabin biscuits, and. Luckily for both First and Third Class, fresh fish would be pretty immediately available completely for free just a few hours later...


20. The Titanic was capable of carrying 64 lifeboats-well over her maximum capacity of 3,547 people- yet was only planned to carry 48. That number was eventually reduced to just20 for cosmetic reasons, as it made the decks look less cluttered.


21. Despite being far too few for the total number of passengers, the Titanic's 20 lifeboats were technically legal as law at the time was based on the gross register tonnage of a ship, not her passenger capacity.


22. The Titanic carried 2 wooden cutters with a capacity of 40 people each, fourteen 30 foot wooden lifeboats with a capacity of 65each, and four collapsible lifeboats with a capacity of 47 each. This meant only 33% of the Titanic's passengers and crew could fit on the lifeboats.


23. Because it took two and a half hours for the titanic to sink, had there been enough lifeboats every single person aboard could have been saved.


24. Of the 20 lifeboats aboard, only 18 were successfully launched- two collapsible lifeboats simply floated away.
Only 9 people were rescued from the water after the lifeboats launched, 3 of which died shortly after hypothermia.


25.30 people managed to survive by sitting, standing, or kneeling atop the upturned hull of collapsible lifeboat B after they failed to right it.


26. The Titanic had 3,500 life jackets aboard, but they were so cold that they would have been useless as people simply froze to death within minutes of entering the frigid.
Despite having a capacity of 65, the first lifeboat launched with just 28 people- this was due to people being reluctant to leave the ship as they did not consider themselves to be in imminent danger.


27. A total of 472 seats aboard the lifeboats went unused. 
Another lifeboat with a capacity of 65 carried only 12 people: 5 first-class passengers and 7 crew members. The press nicknamed it the 'Millionaire'sBoat' who accused the occupants of ignoring the cries for help from people in the. Some things never change.


28. Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon, a member of the 'Millionaire'sBoat', paid each of the 7 crewmembers in his lifeboat 5 pounds each, an equivalent of $510in today's dollars. He was later heavily criticized for paying the men but claimed that he was simply compensating them for the loss of their kit. We're sure it had absolutely nothing to do with launching the boat early and keeping it away from drowning victims desperately calling for help. 


29. Jack B Thayer, a survivor, said of the 'Millionaire'sBoat', “The partly filled lifeboat standing by about 100 yards away never came back. Why on Earth they never came back is a mystery. How could any human being fail to heed those cries?”. We think it’s because money clearly doesn't your humanity.


30. 1 lifeboat returned to try and save others after launching, despite fears of being overwhelmed by desperate victims or being dragged under by downward suction caused by the Titanic's sinking. We're guessing there were probably no rich people aboard that particular boat. 




31. Lifeboats floated for 1 hour and 10 minutes in open before the rescue ship Carpathia arrived on-scene. Luckily the seas were relatively gentle- had they been rough it's likely all would have perished.


32. The Carpathia secured 13 of the Titanic'slifeboats but left 7 to float adrift. Days later the Canadian ship Mackay-Bennetttried to bring one boat on board but failed. There's a chance at least one of the Titanic'slifeboats could still be bobbing around somewhere in the Atlantic.


33. Souvenir hunters removed the plates from the lifeboats containing the name Titanic, as well as the lifeboat numbers.

34. Able Seaman Tom Jones pried off the number8 from lifeboat 8 and sent it to Lucy Noel Martha, the Countess of Rothes.


35. It's thought the rest of the surviving lifeboats were put into use on the Titanic's sister ship the Olympic.


36.6 life jackets from the Titanic remain inexistence in museums or private collections around the world.


37. On the 25th of June, 2008, one blood-stained life was sold at auction for 34,692 pounds.


38. Prior to the Titanic's sinking, American author Morgan Robertson wrote the novel 'Futility', in which a liner named Titan strikes an iceberg on her maiden voyage.


39. Before her collision, the Titanic received6 ice warnings from passing ships.


40. Despite the fog and unsafe waters, the Titanicsteamed along at 22.5 knots, or just .5 knots below her top speed of 23 knots. From the moment lookout, Frederick Fleet spotted an iceberg dead ahead, it took only 30 seconds for the ship to crash into it.


41.4 forward compartments could have flooded without the Titanic sinking- but 6 were ruptured in the collision. The iron rivets used in her construction have been universally blamed for her sinking.


42. The iceberg caused a 220 to 245 foot (67-75meter) long gash under the line, causing an opening of cubic feet along with a fourth of the ship.


43. Flooding at a rate of 400 tons per minute, it took the Titanic 160 minutes to sink.


44. Approximately 38,000 tons filled the bow of the Titanic, causing the ship's stern to lift up out of them and split the ship in half just in front of the third funnel. 


45. It took the two sections of the titanic between5 and 10 minutes to reach the bottom.


46. The temperature at the time was 28 degrees(-2 Celsius), four degrees below freezing. The Titanic's Second Officer, Charles Lightoller, described hitting the as “a thousand knives being driven into one's body.”


47. A photograph taken by the liner Prinze Adelbertjust a few miles south of the Titanic's sinking may be of the iceberg responsible for her sinking.


48. The Titanic iceberg was thought to originally have been 1 mile long when first 'born' off the coast of Greenland, but was estimated to be between 200-400 feet (61-122 meters) at the time of the sinking. 


49. Approximately 300 icebergs reached the NorthAtlantic shipping lanes in April 1912, the highest number for 50 years.

50. The Titanic's Captain, Edward Smith, was quoted as saying, “I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder. I can not conceive of any vital disaster happening to this vessel.

 Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.”, while in command of the Adriatic. Had the Titanic not cut corners by using weak rivets, it's well possible that the good Captain may have been proven right. What other facts about the Titanic do you know? Were her designers really just tempting fate, claiming her to be unsinkable?