The hull was immediately towed to a mammoth fitting-out dock where thousands of workers would spend most of the next year building the ship’s decks, constructing her lavish interiors and installing the 29 giant boilers that would power her two main steam engines. More than 100,000 people attended the launching, which took just over a minute and went off without a hitch.

On May 31, 1911, Titanic’s immense hull–the largest movable manmade object in the world at the time–made its way down the slipways and into the River Lagan in Belfast. In March 1909, work began in the massive Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland, on the second of these three ocean liners, Titanic, and continued nonstop for two years. Part of a new “Olympic” class of liners, each ship would measure 882 feet in length and 92.5 feet at their broadest point, making them the largest of their time. Pirrie, chairman of the shipbuilding company Harland and Wolff. Bruce Ismay, chief executive of White Star, discussed the construction of three large ships with William J. The same year that Cunard unveiled its two magnificent liners, J. Lusitania met its tragic end on May 7, 1915, when a torpedo fired by a German U-boat sunk the ship, killing nearly 1,200 of the 1,959 people on board and precipitating the United States’ entry into World War I.ĭid you know? Passengers traveling first class on Titanic were roughly 44 percent more likely to survive than other passengers. Cunard’s other masterpiece, Lusitania, launched the same year and was lauded for its spectacular interiors.

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