One of the most famous shipwrecks. 1,517 deaths. The Titanic. Hello, my name is Jisue Kang and My topic is to tell you about the Titanic. First I will tell you about the Titanic before the accident, and how the accident happened, about what information we have found after the disaster, the conditions of it today, about the movie they made after it, and finally few interesting facts, and my thoughts about the Titanic.
On April 10, 1912, the Titanic, largest ship afloat, left Southampton, England on its maiden voyage to New York City. The White Star Line (the company that built the Titanic, and was owned by J.P. Morgan, an American tycoon.) had spared no expense in assuring its luxury. It had cost $7.5 million, took 3000 men, and 2 years to build it. A legend even before it sailed, its passengers were a mixture of the world's wealthiest basking in the elegance of first class accommodations and immigrants packed into steerage. She was said to be the safest ship ever built, so safe that she carried only 20 lifeboats (enough to provide accommodation for only half her 2,200 passengers and crew). This discrepancy rested on the belief that since the ship's construction made her "practically unsinkable," her lifeboats were necessary only to rescue survivors of other sinking ships. Additionally, lifeboats took up valuable deck space. It stood 25 stories high, and weighed an incredible 46,000 tons.
Now I will go on about the disaster. The collision occurred at 11:40 P.M. on Sunday, April 14, 1912, and claimed 1517 lives. The gash that the iceberg cut into the hull of the Titanic was between 220 to 245 feet long. The total length of the ship was approximately 882 feet. The ship sank in less than 3 hours. Only 705 survived. That means that Titanic sank at a rate of 10 miles per hour (or 16 km per hour). According to the builders of the Titanic, even in the worst possible accident at sea, the ship should have stayed afloat for two to three days. This is why some people think that the Titanic’s sinking also had something to do with the flaws in the design. They also recorded that before they struck the burg, the wireless operators had received several ice warnings from others ships in the area, the Titanic continued to rush through the darkness at nearly full steam. When the ship was going down they tried to save as many people as possible. Women and children took the life boats first.
From now I will talk about what information we have found about the Titanic, and the conditions of it under the sea. The Titanic was rediscovered on July 14th, 1986. 74 years after it sank. It lies 12,600 feet (over 2.33 miles) at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The two pieces of the Titanic lay 1,970 feet apart from one another on the ocean floor. Because the front section of the Titanic went down nose first, the bow is buried 60 feet below the ocean floor. The huge gash is also buried. (Recent technology has allowed visual access to the damaged area of the hull) Since the death of Millvina Dean, May 31st of 2009, there are no longer any living survivors of the Titanic tragedy. Millvina Dean was just nine weeks old at the time of the ship’s sinking. April 14th, 2012 will be the 100th anniversary of the Titanic's sinking. Right now, many scientists, including Robert Ballard, are concerned that visits by tourists in submersibles, and the recovery of artifacts is making the decay of the ship faster. Underwater microbes have been eating away at Titanic's steel since the ship sank, and because of the recent visitors National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that "the hull and structure of the ship may collapse to the ocean floor within the next 50 years. Eventually there will be nothing left but a rust stain.
Now about the movie. Titanic the movie was released on December 19th 1997. It was produced by James Cameron. He is the same person who made the hit movie Avatar. The movie is known as an American epic romance and disaster film. It ran for 194 minutes, and it was nominated for fourteen Academy Awards, eventually winning eleven. It became the highest-grossing film of all time, with a worldwide gross of over $1.8 billion and it was the first film to reach the billion dollar mark. And it remained like that for twelve years until Cameron's next movie Avatar, surpassed it in 2010. Titanic is also ranked as the sixth best epic film of all time in AFI's 10 Top 10 by the American Film Institute. The film is due for theatrical re-release in 2012 after James Cameron completes its conversion into 3-D.
While I was researching, I found many interesting facts that amused me. One of them was that 2 dogs were among the Titanic survivors. Also, the Titanic is about as long as the Empire State building is tall. The lookouts in the crow's nest did not have binoculars. I thought that having binoculars might have prevented the Titanic tragedy. Another fact is that ALL the 1st class children survived. The first lifeboat launched was Lifeboat 7 on the starboard side with 28 people on board when it could have saved 65. I thought this was sad because even if they filled the capacity of each lifeboat, they still would have left a thousand people behind. So they should have saved anyone they could have. What I found was funny was that the ship was still so brand new when passengers boarded it on April 10, 1912 that the paint was still wet in some spots. Plus, because women and children got to the lifeboats first, one man dressed as a woman to escape.
So I talked about what the Titanic was like before the accident, about the disaster, about what information we have found after the disaster, the conditions of it today, and finally a few interesting facts, and my thoughts about the Titanic.
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