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Titanic Facts For Kids

You might have heard of the famous RMS Titanic luxury ship which sadly sank after hitting an iceberg on April 15, 1912 on her very first voyage.

Let’s explore some awesome facts about the Titanic.

Quick Titanic Facts

  • Officially, Titanic was in charge of transporting mail for the British Postal Service.
  • Building the Titanic took more than two years.
  • Titanic’s construction cost exceeded $7 million.
  • After the iceberg hit the Titanic, the first lifeboat was launched an hour later.
  • It’s possible that the iceberg that struck the Titanic rose 100 feet above the ocean.
  • The Titanic’s length was a little over 900 feet.
  • There were just 23 women among the 908 crew members on the Titanic.
  • Less than one-third of those on board the Titanic were still alive.
  • Total 25 engineering officers perished while attempting to keep The Titanic afloat.

Titanic Construction

On 30 April 1907, at a dinner between J Bruce Ismay and Lord William James Pirrie, the idea to build the Titanic sprang to mind.

They wanted to build a ship that was even better than the luxury Cunard line on the Atlantic. 

Once they’d decided what they were going to do, the planning went full steam ahead.

Titanic

It took 3 years to build and cost $7,500,000 (equivalent to $400 million today). 

Titanic project has employed over 15,000 workers, mostly men.

Eight construction workers – who were paid $10 per week – died during construction.

The Titanic was built in Belfast in the Harland and Wolff shipyard by the White Star Line company. It was owned by JP Morgan, an American tycoon.

Titanic at Harland and Wolff
Titanic under construction at the Harland and Wolff shipyard

The big launch

After her launch in Belfast, Ireland on 31 May 1911 in the presence of about 90 crew members and a crowd of about 100,000 people, she took 62 seconds to travel the slipway sliding on 22 tons of soap and tallow.

It was a grand occasion. On 2 April 1912 the Titanic sailed for Southampton from Belfast.

On 10 April 1912 she sailed from Southampton docks on her first Atlantic crossing to New York.

titanic-southampton
The Titanic in Southampton

The journey was meant to take 137 hours – the anticipated journey time sailing from Queenstown to New York City.

The captain of the Titanic was Captain Edward J. Smith, who was a master at sea with over 43 years’ experience.

Lots of people say that he actually ignored iceberg warnings as he was trying to set a new time record. This isn’t true. That would be very irresponsible!

Captain Edward J Smith
Captain Edward J Smith

How big was the Titanic?

The Titanic was approximately 882.5 feet (269 metres) long and about 92.5 feet (28.2 metres) wide at its widest point. It had a height from water line to Boat Deck of 60 feet.

It was almost as long as three football fields, as tall as a 17 storey building, with four smoke stacks; only one of the smoke stacks was for decoration to give the ship a balanced look.

The engines used more than 800 tons of coal daily and the top speed was 24 knots (27 miles per hour).

She was one of the first ships to have a telephone system and electric lights in all bedrooms, with four elevators, a heated swimming pool, a gym, two libraries and two barber shops.

There were 840 staterooms, 9 decks and 10,000 light bulbs. Wow!

swimming pool Titanic

Titanic ticket costs

The cost of a First Class ticket was $4,350 (£875). It was $1,750 for a Standard Class ticket and $30 for a Third Class ticket.

The Third Class tickets were mostly for families who were emigrating to the United States.

In many cases they had sold everything to get onto the Titanic and to give them some money to get started in America.

Those were some seriously expensive tickets!

ticket for Titanic

All about the passengers and crew

Titanic could carry about 3,547 people when fully loaded, which is both passengers and crew but they sailed from Southampton with 2,223 on board.

1,324 were passengers and 885 were crew.

There were 13 honeymooning couples too.

marriage

There were around 2,200 passengers and crew members on Titanic. When the Titanic sank, the total number of survivors was around 705. Of these, 492 were passengers most of them from First Class, along with 214 crew members.

All 25 engineering officers died whilst trying to keep the ship afloat.

Two dogs survived and the band played music till the ship went under.

Unfortunately, none of the band members survived.

band on Titanic

What supplies did the Titanic have on board?

Here are just some of the supplies the Titanic carried (she certainly did carry a lot!):

75,000 pounds of fresh meat

36,000 apples

40 tons of potatoes

1,000 loaves of bread

10,000 pounds of sugar

make a rubber egg

40,000 fresh eggs

6,000 pounds of butter

15,000 bottles of ale

8,000 cigars

egg cup

The sinking of the Titanic

On 14 April 1912 the Titanic received warnings of icebergs in the area from other ships. The lifeboat drill for that day was cancelled by the Captain, so the crew didn’t know what to do.

Check out more interesting facts about April month for kids.

After the second iceberg warning the ship changed course, which ended up being a big mistake as it took it right into a collision course with the iceberg.

iceberg

More warnings came, but Captain Smith didn’t receive them. He also didn’t receive the final one at 9.40pm that night.

At 11pm the crew on the ship “Californian”, sent a message to say she’d stopped sailing due to icebergs, but the acting captain wasn’t interested.

iceberg-titanic

The fatal iceberg was 15 miles (24 kilometers) away. There was no wind and the waters were calm. This actually made it more difficult to spot icebergs as you couldn’t see water breaking up against it.

Titanic hit the iceberg at 11.39 PM on April 15th, 1912.

After hitting the iceberg, it took Titanic approximately 2 hours and 40 minutes to fully sink. 

When the Captain put out a distress signal, the nearest ship – the Californian – 20 miles (32 kilometers) away, had turned off her wireless.

Carpathia rescue ship

The ship Carpathia – 58 miles (93 kilometers) away – sent a message to say she was on her way, but she was actually four hours away.

Lifeboats were launched, but lots of them weren’t actually very full.

By 2.20am the Titanic slipped beneath the freezing water which could kill people quickly.

lifeboats on Titanic

By 4.10am the Carpathia arrived and the captain Arthur Rostron said: “Except for the [life] boats beside the ship and the icebergs, the sea was strangely empty…”

By 8.30am the Californian arrived after realising the disaster and by 8.50am the Carpathia sailed for New York with 705 survivors and many dead.

It was a very sad occasion.

new york statue of liberty

Interesting Facts about the Titanic

The approximate age of the iceberg’s snow was 10,000 years. Only 1/10th of its mass could be seen above water.

Titanic could carry 64 lifeboats.

titanic-artifacts

48 lifeboats were originally planned for the ship, but this was reduced in number so the decks would look less cluttered. This meant that 20 lifeboats were actually carried aboard.

It took 74 years before the wreck was rediscovered 2.3 miles (nearly 4 kilometers) under the sea.

It took 15 minutes for the Titanic to reach the ocean floor, sinking at a speed of around 10 miles per hour (16 kilometers per hour).

About 6,000 artifacts have been recovered from the wreck to date.

pay and money

When it opened, the movie Titanic was the first film to ever reach the billion-dollar mark.

The initial total amount of money the movie made was $1.84 billion.

It stayed the highest grossing film until Avatar passed it in 2010.

Further Reading

Read more about the story of Harland and Wolff and Titanic.

History facts.

Guatemala History

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