Titanic

16 Pages 4005 Words

e six anchor chains and two piles of cable drag chains, weighing eighty tons each, brought her to a halt. As is White Star’s practice, there is no christening (McCluskie, Sharpe, and Marriott, 474).
On February 3, 1912, she was dry docked in the Thompson Graving Dock in Belfast, Northern Ireland where she was fitted with her three massive propellers. The final phase of her fitting out included a final coat of paint applied to her hull. Finishing touches began on the interior and the installation, testing, and assigning of the call letters "MGY" to the Marconi Radio were completed (McCluskie, Sharpe, and Marriott, 475). At the beginning of March Titanic’s sister Olympic, who had been returned to dry dock for the replacement of a propeller blade on one of her three propellers, joined her for a short while (McDonald, 1).
Titanic was classified as a steel triple screw steamer, with an overall length of 882.75 feet, almost the length of four city blocks, breadth of 92.5 feet, and a depth of 59.6 feet. The gross registered tonnage was 46,329 and a net registered tonnage of 21,831. She had two triple-expansion eight cylinder engines and one low-pressure turbine engine with 6,906 registered horsepower, for a total horsepower of 46,000. Her estimated service speed was twenty-one knots with a top speed of twenty-three to twenty-four knots (National Maritime Museum, 1).
Among her gigantic features were four huge funnels, each one large enough to drive two trains through it. The Titanic had nine decks, and was as high as an eleven-story building (Appendix D: Deck View). She accommodated 735 first-class passengers, 674 second-class passengers, 1,026 third-class passengers, and 885 crewmembers (National Maritime Museum, 1). Twenty lifeboats were aboard which held a capacity of 1,178 persons.
As her name boasted, the Titanic was indeed the biggest ship in the world. She was nicknamed “the Millionaires’ Special,” “the ...