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Building The World's First Unsinkable Ocean Liner

By Mike Singleton - MikeydredPublished 2 years ago 3 min read
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The Titanic Slipway Belfast

Prologue on The Sinking of the Titanic

This is for the Vocal "Ship of Dreams" Challenge on the 110th Anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. This will be observations on the story of building the world's first unsinkable Ocean Liner.

To this end, I have included two videos by Public Service Broadcasting the first being the building of The Titanic, the Unsinkable Ship. The second is the Launch of the Titanic on its Maiden Voyage to New York from Southampton. Bothe the videos fit a lot of information in, as well as being accompanied by excellent music so well worth your time as your read this.

The Titanic On The Belfast Slipway

They stood on the slipway in Belfast, construction workers with their tools. Wrenches, hammers, riveters, welding apparatus, and much more to implement the plans of the mind responsible for the greatest liner to grace the high seas ever.

They would use their hammers and wrenches and cranes and forges to put together this ocean-going leviathan that stretched out forever and reached to the skies. For over two years from the laying of the keel until the liner went down the slipway they worked on this amazing piece of construction which was to be seen as a luxury floating hotel rather than a means of transport.

For those with the means, this was to be the perfect way to cross the oceans of the world in. total opulence.

The ship was to span 883 feet from stern to bow (one-sixth of a mile), 175 feet from the bottom of the hull to the top of the smokestacks (a ten-storey building) and its hull would be divided into 16 compartments that were presumed to be watertight. Because four of these compartments may be flooded without causing a critical loss of buoyancy, the Titanic was considered unsinkable.

Harland and Wolff put their leading designers to work designing the liner, overseen by Lord Pirrie, a director of both Harland and Wolff and the White Star Line under whose jurisdiction the Titanic was to sail.

The Titanic's construction began on 31 March 1909.and took about 26 months to build. It was designed essentially as an enormous floating box girder, with the keel acting as a backbone and the frame of the hull forming the ribs. At the base of the ship, a double bottom 5 feet 3 inches deep supported 300 frames, each between 24 inches and 36 inches apart and measuring up to about 66 feet long. They terminated at the bridge deck (B Deck) and were covered with steel plates which formed the outer skin of the ship.

The genius design of this ship meant that she could not be beaten by nature, and would be a permanent fixture on the seas and oceans of this world, her maiden voyage to leave the Belfast slipway and make her way to Southampton.

Lifeboats were mere decoration, to put passengers' minds at ease, but the Titanic was unsinkable so they were more for decoration than practicality. The Titanic carried two and a half thousand passengers but the twenty lifeboats only had room for half that number.

The Maiden Voyage of the Titanic

From Southampton Dock she would pick up her passengers for her maiden voyage to New York, for the journey of a lifetime, safe in the knowledge they were passengers on the world’s first unsinkable ocean liner…

Mother Nature however had other ideas ……..

I have included the Bob Dylan song "Tempest" about the sinking of the Titanic to conclude my story on this subject. It is almost fifteen minutes long but evokes what happened perfectly in my opinion.

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About the Creator

Mike Singleton - Mikeydred

Weaver of Tales, Poems, Music & Love

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