Ancient images taken before and after the sinking of the Titanic

Later, the names Olympic, Titanic and Gigantic were chosen (later changed to Britannic), in reference to the three races of the Greek mythology: the Olympians, the titans and the giants. The projects of the three vessels were made at the Harland and Wolff offices in Belfast, Ireland.

The designers were William Pirrie, his nephew Thomas Andrews, construction manager and head of the design department of Harland and Wolff, and his brother-in-law Alexander Carlisle, the shipyard's chief designer and general manager. Carlisle's responsibilities included decorations, the equipment, the safety devices and all the general arrangements, including the implementation of an efficient system of davits for lifeboats.

The final plans were completed in the autumn of 1908 and the materials needed for the construction were commissioned by Harland and Wolff. Its construction was financed by the American businessman J. P. Morgan and his company International Mercantile Marine Company, and began on March 31, 1909

The total cost was 7.5 million dollars at the time, that is, about 172 million dollars at the current rate. In order to differentiate the two brothers, the Olympic was built with its helmet painted  in white, while the Titanic was built with its helmet painted in black.

Standard first class cabins were adorned with white wood paneling, expensive furniture and other elegant decorations. They only had shared bathrooms that had hot and cold water. It also had electric stoves.

In the case of the four most luxurious suites, chimneys with beautifully built-in electric stoves were used in the living rooms. As an innovation in travel of the time, the Titanic had three elevators for the first class and one for the second class.

The ship had very old security rules, it had less lifeboats than it  was really needed. It did not even reach half the passengers, only 1178 people could use them.

Towards the bow there was the bridge and the first block, which included the officers' rooms, the marconi radiotelegraphy room, the machines that moved the elevators and six first-class simple rooms. On the walls of this block, there were circular windows that illuminated the first-class interior rooms of the lower deck.

The second block was made up of the first class Grand Staircase and the gymnasium. The stairway covered this deck to cover E; on the upper level was a glass dome that provided natural light to the staircase along its levels by means of skylights on either side.

Among the almost nine hundred people that were part of the Titanic crew, 66 belonged to the deck crew (officers, sailors, lookouts and foremen), 325 were mechanics (coal workers, stokers, greasers, electricians, etc.), and finally 494 were members of the care team (flight attendants, stewards, cooks, radio operators, etc.)

The captain of the ship was Captain Edward Smith, the most respected officer of the White Star Line and an extremely popular captain among first class passengers, having commanded all the largest and newest ships of the company since 1904.

The Titanic orchestra was composed by eight musicians. However, the band acted in two different groups; one was a quintet led by the violinist Wallace Hartley, 33, and the other a musical trio that played for customers of the Restaurant à la carte. Each set had its own melodic repertoire. Under normal circumstances, they did not play melodies together, although Hartley exercised direct supervision over all the musicians.

The ship began its maiden voyage from Southampton (England) to New York on Wednesday, April 10, 1912, with Captain Edward John Smith in command, who before the trip said that this was  going to be his last command before retiring as he wanted to spend more time with his wife and daughter.

The days passed without incident, but on April 13, the first reports of sighting of ice blocks on the route began to arrive; at least a dozen messages could be received before the Marconi telegraph failed for a period of 10 hours.

Once the communication in the radio booth was restored, the radiotelegraphists began to receive warnings about the danger of icebergs, which were ignored or not taken into account by the replacement officers. It was generally believed that ice was not a very worrisome danger for large ships. The passage of ships very close to the ice was not uncommon, and even some frontal collisions had not been disastrous.

The friction of the ice with that mass of more than 46,000 tons thrown at high speed, generated enough energy to tear the steel plates off the starboard side of the ship, about 5 m below the waterline. Although the width of the breaks did not exceed 5 cm, affecting five compartments of the lower deck, caused the ship fatal damage.

During this time, the crew had the passengers boarded in the lifeboats, beginning with those of the upper classes. The first boats were occupied with few passengers. And although the ship complied with the rescue measures required by the legislation then in force, the capacity of the lifeboats was not enough for the number of people on board, between the passage and the crew.

The remains of the Titanic were located on September 1, 1985 at 1:05 a.m. m. by a Franco-American expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel of the IFREMER and by Dr Robert Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The discovery of the remains made by the team of Ballard and Michel made  the interest for the Titanic return to the present. Since that time numerous exhibitions of objects rescued from the wreck and historical and cultural societies are appearing. They disseminate and investigate everything related to the transatlantic.