Ancestors, history buffs mark Titanic sinking anniversary


A titan of the seas slipped beneath the ocean waves April 15, 1912, lost to the depths for eight decades. More than a hundred years later, the legacy of the Titanic and its famous list of passengers, from the highest of the upper class to the lowest in third class or steerage, still spark wonderment of how can something so beautiful, and supposedly unsinkable, be sunk by a single, large iceberg.

The Titanic by the numbers:  

  • 3,300- total capacity of passengers and crew
  • 1,517 people died
  • 16- the number of standard life boats combined with four collapsible boats that could hold 1,178 people
  • 37 seconds to react after the sighting of the iceberg
  • 97, the age of the last survivor, Millvina Dean, who died in 2009.  She was only 2 months old when the Titanic sank.

Titanic artifacts:

With a ship so large, auctions are somewhat common, the latest, according to the Guardian, being held at RR Auction in Boston is expected to bring in a million dollars.  A large silver loving cup is the center piece of the auction.  Molly Brown presented the cup to the captain of the Carpathia, the ship that rescued Titanic survivors.  Starting bid for the cup is $25,000.
Other items in the auction, a gold collar stud, a silver half-dollar and a steel rivethead with "SS Titanic 1912" stamped into it.  The rivet was taken by shipyard worker where the Titanic was built.  
The auction also includes large scale plans of the Titanic that was made for the inquiry of the sinking.   The hearings found the sinking was caused by the collision with the iceberg as the ship traveled too fast, and not by design and construction problems.  According to some scholars, both contemporaries of the disaster as well as current Titanic experts, the ship was doomed by what were considered state-of-the-art designs that were flawed. 

The wreckage of the Titanic was found in 1985 off the coast of Newfoundland.

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