ABOARD THE SHIP OF DREAMS

FACTS

1. Titanic burned around 600 tonnes of coal a day – hand shovelled into its furnaces by a team of 176 men. Almost 100 tonnes of ash were ejected into the sea every 24 hours.

2. The ship's interiors were loosely inspired by those at the Ritz hotel in London. Facilities on board included a gym, pool, Turkish bath, a kennel for first class dogs, and a squash court. It even had its own on board newspaper – the Atlantic Daily Bulletin.

3. 20 horses were required to carry the main anchor.

4. 100,000 people turned up to see the ship’s launch on May 31, 1911.

5. 22 tons of soap and tallow (rendered beef or mutton fat) were smeared on the slipway to assist its unhindered passage into the River Lagan.

6. The last supper served to first-class passengers consisted of 11 courses.

7. First-class passengers were given a music book containing 352 songs. Musicians on board were required to know them all, in case requests were made.

8. The last remaining survivor of the disaster, Millvina Dean, died on May 31, 2009, aged 97. She was two months old at the time of the sinking.

9. Just 37 seconds elapsed between the sighting of the 100 feet tall iceberg, that came from a glacier in Greenland, and the collision.

10. A lifeboat drill, scheduled for April 14, was cancelled for unknown reasons.

11. At the time of the ship’s sinking, the temperature would have been -2°C – few would have survived longer than 15 minutes in the water, while around one in five would have died within two minutes from cold shock.

12. The wreck of the Titanic was discovered in 1985 and lies 370 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, around 12,500 feet below the surface.



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