RMS Titanic ~ 100th Anniversary of the Sinking of The Ship of Dreams

It wasn't until I was roughly 7 years old that I first came to learn about the sinking of the RMS Titanic. I was up late one summer night watching old movies with my mother, which I always loved to do, and the movie that evening was "A Night to Remember" a 1958 British docudrama about the sinking of the Titanic on April 15, 1912. I remember being both captivated and horrified at the thought of this giant ship sinking in to the cold Atlantic ocean.

Since then I have always been intrigued by Titanic and her tragic maiden voyage.  I grew up in a suburb of Philadelphia and there where towns and colleges named after some of Philadelphia's socialites. Names like Elkins (Elkins Park) and Widener (Widener University) who where actually on board this historic ship. As a matter of fact the hospital I worked in for many years had both an Elkins and Weidner buildings because of the money these families had contributed to the hospital. So of course in 1997 when  James Cameron's movie "Titanic" was about to open I was completely ecstatic!!! I even went to St. Petersberg Florida to see the traveling Titanic exhibit and some of the actual items which had been recovered from Titanic. The movie opened and I was once again enamored by Titanic.

Here are some incredible photos I found at MSN News Photos.

Titanic before her Maiden Voyage

Final Construction Being Done on Titanic.

Titanic's Propellers

Titanic leaving Belfast, Ireland

The A-Deck Promenade.

First Class Dining Saloon on D-Deck

 Reading and Writing Room on A-Deck

 The After Grand Staircase

Illustration of the Grand Staircase

62 Year Old Captain Edward John Smith

Photo of the Iceberg which was rammed into by Titanic taken 5 days after the disaster by a Bohemian Seaman

Last Lifeboat Successfully Launched by Titanic Before Sinking. Photo Taken by a Passenger Aboard The Carpathia.

The New York Herald Reporting the Disaster

The Unsinkable Molly Brown Giving Captain Arthur Henry Rostron of the Carpathia an Award for His Services in Rescuing the Survivors of Titanic.

Titanic's Final Resting Place

"RMS Titanic was a British passage Liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912 after colliding with an Iceberg during its Maiden Voyage from Southampton, England to New York City. The sinking of the Titanic caused the deaths of 1,514 people in one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history. She was the largest ship afloat at the time of her maiden voyage. One of three Olympic class ocean liners operated by the White Star Line, she was built between 1909–11 by the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast. She carried 2,224 people."

~ Wikipedia

 Last night once again Titanic kept me up late as I had stumbled upon the National Geographic Special "Titanic ~ The Final Word with James Cameron". In this documentary Cameron assembles some of today's leading experts on Titanic and discusses the last moments of Titanic on the surface of the ocean. They go on to reconstruct how the damaged occurred using updated animation and by working backwards from the final resting place of the scattered wreckage. Cameron's group also came to the realization that most ships typically will capsized before sinking. Titanic managed not to capsize but did snap in two before the 2 1/2 mile descent to her watery grave. The group also approached the topic of what possibly could have been done to save more passengers given the knowledge we currently possess about Titanic's fateful night 100 years ago today.