Monday
night for Halifax to get the passengers after they were landed.
Mr. Franklin made a guess that the Titanic's passengers
would get into Halifax on Wednesday. The Department of
Commerce and Labor notified the White Star Line that customs
and immigration inspectors would be sent from Montreal
to Halifax in order that there would be as little delay as
possible in getting the passengers on trains.

Monday night the world slept in peace and assurance.
A wireless message had finally been received, reading:

"All Titanic's passengers safe."

It was not until nearly a week later that the fact was
discovered that this message had been wrongly received in
the confusion of messages flashing through the air, and that
in reality the message should have read:

"Are all Titanic's passengers safe?"

With the dawning of Tuesday morning came the awful news
of the true fate of the Titanic.



CHAPTER II

THE MOST SUMPTUOUS PALACE AFLOAT

DIMENSIONS OF THE TITANIC--CAPACITY--PROVISIONS FOR
THE COMFORT AND ENTERTAINMENT OF PASSENGERS--
MECHANICAL EQUIPMENT THE ARMY OF ATTENDANTS REQUIRED.

THE statistical record of the great ship has news value
at this time.

Early in 1908 officials of the White Star Company
announced that they would eclipse all previous records in
shipbuilding with a vessel of staggering dimensions. The
Titanic resulted.

The keel of the ill-fated ship was laid in the summer of
1909 at the Harland & Wolff yards, Belfast. Lord Pirrie,
considered one of the best authorities on shipbuilding in the
world, was the designer. The leviathan was launched on
May 31, 1911, and was completed in February, 1912, at a
cost of $10,000,000.


SISTER SHIP OF OLYMPIC

The Titanic, largest liner in commission, was a sister ship
of the Olympic. The registered tonnage of each vessel is
estimated as 45,000, but officers of the White Star Line say
that the Titanic measured 45,328 tons. The Titanic was
commanded by Captain E. J. Smith, the White Star admiral,
who had previously been on the Olympic.

She was 882 1/2 long, or about four city blocks, and
was 5000 tons bigger than a battleship twice as large as the
dreadnought Delaware.

Like her sister ship, the Olympic, the Titanic was a four-
funneled vessel, and had eleven decks. The distance from
the keel to the top of the funnels was 175 feet. She had an
average speed of twenty-one knots.

The Titanic could accommodate 2500 passengers. The
steamship was divided into numerous compartments, separated
by fifteen bulkheads. She was equipped with a gymnasium,
swimming pool, hospital with operating room, and
a grill and palm garden.


CARRIED CREW OF 860

The registered tonnage was 45,000, and the displacement
tonnage 66,000. She was capable of carrying 2500 passengers
and the crew numbered 860.

The largest plates employed in the hull were 36 feet long,
weighing 43 1/2 tons each, and the largest steel beam used was
92 feet long, the weight of this double beam being 4 tons.
The rudder, which was operated electrically, weighed 100
tons, the anchors 15 1/2 tons each, the center (turbine) propeller
22 tons, and each of the two "wing" propellers 38
tons each. The after "boss-arms," from which were sus-
pended the three propeller shafts, tipped the scales at 73 1/2
tons, and the forward "boss-arms" at 45 tons. Each link
in the anchor-chains weighed 175 pounds. There were more
than 2000 side-lights and windows to light the public rooms
and passenger cabins.

Nothing was left to chance in the construction of the
Titanic. Three million rivets (weighing 1200 tons) held the
solid plates of steel together. To insure stability in binding
the heavy plates in the double bottom, half a million rivets,
weighing about 270 tons, were used.

All the plating of the hulls was riveted by hydraulic power,
driving seven-ton riveting machines, suspended from traveling
cranes. The double bottom extended the full
length of the vessel, varying from 5 feet 3 inches to 6 feet 3
inches in depth, and lent added strength to the hull.


MOST LUXURIOUS STEAMSHIP

Not only was the Titanic the largest steamship afloat but
it was the most luxurious. Elaborately furnished cabins
opened onto her eleven decks, and some of these decks were
reserved as private promenades that were engaged with the
best suites. One of these suites was sold for $4350 for the
boat's maiden and only voyage. Suites similar, but which
were without the private promenade decks, sold for $2300.

The Titanic differed in some respects from her sister ship.
The Olympic has a lower promenade deck, but in the Titanic's
case the staterooms were brought out flush with the outside
of the superstructure, and the rooms themselves made much
larger. The sitting rooms of some of the suites on this deck
were 15 x 15 feet.

The restaurant was much larger than that of the Olympic
and it had a novelty in the shape of a private promenade deck
on the starboard side, to be used exclusively by its patrons.
Adjoining it was a reception room, where hosts and hostesses
could meet their guests.

Two private promenades were connected with the two most
luxurious suites on the ship. The suites were situated about
amidships, one on either side of the vessel, and each was about
fifty feet long. One of the suites comprised a sitting room,
two bedrooms and a bath.

These private promenades were expensive luxuries. The
cost figured out something like forty dollars a front foot for
a six days' voyage. They, with the suites to which they are
attached, were the most expensive transatlantic accommodations
yet offered.


THE ENGINE ROOM

The engine room was divided into two sections, one given
to the reciprocating engines and the other to the turbines.
There were two sets of the reciprocating kind, one working each
of the wing propellers through a four-cylinder triple expansion,
direct acting inverted engine. Each set could generate 15,000
indicated horse-power at seventy-five revolutions a minute.
The Parsons type turbine takes steam from the reciprocating
engines, and by developing a horse-power of 16,000 at 165
revolutions a minute works the third of the ship's propellers,
the one directly under the rudder. Of the four funnels of the
vessel three were connected with the engine room, and the
fourth or after funnel for ventilating the ship including the
gallery.

Practically all of the space on the Titanic below the upper
deck was occupied by steam-generating plant, coal bunkers
and propelling machinery. Eight of the fifteen water-tight
compartments contained the mechanical part of the vessel. There
were, for instance, twenty-four double end and five single end
boilers, each 16 feet 9 inches in diameter, the larger 20 feet long
and the smaller 11 feet 9 inches long. The larger boilers had
six fires under each of them and the smaller three furnaces.
Coal was stored in bunker space along the side of the ship
between the lower and middle decks, and was first shipped
from there into bunkers running all the way across the vessel
in the lowest part. From there the stokers handed it into
the furnaces.

One of the most interesting features of the vessel was the
refrigerating plant, which comprised a huge ice-making and
refrigerating machine and a number of provision rooms on the
after part of the lower and orlop decks. There were separate
cold rooms for beef, mutton, poultry, game, fish, vegetables,
fruit, butter, bacon, cheese, flowers, mineral water, wine,
spirits and champagne, all maintained at different temperatures
most suitable to each. Perishable freight had a compartment
of its own, also chilled by the plant.

COMFORT AND STABILITY

Two main ideas were carried out in the Titanic. One was
comfort and the other stability. The vessel was planned to be
an ocean ferry. She was to have only a speed of twenty-one
knots, far below that of some other modern vessels, but she was
planned to make that speed, blow high or blow low, so that
if she left one side of the ocean at a given time she could be
relied on to reach the other side at almost a certain minute
of a certain

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