Titanic facts & the people who were there
Over 100 years have passed since the shocking — and entirely avoidable — Titanic tragedy, and many of us remain fascinated with the many details and stories leading up to the events beginning just before midnight on April 14, 1912.
Here we’ve assembled some essential Titanic facts and stats about the ship, as well as those who traveled on her doomed maiden voyage.
Scroll on to see our large (and growing!) collection of articles and interviews from the moment the news broke — and beyond.
Titanic facts: The ship
Length: 882 feet 9 inches
Breadth: 92 feet
Height: 175 feet (funnels to keel)
Top speed: 23 knots (approximately 26 mph)
Rooms on the Titanic:
1st class staterooms: 416
2nd class staterooms: 162
3rd class staterooms: 262
Total number of staterooms: 840
Titanic facts: Timeline of events
April 10, 1912
12pm: Titanic launches on her maiden voyage
April 14
Throughout the day: Seven iceberg warnings received
11:40 pm: Iceberg struck the Titanic on the starboard side of her bow within moments of the lookout spotting it
11:50 pm: Water had risen 14 feet in the front part of the ship
April 15
12:05 am: Lifeboats were uncovered and passengers and crew started assembling on deck
12:25 am: The Carpathia — about 58 miles away — picked up the Titanic distress calls and turned to rescue passengers
2:05 am: The last lifeboat left the ship, leaving 1,500 people still aboard the rapidly sinking ship
2:20 am: The Titanic sunk fully into the sea
4:10 am: The Carpathia arrived on the scene and began boarding passengers from the lifeboats
8:50 am: With 703 survivors on board, the Carpathia set off for New York
April 18
9:00 pm: The Carpathia docked in New York
April 22 to May 15
Ships were sent to the site of the Titanic sinking, where they recovered 328 bodies

Titanic facts: Passengers & crew
Titanic max capacity (including passengers and crew): 3,547
Total number on maiden journey: 2,218
Maximum number of passengers Titanic could carry: 2,566
Number of Titanic passengers on board: 1,300
Adult male: 776
Adult female: 412
Children: 112
1st class: 319
2nd class: 272
3rd class (steerage): 709
Number of Titanic crew on board: 918
Male: 896
Female: 22
Titanic facts: Casualties & survivors*
Titanic passenger deaths / survivors / survival rate:
812 / 488 / 37%
Adult male: 648 / 128 / 16%
Adult female: 108 / 304 / 72%
Children: 56 / 56 / 50%
1st class: 120 / 199 / 62%
2nd class: 155 / 117 / 43%
3rd class: (steerage): 537 / 172 / 25%
Titanic crew deaths / survivors / survival rate:
703 / 215 / 23%
Male: 701 / 195 / 21%
Female: 2 / 20 / 91%
Total deaths / survivors / survival rate:
1,523 / 703 / 32%
What did the Titanic look like?
Before her maiden -- and final -- voyage, there was a lot of hype about the Titanic's unprecedented size, safety and lush accommodations. Here, we have some photos and diagrams that detail her special features as a luxury liner.

Inside the Titanic
See what it looked like inside the Titanic – the interiors of fancy lounges, dining rooms, first-class cabins and other luxurious delights – before the ship sunk to the ocean floor on her maiden voyage in 1912.

Titanic cross-section diagrams
How was the Titanic ship laid out inside? Check out several different Titanic cross-section views, and get an idea of the size and the layout of the doomed vessel.
First reports of the Titanic sinking

RMS Titanic news: These first stories of the sinking disaster dated April 15, 1912 were wildly inaccurate
Here are some front pages of newspapers around the country, showing very first breaking Titanic news on the night she sank. There was very little information available at the time, and some news reports were, sadly (but unsurprisingly), riddled with errors.

April 15: Liner Titanic strikes iceberg, sinking head down
Thousands in dire peril on the Atlantic. Largest vessel afloat reported sinking head down; women put off in boats

April 16: 1,492 go down to their death in loss of the Titanic
Woman and children saved; men stay to die; pitiful scenes as news is awaited; world’s most noted names among “missing”

April 17: New York's reaction to news of the Titanic disaster
The last faint hopes lingered in the hearts of many that more than the 868 survivors of the wreck of the Titanic carried by the Carpathia had been saved by some of the other vessels that hastened to answer the great White Star liner’s call of distress...

When the Titanic sank: See a vintage newsreel with authentic footage
This is film footage from 1912 that was incorporated into a newsreel to show to moviegoers shortly after the Titanic disaster.
Whose fault was the Titanic disaster?
Naturally, once the final number of how many people died on the Titanic was known, the world wanted to know how this disaster happened, how it could be avoided in the future, and who was at fault.

Titanic lifeboats: Editorial cartoons published right after the disaster pulled no punches
The Titanic was one of the most luxurious, well-appointed cruise liners ever, with seemingly no expense spared… except when it came to passenger safety in the event of an emergency. Artists had a lot to say about the lack of sufficient lifeboats and White Star Line's culpability.

April 23: Titanic witnesses blame the ship's officers for the fatal collision
Two surviving members of Titanic’s crew place blame for tragedy on White Star Line officials and officers of the boat, claiming that they had ignored warnings of the iceberg sighting
The perils of underwater ice
How did the great "unsinkable" Titanic sink so quickly? Contemporary mariner experts offered their speculations about the weather conditions (or lack thereof) that might have played a role in the disaster.

Titanic hit "growler" iceberg
On the day following the Titantic disaster, experts considered whether fog or mist obscured the deadly iceberg from view.

The Titanic's last desperate SOS messages sent as the ship was sinking
...but after just a few days, as accounts from survivors and other crews that had been in the area that night started coming in, opinions on this matter had shifted.
Those who died and those who survived
In addition to heartbreaking tales of courage from some of the casualties of the Titanic's sinking, we've also gathered a collection of Titanic survivor stories.

5 Heroic and heartbreaking stories of people who died on the Titanic (1912)
Tales of courage about people who died on the Titanic fascinate us to this day. Here are a few stories about some of the ship's most prominent passengers in those final terrifying moments.

The Titanic's terrifying last moments before sinking to the ocean floor
Below are several chapters from a book that was issued the same year as the Titanic disaster, and was called simply Titanic. While many aspects of the story as published were based on interviews and official reports, the author, Filson Young, filled in any gaps in the narrative as best he could, with a blend of conjecture and creativity.

See how the Titanic survivors in lifeboats were rescued by the ship Carpathia
Fleeing the sinking ship in lifeboats, many Titanic survivors were saved by the first rescue ship on the scene. See how it happened, and what it was like when they finally made it to New York.

Titanic survivors tell how they made it off the doomed ship
These graphic accounts of the terrible scenes aboard the Titanic after it struck the iceberg and of the hardships endured by the survivors before they were rescued are related by men who reached port on the rescue ship, Carpathia.

Sketches of the Titanic sinking: A survivor explains how the huge ship went down
Below are terrifying and telling sketches of the Titanic’s last moments, drawn by Lewis P Skidmore, who was a passenger on the rescue ship Carpathia

How I was saved from the Titanic: A Titanic survivor's story
Charlotte Collyer lived through the tragic disaster the world remembers more than 100 years later. Here, read about what happened in this dramatic and compelling first-person account from a Titanic survivor.

Saved from the Titanic, but the loss too much to bear: A follow-up from survivor Charlotte Collyer
In 1912, people offered a generous and spontaneous outpouring of aid and encouragement to Mrs Collyer and her daughter, who were saved from the Titanic. Unfortunately, however, not all survivor stories have happy endings.

The 'unsinkable' Titanic went down 50 years ago
This 1962 retrospective, which was written on the 50th anniversary of the Titanic sinking, summarizes the events of that April night with the benefit of decades of hindsight and investigations.