Alexander M. Carlisle, born in 1854, was the principal designer of the 'Olympic' and the Titanic. After his retirement in 1909 Thomas Andrews became his successor.
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Alexander M. Carlisle joined Harland and Wolff Shipbuilding - the giant Belfast shipbuilder that built all the White Star Line vessels - at the age of 17 as a premium apprentice, eventually becoming a managing director with the firm. He was an early advocate for the installation of "Welin quadrant" davits. After his retirement in 1909 he worked for the Welin Davit and Engineering Co. Ltd. of London. Following the Titanic disaster Carlisle testified at the British inquiry and in civil lawsuits. He died in 1926.
Originally the Titanic's design was for three funnels and four masts, but Lord James Pirrie - a partner in the firm of Harland and Wolff Shipbuilding - felt that four funnels would make her look much better. The public also felt that vessels with four funnels were safer because they were larger and sturdier. So four it became, but actually the fourth funnel was false and only served as an air vent and for looks.
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The number of masts was reduced to two, one fore and one aft. Numerous masts were the mark of a sailing vessel; these ships were to be the "Queens of a new era". The antenna for the Marconi wireless apparatus would be strung between the masts.
Other original designs were changed too. The First-Class dining room was to have a large dome but this was changed to a normal ceiling. The spa was reduced in size and the gymnasium was moved to the Boat-Deck. They enlarged the main staircase ("The Grand Staircase") so that it fanned out at the landing from A - Deck to D - Deck, with large balustrades and a huge glass dome overhead. Two extra elevators were added making a total of four, three for First-Class and one for Second-Class.
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At the same time Harland & Wolff Shipbuilding purchased a secondhand floating crane for use at the fitting-out basin. This crane could lift 250 tons.
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The Titanic's keel (keel number 401, official built number 131428) was laid down on March 31st, 1909 at Harland and Wolff Shipbuilding in Belfast.
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The rudder weighed 101 tons and was made from six separate parts.
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The 3 anchors weighed a total of 31 tons. It took 20 horses to haul one anchor.
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The Titanic's was launched May 31st, 1911.
It took a workforce of over 17,000 labourers to build the Titanic.
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She had nine decks including the Orlop-Deck. Below the Boat-Deck were decks A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. Below G-Deck were the boiler rooms and holds etc. The hull was divided into sixteen water tight compartments by means of fifteen water tight bulkheads extending up through F-Deck.
The Titanic was designed to remain afloat with any two compartments flooded, possibly three, enabling her to withstand a collision at the joint of two compartments. This was the worst disaster anyone at that time could have imagined. It was widely regarded that the "Olympic Class" liners were largely "unsinkable" and were themselves lifeboats.
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The British Board of Regulations required that any ship over 10,000 tons had to carry sixteen lifeboats. As the Titanic carried 20 lifeboats she was well within regulation. Sixteen of these were regular wooden type and four Englehardt collapsibles known as A, B, C and D. In fact, no liner afloat at that time carried enough lifeboats to evacuate all passengers and crew.
The Board briefly considered raising the legal minimum to 32 but decided against it. We must remember that our belief today of the reason for lifeboats, came from the Titanic disaster. Prior to this the general opinion was, should a ship become stricken, that lifeboats were used to ferry passengers to rescue ships waiting nearby in the already crowded North Atlantic shipping lanes. With the invention of the wireless, this made this even more credible. Any large ship in trouble was expected to remain afloat for many hours or even days and help would be promptly summoned by radio.
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Titanic's overall length was 882.5 feet, her beam was 92.5 feet and she was 60.5 feet from water line to the Boat-Deck. Her gross tonnage was 46,328 tons, net tonnage of 24,900 tons.
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The steam required to run all this came from 29 huge, three storey high boilers. The Titanic needed 650 tons of coal a day for her 159 furnaces.
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As she looked almost identical to her sister the 'Olympic' many photos and video footage shown of the Titanic is actually the 'Olympic'. If you know how, it is very easy to identify the two ships. The 'Olympic' had a completely open Promenade Deck, whereas the Titanic and the 'Britannic' both had the forward one third enclosed.
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General information 'Imperator' (renamed 'Berengaria'):
Launched: May 23rd, 1912, Vulcan Shipyards, Hamburg.
The ship was originally built for the Hamburg-America line. It was built at the Vulcan Shipyards at Hamburg on the river Elbe. It was originally called the 'Imperator'. She was launched by the German Kaiser himself on May 23rd, 1912 - a month after the Titanic went down. Changes had been made both in hull design and the equipment on board in order to increase safety. She was fitted with a total of 83 lifeboats.
Maiden voyage: June 20th, 1913 from Cuxhaven to New York.
Gross Tonnage: 52,226.
Dimensions: 269.09 x 29.96 m.
Funnels: 3.
Masts: 2.
Size: 52.117 gross tons.
Length over all: 277.06 m.
Width: 29.87 m.
Depth: 19.20 m.
Machines: 4 turbines AEG-Vulcan.
Speed: 23 knots normal, 24 knots maximum.
Capacity: 714 + 194 First-Class, 401 + 205 Second-Class, 962 + 1,772 Third-Class passengers, 1,180 crew.
An interesting thing to note about the 'Imperator' is that she carried a large bronze decorative eagle figurehead on her bow. It is believed that this was added to the ship to make her the longest ship on the seas, which she apparently just barely didn't meet or beat.
At the time the 'Imperator' was the world's largest ship.
During WWI the 'Imperator' lay protected on the river Elbe - a local sight and a tourist attraction.
At the end of the war the Allied Forces of Occupation found the 'Imperator' rusted, decaying and stuck in the mud.
Seized by the US Navy as troop transporter on May 5th, 1919 until August 1919 it was handed over to the Shipping Controller, London in February 1920.
The ship was sold to the Cunard Line and renamed 'Berengaria' in February 1921.
March 3rd, 1938 the ship catches fire in New York harbor.
She was sold for scrapping on July 11th, 1938 after the Cunard Line had introduced the giant 'Queen Mary' and 'Queen Elizabeth' two years before.
May 31st, 1911:
After one month delay the Titanic is being launched. (The 'Olympic' - Titanic's sister ship, outbound from Southampton on September 20th, 1911 - with Captain Edward John Smith who would later captain the Titanic, has a major collision with the H.M.S. 'Hawke', a British Royal Navy cruiser. Repairs made back at Harland and Wolff Shipbuilding delay the fitting out of the Titanic one month due to necessary diversion of workers and materials to repair the 'Olympic'.)
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12.05 p.m.: Two rockets were fired followed by a third rockets five minutes later.
12.13 p.m.: The hull of a ship that was to become the most known ship in the world gracefully started moving under her own weight down the slipway. Twenty-two tons of tallow, soap, and train oil are used to grease the slipway bed to coat and protect against the enormous three-tons-per-square-inch pressure of the freshly painted hull. She travelled nearly twice her 900 foot length at achieved twelve knots before being brought to a halt by six anchor chains and two piles of cable drag chains, each chain weighing eighty pounds. The launch lasted only sixty two seconds and was watched by over 100,000 spectators. Once these chains had been detached, tugs from Liverpool’s Alexandra Towing company, namely 'Alexandra', 'Hornby', 'Herculaneum' and 'Wallasey', warped the Titanic into the fitting-out basin, assisted by Harland & Wolff’s own tug, 'Hercules'.
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Shipyard worker James Dobbins, age 43, had his legs pinned by a support he was cutting when the Titanic was launched. His friends dragged him to safety and he was taken to Belfast Royal Victoria Hospital where he died the next day of contusions and shock.
The VIP's watching the launch were ignorant of the tragedy and went to the Queen's Island yard where
Lord James Pirrie and his guests had an expensive lunch before they boarded the 'Olympic' to return to the UK mainland.
Although some of the movies that have been made show the Titanic being launched with a christening of champagne, this was incorrect as it was customary for the White Star Line to launch without a christening.
In the city’s Grand Central Hotel, J. W. Kempter presided at a lunch given for a large number of yard officials and visitors. Even the press had their own little celebration, again at Belfast’s Grand Central Hotel.
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The next ten months were spent installing machinery and fitting her interiors.
On February 3rd, 1912 she was dry docked in the Belfast Harbour Commission's new graving dock where her propellers were fitted and a final coat of paint applied.
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At the beginning of March she briefly joined her sister the 'Olympic', who returned to dry dock for the replacement of a propeller blade. The Titanic was 1,004 gross tons larger than her sister and was in several ways more luxurious in her appointments.
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On April 2nd, 1912 the completed ship set sail from Belfast for her sea trials. No one could have known that in less than two weeks, during her maiden voyage, she would be 12,500 feet down at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean broken in two pieces...
Thomas Andrews Jr. was born February 7th, 1873 in Belfast, Ireland. His parents were the Right Honourable Thomas Andrews, a local politician, and Eliza Pirrie. Thomas was their second son.
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Eliza Pirrie Andrews was the sister of Lord James Pirrie, the controlling owner of Harland & Wolff Shipbuilding in Belfast. As his nephew would later, Pirrie worked his way up the ranks at Harland and Wolff Shipbuilding, beginning his career as an apprentice. He would become a partner in the firm by the age of twenty-seven. Pirrie was created a Baron in 1906 and a Viscount in 1921, but as his marriage was childless, the peerage would die out with his death.
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Thomas Andrews, who had shown an early interest in ships, attended the Royal Belfast Academical Institution from 1884 to 1889, when he left at the age of sixteen to begin his apprenticeship at Harland & Wolff Shipbuilding in Belfast.
The apprenticeship he served was designed for one intended to end up quite high in the company. He began with three months in the joiner's shop, followed by a month in the cabinetmaker's ship and two months actually working on the ships. Next he spent two months in the main store (warehouse), five months with the shipwrights, two in the moulding loft, two with the painters, eight with the iron shipwrights, six with the fitters, three with the patternmakers, and eight with the smiths. The last eighteen months of his five year term were spent in the drawing office. His great talent for mechanical engineering and construction and his growing leadership abilities singled him out for a bright future, possibly as a senior manager.
He became Harland and Wolff Shipbuilding's managing director and head of the draughting department.
Thomas Andrews seemed well-suited to his work. Shipbuilders were apparently a very exclusive bunch; their work was very hard, and it took a great deal to gain their respect. Thomas Andrews had earned it. During his apprenticeship he had shown that he could meet the physical demands of the work. He was also developing a great reputation for integrity.
Thomas Andrews was well-liked by both the workers in the yards and the men in the upper divisions of the company and he appears to have loved not only his work, but also the ships themselves and the workers.
On June 24th, 1908, Thomas Andrews was married to Helen Reilly Barbour. The couple made their home at "Dunallon," Winslow Avenue in Belfast. A daughter, Elizabeth, was born to Thomas and Helen in 1910.
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According to passengers on the Titanic, Thomas Andrews frequently spoke of his wife and daughter.
Thomas Andrews did not survive the sinking of the Titanic on that "Fateful Night" April 14th - April 15th, 1912.
Sometime after the death of Thomas Andrews, Helen Andrews was married to Henry Pierpont Harland. They had no children and Helen herself died in England in 1966.
"Mr. Andrews met his fate like a true hero, realizing the great danger, and gave up his life to save the women and children of the Titanic. They will find it hard to replace him."
(Mary Sloan, Titanic Stewardess - Quote from letter to her sister, April 27th, 1912)
This website is dedicated to the eternal legacy of the RMS Titanic and to all of those who needlessly died one cold night in April, 1912...
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