$10,000,000 SHIP ACME OF SEA LUXURY AND MARVEL IN SIZE
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Floating Palace Fifteen Stories High, Housing 3,500 Cabin and Steerage Passengers
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The Titanic left Southampton last Wednesday on her maiden voyage for New York. She had then 1,100 passengers, 350 of them in the first cabin.
She had trouble at the start because of her great suction. As she was leaving her pier there was a sound as if of a mountain battery being discharged and a rush of passengers to the port rail followed.
As the big 45,000-ton steamship passed out into the stream she had ..tecked the water between herself and the quay to such an extent that seven huge haweers with which the American liner New York was moored had snapped and the New York was drifting helplessly, stern first, toward the Titanic.
TITANIC COMPARED WITH TWO TALLEST BUILDINGS IN WORLD
The biggest vessel afloat reversed her engines and in a few minutes her headway was stopped and tugs that had rushed to the New York prevented a bad smatch between the liners.
The Titanic was the largest ship afloat. She was nearly 1,000 tons greater than her sister ship, the Olympic, and, like her, was 100 feet longer than their next rivals. She was 882 1-2 feet long, 92 1-2 feet in the beam and 94 feet deep. She was of 46,000 tons register and had a displacement of 56,000 tons. At the same time the was a floating marvel of luxury and carried literally a townful of people.
The Titanic was fifteen stories high. The floors were named the bottom, double bottom, bad plates, lower orlop, orlop lower, middle, main, setoon, upper, promenade, upper promenade, boat and stern decks and extra compass platform.
With officers and crew numbering men, the Titanic was capable of carrying 3.000 to 3.500 paseengers—cabin and steerage. She was built to be the last word in size, speed, power and sea luxury, and it would take a powerful imagination to conceive the magnificence and detail for comfort and luxury and pastime on the great ship. Its interior more closely resembles a huge hotel, with heavy balustraded wide stairways, elevators running up and down for nine stories; its great saloons and restaurants, its miniature theatre, squash and tennis courts, swimming pools and Turkish bathrooms; its great smoking room, card rooms and beautiful music rooms, and even on the top of its twelve decks a miniature golf links.
IN COMMAND OF ADMIRAL SMITH OF WHITE STAR FLEET.
Capt. Smith, her commander, the admiral of the White Star fleet, was in command of her sister ship, the Olympic, when she made her maiden voyage to New York and also when she collided wish the British cruiser Hawke in the Solent last September.
The Titanic was launched at Belfast May 11 last year. J. Pierpont Morgan, who was the guest of Lord Pirrie, chairman and managing director of the White Star Line, and J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the International Mercantile Marine Company, witnessed the launching. Enthusiastic crowdes, lining the banks of the River Laffan, cheered heartily as the big vessel took the water.
SPORTS AND DIVERSIONS OF A WINTER OR SUMMER HOTEL.
Among the attractions en the Titanic were turkish and electric baths, swimming pools, tennis courts, ballroom, sun parlors, winter gardens, palm courts, gimnasium and a sports deck. The squash racquets courts was as good as any that could be found ashore. It was thirty by twenty feet in size and extended up through the middle of decks G and F as high as the main, or E deck. A coach was aboard to teach those who could not play.
Each stateroom had its own tub with all kinds of water. There was a servants' hall for the valets, maids and oyher servants of the voyagers. When the were not actually engaged about the persons of their employers, servants were expected to remain in this hall though they were travelling first-class.
Capt. E. J. Smith of Titanic, the World's Biggest Ship
By this arrangement the difficulties that have some times arisen aboard ship When a valet was mistaken for his master were to be avoided. Another feature was an old English chop house with high backed stalls of black oak. The arbors in the palm garden were another novelty. They were artificially contrived with vines amid banks of real flowers. The sitting-rooms in some of the suites were as large as 15x15 feet. The restaurant was larger than that in the Olympic and had a novelty in the shape of a private promenade deck on the starboard side. It led to a reception room where hosts and hostesses could meet their guests before going into the restaurant.
Some idea of the immensity of the great vessel can be gained from a few figures. In her double bottom alone there were 500,000 rivets, 1 3-4 inches in diameter, and the weight of them amounted to 27O tons. The plates in the bottom weighed 4 1-4 tons each and wore 20 feet long.
The stern frame weighs 70 tons, the rudder 100 tons, and the boss arms .. 1-2 tons aft and 45 tons forward. The largest beam in her was 93 feet long and weighed more than 4 tons. Three million steel rivets were used in binding her massive plates, and the total weight of them was 1,300 tons.
The Titanic has nine steel decks. The hull is divided into thirty water-tight compartments, the doors of which could simultaneously closed by throwing over a lever on the bridge. Some idea of the damage done by the collision may
be judged from the fact that through this arrangement of bulkheads the huge vessel was considered unsinkable.
IT CONTAINED THE LAST WORD IN REGAL FURNISHING.
Two suites on the Titanic were $4,310 each for the single trip. These apartments, which were called the Regal Suites, were just abaft the grand companionway on the B deck. They consisted of sitting-rooms, sleeping chambers, baths and wardrobes, with a "front garden," a wide private promenade extending the whole length of the suites and having its own sea rail.
The occupant of one of those suites could smoke, read, loll exercise or do as he chose on his own deck with all the privacy he could enjoy on his own plazza at his home.
The construction of the Titanic was carried out under the supervision of Alexander M. Carlisle, general manager of Harland & Wolff, the Belfast shipbuilders, whose distinction in the shipbuilding craft is such that he has been made a Privy Councillor to the British monarch. Mr. Carlisle is a modest man about sixty years of age and has had more than forty years' experience as a naval constructor.
When he was in this city on a brief visit in July, 1910, he was enthusiastic for big ships. There was, he said, practicaly no limit to the size a ship could be built, but he could not do all that he wished in that direction because he had to consider channels and docks. In designing size he was limited only by harbor conditions and in the matter of speed by the willingness of the travelling public to pay the cost of it.
NOT DIFFICULT TO HANDLE, SAID CONSTRUCTOR.
It was a mistake, Mr. Carlisle then said, to suppose that a big ship was hard to handle. They answered the helm very readily, he declared.
When Brooklyn Bridge was building Mr. Carlisle crossed the East River on one of the cables then in process of construction.
Mr. Carlisle was here on the Olympic when she made her maiden trip. Throughout that voyage he was warmly congratulated on the way the great vessel, the building of which he had carried out, had behaved, especially in the storms that vexed her path on her first journey across the ocean. Speaking then of the Titanic, he said he would also accompany her on her maiden voyage.
CANADIAN LINER MEETS 100 MILE ICE FIELD.
LIVERPOOL, England, April 15.--The Canadian Pacific Steamship Company's liner Empress of Britain which left St. John, N. B., on April 6 arrived here to-day and reports having encountered an ice field of a hundred miles in extent when three days out from Halifax.