and built--the "unsinkable lifeboat";--and then in a moment to hear
that it had gone to the bottom as if it had been the veriest tramp
steamer of a few hundred tons; and with it fifteen hundred passengers,
some of them known the world over! The improbability of such a thing
ever happening was what staggered humanity.

If its history had to be written in a single paragraph it would be
somewhat as follows:--

"The R.M.S. Titanic was built by Messrs. Harland & Wolff at their
well-known ship-building works at Queen's Island, Belfast, side by
side with her sister ship the Olympic. The twin vessels marked such an
increase in size that specially laid-out joiner and boiler shops were
prepared to aid in their construction, and the space usually taken up
by three building slips was given up to them. The keel of the Titanic
was laid on March 31, 1909, and she was launched on May 31, 1911; she
passed her trials before the Board of Trade officials on March 31,
1912, at Belfast, arrived at Southampton on April 4, and sailed the
following Wednesday, April 10, with 2208 passengers and crew, on her
maiden voyage to New York. She called at Cherbourg the same day,
Queenstown Thursday, and left for New York in the afternoon, expecting
to arrive the following Wednesday morning. But the voyage was never
completed. She collided with an iceberg on Sunday at 11.45 P.M. in
Lat. 41° 46' N. and Long. 50° 14' W., and sank two hours and a half
later; 815 of her passengers and 688 of her crew were drowned and 705
rescued by the Carpathia."

Such is the record of the Titanic, the largest ship the world had ever
seen--she was three inches longer than the Olympic and one thousand
tons more in gross tonnage--and her end was the greatest maritime