At 8:13PM GMT on the 15th April 1912 (two years before the outbreak of the first world war), the luxury passenger liner RMS Titanic struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage to New York, and sank two hours and forty minutes later, with the loss of one thousand, five hundred and twelve lives. The ship did not have sufficient lifeboats, and due to various procedural failings many lifeboats departed only partially filled. With wireless communications still in its infancy, the Titanic crew launched rockets to signal their distress, while the two wireless operators alternately sent out CQD (general quarters: distress) and SOS (a recently created international distress signal) messages to anyone who was listening. Several ships raced to the scene, despite some being hundreds of nautical miles away (Titanic's sister ship, RMS Olympic, was 200 nautical miles away and still attempted to respond to the distress call, even though her maximum speed was only 23 knots (43 km/h; 26 mph)). The last message received from Titanic was a faint 'C...Q', minutes before the ship disappeared under the ocean, the wireless operators having ignored the abandon ship order to continue transmitting until the water destroyed their equipment (Both of them escaped the ship, however the senior wireless operator died in one of the lifeboats) Many more men than women perished in the sinking, as most of the male passengers surrendered their places on the lifeboats to women and children. The first ship to arrive on the scene was the RMS Carpathia, operated by Cunard (the main rival of Titanic's operator, White Star Line). Despite pushing her engines beyond their maximum rated output (Her captain even ordered the passenger heating and hot water turned off so that more steam could be diverted to the engines, as well as ordering his crew to give up their cabins to survivors, and giving up his own.) and being only 58 miles from Titanic's location, as well as sailing straight through the ice field without slowing down at all, Titanic was long gone when Carpathia arrived at the scene, and only 705 of Titanic's 2,224 passengers and crew were saved, with one more dying on board Carpathia before she arrived in New York. Somewhat ironically, Carpathia herself sank after being torpedoed in 1918. Cruelly, there was another ship, the SS Californian, less than 10 miles from Titanic's location. Her lookouts spotted Titanic's distress rockets, and informed their captain, but he failed to render assistance to the sinking ship. The passengers aboard the Titanic could see the lights of the SS Californian. The board of enquiries launched in the UK and the US were fairly damning, and led to considerable improvements in maritime safety regulations. (while Titanic did not have sufficient lifeboats for all persons aboard, she did have significantly more than the regulations of the time required her to have) and the US congress struck a medal for the Carpathia's captain. (The captain of the SS Californian was punished for his failure to respond) Even now, 100 years later, Titanic is still the 5th biggest maritime disaster to occur in peacetime. Contrary to common belief, Titanic is not the largest ship built in that period, that honour falls to her other sister ship, HMHS Britannic, which was sunk during the first world war (Some say she was torpedoed, but the more widely held belief is she hit a mine; she was flagged as a hospital ship so intentionally firing on her would constitute a war crime). Only 35 people died in the Britannic sinking.
