RMS Titanic: 100 Years Later

April 14th, 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the day the British passenger liner RMS Titanic struck an iceberg about 375 miles south of Newfoundland and sank jus’ two and a half hours later.  The Titanic was on her maiden voyage, having disembarked from Southhampton, England April 10th.

The ship was bound for New York and had made stops in France and Ireland before heading west towards the United States East Coast.  The Titanic carried two-thousand-224 people and the sinking caused the deaths of one-thousand-514.

At the time of the voyage, she was the largest ship afloat.

The Titanic was jus’ four days into its crossing when it hit the iceberg at 11:40 p.m. local time.  Just before 2:20 a.m., the ship broke up and sank.

People thrown into the icy waters of the North Atlantic died within minutes from hypothermia.  The 710 people who survived in lifeboats were taken aboard the RMS Carpathia some hours later.

The catastrophe was met with shock and anger around the world because of the massive loss of life and the operational failures which led to what took place.  The wreck of the Titanic still sits on the seabed, more than 12-thousand feet below the surface.

Since it was re-discovered back in 1984, thousands of items have been recovered and put in museums around the globe.  Countless books, memorials and exhibits help keep her memory alive along with the movies which have been made.

Now thousands of records on the passengers and crew are available to the public.  With the simple click of a mouse, historians and genealogists can search for the names of those who were on board the ship or who helped rescue survivors.

All the data is available in a single location and is temporarily free of charge to access at www.ancestry.com/titanic.

The wreckage of the Titanic will go under United Nations protection April 15th, 2012. The UN Protection will prevent unethical or non-scientific exploration of the wreck.

The RMS Titanic company claimed the wreckage nearly 20 years ago. Since then, more than five-thousand items have been pulled from the ship’s remains.

Many of those are in exhibits around the United States.  The company hopes to possibly auction all of the items off in one lot.