Titanic, British luxury passenger liner that sank on April 15, 1912, en route to New York from Southampton, England, on its maiden voyage.
The largest and most luxurious ship afloat, the Titanic had a double-bottomed hull divided into 16 watertight compartments. Because four of these could be flooded without endangering its buoyancy, it was considered unsinkable. Shortly before midnight on April 14, it collided with an iceberg southeast of Cape Race, Newfoundland; five compartments ruptured and the ship sank. Some 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers died.
After the disaster, new rules were drawn up requiring that the number of places in lifeboats equal the number of passengers (the Titanic had only 1,178 lifeboat places for 2,224 passengers) and that all ships maintain a 24-hour radio watch for distress signals (a ship less than 20 mi [32 km] away had not heard the Titanic’s distress signal because no one had been on duty). The International Ice Patrol was established to monitor icebergs in shipping lanes.
In 1985 Robert Ballard found the wreck of the Titanic lying upright in two pieces at a depth of 13,000 ft (4,000 m). American and French scientists explored it using an uncrewed submersible.
