How big is Titanic? | Scale of the Universe

The Titanic was a British passenger ship that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on its first voyage, in April 1912. It was about 269 meters (883 feet) long from bow to stern. When it was launched in 1911, it was the largest object that had ever moved on water.

Size

Royal Museums Greenwich, which runs Britain's National Maritime Museum, gives the ship's overall length as 882.75 feet (269.1 meters). The US Senate report on the disaster, written in 1912, gives 882.6 feet (269.0 meters). The ship was 92.5 feet (28.2 meters) wide, so it was about nine and a half times as long as it was wide. It had 10 decks.

A second, shorter length appears in the official records. When the Titanic was registered as a British ship at Liverpool, its length was entered as 852.5 feet (259.8 meters). This registered length is a different measurement from the overall length, and the explorer shows the overall length.

Size comparisons

The ship was nearly two and a half times as long as an American football field, which is 110 meters (120 yards) including the end zones.
About 160 people 1.7 meters (5 feet 7 inches) tall, lying head to toe, would stretch from bow to stern.
Stood on end beside Hoover Dam, which is 221 meters (726 feet) tall, the ship would rise about 48 meters (156 feet) above the top of the dam.
Stood on end beside the Eiffel Tower, which is 330 meters (1,083 feet) tall, it would reach about four-fifths of the way to the top.

Building the Titanic

The shipbuilder Harland and Wolff built the Titanic in Belfast for the White Star Line, to carry passengers between Southampton, England, and New York. It was launched on May 31, 1911, and completed on March 31, 1912. Its sister ship, the Olympic, was launched in 1910. A US Senate report described the Titanic as a duplicate of the Olympic, except for its passenger rooms.

The ship had room for 2,435 passengers in three classes and a crew of 885. The letters RMS in its full name stand for Royal Mail Ship, because it also carried mail. First class had squash courts, a Turkish bath, a gymnasium and a swimming pool.

The sinking

The Titanic left Southampton on April 10, 1912. At 11:40 p.m. on April 14, it struck an iceberg. The British inquiry found that the ice damaged the starboard (right) side of the hull, about 3 meters (10 feet) above the level of the keel. The damage ran for about 91 meters (300 feet), roughly a third of the ship's length.

The hull was divided into 16 watertight compartments, and the ship was designed to stay afloat with any two neighboring compartments flooded. The iceberg damaged six: the forepeak at the bow, three cargo holds and two boiler rooms. The Titanic sank at 2:20 a.m. on April 15.

There were 2,201 people on board, but the 20 lifeboats could hold only 1,178, about half of them. The inquiry counted 711 survivors and 1,490 people who died. It found that the collision was "brought about by the excessive speed at which the ship was being navigated". A joint French and American expedition found the wreck on September 1, 1985, about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) below the surface.