Titanic: Building the World’s Most Famous Ship

Description

A fascinating look at the making of the Titanic in vivid, colorful detail When she set sail from Southampton on her doomed maiden voyage on April 10, 1912, theRMS Titanic was the jewel in the crown of the White Star Line. A floating palace weighing nearly 50,000 tons, she was the largest and most technologically advanced moving object in the world. Titanic spent barely five days at sea, but a skilled workforce of thousands had toiled for years--amid long, hard, and often dangerous conditions--building the ship in a remarkable feat of design and engineering. As Anton Gill shows in this lavishly illustrated book, the story of Titanic's construction is also the story of these dedicated men and women. Riveters risked deafness from hammering millions of rivets that held together the enormous steel hull; engineers had the gargantuan task of fitting engines to power the massive liner across the Atlantic at 23 knots; electricians installed state-of-the-art communications systems and enormous steam-driven generators; and carpenters, cabinetmakers, and artisans labored over every last detail of the opulent state rooms. This book--which features numerous archival photographs and illustrations alongside a host of informative and illuminating sidebars--reveals that, contrary to popular opinion, no one at the White Star Line ever called the ship "unsinkable." And it takes us as never before into the veritable city of surprising comforts aboard Titanic, which contained a darkroom, gym, hospital, squash court, swimming pool, Turkish bath, wireless telegraph office, barber shops that sold souvenirs, a printing department that issued a daily newspaper with news received by wireless telegraph, and even a mail room staffed by five postal workers, who went down with the ship, protecting the mail. From the engine room to the ballroom, this companion to the Nat Geo documentary Rebuilding Titanic is a moving testament to those who designed, built, and fitted the "ship of dreams."