"Each night the sun sank right in our eyes along the sea, making an undulating glittering pathway, a golden track charted on the surface of the ocean which our ship followed unswervingly until the sun dipped below the edge of the horizon, and the pathway ran ahead of us faster than we could steam and slipped over the edge of the skyline - as if the sun had been a golden ball and had wound up its thread of gold too quickly for us to follow." -Lawrence Beesley, Titanic Survivor
On a summer night in 1907, Joseph Bruce Ismay, chairman of White Star Liners and Lord William Pirrie formulated plans for Titanic. Employing 15,000 workmen, its construction was a three-year process. Shipyards stimulated Ireland's economy, and Titanic was the biggest ship ever built. Composed of sixteen compartments and fifteen watertight bulkheads, it was considered unsinkable. Construction was a 7,500,000 dollar process, requiring the largest gantry in the world to be built in Belfast at the Harland and Wolff shipyard.
"Let the Truth be known, no ship is unsinkable. The bigger the ship, the easier it is to sink her. I learned long ago that if you design how a ship’ll sink, you can keep her afloat. I proposed all the watertight compartments and the double hull to slow these ships from sinking. In that way, you get everyone off. There’s time for help to arrive, and the ship’s less likely to break apart and kill someone while she’s going down." -Thomas Andrews, ship architect