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Titanic : Class Clash In 1912

“...There was, at any rate, some arrangement- whether official or not, for separating the classes in embarking in boats; how far it was carried out, I do not know...” -Lawrence Beesley, survivor of the Titanic

In the dawn of the early nineteen hundreds, the grandest of all ships embarked on her maiden voyage to New York. She never made it. The mighty Titanic, which had been touted as “unsinkable”, collided with an iceberg, taking more than fifteen hundred souls into the freezing Atlantic waters. This greatest loss at sea of all humanity could have been avoided, if the discriminatory class system at the time had not been in place many deaths would be prevented. The lifeboats were separated by class, age and gender, thus, playing a big part in the number of lives lost. The stories of the survivors left strong and memorable reflections on society still alive today. The sinking of the Titanic not only resulted in unnecessary deaths from unfair hierarchies including gender and class, but new standards in ship safety.  

For years, Titanic was the largest movable object in the world. Complex calculations went into the proper configuration of speed for the craft (Beesley 10). The final measurements of this triple-screw vessel were eight hundred and eighty three feet long, ninety two and a half feet broad and in height, one hundred and four feet (from keel to bridge). Of Titanic’s four elliptical funnels, three were used to take away smoke and water gases. The fourth was used for ventilations (Beesley 11). Construction started in 1908 with ten hundred men building her (When Weather Changed History: Titanic). The Titanic was complete with 29 boilers and 159 furnaces. Transportation from the engine room to the boiler room for the ship’s coalers was through water-tight doors (Beesley 11).

The Titanic had sixteen compartments. Unfortunately, the ship was designed to stay afloat with two of the sixteen compartments filled with water. Five compartments were flooded...