The Titanic

by Read Listen Learn


The Titanic

The Titanic is one of the most famous ships in world history. People still read books about it a century after the accident and James Cameron’s film ‘Titanic’ is still a favourite with many young people – and older ones too!

The name ‘Titanic’ means ‘huge’. At the time, the ship was the largest in the world. It carried the very rich and many poor people too. The rich had a swimming pool, rooms for dancing, excellent restaurants and many other luxurious facilities. Life on the ship was not so comfortable for the poor, however. They were travelling to the U.S. to find a better life than their home countries – England, Ireland and Scandinavia – could give them. Many were saving for months and months to buy third-class tickets on the ship and took everything important with them.

On 10th April, 1912, the Titanic left the southern English coast. It continued to France and Ireland, where more passengers got on the boat. It was the Titanic’s first trip and many important, rich people were travelling on the ship.

But two nights later, on 12th April, when it was dark and cold and the ship was hundreds of kilometres from land, the Titanic hit an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean. It was not a direct crash straight into the iceberg, but one that happened along the side of the ship, while it was passing by it.

The damage was great. When the shipbuilder heard the news – he was on the ship – he knew immediately that it was going to sink and it was going to happen in an hour or two. He told the captain that it was a “mathematical certainty”. But he had other important information too: there were not enough lifeboats to get all the passengers off the ship!

The captain worked quickly. The officers went to all the rooms and told the first and second class passengers that they must leave. Women and children went first – rich women and children. Only one child died from the families with first and second-class tickets. Four out of five women lived too. But the third class children were not so lucky. There were seventy-nine of them but only twenty-seven were alive the next morning.

Most of the men died – first, second and third class passengers – because women and children got into the lifeboats first. Some left half-empty because of this. The water was below freezing point and many men died in two minutes of heart attacks. All were dead in half an hour.

There were some very, very brave people on the Titanic. The builder of the ship, for example, stayed on it and helped to the last minute to get women and children into the boats. There were many others: the musicians played popular songs to relax the frightened passengers. They all died too.

When the world heard the news, people were shocked and very sorry. Many people lost everything. Many children lost their parents.

One hundred years after the Titanic broke into two pieces and rested on the bottom of the sea, we still remember the largest ship in the world, a ship that sank and killed businessmen, actors and people that wanted to find a better life in the United States but only found death in the icy water of the Atlantic.