Disaster more than 110 years ago

Just four days later, Titanic's maiden voyage turned into a historic tragedy when the ship struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic. It sank in less than three hours.

The ship did not have enough lifeboats for the approximately 2,220 people on board. More than 1,500 people died in the accident, making the Titanic the most famous shipwreck in history. Only more than 700 people survived.

The luxury liner carried members of some of America's most powerful and wealthy families. Tycoon John Jacob Astor IV put his pregnant wife in a lifeboat. He drowned in the early morning hours of April 15, according to Biography.com.

Isidor Straus, co-owner of Macy's, and his wife Ida died, inspiring the blockbuster film “Titanic.” Businessman Benjamin Guggenheim also died in the sinking.

Of the 329 first-class passengers on board, 199 survived. Of the 995 second- and third-class passengers, 293 survived. And of the 899 crew members, 214 survived.

Investigations at the time cited several contributing factors to the tragedy: Captain Edward Smith was said to have been traveling too fast in dangerous waters; an initial inspection of the ship was done too quickly; there were not enough lifeboats; and a nearby ship failed to help.

Titanic cost an estimated $7.5 million to build at the time, was over 900 feet long and weighed 46,328 tons. Its top speed was 23 knots. Efforts were made over the years to locate the ship, but the wreck was not discovered until 1985.

“Titanic was clearly the big Everest at the time,” Robert Ballard, the American oceanographer who led the expedition that found the wreck, told CNN Travel in 2021. “A lot of different entities tried to find it.”

Secret mission to discover the ship

Ballard was unsuccessful on his first attempt in 1977. The expedition only succeeded in 1985 when Ballard, working with the French Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea, and his team discovered the wreck of the Titanic while participating in a secret US military mission to search for two sunken nuclear submarines.

Before agreeing to carry out the mission signed by US President Ronald Reagan, he asked if he could search for the Titanic when he completed the top-secret mission.

Although he was never explicitly given permission to search the famous wreck, Ballard said he was told he could do whatever he wanted after finding the nuclear submarines. The Titanic was found lying at the bottom of the North Atlantic.

In 1986, a team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution made the first trip to see the sunken ship using a three-person submersible called Alvin and a newly developed remotely operated vehicle called Jason Jr. Footage from that expedition was only just released to the public this year.

After more than a century, Titanic is still full of charm

More than a century after the ship sank, researchers and historians remain fascinated by its story.

A team from deep-sea investigators Magellan and filmmakers Atlantic Productions recently used deep-sea maps to create the first-ever “digital twin” of the Titanic wreck.

The millimetre-by-millimeter digital replica has finally succeeded in capturing the entire wreck including the bow and stern sections – which separated when they sank in 1912.

Amateur explorers are also drawn to the wreck. And as we know, OceanGate, the company at the center of the international search, lost its submersible while en route to the Titanic wreck for an expedition.

The expedition to explore the wreckage of the Titanic cost passengers “$250,000 or more,” according to the company’s website. And now, four days after it disappeared, the ship has still not been found.

By late Wednesday, search teams had detected noises and signals suspected to be from the mini-submarine named Titan in the area near the site where the historic Titanic sank to the ocean floor more than a century ago.

Mai Van (according to Biography, CNN)