Titanic Video

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Historical Information

Building Titanic
It took a year to design the great leviathans, with Harland & Wolff also spending several months enlarging the slipways of its Belfast shipyard where the liners would be built.

Construction began on Olympic with her keel being laid down on 16th December 1908. The work on Titanic started the following spring on 31st March 1909.

A 15,000 strong workforce was assembled to forge together more than two thousand one-inch steel plates to form the hull, which soon dwarfed the whole of Belfast as it towered over the shipyard. Over three million rivets apiece were used on each of the three ships which, once completed, weighed 46,000 tons each and had a length of 882 feet.

The first ship to be launched was Olympic on 20th October 1910, followed by Titanic on 31st May 1911. It took a further ten months to complete the ships, fitting out the interiors and the installing the massive state-of-the-art engines, boilers and mechanical equipment. Interestingly, of Titanic's four funnels, only three were real, the fourth being added for aesthetic value and to act as a ventilation shaft.

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