Twelfth Index Card

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• The Titanic was to be 883 feet long, 93 feet wide and 11 storeys high. Suspended from scaffolds and gantries were newly-invented hydraulic riveting machines used to drive some 3 million button-headed rivets into plates, girders, beams and brackets.
• As the ship’s hull neared completion, workers began to report mysterious hammering sounds beneath the sealed plate of the double floor. Many believed, that because of the rapid pace of construction, a man had accidentally been entombed inside the ship. It had happened before on other jobs, and to the ship workers, it was the worst possible omen.
• The safety and navigation at sea in those days was the responsibility primarily of the board of trade, and this is a British government organization which is set up to police merchant ships at that period. And they would have varying regulations, number of lifejackets on board, number of lifeboats, but ships had become so large so quickly that they outpaced the regulations.
• Most regulations said that you had to have about 16 lifeboats on a vessel up to 10,000 tons. Well, of course, the Titanic weighed 45,000 tons, carrying far more passengers than a 10.000 ton vessel. Yet, she had lifeboat provision for a 10.000 ton ship.
• Lifeboats are of a standard size, they carry 65 people, and the regulation that was in effect in 1912 had been formulated in 1895. The decision to only carry the minimum number of lifeboats required by law was actually made by Bruce Ismay, the chairman of the White Star Line. It wasn't made in a light of not only the belief that the ship was unsinkable and the lifeboats would not be needed, but also to maximize the deck space for the convenience of the passengers. It was a businessman’s decision