The ship was certified unsinkable.
No such certificate existed. Publicity and press used the word; the inquiry treated subdivision as a design claim that failed in a side-grazing flood.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Notoriety98
Mystery30
Scale90
Evidence82
Legal impact85
Culture98
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Quick answers
When and where did Titanic sink?
The ship struck an iceberg at about 23:40 on 14 April 1912 and sank at about 02:20 on 15 April in the North Atlantic. The British Wreck Commissioner’s report placed the loss at 41°46′N, 50°14′W.
How many people died?
Lord Mersey’s court recorded 1,490 lives lost. Other 1912 tallies ran higher; modern compilers often cite about 1,500 of roughly 2,200 aboard. About 710 people reached Carpathia. Figures still differ because crew and steerage lists were incomplete.
What did the official inquiries conclude?
Both the United States Senate inquiry and the British Wreck Commissioner found that the ship was driven too fast in an ice region, that lookout and wireless practice were inadequate, and that lifeboat capacity and loading failed the people on board. The British report dated 30 July 1912 blamed the collision on excessive speed.
Why were there too few lifeboats?
Board of Trade rules then scaled boatage to gross tonnage, not to the number of souls. Titanic’s twenty boats were legal. After 1912 the rule of boats for all became the political and then the treaty standard under SOLAS.
Was the ship officially called unsinkable?
No classification society certified Titanic as unsinkable. Trade-press and White Star publicity stressed watertight subdivision. The word stuck in English headlines after the wreck and became a lesson about marketing, not a hidden design stamp.
When was the wreck found?
On 1 September 1985 a joint expedition of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and IFREMER located the wreck in two main pieces at about 3,800 metres. The United States later passed the RMS Titanic Memorial Act 1986 to treat the site as a memorial.
Cause of loss is closed. Ethics of the wreck and the exact death list are not.
English folklore still prefers a cursed ship to a Board of Trade table.
Still open
- A complete named death list — Steerage and some crew entries remain disputed. Compilers still differ by tens of names around Mersey’s 1,490.
- How the hull opened — Grazing seams versus a long gash is an engineering argument. It does not reopen the iceberg finding.
- Salvage versus grave — Who may lift objects, and for which museums, is still litigated and diplomatically managed.
- Californian’s distance — Lord’s exact range and what his officers saw remain a side controversy with no change to Titanic’s own navigation.
- Climate of the ice field — Oceanographers revisit 1912 ice as climate history; that research is context, not a new culprit.
Myth vs record
A fire in a coal bunker sank the ship.
A bunker fire was discussed then and later. It is not the 1912 official cause. The courts named ice and speed.
Third class was locked below as policy.
Physical barriers and confusion delayed many steerage passengers. The inquiries did not find a standing order to trap them.
The wreck is one intact ship on the bottom.
The 1985 find showed two main pieces and a wide debris field, matching a break-up as the hull sank.
Local notes
Southampton and Belfast
English and Ulster memory is local as well as global: crew streets in Southampton and yard identity in Belfast still organise centenary rites.
New York landing
American English memory begins at the Cunard pier on 18 April 1912 and at Senator Smith’s hearing room, not at Belfast.
Halifax recovery
Canadian cable ships brought many of the recovered dead to Halifax. English-language cemeteries there are part of the North Atlantic file, not a footnote.
Titanic is a closed navigational disaster whose afterlife is law, lists and a wreck that later cameras made visible.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.