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Sailing the seas has never been an easy task, challenging Poseidon by crossing the gates of his realm with hubris and arrogance was a primary cause of potential troubles. But the undeniable allure of navigating the unknown, first by sail and then by steam, was the extra incentive that for centuries drove mankind to the sea. It was an era when technology had reached unprecedented levels, it was the placid yet dynamic Europe of the Belle Époque, the cradle of new cultural and social dynamics ready to truly herald what would be remembered as the short century. It was the time for those with a dream to fill a bag and seek it somewhere, America, Australia... the world was near, within reach.
The ships were the bridge, the beginning where life took on a new light as soon as a port was crossed and one's bag placed on a brand new white sheet. The Titanic was born like all great ships, once given a name, it is launched into the sea, first gently and then more rapidly until the propellers make contact with the water for the first time and engineers, carpenters, and apprentices all with hearts in their throats hope that the enormous steel container confirms the laws of Mother Nature and floats. Second of three sisters, all beautiful and elegant with grand names: Olympic, Titanic, and Gigantic. Its role was to take to the sea and challenge the competition not in speed but in elegance and technology. Twenty-nine boilers to move nearly fifty thousand tons, two triple-expansion engines to harness the entire steam cycle plus a turbine, it was also powerful with a force of fifty thousand horses. It was Belfast's pride, it was the daughter of the humble naval architect Thomas Andrews and all his carpenters. Elegant, slender with its four funnels rising from the lifeboat deck, the fourth was merely an air intake but few would have noticed it, and it was there to keep company with the other three to enhance the sense of power and magnificence. Interiors decorated in a variety of styles, from Italian Renaissance to Neoclassicism to the Victorian era, decks divided by class as was the custom of the time to respect a natural and accepted division even at sea, yet even if you were poor, you could have a bed in a cabin because on the Titanic there was no more room for cold and unhygienic dormitories. Four more lifeboats than the number required by law were granted to alleviate Andrews's concerns for the unsinkable ship, swift sea trials without too much fuss, it was the Titanic, nothing more was needed.
A flaw in the rivet composition condemned her, small nails holding her together broke like breadsticks under the pressure of more than five tons, the iceberg grazed had decreed her premature end. Folded, broken, and shattered into heaps of formless material at the bottom of the ocean, kept hidden for years until a geologist found her, but she was no longer a ship.
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