The RMS Titanic’s hold carried a jeweled Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and a painting later valued by its owner at $100,000, yet the ship had no searchlight because British merchant rules banned them. It grew from a 1907 meeting between White Star chairman J. Bruce Ismay and financier J.P. Morgan, who were losing ground to Cunard’s subsidized Lusitania and Mauretania. White Star chose size and luxury over speed and gave Harland and Wolff a cost plus 5 percent contract. Passengers got a swimming pool, Turkish baths, a squash court, and the Cafe Parisien, all smoothed by a hybrid of reciprocating engines and a Parsons turbine, while 176 firemen shoveled over 600 tons of coal a day in heat above 110 degrees.

Its 20 lifeboats held 1,178 people against a capacity of 3,327, yet that exceeded the Board of Trade rule, which topped out at 14 boats for any ship over 10,000 tons. Wireless operator Jack Phillips brushed off an ice warning from the Californian that lacked the MSG prefix. Afterward Senator William Alden Smith rushed subpoenas in New York and Lord Mersey’s British inquiry ruled that keeping full speed near ice would be negligent in the future. The 1914 SOLAS convention required lifeboats for all aboard, drills, and a round the clock radio watch.

• Harland and Wolff designed davits able to hold up to 48 lifeboats.
• A long E deck passageway nicknamed Scotland Road served as the main route for crew and third class passengers.
• The cable ship Mackay-Bennett, short of embalming fluid, buried many third class and crew victims at sea.
• The International Ice Patrol has recorded no iceberg collision deaths in its patrolled area since its founding.
• Robert Ballard and Jean-Louis Michel located the wreck in 1985.