Learning
This is the learning area of the website, the content here is written with activites for children in mind.
Draw your own Titanic
Once you have found out all about the Titanic story, draw your own TITANICa picture.
Titanic education resource
A useful pack to help your students explore the social class of some of the passengers on board Titanic. The lessons centre on photographs, pictures, written information and artefacts from three of Titanic’s survivors, Lady Duff-Gordon, a first class passenger; Elsie Doling, second class passenger; and Rosa Abbot, third class passenger.
Birth of a dream
The story of Titanic and her sister ships began five years earlier, when one evening in 1907 Mr & Mrs J. Bruce Ismay went for dinner at the home of Lord & Lady Pirrie in London.
Titanic dream takes shape
The simple sketches drawn the night of the dinner party were taken back to Harland & Wolff by Lord Pirrie.
Life for the Shipyard workers
A skilled worker was paid £2.00 a week while an unskilled labourer received £1.00 or less. At these rates it would have cost the workers 4-8 months wages to pay for a single First Class berth on one of the liners.
Dangerous conditions for Shipyard workers
In addition to the long hours, it was a dangerous job, with none of the Health & Safety regulations we have today. Men worked in all weathers with no protective clothing, hard hat or safety equipment, and this led to many accidents, and even fatalities.
Construction: the keel
The layout of the keel is the first stage of the construction of a ship. The keel is a key structure, like the backbone of a human body, on which everything else depends. It is made in sections, laid on blocks on a sloping slipway.
Construction: the frames
After the keel has been laid, construction begins on the frame. The frame is similar to the ribs in the human body, and it forms the basic shape of the hull. Curved frames are connected to the keel, while steel beams help to hold the frames together and add strength to the structure.
Construction: the hull
The next stage in ship building is to rivet steel plates to the frame, in order to form the watertight hull of the ship, like the skin on the human body.
Launch
On 20th October 1910, amidst a blaze of publicity, Olympic, the first of the three sister ships, was launched. This publicity was so important that even though the White Star Line had planned to paint the hull of Olympic black, she was painted light grey for the launch in order to show her off best in the photographs.