Titanic Facts

Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition is filled with hundreds of amazing artifacts—all real—and thousands of fascinating facts and stories. These are just a small sampling of the many interesting subjects touched on in the exhibition:

• It cost $7.5 million to build Titanic and the Ship carried a $5 million insurance policy.
• A medical officer greeted the third-class passengers. He wanted to be sure that none of the immigrants had any health problems that would prevent them from entering the United States.
• There were only two bathtubs for the more than 700 third-class passengers aboard the Ship.
• Sixty chefs and chefs' assistants worked in Titanic's five kitchens. They ranged from soup cooks and roast cooks to pastry cooks and vegetable cooks. There was a kosher cook, too, to prepare the meals for the Jewish passengers.
• Some experts predict that if the Ship's bow had crashed straight into the iceberg, Titanic and most of its passengers would have survived.
• At first most of the passengers did not believe Titanic was really sinking, hence the low number of 19 aboard the first lifeboat, even though it could carry 65.
• Even if all 20 lifeboats had been filled to capacity, there would only have been room in them for 1,178 people. Titanic held about 2,200 passengers and crew.
• Although several passengers and crew members on the lifeboats wanted to return to the Ship, the majority protested out of fear that the hundreds in the water would swamp the boats.
• Initial headlines of the Titanic disaster claimed all passengers survived and the Ship was being towed to land.