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| Royal Mail Steamer Titanic | |||||
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Titanic is probably the best-known ship in modern history. Since sinking in 1912 her story has entered popular culture as a tale of human pride and tragedy. Titanic was the second of three massive ships built by the White Star Line for the transatlantic passenger trade. At 883 feet long and over 46,000 tons she was the largest ship in the world when she embarked in early April 1912 on her maiden voyage to New York.
Just before midnight on 14 April Titanic struck an iceberg, damaging the hull below the waterline. Despite her elaborate system of watertight doors and bulkheads, the ship was doomed. Outdated safety regulations had provided far fewer lifeboats than was necessary to evacuate the 2200 passengers and crew, and most people were still aboard when the ship finally went down at 2:20 a.m. Only about 700 survivors remained when rescue vessels arrived at first light. News of the sinking caused shock worldwide. Maritime safety rules were immediately improved, including the provision of sufficient lifeboats on ships. In 1985 Titanic's wreck was discovered on the ocean floor, and in recent years several expeditions have visited the decaying remains of the once-great liner.
This model builds into a 1:1200 scale waterline replica of Titanic and is approximately 9 inches long when complete. You will need a colour printer capable of handling card or cover stock to print the parts sheets. 67 lb cover stock (approx 8.5 thousandths of an inch or 0.2 mm thick) is recommended.
My thanks to Gerardo Escobedo for test building this model and making helpful suggestions for improvement. Note to webmasters! If you want to offer this kit on your site, please read this first.
The model files The parts and instructions are in Adobe PDF format, and have been compressed into ZIP files for faster transfer. They should work on any Windows, Macintosh, OS/2 or Unix/Linux computer. You will need Adobe's Acrobat Reader and an un-ZIP program. If files are unavailable or slow to download, try at a different time of day, when the file servers may be less busy. Primary site: Follow this link to download the instruction and parts files.
Secondary site: Not yet available.
Related links Titanic: a beginner's guide - BBC Channel 4 has compiled a list of Titanic-related web sites for further reading. Titanic Research and Modeling Association - Created with the scale modeler in mind, this site contains a vast amount of information about Titanic and her sisters and an active discussion forum. RMS Titanic - The Wikipedia entry gives a good overview of the ship and her history. Titanic photo gallery - From MaritimeQuest, a wonderful collection of photos showing Titanic from her construction to her final resting place. Olympic videos - From youtube.com, three short videos showing life aboard RMS Olympic, Titanic's sister ship. |
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Last updated on April 6, 2007 Copyright 2007 by Ralph Currell |
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