Titanic: From Belfast to the North Atlantic

After launch, Titanic was fitted out and worked on at Thompson Graving Dock. Machinery, funnels, cabins and public rooms turned a steel shell into an operating liner, with thousands of tradespeople contributing to the transformation. Opened in 1911 for the Olympic-class ships, the 850-foot dock was then the world's largest. Its surviving stone chamber makes the scale of Titanic easier to grasp than photographs alone.

Titanic left the yard for trials in Belfast Lough, where her compasses were adjusted and manoeuvring and speed tests were carried out. She was formally handed to White Star the same day and departed for Southampton under Captain Edward Smith. The map pin represents the trial waters, not a claimed single ship fix: the contemporary account describes activity across the lough and a measured mile rather than one exact coordinate.

Titanic began her maiden voyage from White Star Dock, now Ocean Dock, shortly after noon. Southampton supplied most of her crew, so the disaster would later cut especially deeply through this port city and its families. The departure almost became a different maritime story when suction from the moving liner drew the moored New York toward Titanic. Tug action and reversed engines prevented a collision, but the incident delayed departure.

Because Titanic was too large for Cherbourg's quays, she anchored in the roadstead. The tenders Nomadic and Traffic carried passengers, baggage and mail between shore and ship during the brief evening call. First- and second-class travellers crossed alongside emigrants beginning new lives overseas. The pin marks a representative area of the roadstead; surviving records do not justify a metre-precise anchorage point.

Titanic anchored off Roches Point near Queenstown, now Cobh, for her last port call. Tenders Ireland and America brought 123 passengers out to the liner before she turned toward the open Atlantic. For many third-class passengers, Queenstown was the final European threshold of an emigration journey. The pin uses Roches Point to represent the documented outer anchorage rather than placing Titanic at Cobh's shallow quay.

Titanic struck an iceberg on a calm, clear night after receiving several ice warnings. The impact opened a sequence of hull damage to the sea; the ship's compartment design could not survive flooding that extended beyond its intended limit. No exact modern coordinate for the impact can be defended. This rounded marker is editorial and intentionally approximate: Titanic drifted before sinking, while the position transmitted during the emergency was later shown to be well west of the wreck.

Titanic's wireless operators sent CQD and SOS calls with a corrected position of 41°46′ N, 50°14′ W. Carpathia and other ships navigated toward the coordinates available to them during the emergency. This is a historical communications point, not the known wreck site. Its separation from the wreck shows the limits of 1912 dead reckoning and explains why later searchers could not simply descend at the transmitted position.

Titanic's bow rests about 3,800 metres below the surface, separated from the stern amid a broad debris field. NOAA recorded the bow centre at approximately 41°43′57″ N, 49°56′49″ W during its 2004 expedition. The wreck was located in 1985 by a French-American team using deep-sea imaging. It is both an archaeological site and a grave, and international protection efforts seek to limit disturbance and unregulated recovery.

Captain Arthur Rostron drove Carpathia through an ice field toward Titanic's calls and prepared blankets, hot drinks and medical stations before arrival. The first lifeboat came alongside at 4:10 a.m.; the last survivors were aboard by about 8:30. Carpathia recovered people from drifting boats rather than from one fixed coordinate, so this pin represents the rescue field near the wreck. U.S. archival records list 706 rescued people, though totals vary slightly among historical sources.