HOW SAFETY AT SEA HAS IMPROVED SINCE TITANIC

The shock of the sinking of Titanic on 15 April 1912 stunned the world, with the immediate question being asked: how could something so large and so sure vanish beneath the waves in just a few hours? The subsequent inquiries kept Titanic in the headlines for months as further questions were raised: why were the lifeboats lowered with too few people on board? Why were the boats themselves few and far between? Why was there no 24-hour radio operator on a nearby ship that heard the SOS?

The questions have become the subject of many debates over the last century, not least when interest in the sinking grew following the discovery of the wreck in 1985 and the release of a big-budget movie recounting events.

So what has changed since the loss of in 1912? Throughout history there have been accidents and disasters involving passenger ships. was not the first in the 20th century and there will no doubt be others in the future., the Cunard Line lost to a German U-boat’s torpedo. On 7 May 1915 the ship was approaching the coast of Southern Ireland on the last leg of a transatlantic crossing when U-20 fired a single torpedo at the ship.