Titanic. David Ross

On 14 April 1912, less than a week into a transatlantic trip from Southampton to New York, the largest luxury cruise liner in the world struck an iceberg off the coast of Labrador, causing the hull to buckle.

The massive 50,000-ton ship, hailed as ‘unsinkable,’ was soon slipping into the cold Atlantic Ocean, the crew and passengers scrambling to launch lifeboats before being sucked into the deep. Of the 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, more than 1,500 died, making the sinking one of the deadliest for a single ship up to that time.

The sinking has captured the public imagination ever since, in part because of the scale of the tragedy, but also because the ship represented in microcosm Edwardian society, with the super-rich sharing the vessel with poor migrants seeking a new life in North America. Other factors, such as why there were only enough lifeboats to hold half the passengers, also caused controversy and led to changes in maritime safety.

In later years, many survivors told their stories to the press, and Titanic celebrates these accounts. A final chapter examines the shipwreck today, which has been visited underwater by explorers, scientists, and filmmakers, and many artifacts have been recovered as the old liner steadily disintegrates. Titanic offers a compact, insightful photographic history of the sinking and its aftermath in 180 authentic photographs.

by David Ross