10 most famous engineering disasters in the world- #5 got thousands of people killed (With Pics)

5. Titanic (1912)

RMS Titanic was a British passenger ship that sank after hitting an iceberg on her maiden voyage from Southampton (United Kingdom) to New York City, in April 1912. Titanic was at the time the largest ship ever built and was considered to be unsinkable. The tragedy claimed the lives of over 1,500 people.

But was the sinking of the Titanic an engineering failure? Many factors contributed to the catastrophe: removing half the amount of lifeboats originally planned for the ship, and cruising in high speed in an iceberg-prone environment. As for the engineering point of view: several rivets of the 3 million rivets that held the Titanic together were recently recovered and tested, and found to be made of low quality iron, which on impact caused them to fall apart. This might have contributed to the event. Another engineering fault was that the 16 watertight compartments that kept the boat afloat, were not individually sealed, but rather connected near the ceiling. This enabled the water to spill from one compartment to another and sink the boat.