Collections
The first major shipping disaster to hit Edwardian Liverpool was the sinking of the White Star liner Titanic in 1912. Although she sailed from Southampton, Titanic was registered in Liverpool, and so carried the city’s name on her stern. This was because her managing company, the White Star Line, had its head office in James Street, Liverpool. White Star had transferred its main New York service from Liverpool to Southampton in 1907. This was partly due to the competition of the new Cunard liners Lusitania and Mauretania, both sailing from Liverpool from that year.
Find out more about how the Titanic story is linked to Liverpool here.
Titanic, then the largest ship in the world, left Southampton for New York on Wednesday 10 April 1912. On board were 922 passengers, later rising to 1316 after calls at Cherbourg and Queenstown. With her crew of 892 she carried 2,208 people in all. Although she was little more than half full, her 20 lifeboats could only carry about half of the people on board.
At 11.40 pm on the night of Sunday 14 April she struck an iceberg to the south-east of Newfoundland, which fatally damaged the hull. The ship sank over two and a half hours later with the loss of over 1,500 lives.
Follow the links on the right to find out more about some of the collection highlights.
The Maritime Archives and Library also hold a lot of relevant material about the Titanic, including the only surviving first class ticket. You can read more online, with information sheet number 41: RMS Titanic.
You might also be able to spot another highlight from the Titanic collections in National Museum's Liverpool's Top Treasures online quiz - but we are not giving you any clues about which one it is!
There are regular free spotlight talks and roleplayer performances about the Titanic. Further details and upcoming dates are in our Titanic events programme.