Sinking of the RMS Titanic April 1912 when she left Southampton on the first leg of her journey to New York. A few hours later she called at Cherbourg in northern France, a journey of , where she took on passengers. Her next port of call was Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland, which she reached around midday on 11 April. She left in the afternoon after taking on more passengers and stores. By the time she departed westwards across the Atlantic she was carrying 892 crew members and 1,320 passengers. This was only about half of her full passenger capacity of 2,435, as it was
RMS Titanic British ocean liners for both Cunard and White Star, such as "Lusitania" and "Mauretania", sailed out of Liverpool followed by a port of call in Queenstown, Ireland. Since the company's founding in 1871, a vast majority of their operations had taken place out of Liverpool. However, in 1907 White Star established another service out of the port of Southampton on England's south coast, which became known as White Star's "Express Service". Southampton had many advantages over Liverpool, the first being its proximity to London. In addition, Southampton, being on the south coast, allowed ships to easily cross the English Channel