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 alternative theories financial loss for the company. Gardiner proposes that, to make sure at least one vessel would be earning money, the badly damaged "Olympic" was patched up and then converted to become the "Titanic". The real "Titanic" when complete would then quietly enter service as the "Olympic". The "Titanic" indeed had a list to port leaving Southampton. Inadequate trimming of cargo and bunkers would likely result in such and the crew seems to have demonstrated a lack of proficiency on several occasions. A list to port was noted by several "Titanic" survivors including Lawrence Beesley who wrote in his book about