Sinking of the RMS Titanic time of her entry into service on 2 April 1912, Royal Mail Ship (RMS) "Titanic" was the second of three sister ships, and was the largest ship in the world. She and her sister, , were almost one and a half times the gross register tonnage of Cunard's and , the previous record holders, and were nearly longer. "Titanic" could carry 3,547 people in speed and comfort, and was built on a hitherto unprecedented scale. Her reciprocating engines were the largest that had ever been built, standing high and with cylinders in diameter requiring the burning of of coal per
RMS Titanic in popular culture wherein the world, as Western man has known and shaped it, is undermined from within, not overcome from without; and ends not in holocaust but with a quiet slip into oblivion.” Don Lynch's "Inside the Titanic" (1997) presents an overview of the ship and the disaster, illustrated by the artist Ken Marschall, whose pictures of "Titanic" and other lost ships have become famous. Susan Wels' book "Titanic: Legacy of the World's Greatest Ocean Liner" (1997) documents the salvage work of RMS "Titanic" Inc, while Daniel Allen Butler provides a scholarly examination of the "Titanic" story in his 1998 book "Unsinkable: