Passengers of the RMS Titanic April 1912 at around 11:40 pm, while the RMS "Titanic" was sailing about south of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the ship struck an iceberg and began to sink. Shortly before midnight, Captain Edward Smith ordered the ship's lifeboats to be readied and a distress call was sent out. The closest ship to respond was Cunard Line's away, which would arrive in an estimated four hours—too late to rescue all of "Titanic" passengers. Forty-five minutes after the ship hit the iceberg, Captain Smith ordered the lifeboats to be loaded and lowered under the orders women and children first. The first
RMS Titanic in popular culture The Full Story of the RMS Titanic". Robin Gardiner's 1995 and 1998 books "Riddle of the Titanic" and "Titanic: The Ship that Never Sank", put forward a conspiracy theory that the wreck is actually that of the RMS "Olympic", which supposedly the White Star Line had secretly switched with "Titanic" as part of an insurance scam. A variety of novels set aboard the "Titanic" has been produced over the years. One of the earliest was the German author Robert Prechtl's "Titanic", first published in Germany in 1937 and subsequently in Britain in 1938 and in the US in 1940 (translated