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 romantic tragedies with personal heroism. It has inspired many moral, social and political metaphors and is regularly invoked as a cautionary tale of the limitations of modernity and ambition. The RMS "Titanic" has been commemorated in a wide variety of ways in the century after she sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1912. As D. Brian Anderson has put it, the sinking of "Titanic" has "become a part of our mythology, firmly entrenched in the collective consciousness, and the stories will continue to be retold not because they need to be retold, but because we need to tell them."