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 Convergence of the Twain" (1912), his "Lines on the Loss of the "Titanic"", was a considerably more substantial work. His poem sets "Titanic" in a pessimistic post-Darwinian contrast between the achievements and arrogance of man and the humbling power of nature. The building of "Titanic" in its unprecedented scale is contrasted with the origins of its nemesis, following a familiar nineteenth-century notion of the double or "doppelgänger" (a theme most famously realised in "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"): <poem> And as the smart ship grew In stature, grace and hue, In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg