The great ship, at that time the largest and most luxurious afloat, was designed
and built by William Pirrie's Belfast firm Harland and Wolff to service the highly
competitive Atlantic Ferry route. It had a double-bottomed hull that was divided
into sixteen presumably watertight compartments. Because four of these could be
flooded without endangering the liner's buoyancy, it was considered unsinkable. The
Titanic measured 882.5 feet long, with a gross tonnage of 46,328.
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