The R.M.S. Titanic arrives in Queenstown in the early afternoon of Thursday 11th April. As the docks at the harbour were not big enough to accommodate the Titanic, she was anchored approximately a mile away from port. Two White Star tenders, America and Ireland, ferried passengers from the ship to the dock, among them were a crew member who just used the Titanic as a free trip home and Francis Brown where he took his last photo of the Titanic and also the last known photo of Captain Smith alive.
The tenders then brought more passengers and mail to the ship. She then stayed docked for a further hour as Captain Smith allowed local lace merchants to come aboard and sell quiality Irish lace to the first class passengers.
Finally at 1:30pm, the Titanic raised anchor for the last time and headed out into the Atlantic. To the passengers, the crossing so far had been uneventful besides the near miss back in Southampton, however for the Crew there were a few problems. Since the Titanic arrived in Southampton, a fire had be burning in one of the coal bunkers which won't be extinguished until the day before the disaster. This was seen as a waste of coal as there had been a coal strike before the Titanic sailed, threatening to cancel her trip, however the coal strike was solved on the 6th April but this meant that there wasn't enough time to get fresh coal for the Titanic, so coal was taken from other ships and the left overs from the Olympic, this meant that the other ship's crossings had to be cancelled and their passengers transfered to Titanic.
The Titanic leaves Ireland and heads into the Atlantic, never to see land again.
To be continued...
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