What Is the Biggest Cruise Ship That Sank?

By Alice Nichols

The biggest cruise ship that sank was the RMS Titanic, which struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England to New York City in 1912. The ship had a gross tonnage of 46,328, making it at the time the largest passenger liner ever built.

At 11:40 pm on April 14th, 1912, the ship struck an iceberg and within two hours and forty minutes, it had sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Of the more than 2200 people onboard, only 712 survived.

The sinking of the Titanic is one of the most famous maritime disasters in history and has been immortalized in books and movies. The disaster was largely attributed to a lack of safety measures and regulations on board, as well as inadequate communication between passengers and crew. The ship had only 20 lifeboats for over 2000 passengers and crew members when it was legal for them to carry up to 64 lifeboats.

The tragedy sparked renewed attention to maritime safety standards, leading to more stringent regulations aboard passenger ships. Since then there have been multiple other large cruise ships that have sunk including Costa Concordia (gross tonnage 114 819) off Giglio Island in Italy in 2012 and MS World Discoverer (gross tonnage 19 608) near Solomon Islands in 2000.

Today’s modern cruise ships are built with safety in mind and are equipped with state-of-the-art navigation systems as well as lifeboats that can hold up to 150% of a vessel’s capacity. Despite these improvements however, maritime accidents still happen today but with much less disastrous results than what happened with RMS Titanic over 100 years ago.

Conclusion

The biggest cruise ship that ever sank was the RMS Titanic which had a gross tonnage of 46 328 when it tragically sank in 1912 after striking an iceberg during its maiden voyage from Southampton England to New York City. Its sinking led to new regulation for passenger ships making them much safer today than they were at the time of this tragedy.