People who enjoy vacations on modern cruise ships have most likely heard someone caution them against such a voyage by invoking the 1912 Titanic disaster as if comparing a ship built during the Taft administration to one built in a different millennium makes a lick of sense.
Fearing cruises because of what happened to the Titanic is like refusing to fly because Amelia Earhart disappeared.
A comparison of the Titanic vs cruise ship today isn’t just comparing apples to oranges. It’s more like comparing apples to ducks. They’re just not in the same class.
Titanic vs Cruise Ship Comparison 2022
It’s an understatement to say that technologies have changed every aspect of our lives since the Titanic took its doomed voyage. Setting sail in 1912, the Titanic’s passengers couldn’t have conceived of a smartphone, for example. Her designers and builders would have been similarly baffled by advances in the steel and shipwright industries.
The steel that comprises a ship’s hull is different, even if you don’t factor in the too-high sulfur content of the Titanic’s hull. It contributed to the steel’s brittleness in icy waters, which made the ship unable to survive its encounter with that iceberg.
But beyond that, navigation systems, onboard amenities, and just about everything else has changed drastically in more than a century. Today’s cruise ships are substantially larger than the Titanic and hold many more passengers.
While the Titanic had a swimming pool, that sweeping staircase everyone saw in the movie, and a general air of swankiness, the accommodations of modern cruise ships dwarf those of the doomed vessel.
Today’s ships are floating cities, with shopping, multiple dining options, and amenities that, in some cases, are bananas:
- Norwegian Cruise Lines has ships that offer ziplining.
- The Mardi Gras, a Carnival ship, has a roller coaster.
- Several ships today house planetariums, as if the view of the sky from the decks in the middle of the ocean wasn’t awe-inspiring enough.
- The Wonder of the Seas contains no less than 19 swimming pools.
- Other ships have ice bars and swaths of real grass.
Titanic vs Modern Cruise Ships
The Titanic was a wonder at the time. It had a wireless radio. The fact that this was news is a clue as to how far communications have come. Sailing without a radio today is unthinkable.
Navigation was violently different, too. The Titanic crew used a chronometer and sextant to navigate by the stars. Modern cruise ships use GPS and a navigation tool called an electronic chart display and information system (ECDIS) that relies heavily on computers.
The Titanic had a fancy setup of electrical buttons and relays. Again, it was the bleeding edge of tech back then, but we all know how fast the tech world advances.
Length Comparison
Currently, the largest modern ship is Royal Caribbean’s Wonder of the Seas. It’s 1,187 feet (362m) long and 210 feet (64m) at its widest point. That’s more than three football fields long and two NBA courts wide.
By contrast, the Titanic was 882 feet (268m) long and 92 feet (28m) wide. The Wonder of the Seas is more than twice as wide and almost a football field longer. As massive as the Titanic was, that vessel could literally fit inside the hull of what is currently the largest ship.
The size difference leads to a comparison of the two crafts’ gross tonnage capabilities. While the Titanic was 46,329, the Wonder of the Seas boasts a figure more than five times larger at a gross tonnage of 236,857.
As big a difference as that is, the Titanic was still a massive ship. It’s just that we’ve built bigger things these days. If that ship were on the seas today, it would be slightly smaller than the average cruise ship. It’s no longer the biggest and baddest ever, but it was still enormous.
Speed Comparison
A Titanic vs cruise ship comparison when it comes to speed isn’t exactly fair, and as a result, the findings may be somewhat surprising, and the largest ship isn’t necessarily the fastest ship.
The Titanic was an ocean liner as opposed to a cruise ship. An ocean liner’s goals are speed and getting passengers from one place to another quickly. It was a mode of transportation for people and mail. On the other hand, a cruise ship is for cruising, and a pleasure cruise is more about the journey than the destination.
So while the Wonder of the Seas and modern cruise ships like it cruise along at about 22 knots (25mph), the Titanic’s top speed was 23 knots (26mph). It’s not a huge difference, but over a hundred years later, the Titanic would still win a race between the two craft.
Cabin Comparison
In some ways, cabins today are vastly different, and in some ways, not so much. On paper, a big difference is that the Titanic had accommodations available in three classes. First-class passengers had access to 350 staterooms that would have been outfitted much like a cabin on a ship today.
Second-class cabins held bunk beds and housed up to eight people. The third class, also known as steerage, was generally for poor people. Rooms held ten people, and about 1,000 third-class passengers had access to two communal bathrooms.
Today’s cabins all have individual bathrooms (not even the first-class rooms on the Titanic had those), are kitted out nicely, and don’t fall under class distinctions.
However, the hierarchy hasn’t disappeared. Instead of first, second, and third classes, modern cruise lines offer upgrades. Passengers pay extra for access to exclusive parts of the ship, such as certain clubs or restaurants.
Passenger Count comparison
The Titanic could hold more than 3,000 people. With space for 900 crew members, the ship could carry up to 2,420 passengers with that crew.
You have to scroll pretty far down the list of the largest cruise ships today to find a comparable passenger capacity. Royal Caribbean’s Explorer of the Seas holds over 1,500 staterooms and, at double occupancy, can carry 3,114 passengers. Its maximum occupancy capacity is 3,840. That ship is currently the 55th largest cruise ship.
The largest, the Wonder of the Seas, maxes out at 6,988 passengers.
While the Titanic sported ten decks, ships today usually have 14 or more decks. Adding that deck count to the longer and wider dimensions of today’s ships means they can carry many more people and greater tonnage.
Do Modern Cruise Ships Have More Lifeboats Than The Titanic?
It was heartbreaking that the Titanic had only enough lifeboats for about one-third of its passengers. The logic as to why remains infuriating.
- The boat was billed as being unsinkable, so why would we need lifeboats at all?
- Ship owners cut the original plan for 64 lifeboats to 20 because they felt more than that would make the deck look messy and foul the view for the first-class passengers.
In our much more safety-conscious world today, cruise ships don’t have thousands of lifeboats to accommodate their thousands of passengers. Instead, they have state-of-the-art lifeboats that can hold hundreds of people. This makes for fewer boats, but in the event of an unseen disaster, everyone on board a modern cruise ship has a spot on a lifeboat.
Fare Comparison
Tickets for the Titanic’s planned 137-hour voyage were sold in Great Britain, so the cost was in pounds. But in American dollars, first-class tickets averaged about $400 each (though there were higher-end berths that brought as much as $4,000), while a steerage ticket could be had for about $35.
In today’s money, that average first-class berth would cost just north of twelve grand, while the lowly steerage fare would have been right at $1,000.
Final Thoughts
Boarding a vessel today brings a vastly different experience than that of the Titanic passengers, and we’re not talking about the sinking part of that voyage. Today’s ships are larger and more luxurious, and modern cruise ships are just that— cruise ships. The Titanic was an ocean liner, so its purpose was a bit different.
Still, other than not being faster than the Titanic, a ship today holds more people in statelier rooms and offers amenities the people of 1912 couldn’t have dreamt of when they boarded the Titanic. They have enough lifeboats, too.
