On April 2nd 1912, the Titanic underwent its first (and only) sea trials. These trials had originally been scheduled for the day before, but had to be delayed due to bad weather.
During the trials, which lasted twelve hours, Titanic travelled more than 80 nautical miles around Belfast Lough and out into the open sea. A number of tests were performed including an emergency crash stop – which took 3 minutes and 15 seconds. At around 7pm that evening, the ship was declared seaworthy by Francis Carruthers, the surveyor. As we now now, this was not entirely accurate, but maybe we shouldn’t judge – I’m guessing there weren’t many icebergs lurking around the coast of Ireland.
I’ve always been fascinated by the story of the Titanic, so much so that in 2011 I set my first Friends Forever book, The Time Spell, on the ill-fated ship. Countless other books have been inspired by the tragic voyage of this ship – a voyage that began 104 years ago today!

(This post first appeared on WWW.girlsheartbooks.com)