The competition to achieve the fastest Atlantic crossing began in the middle of the 19th Century. The record holder was awarded a symbolic honorary title, the so-called Blue Riband. At the beginning of the 20th Century this competition had turned into an ever fiercer fight between the leading shipping companies in England, the USA and Germany.

The Cunard Line held the record for a long time with its famous ships Lusitania and Mauretania, which were the fastest passenger ships in the world for 22 years. But in 1907, the British White Star Line belonging to the famous American International Mercantile Marine Company decided to build a trio of ships that would eclipse all other steamships. The dimensions of the new "Olympic class" ships would be almost identical: they would differ only in their fittings and in weight.

The grandiose nature of the scheme was reflected in the names of the future ocean leviathans. The first ship, launched in 1911, was christened Olympic, and a few months later work on the Titanic was completed. The third member of the trio was originally intended to be called Gigantic, but was finally launched in 1914 under the more modest name Britannic. The White Star Line wanted these ships to be an all-round luxury experience. To achieve this, the company was prepared to forgo the Blue Riband, which it could never win with a traveling speed of 21 knots.

The keel of the Titanic was laid down on March 31, 1909 in the docks of Harland & Wolff in Belfast, 15 weeks after the keel laying of its sister ship, the Olympic. As no company in the world had sufficient capacities to build a steamship of this size, several docks had to be put together to make room for the Titanic. The hull alone of the ocean giant required the space of three conventional ships. The Titanic had a total length of 269.04 metres and measured 28.19 metres at its widest point. The height from the keel to the top of the four funnels was 56 metres. These are the dimensions of an 11-storey building. Compared to the 70,000 hp of the Mauretania, the Titanic with approximately 50,000 hp was considerably less powerful. But maximum power would have entailed reductions in comfort: high speeds would have required less weight and as little water resistance as possible.

As the Titanic was intended to be a floating city, this kind of construction was not possible. The ship was designed with a huge belly, as an ocean giant with a very high level of water displacement. The propulsion system consisted of a powerful combination of a four cylinder triple expansion reciprocating steam engine and a low pressure Parsons turbine and represented the latest marine technology. The huge engine was powered by 20 boilers and 159 furnaces. The Titanic required 620 to 640 tons of coal per day at sea. The smoke was expelled through enormous funnels, though the fourth funnel of the Titanic was in fact a dummy.

The technical standards of the ship were excellent. The entire Titanic was built of steel; the stays, masts and the bottom were extremely robust. Further, there were double sliding doors throughout the ship and the connection between the engine and boiler rooms consisted of watertight doors which could be closed from the bridge by powerful electromagnets. The luxury liner also had 20 lifeboats, which was deemed entirely sufficient by British security requirements of the time. The White Star Line saw no reason to add extra lifeboats. Alexander Carlisle, one of the directors of the Harland & Wolff shipyard told the British Wreck Commissioner: "We built the ship to enable it to float. We did not build it to enable it collide with an iceberg or a cliff." Unfortunately that is exactly what happened.