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On the morning of April 3rd, Titanic arrived in the new constructed White Star dock in Southampton. This dock was especially built to accommodate giants like Titanic and Olympic . To guide her into the harbour of Southampton five tugs had to be used. Southampton was the main point of crew embarkation . For this ship there were 885 crew members to board. As she was a "R.M.S", which means "Royal Mail Steamer", a ship, legally commissioned by the British Monarchy and the government of the USA to carry mail , thousands of sacks of mail had to be stored in the freight compartments. The list of the enormous food amount is too long to be written down here, except an excerption:
To accommodate 2,000 passengers for nearly a week, giant amounts of food were boarded. E.g. 15,000 bottles of mineral water, 75,000 pounds of meat, 40,000 eggs, 6825 litres of milk and 2.75 tons of tomatoes . (See table XX)
A problem, which nearly delayed the voyage, was a heavy strike of the coal miners that ended on April 6th. But it was not early enough to supply Titanic with enough "fuel". So White Star bought the coal stock of five other ships and the rest of coal Olympic had left as she started her voyage on April 3rd. That way, the coal stock of Titanic rose from 1880 tons to 6300 tons. It took 24 hours to store the coal in the coal bunkers and to clean up the gantries and the decks. During the week in the Harbour of Southampton, Titanic consumed 415 tons to power the crane and to produce electricity. Also, general cargo was loaded, almost 560 tons including 11,254 pieces. ( A Jumbo jet is able to carry only 100 tons of cargo) . However, not only in Southampton preparations for Titanic's voyage have been made, but also in Cherbourg, France , in Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland and in New York, USA . In Cherbourg and in Queenstown tenders had to be built due to the small harbours. In New York the re-constructed and enlarged White Star dock was ready and Titanic had been expected.
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