TITANIC

a very large British passenger ship which in 1912 sank on its first voyage across the Atlantic after hitting an iceberg (= a large mass of floating ice), although its owners had claimed that it could never sink. There were not enough lifeboats for all the passengers and over 1 500 people died. As a result of this disaster, new laws were introduced concerning safety at sea. The wreck of the ship was found at the bottom of the sea in 1985 and there have been several attempts to raise it to the surface, though without success. The disaster has been the subject of several films. The most recent of these, Titanic (1997), which won 11 Oscars , starred Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio , and is one of the most financially successful films ever made.