There is something romantic about traveling on a cruise ship, and even today luxury cruises are considered by many to be the ultimate vacation, featuring days of fun activities in exotic locations and nights of dinner and dancing under the stars. Today even the cheapest cabins are quite luxurious, and people save for years to afford to travel by sea.

However, it was not always that way, and there was a time when travelling on even the most luxurious liners could prove dangerous or even deadly. The loss of the Titanic in 1912 cast a pall over all future voyages, and in the wake of the most famous sinking in history, a number of crucial changes were made, including the requirement that there be enough lifeboats available for every passenger, a change that was codified by the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea in 1914. That same convention also made a change to the way distress signals were used, and the British subsequently ensured that the bulkheads be raised higher up the boat to truly ensure that the compartments were watertight.

Gone were the days that safety would be compromised for the comforts of the first class. And, of course, a bunch of changes were made to the way ships navigated around icebergs. In the wake of the Titanic, people tried to assure each other that a similar disaster could never happen again, but it did just two years later.