53,200 t117,000,000 lb
Fully loaded, the Titanic weighed about 53,150 tonnes (117 million lb). The official figure is 52,310 long tons: its displacement, the weight of water the ship pushed aside at its full design draught. The famous 46,328 ‘tons’ is gross tonnage, a measure of enclosed volume, not weight, so it says nothing about how heavy the ship was.
A ship is weighed by the water it pushes aside: a floating hull displaces exactly its own weight. At the 1912 British inquiry into the sinking, Edward Wilding of the shipbuilder Harland & Wolff gave the Titanic’s displacement at its load draught of 34 ft 7 in as 52,310 tons, “a ton of 2,240 lbs”. Asked if that was what the ship would weigh, he said yes, when actually loaded to that draught.
That total is two parts added together. The lightweight is the ship itself: hull, engines, boilers and permanent fittings. The deadweight is everything loaded aboard, from coal, fresh water and stores to cargo, mail, passengers and crew. Harland & Wolff’s records, summarised by historian Mark Chirnside, show the empty Titanic was 480 tons heavier than its sister Olympic, but both reached the same 52,310 long tons when loaded to their design draught.
Nobody recorded what the Titanic weighed on the night it sank. It carried about 2,200 people against a planned capacity of about 3,300, and had been burning coal for four days, so it was probably somewhat under its full-load figure.
British shipbuilders in 1912 used the long ton of 2,240 lb (1,016 kg). A metric tonne is 1,000 kg (2,205 lb), and the US short ton is 2,000 lb. So 52,310 long tons is about 53,150 tonnes or about 58,600 US tons. Some sources write ‘52,310 tonnes’ or round it to ‘52,000 tonnes’, which mixes up the units and understates the weight by 840 to 1,150 tonnes.
The other famous number, 46,328 gross register tons, is not a weight at all. A register ton is 100 cubic feet (2.83 m³) of enclosed space, so it says the Titanic’s hull and superstructure held about 4.6 million cubic feet. It was used for fees and rankings, and it is why the Titanic counted as the largest ship in the world.
This is also why claims that the Titanic was ‘1,000 tons heavier’ than the Olympic are wrong. The Titanic’s gross tonnage was about 1,005 register tons greater, mostly from extra enclosed space, but their loaded weights were identical.
The engines alone were enormous. Each of the two reciprocating engines weighed 720 tonnes, plus 195 tonnes for its bedplate, and each of the 29 boilers weighed 91.5 tonnes and held another 48.5 tonnes of water. The rudder, over 78 ft (24 m) tall, weighed more than 100 tonnes.
The hull, about 26,000 tons according to RMS Titanic, Inc., was built from about 2,000 steel plates of 2.5 to 3 tons each, held together by over three million rivets that weighed more than 1,200 tons by themselves. The centre anchor, at about 16 tons, left the Netherton ironworks on 1 May 1911 on a horse-drawn cart, with extra horses added for the steep hills on the way to the railway.
Fuel made up a large share of the load. The bunkers held 6,611 tonnes of coal, with another 1,092 tonnes in a cargo hold, and the furnaces burned more than 600 tonnes a day, shovelled in by hand by 176 firemen.
About 117 million lb. Its official displacement of 52,310 long tons comes to 117,174,400 lb, or roughly 58,600 US short tons.
Empty, yes, by about 480 tons. Fully loaded to the same design draught, both ships displaced 52,310 long tons (about 53,150 tonnes). Their younger sister Britannic was the heaviest of the three, at 53,170 long tons.
46,328 gross register tons (often rounded to 46,329). That measures enclosed volume, at 100 cubic feet per register ton, not weight.
The centre anchor weighed about 16 tons. It was made by Noah Hingley & Sons in Netherton, near Dudley, and travelled to Belfast by horse-drawn cart, train and ship.
More than 600 tonnes a day, which left about 100 tonnes of ash to dispose of. With full bunkers and a loaded hold it could carry about 7,700 tonnes of coal.
Last checked October 3, 2026.
