As one might imagine, that could cause some tension. It's not as if the wealthy and less-wealthy passengers onboard necessarily disliked each other in 1912 Europe and America, though, there was quite a difference in how the rich and the merely "comfortable" were treated. Riding a boat across the vast expanse of an ocean meant that all of the passengers had to stay in one relatively fixed location, without the option of going anywhere very far once the ship's voyage across the Atlantic began therefore, there was bound to be some contact between the classes despite the mammoth size of their shared maritime hotel. The accommodations in even the least expensive quarters of the gigantic sailing vessel were magnificent, beyond what most of those traveling third-class had ever seen. Third-class lodging, though, was no slum on this incredible boat. You have the mixing of social classes, from the wealthy elite (John Jacob Astor, for example) who punch their tickets for first-class accommodations all the way, to the affluent members of second-class, financially secure but not quite up to the level of the Astors on the social scale, down to the third-class passengers, many of whom were in the process of immigrating to the United States when they climbed on board the Titanic. The maiden voyage and subsequent sinking of the Titanic is perhaps the most fascinating setting for historical fiction to have occurred in the twentieth century.
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