100 years ago today, at 2:20 AM the “unsinkable” Titanic went down in 12,415 feet of water, and 1,517 souls were lost to the fridged waters of the north Atlantic.
via History.com:
Titanic was equipped with a Marconi wireless, and there had been sporadic reports of ice from other ships, but she was sailing on calm seas under a moonless, clear sky. A lookout saw the iceberg dead ahead coming out of a slight haze, rang the warning bell and telephoned the bridge. The engines were quickly reversed and the ship was turned sharply, and instead of making direct impact the berg seemed to graze along the side of the ship, sprinkling ice fragments on the forward deck. Sensing no collision, the lookouts were relieved. They had no idea that the iceberg’s jagged underwater spur had slashed a 300-foot gash well below the ship’s waterline, and that Titanic was doomed. By the time the captain toured the damaged area with Harland and Wolff’s Thomas Andrews, five compartments were already filling with seawater, and the bow of the ship was alarmingly down. Andrews did a quick calculation and estimated that Titanic might remain afloat for an hour and a half, perhaps slightly more. At that point the captain, who had already instructed his wireless operator to call for help, ordered the lifeboats to be loaded.
via Sinking of the RMS Titanic:
At 11.40 pm (ship’s time), lookout Frederick Fleet spotted an iceberg immediately ahead of Titanic and alerted the bridge. First Officer William Murdoch ordered the ship to be steered around the obstacle and the engines to be put in reverse, but it was too late; the starboard side of Titanic struck the iceberg, creating a series of holes below the waterline. Five of the ship’s watertight compartments were breached. It soon became clear that the ship was doomed, as she could not survive more than four compartments being flooded. Titanic began sinking bow-first, with water spilling from compartment to compartment as her angle in the water became steeper.
Those aboard Titanic were ill-prepared for such an emergency. The ship’s lifeboats had only enough space to carry about half of those on board; if the ship had carried her full complement, only about a third could have been accommodated in the lifeboats. The crew had not been trained adequately in carrying out an evacuation. The officers did not know how many they could safely put aboard the lifeboats and launched many of them barely half-full. Third-class passengers were largely left to fend for themselves, causing many of them to become trapped below decks as the ship filled with water. A “women and children first” protocol was generally followed for the loading of the lifeboats and most of the male passengers and crew were left aboard.
Two hours and forty minutes after Titanic struck the iceberg, her rate of sinking suddenly increased as her forward deck dipped underwater and the sea poured in through open hatches and grates. As her unsupported stern rose out of the water, exposing the propellers, the ship split apart between the third and fourth funnels due to the immense strain on the keel. The stern remained afloat for a few minutes longer, rising to a nearly vertical angle with hundreds of people still clinging to it. At 2.20 am, it sank, breaking loose from the bow section. The remaining passengers and crew were plunged into lethally cold water with a temperature of only 28 °F (-2 °C). Almost all of those in the water died of hypothermia or cardiac arrest within minutes or drowned. Only 13 of them were helped into the lifeboats though these had room for almost 500 more occupants.
Distress signals were sent by wireless, rockets and lamp, but none of the ships that responded were near enough to reach her before she sank. A nearby ship, the Californian, which was the last to have been in contact with her before the collision, saw her flares but failed to assist. Around 4 am, RMS Carpathia arrived on the scene in response to Titanic’s earlier distress calls. 710 people survived the disaster and were conveyed by Carpathia to New York, Titanic’s original destination, while 1,517 people lost their lives.
