The “unsinkable” RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on April 14, 1912, and sunk completely under the black waters of the North Atlantic less than three hours later.
Of the 2,240 passengers and crew on board, more than 1,500 people died, mostly from hypothermia. The seawater was a frigid 28 degrees Fahrenheit.
How did the Titanic sink?
The Titanic was famously the largest ship ever built when it departed Southhampton, England, for its maiden voyage to New York City on April 10, 1912. The luxury liner earned its “unsinkable” distinction because of its durable, water-tight construction.
According to Titanic’s engineers, the ship could take on water in four of its 16 bulkhead compartments and still stay afloat. When the Titanic struck the iceberg, it wasn’t a direct, head-on collision. The starboard side of the hull scraped against a jagged underwater section of the iceberg, opening a long gash that compromised at least five compartments.
As those damaged bulkhead compartments filled with water, the Titanic slowly tilted toward the bow (the front of the ship). This caused even more bulkheads to flood as water poured over the walls separating the compartments. When the Titanic’s chief designer, Thomas Andrews—also a passenger—calculated the alarming angle of the ship, he knew the Titanic was doomed.
Eyewitnesses in lifeboats reported that the Titanic finally began to capsize around 2:15 a.m. Once the process began, it only took five minutes for the ship to raise into the air, snap in half and plunge under the ocean. It was completely submerged by 2:20 a.m.—two hours and 40 minutes from the time of the iceberg impact.
“She took a heavy cant and her bow went down clear...head down,” testified survivor George Symons. “And that is the time when I saw her lights go out, all her lights...Her head was going well down...her stern was out of the water...It righted itself without the bow; in my estimate, she must have broken in half...I saw the poop right itself, then it went up and disappeared from view.”
Why weren't there more survivors?
Two hours and 40 minutes seems like plenty of time to safely evacuate more than 2,000 people into lifeboats. But the problem was there weren’t enough lifeboats.
The Titanic was equipped to carry as many as 64 lifeboats, yet it only sailed with 20 (four more than the legal minimum). At full capacity, those 20 lifeboats could hold a maximum of 1,178 people—still not enough to evacuate everyone. Further, in the chaos and confusion, many of the lifeboats departed half empty.
A little more than 700 Titanic passengers and crew, mostly women and children, made it out safely. The rest tragically went down with the slowly sinking ship.
