Unsinkable: The Loss of RMS Titanic

She was the largest moving object ever built by human hands, and the popular press had called her practically unsinkable. Four days into her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, the RMS Titanic proved otherwise.

The collision

At about 11:40 p.m. ship’s time on 14 April 1912, lookouts spotted an iceberg dead ahead. The ship turned, but too late: the berg scraped along her starboard side below the waterline, buckling the hull and opening at least five of her forward watertight compartments to the sea. [1] Titanic had been designed to float with up to four compartments flooded. With five or more breached, her fate was sealed.

Not enough boats

The ship carried lifeboats for roughly half the people aboard — enough to satisfy the outdated regulations of the day, which set lifeboat requirements by a vessel’s tonnage rather than its passenger capacity. [2] In the chaos and disbelief of the first hour, several boats were launched far from full. By 2:20 a.m. on 15 April, the ship broke apart and went down, leaving hundreds in the 28°F (−2°C) water, where most died of cold within minutes. [1]

The toll

Of the roughly 2,200 passengers and crew aboard, more than 1,500 perished. [1] The death toll fell unevenly: a far higher proportion of first-class passengers survived than those in third class, a disparity that became central to later accounts of the disaster.

The reckoning

The Carpathia arrived around 4 a.m. and rescued some 705 survivors from the lifeboats. [2] Inquiries in both the United States and Britain followed within weeks. Their recommendations reshaped maritime safety: lifeboats for everyone aboard, mandatory 24-hour radio watches, and the founding of the International Ice Patrol to track North Atlantic icebergs. The wreck itself lay undiscovered on the seabed until 1985.