sinking of the RMS Titanic

Background

At the time of her entry into service on 2 April 1912, the Titanic was the second of three Olympic-class ocean liners, and was the largest ship in the world. She and the earlier RMS Olympic were almost one and a half times the gross register tonnage of Cunard's RMS Lusitania and RMS Mauretania, the previous record holders, and were nearly 100 feet (30 m) longer. The Titanic could carry 3,547 people in speed and comfort, and was built on an unprecedented scale. Her reciprocating engines were the largest that had ever been built, standing 40 feet (12 m) high and with cylinders 9 feet (2.7 m) in diameter, requiring the burning of 600 long tons (610 t) of coal per day.

The passenger accommodation, especially the first-class section, was said to be "of unrivalled extent and magnificence", indicated by the fares that first-class accommodation commanded. The Parlour Suites (the most expensive and most luxurious suites on the ship) with private promenade cost over $4,350 (equivalent to $145,000 today) for a one-way transatlantic passage. Even third class, though considerably less luxurious than second and first classes, was unusually comfortable by contemporary standards and was supplied with plentiful quantities of good food, providing her passengers with better conditions than many of them had experienced at home.

The Titanic's maiden voyage began shortly after noon on 10 April 1912 when she left Southampton on the first leg of her journey to New York. An accident was narrowly averted only a few minutes later, as the Titanic passed the moored liners SS City of New York of the American Line and Oceanic of the White Star Line, the latter of which would have been her running mate on the service from Southampton. Her huge displacement caused both of the smaller ships to be lifted by a bulge of water and then dropped into a trough. New York's mooring cables could not take the sudden strain and snapped, swinging her around stern-first towards the Titanic. A nearby tugboat, Vulcan, came to the rescue by taking New York under tow, and Titanic's 62-year-old Captain Edward Smith, the most senior of the White Star Line's captains, ordered her engines to be put "full astern". The two ships avoided a collision by a distance of about 4 feet (1.2 m). The incident, as well as a subsequent stop to offload a few stragglers by tug, delayed the Titanic's departure by at most three-quarters of an hour, while the drifting New York was brought under control.

A few hours later, the Titanic called at Cherbourg Harbour in north-western France, a journey of 80 nautical miles (148 km; 92 mi), where she took on passengers. Her next port of call was Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland, which she reached around midday on 11 April. She left in the afternoon after taking on more passengers and stores.

Ice warnings

The Titanic's wireless operators received seven messages from other ships warning of drifting ice. The ice conditions in the North Atlantic were the worst of any April in the previous 50 years (which was the reason why the lookouts were unaware that they were about to steam into a line of drifting ice several miles wide and many miles long). These conditions were attributed to a mild winter that caused large numbers of icebergs to shift off the west coast of Greenland.

The first warning came on 12 April from SS La Touraine, a French liner, at 17:46. The message reported two separate ice fields and two icebergs as well as dense fog and "derelicts." Captain Smith acknowledged the receipt of this message.

On 14 April, an ice report came at 09:12 from the RMS Caronia reporting "bergs, growlers and field ice". Captain Smith acknowledged receipt of the message. At 10:28, the Caronia also forwarded an ice report from the SS Noordam which stated that "much ice" was reported to them. Smith also acknowledged this message.

At 13:54, RMS Baltic relayed a report from the Greek ship Athenia that she had been "passing icebergs and large quantities of field ice". Smith also acknowledged this report, and showed it to White Star Line chairman J. Bruce Ismay, aboard Titanic for her maiden voyage, who later showed it to a few passengers before returning it to Smith after the Captain asked for it back a few hours later. Smith ordered a new course to be set, which would take the ship further south.

At 13:49, the German ship SS Amerika, which was a short distance to the south, reported she had "passed two large icebergs" and asked the Titanic to forward the message to the Hydrographic Office in Washington, D.C.. There is no evidence as to whether or not this message reached Captain Smith or to the bridge but it was acknowledged by the wireless operator aboard Titanic and forwarded to Washington via Cape Race wireless station, Newfoundland at 21:32.

At 19:37, the SS Californian reported "three large bergs" to the SS Antillian, a message which was intercepted by junior wireless operator Harold Bride who took it to the bridge and later acknowledged its receipt to the Californian. At 21:52, the steamship SS Mesaba reported: "Saw much heavy pack ice and great number large icebergs. Also field ice." It is unclear whether or not this message left the Titanic's radio room as Jack Phillips, the radio operator on watch at the time, did not survive. He acknowledged the message, as per Mesaba's wireless officer Stanley Adams, but the surviving officers could not recall seeing it later.

Response to ice reports

Although Captain Smith was aware of ice in the vicinity, he did not reduce the ship's speed, and continued to steam at 22 knots (41 km/h; 25 mph). Titanic's high speed in waters where ice had been reported was later criticised as reckless, but it reflected standard maritime practice at the time, as well as in the later testimonies of merchant navy captains collected at the British inquiry, many of whom stated that, in clear weather conditions, they would maintain speed even if ice was nearby until it had been spotted.

Additionally, ships treated hazard warnings as advisories rather than calls to action. It was widely believed that ice posed little risk; close calls were not uncommon, and even head-on collisions had not been disastrous. In 1907, SS Kronprinz Wilhelm, a German liner, had rammed an iceberg and suffered a crushed bow, but was still able to complete her voyage. On 10 April 1912, the French liner SS Niagara struck an icefield not far from where Titanic would a few days later, but managed to steam under her own power to New York.

The North Atlantic liners prioritised time-keeping above all other considerations, sticking rigidly to a schedule that would guarantee their arrival at an advertised time. They were frequently operated at close to their full speed, especially after development of improved safety practices. In one interview, in 1907, Captain Smith declared that he could not "imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that."

14 April 1912

Titanic enters Iceberg Alley

As the Titanic approached her fatal collision, most passengers had gone to bed, and command of the bridge had passed from Second Officer Charles Lightoller to First Officer William Murdoch. Lookouts Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee were in the crow's nest, 29 metres (95 ft) above the deck. The air temperature had fallen to near freezing, and the ocean was completely calm. Colonel Archibald Gracie, one of the survivors of the disaster, later wrote that "the sea was like glass, so smooth that the stars were clearly reflected." It is now known that such exceptionally calm water is a sign of nearby pack ice.

Although the air was clear, there was no moon, and with the sea so calm, there was nothing to give away the position of the nearby icebergs; had the sea been rougher, waves breaking against the icebergs would have made them more visible. Because of a mix-up at Southampton, the lookouts had no binoculars; however, binoculars reportedly would not have been effective in the darkness, which was total except for starlight and the ship's own lights. The lookouts were nonetheless well aware of the ice hazard, as Lightoller had ordered them and other crew members to "keep a sharp look-out for ice, particularly small ice and growlers".

At the inquiries, Lee claimed he saw a haze on the horizon ahead of them, and that Fleet told him, "Well, if we can see through that we will be lucky." However, Fleet did not back Lee up on the matter, instead saying that there was a slight haze but "it was nothing to talk about." Both men were also contradicted by several other eyewitnesses who said the sea and weather was clear and calm, including Second Officer Lightoller who reported there was no haze when he went off watch that night. Nor was it reported by any ships near by. Stanley Lord, captain of the nearby SS Californian, noted there was a "soft horizon" where the sky and sea mixed together, making it hard to see where the two separated. It is likely that this is what Fleet and Lee saw, rather than any haze as they entered Iceberg Alley.

"Iceberg, right ahead!"

At 23:39 Fleet spotted an iceberg in Titanic's path. He rang the lookout bell three times and telephoned the bridge to inform Sixth Officer James Moody. Fleet asked, "Is there anyone there?" Moody replied, "Yes, what do you see?" Fleet replied, "Iceberg, right ahead!" After thanking Fleet, Moody relayed the message to Murdoch, who ordered Quartermaster Robert Hichens to change the ship's course. Murdoch is generally believed to have given the order "hard a-starboard", which would result in the ship's tiller being moved all the way to starboard in an attempt to turn the ship to port. This reversal of directions, when compared to modern practice, was common in British ships of the era. It has long been reported that Murdoch rang "full astern" on the ship's telegraphs; however, there is evidence that Murdoch simply signalled the engine room to stop, not reverse. Lead Fireman Frederick Barrett testified that the stop light came on, but even that order was not executed before the collision.

According to Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall, Murdoch told Captain Smith that he was attempting to "hard-a-port around [the iceberg]", suggesting that he was attempting a "port around" manoeuvre – to first swing the bow around the obstacle, then swing the stern so that both ends of the ship would avoid a collision. There was a delay before either order went into effect; the steam-powered steering mechanism took up to 30 seconds to turn the ship's tiller, and the complex task of reversing or stopping the engines would also have taken some time to accomplish. Reversing or stopping the engines and their propellers reduced the rudder's effectiveness, therefore impairing the turning ability of the ship. Had Murdoch turned the ship while maintaining her forward speed, Titanic might have missed the iceberg with feet to spare.

In the event, Titanic's heading changed just in time to avoid a head-on collision, but the change in direction caused the ship to strike the iceberg with a glancing blow. An underwater spur of ice scraped along the starboard side of the ship for about six seconds; chunks of ice dislodged from upper parts of the berg fell onto her forecastle. About five minutes after the collision, all of Titanic's engines were stopped, leaving the bow facing north and the ship slowly drifting south in the Labrador Current.

Effects of the collision

The impact with the iceberg was long thought to have produced a huge opening in Titanic's hull, "not less than 300 feet (91 m) in length, 10 feet (3 m) above the level of the keel", as one writer later put it. At the British inquiry following the accident, Edward Wilding (chief naval architect for Harland & Wolff), calculating on the basis of the observed flooding of forward compartments forty minutes after the collision, testified that the area of the hull opened to the sea was "somewhere about 12 square feet (1.1 m2)". He also stated that "I believe it must have been in places, not a continuous rip", but that the different openings must have extended along an area of around 300 feet, to account for the flooding in several compartments. The findings of the inquiry state that the damage extended over a length of about 300 feet, and hence many subsequent writers followed this more vague statement. Modern ultrasound surveys of the wreck have found that the actual damage to the hull was very similar to Wilding's statement, consisting of six narrow openings covering a total area of only about 12 to 13 square feet (1.1 to 1.2 m2). According to Paul K. Matthias, who made the measurements, the damage consisted of a "series of deformations in the starboard side that start and stop along the hull ... about 10 feet (3 m) above the bottom of the ship". The 2025 National Geographic documentary Titanic: The Digital Resurrection confirmed Matthias's proposition. They revealed a new 3D simulation showing that the ship suffered punctures running in a line along a narrow section of the hull with the most destructive gashes being the size of a couple sheets of A4 paper.

The gaps, the longest of which measures about 39 feet (12 m) long, appear to have followed the line of the hull plates. This suggests that the iron rivets along the plate seams snapped off or popped open to create narrow gaps through which water flooded. Wilding suggested this scenario at the British Wreck Commissioner's inquiry following the disaster, but his view was discounted. Titanic's discoverer, Robert Ballard, has commented that the assumption that the ship had suffered a major breach was "a by-product of the mystique of the Titanic. No one could believe that the great ship was sunk by a little sliver." Faults in the ship's hull may have been a contributing factor. Recovered pieces of Titanic's hull plates appear to have shattered on impact with the iceberg without bending.

The plates in the central part of Titanic's hull (covering approximately 60 per cent of the total) were held together with triple rows of mild steel rivets, but the plates in the bow and stern were held together with double rows of wrought iron rivets which may have been near their stress limits even before the collision. These "Best" or No. 3 iron rivets had a high level of slag inclusions, making them more brittle than the more usual "Best-Best" No. 4 iron rivets, and more prone to snapping when put under stress, particularly in extreme cold. Tom McCluskie, a retired archivist of Harland & Wolff, pointed out that Olympic, Titanic's sister ship, was riveted with the same iron and served without incident for nearly 25 years, surviving several major collisions, including being rammed by a British cruiser. When Olympic rammed and sank the U-boat U-103 with her bow, the stem was twisted and hull plates on the starboard side were buckled without impairing the hull's integrity.

15 April 1912

Preparing to abandon ship

At 00:05 on 15 April, Captain Smith ordered the ship's lifeboats uncovered and the passengers mustered. By now, many passengers were awakening, having noticed the engines and their accompanying vibrations had suddenly stopped. He also ordered the radio operators to begin sending distress calls. Boxhall gave Phillips and Bride his estimation of the ship's location, which incorrectly placed the ship on the west side of the ice belt and directed rescuers to a position that turned out to be inaccurate by about 13.5 nautical miles (15.5 mi; 25.0 km). The former also attempted to signal to a light in the distance using a Morse lamp, but the light – presumed by Boxhall to be a ship – never answered. Below decks, water was pouring into the lowest levels of the ship. As the mail room flooded, the mail sorters made an ultimately futile attempt to save the 400,000 items of mail being carried aboard Titanic. Elsewhere, air could be heard being forced out by inrushing water. Above them, stewards went door to door, rousing sleeping passengers and crew – Titanic did not have a public address system – and told them to go to the boat deck.

The thoroughness of the muster was heavily dependent on the class of the passengers; the first-class stewards were in charge of only a few cabins, while those responsible for the second- and third-class passengers had to manage large numbers of people. The first-class stewards provided hands-on assistance, helping their charges to get dressed and bringing them out onto the deck. With far more people to deal with, the second- and third-class stewards mostly confined their efforts to throwing open doors and telling passengers to put on lifebelts and come up top. In third class, passengers were largely left to their own devices after being informed of the need to come on deck. Many passengers and crew were reluctant to comply, either refusing to believe that there was a problem or preferring the warmth of the ship's interior to the bitterly cold night air. The passengers were not told that the ship was sinking, though a few noticed that she was listing.

Around 00:15, the stewards began ordering the passengers to put on their lifebelts, though again, many passengers took the order as a joke. Some set about playing an impromptu game of football with the ice chunks that were now strewn across the forward well deck. On the boat deck, as the crew began preparing the lifeboats, it was difficult to hear anything over the noise of high-pressure steam being vented from the boilers and escaping via the valves on the funnels above. Lawrence Beesley described the sound as "a harsh, deafening boom that made conversation difficult; if one imagines 20 locomotives blowing off steam in a low key it would give some idea of the unpleasant sound that met us as we climbed out on the top deck." The noise was so loud that the crew had to use hand signals to communicate.

Departure of the lifeboats

At 00:45, lifeboat No. 7 was rowed away from Titanic with an estimated 28 passengers on board, despite a capacity of 65. Lifeboat No. 6, on the port side, was the next to be lowered at 00:55. It also had 28 people on board, among them the "unsinkable" Margaret "Molly" Brown. Lightoller realised there was only one seaman on board (Quartermaster Robert Hichens) and called for volunteers. Major Arthur Peuchen of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club stepped forward and climbed down a rope into the lifeboat; he was the only adult male passenger whom Lightoller allowed to board during the port side evacuation. Peuchen's role highlighted a key problem during the evacuation: there were hardly any seamen to man the boats. Some had been sent below to open gangway doors to allow more passengers to be evacuated, but they never returned. They were presumably trapped and drowned by the rising water below decks.

Meanwhile, other crewmen fought to maintain vital services as water continued to pour into the ship below decks. The engineers and firemen worked to vent steam from the boilers to prevent them from exploding on contact with the cold water. They re-opened watertight doors in order to set up extra portable pumps in the forward compartments in a futile bid to reduce the torrent, and kept the electrical generators running to maintain lights and power throughout the ship. Steward Frederick Dent Ray narrowly avoided being swept away when a wooden wall between his quarters and the third-class accommodation on E deck collapsed, leaving him waist-deep in water. Two engineers, Herbert Harvey and Jonathan Shepherd (who had just broken his left leg after falling into a manhole minutes earlier), died in boiler room No. 5 when, at around 00:45, the bunker door separating it from the flooded No. 6 boiler room collapsed and they were swept away by "a wave of green foam" according to leading fireman Frederick Barrett, who barely escaped from the boiler room.

In boiler room No. 4, at around 01:20 according to survivor trimmer George Cavell, water began flooding in from the metal floor plates below, possibly indicating that the bottom of the ship had also been holed by the iceberg. The flow of water soon overwhelmed the pumps and forced the firemen and trimmers to evacuate the boiler room. Further aft, Chief Engineer Bell, his engineering colleagues, and a handful of volunteer firemen and greasers stayed behind in the unflooded Nos. 1, 2 and 3 boiler rooms and in the turbine and reciprocating engine rooms. They continued working on the boilers and the electrical generators in order to keep the ship's lights and pumps operable and to power the radio so that distress signals could be sent. Several sources contend they remained at their posts until the very end, thus ensuring that Titanic's electrics functioned until the final minutes of the sinking, and died in the bowels of the ship. However, there is evidence to suggest when it became obvious that nothing more could be done, and the flooding in the forward compartments was too severe for the pumps to cope, some of the engineers and other crewmen abandoned their posts and came up onto Titanic's deck, but by this time all the lifeboats had left. Greaser Frederick Scott testified he saw eight of the ship's 35 engineers gathered at the aft end of the starboard boat deck. None of the ship's 35 engineers and electricians survived. Neither did any of the Titanic's five postal clerks, who were last seen struggling to save the mail bags they had rescued from the flooded mail room. They were caught by the rising water somewhere on D deck.

Launching of the last lifeboats

By 01:30, Titanic's downward angle was increasing, but not more than 5 degrees, with an increasing list to port. The deteriorating situation was reflected in the tone of the messages sent from the ship: "We are putting the women off in the boats" at 01:25, "Engine room getting flooded" at 01:35, and at 01:45, "Engine room full up to boilers." This was Titanic's last intelligible signal, sent as the ship's electrical system began to fail; subsequent messages were jumbled and unintelligible. The two radio operators nonetheless continued sending out distress messages almost to the very end.

The remaining boats were filled much closer to capacity and in an increasing rush. No. 11 was filled with five people more than its rated capacity. As it was lowered, it was nearly flooded by water being pumped out of the ship. No. 13 narrowly avoided the same problem, but those aboard were unable to release the ropes from which the boat had been lowered. It drifted astern, directly under No. 15 as it was being lowered. The ropes were cut in time and both boats got away safely.

The first signs of panic were seen when a group of male passengers attempted to rush port-side lifeboat No. 14 as it was being lowered with 40 people aboard. Fifth Officer Lowe, who was in charge of the boat, fired three warning shots in the air to control the crowd without causing injuries. No. 16 was lowered five minutes later. Among those aboard was stewardess Violet Jessop, who would also survive the sinking of one of Titanic's sister ships, Britannic, four years later, in the First World War. Collapsible boat C was launched at 01:40 from a now largely deserted starboard area of the deck, as most of those on deck had moved to the stern of the ship. It was aboard this boat that White Star chairman and managing director J. Bruce Ismay, Titanic's most controversial survivor, made his escape from the ship, an act later condemned as cowardice.

At 01:40, lifeboat No. 2 was lowered. While it was still at deck level, Lightoller had found the boat occupied by men who, he wrote later, "weren't British, nor of the English-speaking race ... [but of] the broad category known to sailors as 'dagoes'." After he evicted them by threatening them with his revolver (which was empty), he was unable to find enough women and children to fill the boat and lowered it with only 25 people on board out of a possible capacity of 40. John Jacob Astor saw his wife off to safety in No. 4 boat at 01:55 but was refused entry by Lightoller, even though 20 of the 60 seats aboard were unoccupied.

Last minutes of sinking

At about 02:15, Titanic's angle in the water began to increase rapidly as water poured into previously unflooded parts of the ship through deck hatches. Her suddenly increasing angle caused what one survivor called a "giant wave" to wash along the ship from the forward end of the boat deck, engulfing many people. The parties who were trying to launch collapsible boats A and B, including Sixth Officer Moody and Gracie, were swept away along with the two boats (boat B floated away upside-down with Bride trapped underneath it, and boat A ended up partly flooded and with its canvas not raised). Bride and Gracie survived on boat B, but Moody perished.

Lightoller, who had attempted to launch collapsible B, realised it would be futile to head aft, and dived overboard from the roof of the officers' quarters. He was sucked into the mouth of a ventilation shaft but was blown clear by "a terrific blast of hot air" and emerged next to the capsized lifeboat. The forward funnel collapsed under its own weight, crushing several people to death struggling in the water, including first class passenger Charles Duane Williams, as it fell into the water and only narrowly missing the lifeboat. It closely missed Lightoller and created a wave that washed the boat 50 yards (46 m) clear of the sinking ship. Those still on Titanic felt her structure shuddering as it underwent immense stresses. As first-class passenger Jack Thayer described it:

Occasionally there had been a muffled thud or deadened explosion within the ship. Now, without warning she seemed to start forward, moving forward and into the water at an angle of about fifteen degrees. This movement with the water rushing up toward us was accompanied by a rumbling roar, mixed with more muffled explosions. It was like standing under a steel railway bridge while an express train passes overhead mingled with the noise of a pressed steel factory and wholesale breakage of china.

Eyewitnesses saw Titanic's stern rising high into the air as the ship tilted down in the water. It was said to have reached an angle of 30–45 degrees, "revolving apparently around a centre of gravity just astern of midships", as Lawrence Beesley later put it. Many survivors described a great noise, which some attributed to the boilers exploding. Beesley described it as "partly a groan, partly a rattle, and partly a smash, and it was not a sudden roar as an explosion would be: it went on successively for some seconds, possibly fifteen to twenty". He attributed it to "the engines and machinery coming loose from their bolts and bearings, and falling through the compartments, smashing everything in their way".

Titanic's final moments

Titanic was subjected to extreme opposing forces – the flooded bow pulling her down while the air in the stern kept her to the surface – which were concentrated at one of the weakest points in the structure, the area of the engine room hatch. Shortly after the lights went out, Titanic's structure failed and the ship split apart. The submerged bow may have remained attached to the stern by the keel for a short time, pulling the stern to a high angle before separating and leaving the stern to float for a few moments longer. The forward part of the stern would have flooded very rapidly, causing it to tilt and then settle briefly until sinking.

The ship disappeared from view at 02:20, 2 hours and 40 minutes after striking the iceberg. Thayer reported that it rotated on the surface, "gradually [turning] her deck away from us, as though to hide from our sight the awful spectacle ... Then, with the deadened noise of the bursting of her last few gallant bulkheads, she slid quietly away from us into the sea."

Titanic's surviving officers and some prominent survivors testified that the ship had sunk in one piece, a belief that was affirmed by the British and American inquiries into the disaster. Archibald Gracie, who was on the promenade deck with the band (by the second funnel), stated that "Titanic's decks were intact at the time she sank, and when I sank with her, there was over seven-sixteenths of the ship already underwater, and there was no indication then of any impending break of the deck or ship". Ballard argued that many other survivors' accounts indicated that the ship had broken in two as she was sinking. As the engines are now known to have stayed in place along with most of the boilers, the "great noise" heard by witnesses and the momentary settling of the stern were presumably caused by the break-up of the ship rather than the loosening of her fittings or boiler explosions.

There are two main theories on how the ship broke in two – the "top-down" theory and the Mengot theory, so named for its creator, Roy Mengot. The more popular top-down theory states that the breakup was centralised on the structural weak-point at the entrance to the first boiler room, and that the breakup formed first at the upper decks before shooting down to the keel. The breakup totally separated the ship down to the double bottom, which acted as a hinge connecting bow and stern. From this point, the bow tugged on the stern, until the double bottom failed and both segments of the ship finally separated. The Mengot theory postulates that the ship broke from compression forces and not fracture tension, which resulted in a bottom-to-top break. In this model, the double-bottom failed first and was forced to buckle upwards into the lower decks, as the breakup shot up to the upper decks. The ship was held together by the B-Deck, which featured 6 large doubler plates – trapezoidal steel segments meant to prevent cracks from forming in the smokestack uptake while at sea – which acted as a buffer and pushed the fractures away. As the hull's contents spilled out of the ship, B-Deck failed and caused the aft tower and forward tower superstructures to detach from the stern as the bow was freed and sank.

Passengers and crew in the water

In the immediate aftermath of the sinking, hundreds of people were left struggling in the icy ocean, surrounded by debris from the ship. Titanic's disintegration during her descent to the seabed caused buoyant chunks of debris – timber beams, wooden doors, furniture, panelling and chunks of cork from the bulkheads – to rocket to the surface. These injured and possibly killed some of the swimmers; others used the debris to try to keep themselves afloat.

The water was lethally cold, with a temperature of −2 °C (28 °F); Lightoller described the feeling of "a thousand knives" being driven into his body. Sudden immersion into freezing water typically causes death within minutes, either from cardiac arrest, uncontrollable breathing of water, or cold shock (not, as commonly believed, from hypothermia); almost all of those in the water died of cardiac arrest or other bodily reactions to freezing water within 15–30 minutes. Only 13 of them were helped into the lifeboats, even though these had room for almost 500 more people.

Those in the lifeboats were horrified to hear the sound of what Lawrence Beesley called "every possible emotion of human fear, despair, agony, fierce resentment and blind anger mingled – I am certain of those – with notes of infinite surprise, as though each one were saying, 'How is it possible that this awful thing is happening to me? That I should be caught in this death trap?'" Jack Thayer compared it to the sound of "locusts on a summer night", while George Rheims, who jumped moments before Titanic sank, described it as "a dismal moaning sound which I won't ever forget; it came from those poor people who were floating around, calling for help. It was horrifying, mysterious, supernatural."

The noise of the people in the water screaming, yelling, and crying was a tremendous shock to the occupants of the lifeboats, many of whom had up to that moment believed that everyone had escaped before the ship sank. As Beesley later wrote, the cries "came as a thunderbolt, unexpected, inconceivable, incredible. No one in any of the boats standing off a few hundred yards away can have escaped the paralysing shock of knowing that so short a distance away a tragedy, unbelievable in its magnitude, was being enacted, which we, helpless, could in no way avert or diminish."

Only a few of those in the water survived. Among them were Gracie, Jack Thayer, Bride, and Lightoller, who made it to the capsized collapsible boat B. Around 12 crew members climbed on board collapsible B, and they rescued those they could until some 35 men were clinging precariously to the upturned hull. Realising the risk to the boat of being swamped by the mass of swimmers around them, they paddled slowly away, ignoring the pleas of dozens of swimmers to be allowed on board. In his account, Gracie wrote of the admiration he had for those in the water; "In no instance, I am happy to say, did I hear any word of rebuke from a swimmer because of a refusal to grant assistance ... [one refusal] was met with the manly voice of a powerful man ... 'All right boys, good luck and God bless you'." Gracie said he heard men, including stoker Harry Senior and Entree cook Isaac Maynard, on collapsible B say that Captain Smith was in the water near the boat. Fireman Walter Hurst said he thought the man who cried out, "All right boys. Good luck and God bless you", was Smith; Hurst said the man cheered the occupants on saying "Good boys! Good lads!" with "the voice of authority". Hurst, deeply moved by the swimmer's valour, reached out to him with an oar, but the man was dead. Several other swimmers reached collapsible boat A, which was upright but partly flooded, as its sides had not been properly raised. Its occupants had to stand for hours in a foot of freezing water, and many died of hypothermia during the night.

Rescue and departure

Titanic's survivors were rescued around 04:00 on 15 April by the RMS Carpathia, which had steamed through the night at high speed and at considerable risk, as the ship had to dodge numerous icebergs en route. Carpathia's lights were first spotted around 03:30, which greatly cheered the survivors, though it took several more hours for everyone to be brought aboard.

The 30 or more men on collapsible B finally managed to board two other lifeboats, but one survivor died just before the transfer was made. Collapsible A was also in trouble and was now nearly awash; many of those aboard (maybe more than half) had died overnight. The remaining twelve survivors (eleven men and one woman) were transferred from A into another lifeboat, leaving behind three bodies in the boat, which was left to drift away. It was recovered a month later by the White Star liner RMS Oceanic with the bodies still aboard.

Those on Carpathia were startled by the scene that greeted them as the sun rose: "fields of ice on which, like points on the landscape, rested innumerable pyramids of ice." Captain Arthur Rostron of Carpathia saw ice all around, including 20 large bergs measuring up to 200 feet (61 m) high and numerous smaller bergs, as well as ice floes and debris from Titanic. It appeared to Carpathia's passengers that their ship was in the middle of a vast white plain of ice, studded with icebergs appearing like hills in the distance.

As the lifeboats were brought alongside Carpathia, the survivors came aboard the ship by various means. Some were strong enough to climb up rope ladders; others were hoisted up in slings, and the children were hoisted in mail sacks. The last lifeboat to reach the ship was Lightoller's boat No. 12, with 74 people aboard a boat designed to carry 65. They were all on Carpathia by 09:00. There were some scenes of joy as families and friends were reunited, but in most cases hopes died as loved ones failed to reappear.

At 09:15, two more ships arrived – Mount Temple and Californian, which had finally learned of the disaster when her radio operator returned to duty – but by then there were no more survivors to rescue. Carpathia had been bound for Fiume, Austria-Hungary (now Rijeka, Croatia), but she had neither the stores nor the medical facilities to cater for the survivors. Rostron ordered that a course be calculated to return to New York, where the survivors could be properly looked after. Carpathia departed the area, leaving the other ships to carry out a final, fruitless two-hour search.

Aftermath

Grief and outrage

When Carpathia arrived in New York on the evening of 18 April after a difficult voyage through pack ice, fog, thunderstorms and rough seas, some 40,000 people were standing on the wharves, alerted to the disaster by newspaper stories relaying information gathered from radio telegraph messages sent by Carpathia and other ships. Instead of docking, however, Carpathia passed it by and headed towards the White Star Line pier, Pier 59. Carpathia lowered the 13 of Titanic's lifeboats it had picked up. It was only after Carpathia docked at Pier 54 – three days after Titanic's sinking – that the full scope of the disaster became public knowledge.

Even before Carpathia arrived in New York, efforts were getting underway to retrieve the dead. Four ships chartered by the White Star Line succeeded in retrieving 328 bodies; 119 were buried at sea, while the remaining 209 were brought ashore to the Canadian port of Halifax, Nova Scotia, where 150 of them were buried. Memorials were raised in various places – New York, Washington, Southampton, Liverpool, Belfast and Lichfield, among others – and ceremonies were held on both sides of the Atlantic to commemorate the dead and raise funds to aid the survivors. The bodies of most of Titanic's victims were never recovered, and the only evidence of their deaths was found 73 years later among the debris on the seabed: pairs of shoes lying side by side, where bodies had once lain before eventually decomposing.

The prevailing public reaction to the disaster was one of shock and outrage, directed against several issues and people: why were there so few lifeboats? Why had Ismay saved his own life when so many others died? Why did Titanic proceed into the ice field at full speed? The outrage was driven not least by the survivors themselves; even while they were aboard Carpathia on their way to New York, Beesley and other survivors determined to "awaken public opinion to safeguard ocean travel in the future" and wrote a public letter to The Times urging changes to maritime safety laws.

In places closely associated with Titanic, the sense of grief was deep. The heaviest losses were in Southampton, home port to 699 crew members and also home to many of the passengers. Crowds of weeping women – wives, sisters, and mothers of crew members – gathered outside the White Star offices in Southampton for news of their loved ones. Most of their missing loved ones were among the 549 Southampton residents who perished. In Belfast, churches were packed, and shipyard workers wept in the streets. The ship had been a symbol of Belfast's industrial achievements, and there was a sense not only of grief but also of guilt, as those who built Titanic came to feel that they were responsible in some way for her loss.

Public inquiries and legislation

In the aftermath of the sinking, public inquiries were set up in the United Kingdom and United States. The US inquiry began on 19 April under the chairmanship of Senator William Alden Smith, and the British inquiry commenced in London under Lord Mersey on 2 May 1912. They reached broadly similar conclusions: the regulations on the number of lifeboats that ships had to carry were out of date and inadequate; Captain Smith had failed to take proper heed of ice warnings; the lifeboats had not been properly filled or crewed; and the collision was the direct result of steaming into a danger area at too high a speed. Both inquiries strongly criticised Captain Lord of Californian for failing to render assistance to Titanic.

Neither inquiry found negligence by the parent company, International Mercantile Marine Co., or the White Star Line (which owned Titanic). The US inquiry concluded that those involved had followed standard practice and that the disaster could thus be categorised only as an "act of God". The British inquiry concluded that Smith had followed long-standing practice, which had not previously been shown to be unsafe, noting that British ships alone had carried 3.5 million passengers over the previous decade with the loss of just 73 lives, and concluded that he had done "only that which other skilled men would have done in the same position". The British inquiry also warned that "what was a mistake in the case of the Titanic would without doubt be negligence in any similar case in the future".

The disaster led to major changes in maritime regulations to implement new safety measures, such as ensuring that more lifeboats were provided, that lifeboat drills were properly carried out and that radio equipment on passenger ships was manned around the clock. Radio operators were to give priority to emergency and hazard messages over private messages and to use the Q code to minimize language problems. Shore stations of the rival international "wireless" networks, the British Marconi Company and Telefunken of Germany, were required to handle all radio calls including those of the other network. An International Ice Patrol was set up to monitor the presence of icebergs in the North Atlantic, and maritime safety regulations were harmonised internationally through the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS).

Cultural impact

Titanic's sinking has become a cultural phenomenon, commemorated by artists, film-makers, writers, composers, musicians and dancers from the time immediately after the sinking to the present day. On 1 September 1985, a joint US-French expedition led by Robert Ballard found the wreck of Titanic, and the ship's rediscovery led to an explosion of interest in Titanic's story. Numerous expeditions have been launched to film the wreck and, controversially, to salvage objects from the debris field. The first major exhibition of recovered artefacts was held at London's National Maritime Museum in 1994–95. The disaster inspired numerous films; in 1997, James Cameron's film Titanic became the first film ever to take $1 billion at the box office, the second film to win 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, after Ben-Hur (1959), and the film's soundtrack became the best-selling soundtrack recording of all time.

Wreckage

The wreck of the Titanic is steadily decaying, with an estimated 0.5–1 ton of metal turning to oxide per day (assuming one ten-thousandth of an inch per day on all surfaces). Eventually Titanic's structure will collapse, and she will be reduced to a patch of rust on the seabed, with any remaining scraps of the ship's hull mingled with her more durable fittings, like the propellers, bronze capstans, compasses and the telemotor.

Casualties and survivors

The number of casualties of the sinking is unclear due to several factors, including confusion over the passenger list, which included some names of people who cancelled their trip at the last minute, and the fact that several passengers travelled under aliases for various reasons and were double-counted on the casualty lists. The death toll has been put at between 1,490 and 1,635 people. The figures below are from the British Board of Trade report on the disaster.

Less than a third of those aboard Titanic survived the disaster. Some survivors died shortly afterwards; injuries and the effects of exposure caused the deaths of several of those brought aboard Carpathia. Of the groups shown in the table, 49 per cent of the children, 26 per cent of the female passengers, 82 per cent of the male passengers and 78 per cent of the crew died. The figures show stark differences in the survival rates between men and women, and of the different classes aboard Titanic, especially among women and children. Although less than 10 per cent of first- and second-class women (combined) were lost, 54 per cent of those in third class died. Similarly, five of six first-class and all second-class children survived, but 52 of the 79 in third class perished. The only first-class child to perish was Loraine Allison, aged two. Proportionately, the heaviest losses were suffered by the second-class men, of whom 92 per cent died. Of the pets brought aboard, three survived the sinking.