More than 100 years have passed since the terrible catastrophe, but this story remains one of the most striking tragedies of mankind. The luxurious, "unsinkable" ship, to which the admiring glances of the whole world were turned, was wrecked on its first voyage. The passengers on that flight were 2,200, and the tragedy claimed the lives of more than 1,500 of them.
Chronology of events April 10, 1912
At 11:39 p.m. on April 14, Titanic's lookout Frederick Fleet noticed an iceberg directly on the course, about 650 m from the liner. Having struck the bell three times, he reported on the phone to the bridge. The first mate ordered the helmsman: "Left aboard!" - and moved the handles of the machine telegraphs to the "full back" position. A little later, so that the liner did not hit the iceberg with its stern, he commanded: "Right on board!" However, the Titanic was too large for a quick maneuver, and the steamer continued to move by inertia for another 25-30 seconds, until its nose began to slowly deviate to the left.
At 23:40, the Titanic tangentially collided with an iceberg. On the upper decks, people felt a faint shock and slight tremor of the hull, on the lower decks the impact was more palpable. As a result of the collision, six holes with a total length of about 90 meters were formed in the starboard skin. At 0:05, Captain Smith ordered the crew to prepare the lifeboats for launch, then entered the radio room and ordered the radio operators to broadcast a distress signal.
At about 0:20, children and women were put into the boats. At 1:20, the water began to flood the forecastle. At this time, the first signs of panic appeared. The evacuation went faster. After 1:30, panic began on board. At about 2:00 the last boat was launched, at 2:05 the water began to flood the boat deck and the captain's bridge. The remaining 1,500 people on board rushed towards the stern. The trim began to grow before our eyes, at 2:15 the first chimney collapsed. At 2:16 a.m. the power went out. At 2:18, with a nose trim of about 23 °, the liner broke. The bow part, having fallen off, immediately went to the bottom, and the stern was filled with water and sank two minutes later.
At 2:20 am, the Titanic disappeared completely under water. Hundreds of people swam to the surface, but almost all of them died from hypothermia. On two folding boats, which did not have time to be lowered from the liner, about 45 people were saved. Eight more were rescued by two boats that returned to the crash site (# 4 and # 14). An hour and a half after the complete immersion of the Titanic, the steamer Carpathia arrived at the scene of the disaster and picked up 712 survivors of the wreck.
Reasons for the crash
After the tragedy, commissions were held to investigate the causes of this incident, and, according to official documents, the cause was a collision with an iceberg, and not the presence of defects in the structure of the ship. The commission based its conclusion on how the ship went down. As noted by some survivors, the ship sank to the bottom as a whole, and not in parts.
As the commission concluded, all the blame for the tragic disaster was placed on the captain of the ship. In 1985, oceanographer Robert Ballard, who had been searching for a sunken ship for many years, was lucky. It was this happy event that helped shed light on the causes of the disaster. Scientists have determined that the Titanic split in half on the ocean surface before sinking. This fact again drew media attention to the reasons for the sinking of the Titanic. New hypotheses arose, and one of the assumptions was based on the fact that low-grade steel was used in the construction of the ship, since it is a well-known fact that the Titanic was built on a tight schedule.
As a result of prolonged research of the wreckage raised from the bottom, experts came to the conclusion that the cause of the disaster was poor quality rivets - the most important metal pins that tied together the steel plates of the ship's hull. Also, the studied wreckage showed that there were miscalculations in the design of the ship, and this is evidenced by the nature of the sinking of the ship. It was finally established that the stern of the ship did not rise high into the air, as previously believed, and the ship crashed into pieces and sank. This points to obvious miscalculations in the ship's design. However, after the disaster, this data was hidden. It was only with the help of modern technology that it was established that it was precisely these circumstances that led to one of the most terrible tragedies of mankind.
