"Titanic" - the most famous and expensive passenger liner of the early XX century. The real floating palace was equipped with the latest technology, modern navigation equipment and, it seemed, was an unsinkable fortress. But on the night of April 14-15, 1912, during his first voyage, he ran into a huge iceberg ramming the ship. In three hours, the grand steamer sank, taking with it more than one and a half thousand human lives.
Ice warnings
The Titanic received the first warnings about observing an iceberg cluster on April 12, but since the discovered icebergs were not on the route of the ship, the radio operators did not attach importance to this message. All day on April 14 ice warnings continued to be received, but some of these messages were not transmitted to the captain. This circumstance was later called one of the main causes of the tragedy that broke out in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. The protocol prescribed in such cases to set a greater number of sentinels that would track large blocks of ice, it was necessary to reduce the speed of the vessel to a minimum and, if necessary, adjust the course. None of this was done; the Titanic was walking at the maximum speed for that time (almost 42 km per hour) to meet its death.
Collision with an iceberg
At 23:30, officer Frederick Fleet, on duty at the shift, saw a large iceberg right at the rate, this message was transmitted to the first assistant captain William Murdoch. According to the researchers, it was he who made the irreparable mistake that became the cause of the most terrible sea catastrophe of the 20th century. He successively gives orders “Right on board!”, “Stop the car!”, “Full back!”, So Murdoch expected to go around the iceberg on the left, to avoid a collision, but he miscalculated. At such a high speed, the liner did not manage to maneuver, at 23:40 the underwater part of the iceberg rams the left side six meters below the waterline. The length of the damage was about 90 meters. Even during the trial, the assumption was made that if Murdoch had not given the order for maneuvers and crashed into an iceberg without slowing down, the catastrophe could either have been avoided altogether, or it would not have acquired such catastrophic proportions. One of the most likely scenarios - a head-on collision could not ruin the Titanic, although the lower decks would have been flooded, but complete immersion could have been avoided by blocking the lower decks, while all passengers would have a chance to survive.
Out of 2224 passengers and crew members, a total of 710 people were saved, 1514 died along with the Titanic and died later. Among them were 52 children, 106 women, 659 men and 696 crew members, led by Captain Edward Smith.
Crash and flooding
At first, there was no panic and alarm on the ship, people were so sure of the unsinkability of the ship that they did not allow the idea that most of them had already signed the death sentence. 10 minutes after the collision with the iceberg, the water completely flooded the lower decks in the bow of the vessel, the stern of the vessel, which contained third-class passenger cabins, was not flooded at first, but the bulkheads between the compartments could not hold back the pressure of the water for a long time. This was announced by Thomas Andrews, returning after inspecting the damage to the Titanic, he also said that, in his opinion, the ship will inevitably sink.
24 minutes after the start of the wreck from the Titanic, a distress signal was given, at the same time the first passengers climbed to the upper deck to put on life jackets and take places in boats. Despite the fact that there was not enough space for everyone in the lifeboats, the first boats left the liner half empty. There was no panic yet, people were evacuating in an organized manner, and the Titanic continued to give distress signals. For the first time, the SOS signal was applied - save our souls. The panic on the deck began to increase only an hour later, by 1:30 already 11 boats were launched, each of which could accommodate up to 70 people.
Of the one and a half thousand dead, a little more than 300 bodies were found, an expedition in 1985 noted that the remains of human bodies were not preserved on board the sunken Titanic, they were completely decomposed in ocean water.
