On April 14, 1912, during its first and only voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, the Titanic collided with an iceberg near the island of Newfoundland and sank. For its time, it was the largest ship in the world with a displacement of 46,300 tons, a length of 269 m, a width of 28.2 m, and a speed of 25 knots. 17,000 workers and engineers took part in its construction, and it itself represented the latest in science and technology. At the current financial rate, the price of a first-class cabin reaches $ 55,000.
Launched into the water, the ship looks extremely reliable and majestic – according to estimates at the time, it was considered unsinkable, since it consists of easily sealed sectors that do not allow water to enter. If for some reason a breach in the hull occurred, the designers assumed that water would only flood the damaged section. Hence the erroneous conclusion that in such a case the Titanic would need one to three days to sink, during which time she would have been able to easily receive help from nearby ships.
During her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York, USA, she struck an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on Sunday evening, April 14, 1912, and sank two hours and forty minutes later at 2:20 a.m. on Monday morning, April 15, after breaking into two pieces.
On the night of the Titanic’s fatal encounter with the Greenland iceberg, Captain Stanley Lord was sailing in the same direction to Boston on the 6,000-ton ship California. On the evening of April 9, his ship was surrounded by ice and he was forced to stop until morning. Knowing about the Titanic’s media voyage and that he was in the same area, Captain Lord was the first to warn the Titanic’s captain about the dangerous ice floes by radio at 11:00 p.m. The message was not understood and, since it did not carry a special danger sign, the Titanic’s radio operator did not report it to the captain. The California’s radio operator turned off the radio and went to sleep because his duty had expired. That same evening, the Titanic’s two lookouts reported an iceberg. The distance was somewhere around 200-250 m. The air temperature was around -10 degrees Celsius. The most famous iceberg strike in world history followed. The iceberg tore the hull apart from the bow for a length of 90 m. Water quickly filled the forward compartments. If only the first four compartments were flooded, the ship could continue without sinking, but the fifth compartment was flooded as well.
The designer of the Titanic, Thomas Andrews, immediately made the necessary calculations – the ship would sink! The Titanic sank in about two hours and twenty minutes, taking with it more than 1,500 victims. Only 704 people were saved, who were taken aboard the ship Carpathia.
