The 1912 Sinking of the RMS Titanic After She Struck an Iceberg on Her Maiden Voyage and Carried Lifeboats for Only Half of Her Passengers

The RMS Titanic was an Olympic-class ocean liner of the White Star Line, built at Harland and Wolff in Belfast and completed in March 1912. At 269 metres long and 46,328 gross register tons, she was the largest movable man-made object in the world.

She departed Southampton on her maiden voyage to New York on 10 April 1912 with 2,224 people aboard — approximately 1,317 passengers and 907 crew.

11:40 p.m.

At 11:40 p.m. on 14 April 1912 the Titanic struck an iceberg on her starboard bow at about 22 knots. Six of her sixteen watertight compartments were opened to the sea over a 90-metre length. She had been designed to survive flooding of any four compartments. Six was beyond the design limit.

Captain Edward Smith ordered the lifeboats prepared at midnight. The first distress rockets were fired at about 12:45 a.m. on 15 April. The first lifeboat was lowered at 12:55 a.m. with 28 of its 65-person capacity.

The ship carried 20 lifeboats with total capacity of 1,178 — approximately half the people on board. This was actually more than the British Board of Trade regulations of the period required; the regulations were based on ship tonnage rather than passenger count and had not been updated since 1894. White Star had voluntarily added four lifeboats above the regulatory minimum.

The sinking

The Titanic broke in two between the third and fourth funnels at about 2:18 a.m. and sank by the bow at 2:20 a.m. on 15 April 1912 — 2 hours 40 minutes after the iceberg strike. Water temperature was approximately minus 2°C. The hundreds of people in the water without lifeboats died of hypothermia within 15-30 minutes.

The Cunard liner Carpathia arrived at 4:10 a.m. and recovered 712 survivors from the lifeboats. 1,517 people died.

The casualties

Survival rates varied substantially by passenger class and gender:

— First-class women: 97 percent survived — First-class men: 33 percent — Second-class women: 86 percent — Second-class men: 8 percent — Third-class women: 49 percent — Third-class men: 16 percent — Crew (all): 24 percent

The pattern reflects the partial enforcement of “women and children first” alongside the substantial structural advantages of first-class passenger location (closer to the boat deck) and substantially poorer third-class access to the boat deck through unfamiliar passageways.

What followed

The Titanic disaster produced the 1914 International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) — the foundational modern maritime safety treaty. SOLAS required lifeboats for 100 percent of passengers and crew, 24-hour radio watch on all passenger ships, and the founding of the International Ice Patrol to monitor North Atlantic icebergs. SOLAS has been revised approximately every 25 years since.

The wreck was located by Robert Ballard in September 1985 at a depth of 3,784 metres approximately 600 km southeast of Newfoundland. The bow and stern sections are about 600 metres apart on the sea floor. The wreck is deteriorating rapidly under microbial action; the bow section is expected to substantially collapse within several more decades.