Sinking of the Titanic

Late on 14 April 1912, four days out on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, the British liner Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic. She sank in the early hours of 15 April, about two hours and forty minutes later. Around 1,500 of the roughly 2,200 people aboard died, most of them in the freezing water, because the ship carried lifeboats for only about half of them. The disaster shocked the world and led to lasting reforms in safety at sea.

When she entered service in April 1912, Titanic, of the White Star Line, was the largest ship in the world, the second of three ships of the Olympic class. She left Southampton on 10 April called at Cherbourg in France and at Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland, and headed west with about 2,200 people aboard. Her passengers ranged from millionaires such as John Jacob Astor to emigrants from Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Syria and elsewhere hoping for a new life in the United States. Her captain, Edward Smith, was the line's most senior.

The ice in the North Atlantic that April was the worst in half a century. Titanic's wireless operators received seven warnings of ice from other ships, and Smith steered a somewhat more southerly course, but the ship kept up a speed of about 22 knots. On a clear, calm night, the lookouts sighted an iceberg directly ahead at 23:40 ship's time. The ship turned but not quickly enough. The iceberg scraped along her starboard side, buckling the hull plates and opening six of her sixteen watertight compartments to the sea. She could stay afloat with up to four flooded, but not six.

The crew fired distress rockets and sent wireless calls for help. The nearest ship, the Californian, missed the calls because she carried only one wireless operator. Titanic carried twenty lifeboats with room for 1,178 people, about half of those on board; under the rules of the day, lifeboats were meant to ferry people to rescue ships rather than hold everyone at once. With little preparation, passengers slow to board and officers interpreting "women and children first" in different ways, many boats were lowered only part full, and two collapsible boats floated off without being launched.

As water spread from one compartment to the next, the bow sank lower. Shortly before 02:20 the stern rose high into the air, the lights went out, and the ship broke up and sank. Almost all of those left in the sea died within minutes from cold shock and hypothermia; only around 40 were pulled into lifeboats. The liner Carpathia, racing to the scene, arrived about an hour and a half after the sinking and had taken on all 710 survivors by 09:15.

Estimates of the death toll vary between about 1,490 and 1,520, depending on the source; modern researchers put it at 1,496. Class made a great difference. Only 3 per cent of first-class and 13 per cent of second-class women died, but nearly half of third-class women did, and most third-class children were lost, while almost all first- and second-class children survived.

Inquiries in the United States and Britain blamed out-of-date lifeboat rules, Smith's failure to heed the ice warnings, badly filled lifeboats and excessive speed in dangerous waters, and both criticised the Californian's captain. Neither found the White Star Line legally negligent. New rules required lifeboat places for everyone, proper drills and round-the-clock wireless watches, and an International Ice Patrol was set up. The first International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea followed in 1914, and its successors still govern shipping.

On 1 September 1985 an American and French expedition led by Robert Ballard found the wreck on the seabed, and James Cameron's 1997 film became the first to earn a billion dollars.

Our 1914 map shows the British Empire, under whose flag Titanic sailed, and the United States, her destination, two years after the sinking.