4. The Sinking: A Maritime Disaster Unfolds
Early hours of April 15, 1912, the globe saw one of the most notorious maritime tragedies in history. For those still on board as well as those observing from the lifeboats, the Titanic’s stern soared high into the air while its bow sank further into the cold Atlantic seas, producing an appalling show. The scene was plunged into darkness broken only by the stars and the shouts of more than 1,500 people battling for their lives as the ship’s lights fluttered and suddenly went out.
Tragic as well as heroic elements defined the last minutes of the Titanic. Many passengers and staff members clutched fervently to rails or anything else that may keep them out of the frigid water when the ship’s tilt changed. While some leapt from the ship, trying to swim to safety, others stayed on board right to the very last. The Titanic split in two between the third and fourth funnels with a thundering boom when the ship’s structural strain finally proved intolerable.
Two hours and forty minutes after the iceberg disaster, at 2:20 AM, the stern part of the Titanic sank under the waves, carrying the life of almost 1,500 people. Now the sea was covered in trash and hundreds of people battling in the frigid waves. Those in the lifeboats had to decide whether to stay away and listen to the last cries of the dying or return to save survivors and run the danger of being swamped.
That evening the water temperature was below freezing, and for anyone submerged in the sea hypothermia set in rapidly. Many of those in the water had fallen victim to the cold in minutes. Among a sea of dead bodies, the few lifeboats that did return to the sinking scene discovered just a handful of survivors.
The entire extent of the catastrophe was seen as morning broke on April 15. Once the pride of the White Star Line and a monument to human accomplishment, the Titanic now lay in two bits at the bottom of the North Atlantic. Eventually the RMS Carpathia, which had sped through the night to reach the tragedy scene, rescued the survivors in the lifeboats—cold, startled, grief-stricken.