page_title: Titanic
section_title: Sinking
hierarchical_section_title: Titanic / Sinking
caption_attribution_description: English: New York Herald front page about the Titanic disaster.
context_page_description: The RMS Titanic was a British passenger ship. It was built by Harland and Wolff ship builders, in Belfast, for the White Star Line company. She sank during her first trip at sea.
  Before she sailed, many people thought it would be almost impossible for ships of this design to sink.
context_section_description: At 11:40 PM on 14 April 1912, during the Titanic's first trip, she hit an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean. The iceberg broke the Titanic's hull (bottom), letting water into the ship. The Titanic sank two hours and forty minutes later at 2:20 AM on 15 April.
  As she sank, the Titanic split in two.  The wreck killed over 1,500 people.  Only around 705 people survived. It was one of the worst shipwrecks that was not during a war.
  One reason why so many people died was that the ship did not have enough lifeboats for everyone on board. The Titanic had 20 lifeboats with room for 1,178 passengers, only a third of the number of passengers the ship could carry. It actually had more lifeboats than was needed by law (it needed 16 with room for 990 passengers). This was because the laws in the UK were out of date. They did not say that a ship needed enough lifeboats for all passengers. They only said that a ship weighing more than 10,000 tons needed 16 lifeboats (the Titanic weighed 46,000 tons). Furthermore, the White Star Line believed that the lifeboats on the Titanic would only be needed to take passengers a short distance to a rescue ship.
  Higher class women and children were allowed on the lifeboats first, and passengers who sailed in first class (which meant that they paid for better rooms on the ship) were allowed on before other passengers.  Few of the poorer people who had paid less (called second class and third class passengers) got out safely.
  Another reason so few people survived was that the radio was off on the SS Californian, the ship closest to the Titanic. The Californian crew did not hear about the accident. Also,the Titanic did have flares but they were white.Back then(and still now),red meant emergency and other colors were used for identification(White=White Star Line).The Californian and other ships saw the flares but they didn't think of the flares as distress signals. Another ship, the SS Carpathia, did hear about the accident and collected all 705 survivors.
  
  This had several reasons:
  There was no information. The ship didn't have an alarm system (like the common ones, where sirens could be sounded). This means that the crew had to tell each passenger to go and evacuate the ship. There was less crew for second and third class, and there were much more people.
  People who paid less had no access tto certain decks.
  There was a clear spearation between the classes. The passage between decks of different classes could be locked. This was especially a problem in the first phase of the evacuation. According to some survivors, some passages were not opened even when the ship started sinking.
  Many people travelling in third class were foreigners. Their language skills were limited.
  
  Many of those who died didn't die because they couldn't leave the ship before it sank. They died of hypothermia, while they were floating in the cold water (which was only a bit over the freezing point at that time).  When the MS. Carpathia arrived, at 4.10 ship's time, they were floating dead bodies in the water. Many lifeboats rowed away flrom those who were in the water shouting for help. The people in the lifeboats were afraid the lifeboat would capsize when peopel entered it from the water. Ony lifebnoat Number four returned to the shouting people in the water. Five people could be rescued, but two of them died in the lifeboat. Around 3am ship's time, 40 minutes after the sinking, the last calls for help ceased. Afdter three am, lifeboat number 14, commanded by Officer Harold Lowe returned. He could save another three people. He had emptid the lifeboat and let the peopel in the boat enter other boats beforehand. 
  
  The following table gives a listing of those who died and those who survived, gropued by age, gender and ships class. Children are those up to age 12. It is taken from a report to British parliament of 1912. There are other lists, with slighly different numbers.
caption: Titanic-New York Herald front page. Wrong numbers were posted the first days after the accident.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2012:01:02 22:43:30", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8988", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "716", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "986"}