How did the Titanic sink?

There is a wealth of information available on this subject -

http://www.titanic-online.com
http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org

However, in summary, I believe this is the accepted history :

The Titanic was steaming along at nearly top speed on April 14th 1912. Due to the stillness of the water and the fact it was a New Moon the lookouts didn't see the iceberg directly in Titanic's path until too late.

The lookout Frederick Fleet sees the iceberg at approx 11:40pm and reports to the bridge with the immortal lines 'Iceberg Right Ahead'. At around the same time Officer Murdoch (currently on the bridge) sees the iceberg for himself and orders "hard'a starboard" - in other words, turn left quick! He also signals the engine room to "full astern" - in other words, full reverse.

Time passes - approximately 30-40 seconds - and Titanic starts to move left. However, it hasn't moved left enough and so the iceberg scrapes and bumps along the starboard (right) bow, punching holes in the first five watertight compartments that make up the Titanic's hull.

As the iceberg passes by the ship Officer Murdoch orders "hard'a port" to try to 'port round' the iceberg to avoid more damage.

As most people know the Titanic was designed to stay afloat if any two of the watertight compartments were breached, and could even stay afloat if the first four were flooded. Hence it was described by the press of the day as "practically unsinkable". However, with the first FIVE compartments flooded the ship was doomed. The ship would go down by the bow due to the water entering the five front compartments - then, because the compartment walls only went up as far as E deck - the water would spill over the top and enter the next compartment, and so on.

The officers were called together to discuss the situation, and Thomas Andrews (the ship's designer) confirmed that the ship would sink. The crew then started to organise the lifeboats.

Because the hull had relatively small punctures the ship flooded quite slowly, resulting in it taking over 2 and half hours to sink. It finally went down at approx 2:20am April 15th 1912.

This is a highly abridged account of the events - if you are interested in knowing more about this subject I would recommend the websites listed above or the excellent book, "A Night to Remember" by Walter Lord

rather quickly.

The titanic hit an iceberg running at night time.

The most recent theory from 2006 was made while diving to the titanic. They found pieces of steel with red paint so they knew it was the bottom of the ship. So, here's the most recent theory of how it sank, on april 14, 1912 the TITANIC was going 21 knots(full speed) when the iceberg scraped off the bottom on the first 5 compartments, Then, the ship began sinking. The ship would of stayed afloat if it had not split in half, the splitting of the TITANIC was not caused by the TITANIC's stern straight up in the air it was caused by a structual failure. So the TITANIC would have floated if it had not split and almost everyone would have been saved by help coming on the way.

this theory was on the discovery channel FEB. 2006

By taunting mother nature bragging it was unsinkable.

Tragically too fast for help to arrive in time to save everybody.

Too much weight in the ship.

recent (2005/2006) forensic evidence suggests the Titanic "ran aground" on an underwater "shelf" of the iceberg -- severely damaging the bottom of the ship & slicing the heads off the rivets holding the hull plating together. also, another part of the theory states that it's likely the shelf had an upward incline and as the ship made the upward slide, it seperated several vital joints -- sort of like dislocating a bone in your hand, except in the ship's case, the dislocation proved fatal.

the area of the Titanic's hull damaged also happened to be the "expansion joint" that allowed the ship to "breathe" (flex with the movement/waves of the water it travelled in) & the damage had created an equally fatal area of weakness & is one of the 2 places, at which, the ship later broke apart.

My theory of the famous Titanic sunk is by piont form:

1. After the iceburg smashed into the Titanic, the stern rose in the air as the bow sunk, the weight of the stern made the Titanic snap in half.

2. Stern: As the two halfs sank, debris fell out the stern and the stern twirled, sucking the stern to the side.
Bow: As the stern sank the bow darted straight down and fliped normaly.

3. This was how the Titanic was 600 metre's apart, or the bow could have drifted with the stern but not as far.

Adam in Gr. 6.

The Titanic hit an Iceberg at roughly 11:40 am and the iceberg damaged the first five compartments and scarped the bottoms causing damager to the starbord side and under the hull as well. The ships damage was not as severe in the begining but the ill fated choice to keep the show sailing increased the amount of flooding and by the time the ship halted the Titanic was so full of water it was doomed to sink in two hours. It fully submerged around 2.20 am.

Watching the movie "Titanic" and the re-enactment of the sinking, and the 1997 movie release, I am thinking that when the fourpeay, Bolier Room 6, and 3 holds all got completely flooded with over tens of thousands of gallons of water from the iceberg collision that caused it, 5 compartments were compromised...the ship can not sink if up to 4 compartments were compromised. And water is very, very heavy and with nothing to stop that excess water, the bulkheads in the ship were doomed to a watery tomb. The lower decks got flooded, starting at E deck, and then to the top deck....A deck. Then, all of that water pressure (thousands of tons of it) from this huge flooding caused a fracture of the boat from the keel, splitting the boat in half so that as the forward part of the boat went down, the stern ends up level and goes 90 degrees and floats for only 1 or 2 minutes. Eventually, the bottom of the stern floods and the rest of the boat floods as it goes vertically down to its watery North Atlantic tomb...forever, taking about 1 1/2 minutes from the first time this part of the boat goes down until there was no part of the boat above the surface.