Preparing to abandon ship in 1911 At 00:05 on 15 April, Captain Smith ordered the ship's lifeboats uncovered and the passengers
mustered. By now, many passengers were awakening, having noticed the engines and their accompanying vibrations had suddenly stopped. He also ordered the radio operators to begin sending distress calls. Boxhall gave
Phillips and
Bride his estimation of the ship's location, which wrongly placed the ship on the west side of the ice belt and directed rescuers to a position that turned out to be inaccurate by about . The former also attempted to signal to a light in the distance using a Morse lamp, but the lightpresumed by Boxhall to be a shipnever answered. Below decks, water was pouring into the lowest levels of the ship. As the mail room flooded, the mail sorters made an ultimately futile attempt to save the 400,000 items of mail being carried aboard
Titanic. Elsewhere, air could be heard being forced out by inrushing water. Above them, stewards went door to door, rousing sleeping passengers and crew
Titanic did not have a public address systemand told them to go to the boat deck. The thoroughness of the muster was heavily dependent on the class of the passengers; the first-class stewards were in charge of only a few cabins, while those responsible for the second- and third-class passengers had to manage large numbers of people. The first-class stewards provided hands-on assistance, helping their charges to get dressed and bringing them out onto the deck. With far more people to deal with, the second- and third-class stewards mostly confined their efforts to throwing open doors and telling passengers to put on lifebelts and come up top. In third class, passengers were largely left to their own devices after being informed of the need to come on deck. Many passengers and crew were reluctant to comply, either refusing to believe that there was a problem or preferring the warmth of the ship's interior to the bitterly cold night air. The passengers were not told that the ship was sinking, though a few noticed that she was
listing. Around 00:15, the stewards began ordering the passengers to put on their lifebelts, though again, many passengers took the order as a joke. Some set about playing an impromptu game of
football with the ice chunks that were now strewn across the forward well deck. On the boat deck, as the crew began preparing the lifeboats, it was difficult to hear anything over the noise of high-pressure steam being vented from the boilers and escaping via the valves on the funnels above.
Lawrence Beesley described the sound as "a harsh, deafening boom that made conversation difficult; if one imagines 20 locomotives blowing off steam in a low key it would give some idea of the unpleasant sound that met us as we climbed out on the top deck." The noise was so loud that the crew had to use hand signals to communicate.
Titanic had a total of 20 lifeboats, comprising 16 wooden boats on
davits, eight on either side of the ship, and four collapsible boats with wooden bottoms and canvas sides. The collapsibles were stored upside down with the sides folded in, and would have to be erected and moved to the davits for launching. Two were stored under the wooden boats and the other two were lashed atop the officers' quarters. The position of the latter would make them extremely difficult to launch, as they weighed several tons each and had to be manhandled down to the boat deck. On average, the lifeboats could take up to 68 people each, and collectively they could accommodate 1,178 – barely half the number of people on board and a third of the number the ship was licensed to carry. The shortage of lifeboats was not because of a lack of space nor because of cost.
Titanic had been designed to accommodate up to 68 lifeboats. In fact, it carried more than the regulation lifeboats legislated by the Board of Trade and indeed more than there was time to launch. In an emergency at the time, lifeboats were intended to be used to transfer passengers off the distressed ship and onto a nearby vessel. It was therefore commonplace for liners to have far fewer lifeboats than needed to accommodate all their passengers and crew, and of the 39 British liners of the time of over , 33 had too few lifeboat places to accommodate everyone on board. The White Star Line desired the ship to have a wide promenade deck with uninterrupted views of the sea, which would have been obstructed by a continuous row of lifeboats. Captain Smith was an experienced seaman who had served for 40 years at sea, including 27 years in command. This was the first crisis of his career, and he would have known that even if all the boats were fully occupied, more than a thousand people would remain on the ship as she sank with little or no chance of survival. Several sources later contended that upon grasping the enormity of what was about to happen, Captain Smith became paralysed by indecision, had a mental breakdown or nervous collapse, and was lost in a trance-like daze, being ineffective and inactive in attempting to mitigate the loss of life. However, according to survivors, Smith took charge and behaved coolly and calmly during the crisis. After the collision, Smith immediately began an investigation into the nature and extent of the damage, personally making two inspection trips below deck to look for damage, and preparing the wireless men for the possibility of having to call for help. He erred on the side of caution by ordering his crew to begin preparing the lifeboats for loading, and to get the passengers into their lifebelts before he was told by Andrews that the ship was sinking. Smith was observed all around the decks, personally overseeing and helping to load the lifeboats, interacting with passengers, and trying to instil urgency to follow evacuation orders while avoiding panic. Fourth Officer Boxhall was told by Smith at around 00:25 that the ship would sink, while Quartermaster George Rowe was so unaware of the emergency that after the evacuation had started, he phoned the bridge from his watch station on the aft docking bridge to ask why he had just seen a lifeboat go past. The crew was unprepared for the emergency, as lifeboat training had been minimal. Only one
lifeboat drill had been conducted while the ship was docked at Southampton. It was a cursory effort, consisting of two boats being lowered, each manned by one officer and four men who merely rowed around the dock for a few minutes before returning to the ship. The boats were supposed to be stocked with emergency supplies, but
Titanics passengers later found that they had only been partially provisioned despite the efforts of the ship's chief baker,
Charles Joughin, and his staff to do so. No lifeboat or fire drills had been conducted since
Titanic left Southampton. A lifeboat drill had been scheduled for the Sunday morning before the ship sank, but was cancelled by Captain Smith for unknown reasons. Lists had been posted on the ship assigning crew members to specific lifeboat stations, but few appeared to have read them or to have known what they were supposed to do. Most of the crew were not seamen, and some even had no prior experience of rowing a boat. They were now faced with the complex task of coordinating the lowering of 20 boats carrying a possible total of 1,100 people a distance of down the sides of the ship. Thomas E. Bonsall, a historian of the disaster, has commented that the evacuation was so badly organised that "even if they had the number [of] lifeboats they needed, it is impossible to see how they could have launched them" given the lack of time and poor leadership. Indeed, not all of the lifeboats on board
Titanic were launched before the ship sank. By about 00:20, 40 minutes after the collision, the loading of the lifeboats was under way. Second Officer Lightoller recalled afterwards that he had to cup both hands over Smith's ears to communicate over the racket of escaping steam, and said, "I yelled at the top of my voice, 'Hadn't we better get the women and children into the boats, sir?' He heard me and nodded reply." Smith then ordered Lightoller and Murdoch to "put the women and children in and lower away". Lightoller took charge of the boats on the port side and Murdoch took charge of those on the starboard side. The two officers interpreted the "women and children" evacuation order differently; Murdoch took it to mean
women and children first, while Lightoller took it to mean women and children only. Lightoller lowered lifeboats with empty seats if there were no women and children waiting to board, while Murdoch allowed a limited number of men to board if all the nearby women and children had embarked. Neither officer knew how many people could safely be carried in the boats as they were lowered and they both erred on the side of caution by not filling them. They could have been lowered quite safely with their full complement of 68 people, especially with the highly favourable weather and sea conditions. Some have estimated that more lives could have been saved if the boats were filled to capacity rather than launched with many seats vacant. However, it is also true that few passengers at first were willing to board the lifeboats and the officers in charge of the evacuation found it difficult to persuade them. Millionaire
John Jacob Astor declared: "We are safer here than in that little boat." Some passengers refused flatly to embark. J. Bruce Ismay, realising the urgency of the situation, roamed the starboard boat deck urging passengers and crew to board the boats. A trickle of women, couples and single men were persuaded to board starboard lifeboat No. 7, which became the first lifeboat to be lowered.
Departure of the lifeboats At 00:45, lifeboat No. 7 was rowed away from
Titanic with an estimated 28 passengers on board, despite a capacity of 65. Lifeboat No. 6, on the port side, was the next to be lowered at 00:55. It also had 28 people on board, among them the "unsinkable"
Margaret "Molly" Brown. Lightoller realised there was only one seaman on board (Quartermaster
Robert Hichens) and called for volunteers. Major
Arthur Godfrey Peuchen of the
Royal Canadian Yacht Club stepped forward and climbed down a rope into the lifeboat; he was the only adult male passenger whom Lightoller allowed to board during the port side evacuation. Peuchen's role highlighted a key problem during the evacuation: there were hardly any seamen to man the boats. Some had been sent below to open gangway doors to allow more passengers to be evacuated, but they never returned. They were presumably trapped and drowned by the rising water below decks. Meanwhile, other crewmen fought to maintain vital services as water continued to pour into the ship below decks. The engineers and firemen worked to vent steam from the boilers to prevent them from exploding on contact with the cold water. They re-opened watertight doors in order to set up extra portable pumps in the forward compartments in a futile bid to reduce the torrent, and kept the electrical generators running to maintain lights and power throughout the ship. Steward
Frederick Dent Ray narrowly avoided being swept away when a wooden wall between his quarters and the third-class accommodation on E deck collapsed, leaving him waist-deep in water. Two engineers, Herbert Harvey and Jonathan Shepherd (who had just broken his left leg after falling into a manhole minutes earlier), died in boiler room No. 5 when, at around 00:45, the bunker door separating it from the flooded No. 6 boiler room collapsed and they were swept away by "a wave of green foam" according to leading fireman
Frederick Barrett, who barely escaped from the boiler room. In boiler room No. 4, at around 01:20 according to survivor trimmer George Cavell, water began flooding in from the metal floor plates below, possibly indicating that the bottom of the ship had also been holed by the iceberg. The flow of water soon overwhelmed the pumps and forced the firemen and trimmers to evacuate the boiler room. Further
aft, Chief Engineer Bell, his engineering colleagues, and a handful of volunteer firemen and greasers stayed behind in the unflooded Nos. 1, 2 and 3 boiler rooms and in the turbine and reciprocating engine rooms. They continued working on the boilers and the electrical generators in order to keep the ship's lights and pumps operable and to power the radio so that distress signals could be sent. Several sources contend they remained at their posts until the very end, thus ensuring that
Titanics electrics functioned until the final minutes of the sinking, and died in the bowels of the ship. However, there is evidence to suggest when it became obvious that nothing more could be done, and the flooding in the forward compartments was too severe for the pumps to cope, some of the engineers and other crewmen abandoned their posts and came up onto
Titanics deck, but by this time all the lifeboats had left. Greaser Frederick Scott testified he saw eight of the ship's 35 engineers gathered at the aft end of the starboard boat deck. None of the ship's 35 engineers and electricians survived. Neither did any of the
Titanics five postal clerks, who were last seen struggling to save the mail bags they had rescued from the flooded mail room. They were caught by the rising water somewhere on D deck. Many of the third-class passengers were also confronted with the sight of water pouring into their quarters on E, F and G decks. Carl Jansson, one of the relatively small number of third-class survivors, later recalled: Then I run down to my cabin to bring my other clothes, watch and bag but only had time to take the watch and coat when water with enormous force came into the cabin and I had to rush up to the deck again where I found my friends standing with lifebelts on and with terror painted on their faces. What should I do now, with no lifebelt and no shoes and no cap? The lifeboats were lowered every few minutes on each side, but most of the boats were greatly under-filled. No. 5 left with 41 aboard, No. 3 had 32 aboard, No. 8 left with 39 and No. 1 left with just 12 out of a capacity of 40. The evacuation did not go smoothly and passengers suffered accidents and injuries as it progressed. One woman fell between lifeboat No. 10 and the side of the ship but someone caught her by the ankle and hauled her back onto the promenade deck, where she made a successful second attempt at boarding. First-class passenger Annie Stengel had several ribs broken when a German-American doctor and his brother jumped into No. 5, squashing her and knocking her unconscious. The lifeboats' descent was likewise risky. No. 6 was nearly flooded during the descent by water discharging out of the ship's side, but successfully made it away from the ship. No. 3 came close to disaster when, for a time, one of the
davits jammed, threatening to pitch the passengers out of the lifeboat and into the sea. By 01:20, the seriousness of the situation was now apparent to the passengers above decks, who began saying their goodbyes, with husbands escorting their wives and children to the lifeboats. A total of eight
distress flares were fired, one going up every few minutes, in hopes of attracting the attention of any ships. In addition, the ship's radio operators repeatedly sent the
distress signal CQD. Radio operator
Harold Bride suggested to his colleague Jack Phillips that he should use the
SOS signal, as it "may be your last chance to send it". Contrary to what Bride thought, SOS was not a new call, having been used many times before. The two radio operators contacted other ships to ask for assistance. Several responded, of which was the closest, at away. She was a much slower vessel than
Titanic and, even driven at her maximum speed of , would take four hours to reach the sinking ship. Another to respond was
SS Mount Temple, which set a course and headed for
Titanic position but was stopped en route by pack ice. Much nearer was , which had warned
Titanic of ice a few hours earlier. Apprehensive at his ship being caught in a large field of drift ice,
Californians captain,
Stanley Lord, had decided at about 22:00 to halt for the night and wait for daylight to find a way through the ice field. At 23:30, 10 minutes before
Titanic hit the iceberg,
Californians sole radio operator,
Cyril Evans, shut his set down for the night and went to bed. On the bridge her third officer, Charles Groves, saw a large vessel to starboard around away. It made a sudden turn to port and stopped. If the radio operator of
Californian had stayed at his post fifteen minutes longer, hundreds of lives might have been saved. A little over an hour later, Second Officer Herbert Stone saw five white rockets exploding above the stopped ship. Unsure what the rockets meant, he called Captain Lord, who was resting in the chartroom, and reported the sighting. Lord did not act on the report, but Stone was perturbed: "A ship is not going to fire rockets at sea for nothing," he told a colleague. ship
SS Birma. This was one of
Titanics last intelligible radio messages.|alt=Image of a distress signal reading: "SOS SOS CQD CQD. MGY [Titanic]. We are sinking fast passengers being put into boats. MGY" By this time, it was clear to those on
Titanic that the ship was indeed sinking and there would not be enough lifeboat places for everyone. Some still clung to the hope that the worst would not happen: when
Eloise Hughes Smith pleaded whether Lucian, her husband of two months, could go with her, Captain Smith ignored her, shouting again through his megaphone the message of women and children first. Lucian said, "Never mind, captain, about that; I will see that she gets in the boat", before telling Eloise, "I never expected to ask you to obey, but this is one time you must. It is only a matter of form to have women and children first. The ship is thoroughly equipped and everyone on her will be saved." Charlotte Collyer's husband Harvey called to his wife as two seamen hauled her into a lifeboat, "Go, Lottie! For God's sake, be brave and go! I'll get a seat in another boat!" Neither man survived. Tillie Taussig had to be dragged away from her husband (Emil Taussig) and put into lifeboat No. 8 with her daughter. When Celiney Yasbeck saw Mr. Yasbeck would not be joining her in her boat, she tried in vain to return to him as it dropped to the sea. Other couples refused to be separated.
Ida Straus, the wife of
Macy's department store co-owner and former member of the
United States House of Representatives Isidor Straus, told her husband: "We have been living together for many years. Where you go, I go." They sat down in a pair of deck chairs and awaited their end. The industrialist
Benjamin Guggenheim changed out of his life vest and sweater into top hat and evening dress and declared his wish to go down like a gentleman. At this point, the vast majority of those who had boarded lifeboats were first- and second-class passengers. Few third-class (steerage) passengers had made it up onto the deck, and most were still lost in the maze of corridors or trapped behind gates and partitions that segregated the accommodation for the steerage passengers from the first- and second-class areas. This segregation was not simply for social reasons; it was a requirement of United States immigration laws, which mandated that third-class passengers be segregated to control immigration and to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. First- and second-class passengers on transatlantic liners disembarked at the main piers on
Manhattan Island, but steerage passengers had to go through health checks and processing at
Ellis Island. In at least some places,
Titanics crew appear to have actively hindered the steerage passengers' escape. Some of the gates were locked and guarded by crew members, apparently to prevent the steerage passengers from rushing the lifeboats. Irish survivor Margaret Murphy wrote in May 1912: Before all the steerage passengers had even a chance of their lives, the
Titanics sailors fastened the doors and companionways leading up from the third-class section ... A crowd of men was trying to get up to a higher deck and were fighting the sailors; all striking and scuffling and swearing. Women and some children were there praying and crying. Then the sailors fastened down the hatchways leading to the third-class section. They said they wanted to keep the air down there so the vessel could stay up longer. It meant all hope was gone for those still down there. A long and winding route had to be taken to reach topside; the steerage-class accommodation, located on C through G decks, was at the extreme ends of the decks, and so was the farthest away from the lifeboats. By contrast, the first-class accommodation was located on the upper decks and so was nearest. Proximity to the lifeboats thus became a key factor in determining who entered them. To add to the difficulty, many of the steerage passengers did not understand or speak English. It was perhaps no coincidence that English-speaking Irish immigrants were disproportionately represented among the steerage passengers who survived. Many of those who did survive owed their lives to third-class steward John Edward Hart, who organised three trips into the ship's interior to escort groups of third-class passengers up to the boat deck. Others made their way through open gates or climbed emergency ladders. Some, perhaps overwhelmed by it all, made no attempt to escape and stayed in their cabins or congregated in prayer in the third-class dining room. Leading Fireman Charles Hendrickson saw crowds of third-class passengers below decks with their trunks and possessions, as if waiting for someone to direct them. Psychologist Wyn Craig Wade attributes this to "
stoic passivity" produced by generations of being told what to do by social superiors. August Wennerström, one of the male steerage passengers to survive, commented later that many of his companions had made no effort to save themselves. He wrote: Hundreds were in a circle [in the third-class dining saloon] with a preacher in the middle, praying, crying, asking God and Mary to help them. They lay there and yelled, never lifting a hand to help themselves. They had lost their own will power and expected God to do all the work for them.
Launching of the last lifeboats |alt=Painting of lifeboats being lowered down the side of Titanic, with one lifeboat about to be lowered on top of another one in the water. A third lifeboat is visible in the background. By 01:30,
Titanics downward angle was increasing, but not more than 5 degrees, with an increasing list to port. The deteriorating situation was reflected in the tone of the messages sent from the ship: "We are putting the women off in the boats" at 01:25, "Engine room getting flooded" at 01:35, and at 01:45, "Engine room full up to boilers." This was
Titanics last intelligible signal, sent as the ship's electrical system began to fail; subsequent messages were jumbled and unintelligible. The two radio operators nonetheless continued sending out distress messages almost to the very end. The remaining boats were filled much closer to capacity and in an increasing rush. No. 11 was filled with five people more than its rated capacity. As it was lowered, it was nearly flooded by water being pumped out of the ship. No. 13 narrowly avoided the same problem, but those aboard were unable to release the ropes from which the boat had been lowered. It drifted astern, directly under No. 15 as it was being lowered. The ropes were cut in time and both boats got away safely. |alt=Painting of a sinking ship with a lifeboat being rowed away from it in the foreground. The first signs of panic were seen when a group of male passengers attempted to rush port-side lifeboat No. 14 as it was being lowered with 40 people aboard.
Fifth Officer Lowe, who was in charge of the boat, fired three warning shots in the air to control the crowd without causing injuries. No. 16 was lowered five minutes later. Among those aboard was stewardess
Violet Jessop, who would also survive the sinking of one of
Titanics sister ships, , four years later, in the
First World War. Collapsible boat C was launched at 01:40 from a now largely deserted starboard area of the deck, as most of those on deck had moved to the
stern of the ship. It was aboard this boat that White Star chairman and managing director
J. Bruce Ismay,
Titanics most controversial survivor, made his escape from the ship, an act later condemned as cowardice. At 01:40, lifeboat No. 2 was lowered. While it was still at deck level, Lightoller had found the boat occupied by men who, he wrote later, "weren't British, nor of the English-speaking race ... [but of] the broad category known to sailors as '
dagoes'." After he evicted them by threatening them with his revolver (which was empty), he was unable to find enough women and children to fill the boat and lowered it with only 25 people on board out of a possible capacity of 40. John Jacob Astor saw his wife off to safety in No. 4 boat at 01:55 but was refused entry by Lightoller, even though 20 of the 60 seats aboard were unoccupied. The last boat to be launched was collapsible D, which left at 02:05 with 25 people aboard; two more men jumped on the boat as it was being lowered. The water had reached the boat deck and the forecastle was deep underwater. First-class passenger Edith Evans gave up her place in the boat, and ultimately died in the disaster. She was one of only four women in first class to perish in the sinking. Several survivors, including Third Class passenger Eugene Daly and First Class passenger George Rheims, claimed to have seen an officer shoot one or two men during a rush for a lifeboat, then shoot himself. It was rumoured that Murdoch was the officer, which was persisted in
James Cameron's
Titanic. Thomas Andrews was reportedly last seen in the first-class smoking room after approximately 02:05, apparently making no attempt to escape. However, other reports suggest that Andrews may have been in the smoking room before 01:40, and that he then continued assisting with the evacuation; Captain Smith carried out a final tour of the deck, telling the radio operators and other crew members: "Now it's every man for himself", and told men attempting to launch collapsible boat A, "Well boys, do your best for the women and children, and look out for yourselves," and returned to the bridge just before the ship began its final plunge. It is thought that he may have chosen to
go down with his ship and died on the bridge when it submerged. However, several survivors, including Harold Bride, saw Smith jump overboard from the bridge. Mess steward Cecil Fitzpatrick claimed to have seen Andrews jump overboard with Smith. but remained inside as steward Edward Brown claimed to have seen them at the top of the staircase in the first-class entrance. Part of the enduring folklore of the
Titanic sinking is that the musicians played the hymn "
Nearer, My God, to Thee" as the ship sank, though some regard this as dubious. Nonetheless, the claim surfaced among the earliest reports of the sinking, and the hymn became so closely associated with the
Titanic disaster that its opening bars were carved on the grave monument of
Titanics bandmaster, Wallace Hartley. Archibald Gracie emphatically denied it in his account, written soon after the sinking, and Harold Bride said that he had heard the band playing ragtime, then "Autumn", by which he may have meant
Archibald Joyce's then-popular waltz "Songe d'Automne" (Autumn Dream). George Orrell, the bandmaster of the rescue ship,
Carpathia, who spoke with survivors, said: "The ship's band in any emergency is expected to play to calm the passengers. After
Titanic struck the iceberg the band began to play bright music, dance music, comic songs – anything that would prevent the passengers from becoming panic-stricken ... various awe-stricken passengers began to think of the death that faced them and asked the bandmaster to play hymns. The one which appealed to all was 'Nearer My God to Thee'." According to Gracie, the tunes played by the band were "cheerful" but he did not recognise any of them, said that if they had played "Nearer, My God, to Thee" he "should have noticed it and regarded it as a tactless warning of immediate death to us all and one likely to create panic". Several survivors who were among the last to leave the ship, including Brown, said the band continued playing until the ship began her final plunge. Gracie said that the band stopped playing at least 30 minutes before the vessel sank. A. H. Barkworth, a first-class passenger, said: "I do not wish to detract from the bravery of anybody, but I might mention that when I first came on deck the band was playing a waltz. The next time I passed where the band was stationed, the members had thrown down their instruments and were not to be seen." and Gracie, were swept away along with the two boats (boat B floated away upside-down with Bride trapped underneath it, and boat A ended up partly flooded and with its canvas not raised). Bride and Gracie survived on boat B, but Moody perished. Lightoller, who had attempted to launch
collapsible B, realised it would be futile to head aft, and dived overboard from the roof of the officers' quarters. He was sucked into the mouth of a ventilation shaft but was blown clear by "a terrific blast of hot air" and emerged next to the capsized lifeboat. The forward funnel collapsed under its own weight, crushing several people to death struggling in the water, including first class passenger
Charles Duane Williams, as it fell into the water and only narrowly missing the lifeboat. It closely missed Lightoller and created a wave that washed the boat clear of the sinking ship. Those still on
Titanic felt her structure shuddering as it underwent immense stresses. As first-class passenger Jack Thayer described it: Occasionally there had been a muffled thud or deadened explosion within the ship. Now, without warning she seemed to start forward, moving forward and into the water at an angle of about fifteen degrees. This movement with the water rushing up toward us was accompanied by a rumbling roar, mixed with more muffled explosions. It was like standing under a steel railway bridge while an express train passes overhead mingled with the noise of a pressed steel factory and wholesale breakage of china. Eyewitnesses saw
Titanics stern rising high into the air as the ship tilted down in the water. It was said to have reached an angle of 30–45 degrees, "revolving apparently around a centre of gravity just astern of midships", as Lawrence Beesley later put it. Many survivors described a great noise, which some attributed to the boilers exploding. Beesley described it as "partly a groan, partly a rattle, and partly a smash, and it was not a sudden roar as an explosion would be: it went on successively for some seconds, possibly fifteen to twenty". He attributed it to "the engines and machinery coming loose from their bolts and bearings, and falling through the compartments, smashing everything in their way". After another minute, the ship's electrical system failed, causing the lights to flicker once and then permanently go out, plunging
Titanic into darkness. Jack Thayer recalled seeing "groups of the fifteen hundred people still aboard, clinging in clusters or bunches, like swarming bees; only to fall in masses, pairs or singly as the great afterpart of the ship, two hundred fifty feet of it, rose into the sky."
Titanics final moments Titanic was subjected to extreme opposing forces – the flooded bow pulling her down while the air in the stern kept her to the surface – which were concentrated at one of the weakest points in the structure, the area of the engine room hatch. Shortly after the lights went out,
Titanics structure failed and the ship split apart. The submerged bow may have remained attached to the stern by the keel for a short time, pulling the stern to a high angle before separating and leaving the stern to float for a few moments longer. The forward part of the stern would have flooded very rapidly, causing it to tilt and then settle briefly until sinking. The ship disappeared from view at 02:20, 2 hours and 40 minutes after striking the iceberg. Thayer reported that it rotated on the surface, "gradually [turning] her deck away from us, as though to hide from our sight the awful spectacle ... Then, with the deadened noise of the bursting of her last few gallant bulkheads, she slid quietly away from us into the sea."
Titanics surviving officers and some prominent survivors testified that the ship had sunk in one piece, a belief that was affirmed by the British and American inquiries into the disaster. Archibald Gracie, who was on the promenade deck with the band (by the second funnel), stated that "
Titanics decks were intact at the time she sank, and when I sank with her, there was over seven-sixteenths of the ship already underwater, and there was no indication then of any impending break of the deck or ship". Ballard argued that many other survivors' accounts indicated that the ship had broken in two as she was sinking. As the engines are now known to have stayed in place along with most of the boilers, the "great noise" heard by witnesses and the momentary settling of the stern were presumably caused by the break-up of the ship rather than the loosening of her fittings or boiler explosions. There are two main theories on how the ship broke in two – the "top-down" theory and the Mengot theory, so named for its creator, Roy Mengot. The more popular top-down theory states that the breakup was centralized on the structural weak-point at the entrance to the first boiler room, and that the breakup formed first at the upper decks before shooting down to the keel. The breakup totally separated the ship down to the double bottom, which acted as a hinge connecting bow and stern. From this point, the bow tugged on the stern, until the double bottom failed and both segments of the ship finally separated. almost all of those in the water died of cardiac arrest or other bodily reactions to freezing water within 15–30 minutes. Only 13 of them were helped into the lifeboats, even though these had room for almost 500 more people. Those in the lifeboats were horrified to hear the sound of what Lawrence Beesley called "every possible emotion of human fear, despair, agony, fierce resentment and blind anger mingled – I am certain of those – with notes of infinite surprise, as though each one were saying, 'How is it possible that this awful thing is happening to
me? That I should be caught in this death trap?
Jack Thayer compared it to the sound of "locusts on a summer night", while George Rheims, who jumped moments before
Titanic sank, described it as "a dismal moaning sound which I won't ever forget; it came from those poor people who were floating around, calling for help. It was horrifying, mysterious, supernatural." The noise of the people in the water screaming, yelling, and crying was a tremendous shock to the occupants of the lifeboats, many of whom had up to that moment believed that everyone had escaped before the ship sank. As Beesley later wrote, the cries "came as a thunderbolt, unexpected, inconceivable, incredible. No one in any of the boats standing off a few hundred yards away can have escaped the paralysing shock of knowing that so short a distance away a tragedy, unbelievable in its magnitude, was being enacted, which we, helpless, could in no way avert or diminish." , one of the survivors on collapsible lifeboat B. He never recovered from his ordeal and died eight months after the sinking.|alt=Photograph of a moustached middle-aged man in a dark suit and waistcoat, sitting in a chair while looking at the camera Only a few of those in the water survived. Among them were Gracie, Jack Thayer, and Lightoller, who made it to the capsized collapsible boat B. Around 12 crew members climbed on board collapsible B, and they rescued those they could until some 35 men were clinging precariously to the upturned hull. Realising the risk to the boat of being swamped by the mass of swimmers around them, they paddled slowly away, ignoring the pleas of dozens of swimmers to be allowed on board. In his account, Gracie wrote of the admiration he had for those in the water; "In no instance, I am happy to say, did I hear any word of rebuke from a swimmer because of a refusal to grant assistance ... [one refusal] was met with the manly voice of a powerful man ... 'All right boys, good luck and God bless you'." Gracie said he heard men, including stoker Harry Senior and Entree cook Isaac Maynard, on collapsible B say that Captain Smith was in the water near the boat. Fireman Walter Hurst said he thought the man who cried out, "All right boys. Good luck and God bless you", was Smith; Hurst said the man cheered the occupants on saying "Good boys! Good lads!" with "the voice of authority". Hurst, deeply moved by the swimmer's valour, reached out to him with an oar, but the man was dead. Several other swimmers reached collapsible boat A, which was upright but partly flooded, as its sides had not been properly raised. Its occupants had to stand for hours in a foot of freezing water, and many died of hypothermia during the night. Farther out, the other eighteen lifeboats – most of which had empty seats – drifted as the occupants debated what, if anything, they should do to rescue the swimmers. Boat No. 4, having remained near the sinking ship, seems to have been closest to the site of the sinking at around away; this had enabled two people to drop into the boat and another to be picked up from the water before the ship sank. After the sinking, seven more men were pulled from the water, although two later died. Collapsible D rescued one male passenger who jumped in the water and swam over to the boat immediately after it had been lowered. In all the other boats, the occupants eventually decided against returning, probably out of fear that they would be capsized in the attempt. Some put their objections bluntly; Quartermaster Hichens, commanding lifeboat No. 6, told the women aboard his boat that there was no point returning as there were "only a lot of stiffs there". After about twenty minutes, the cries began to fade as the swimmers lapsed into unconsciousness and death. Fifth Officer
Harold Lowe, in charge of lifeboat No. 14, "waited until the yells and shrieks had subsided for the people to thin out" before mounting an attempt to rescue those in the water. He had gathered together five of the lifeboats before the ship sank and began transferring the occupants between them to free up space in No. 14. Lowe then took a crew of six, including one male passenger who volunteered to help, and then rowed back to the site of the sinking. By the time No. 14 headed back to the site of the sinking, almost all of those in the water were dead and only a few voices could still be heard.
Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, recalled after the disaster that "the very last cry was that of a man who had been calling loudly: 'My God! My God!' He cried monotonously, in a dull, hopeless way. For an entire hour, there had been an awful chorus of shrieks, gradually dying into a hopeless moan, until this last cry that I speak of. Then all was silent." For some survivors, the dead silence that followed was worse even than the cries for help. Lowe and his crew found four men still alive, one of whom died shortly afterwards. Otherwise, all they could see were "hundreds of bodies and lifebelts"; the dead "seemed as if they had perished with the cold as their limbs were all cramped up". In the other boats, there was nothing the survivors could do but await the arrival of rescue ships. The air was bitterly cold and several of the boats had taken on water. The survivors could not find any
food or drinkable water in the boats, and most had no lights. The situation was particularly bad aboard collapsible B, which was only kept afloat by a diminishing air pocket in the upturned hull. As dawn approached, the wind rose and the sea became increasingly choppy, forcing those on the collapsible boat to stand up to balance it. Some, exhausted by the ordeal, fell into the sea and drowned. It became steadily more difficult for the rest to keep their balance on the hull, with waves washing across it. In collapsible A, a similarly bad situation existed with the boat only being kept afloat by its Kapok-filled fenders, forcing occupants to push off the bodies of those who died over the course of the night in an effort to keep the boat afloat. Only twelve people were alive when the boat was spotted by Lowe who subsequently transferred them to his own boat.
Rescue and departure Titanics survivors were rescued around 04:00 on 15 April by the , which had steamed through the night at high speed and at considerable risk, as the ship had to dodge numerous icebergs en route.
Carpathias lights were first spotted around 03:30, which greatly cheered the survivors, though it took several more hours for everyone to be brought aboard. The 30 or more men on collapsible B finally managed to board two other lifeboats, but one survivor died just before the transfer was made. Collapsible A was also in trouble and was now nearly awash; many of those aboard (maybe more than half) had died overnight. The remaining survivors were transferred from A into another lifeboat, leaving behind three bodies in the boat, which was left to drift away. It was recovered a month later by the White Star liner with the bodies still aboard. Those on
Carpathia were startled by the scene that greeted them as the sun rose: "fields of ice on which, like points on the landscape, rested innumerable pyramids of ice." Captain
Arthur Rostron of
Carpathia saw ice all around, including 20 large bergs measuring up to high and numerous smaller bergs, as well as ice floes and debris from
Titanic. It appeared to
Carpathias passengers that their ship was in the middle of a vast white plain of ice, studded with icebergs appearing like hills in the distance. As the lifeboats were brought alongside
Carpathia, the survivors came aboard the ship by various means. Some were strong enough to climb up rope ladders; others were hoisted up in slings, and the children were hoisted in mail sacks. The last lifeboat to reach the ship was Lightoller's boat No. 12, with 74 people aboard a boat designed to carry 65. They were all on
Carpathia by 09:00. There were some scenes of joy as families and friends were reunited, but in most cases hopes died as loved ones failed to reappear. At 09:15, two more ships arrived – and , which had finally learned of the disaster when her radio operator returned to duty – but by then there were no more survivors to rescue.
Carpathia had been bound for Fiume,
Austria-Hungary (now
Rijeka, Croatia), but she had neither the stores nor the medical facilities to cater for the survivors. Rostron ordered that a course be calculated to return to New York, where the survivors could be properly looked after.
Carpathia departed the area, leaving the other ships to carry out a final, fruitless two-hour search. == Aftermath ==