Report Reconstructs Final Moments And Mistakes Of Sinking

A scientific report based on five years of research on wreckage of the sunken Titanic sums up the fateful events of April 14-15, 1912 as follows:

At 11:35 p.m. lookouts in the crow’s nest of the Titanic spotted an iceberg dead ahead. First Officer William Murdoch ordered the ship turned to avoid a head-on crash. This was the first mistake, according to the report. If the ship had hit the iceberg head on, it would have caused some damage but the watertight doors, designed to protect the ship from flooding, would have closed, confining the water to the front of the ship, preventing wider flooding and keeping it afloat. By sideswiping the iceberg, a large part of the Titanic’s hull was exposed to serious damage.

The steel, subject to icy water temperatures for several days, was already under stress. A fire, begun in the ship’s coal bunker before it left port and put out only the day before the sinking, had heated the ship’s steel. This combination of heat and cold added to the stress on the steel. Slamming the 50,000-ton, 882-foot Titanic into an iceberg at between 23 and 26 miles an hour was more than the steel could stand.

The collision with the ice did not create a 300-foot gash, which the report now calls “folklore.” What the crash did was to cause the already stressed steel to crack.

“We believe the damage to the ship consisted of popped rivets, cracks in the shell plating, and torn seams below the waterline while there was a large hole punched in the side of the ship… . Fissures occurred in the hull plates in contact areas with the iceberg as well as very small cracks that radiated out from rivet holes,” the report states.

By 2 a.m., the stern lifted out of the water, its three huge propellers hanging in the air. Gradually the Titanic tilted to a 65-degree angle against the star-filled sky.

The Titanic was never built to stand that kind of strain. According to Peter Hsu, a structural engineer with Techmatics Inc., a naval consulting firm that contributed to the report, at about 100 feet underwater the ship began to crack in two.

Steel on the upper decks ripped apart and the hull girder at the ship’s center broke, cracking the hull open.

Finally, the bow of the Titanic, weighted down with 16,000 tons of water, ripped free.

To the lifeboat passengers, the stern appeared to be about to right itself. But it assumed a vertical position as water flooded in, and in the space of four or five minutes, slipped slowly underwater and disappeared, not to be seen again for 73 years.