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Many decades have passed since that terrible disaster, and no one doubted what exactly sent the magnificent Titanic to the bottom of the ocean. When the “unsinkable” ship, the largest, most luxurious ocean liner of its time, crashed into an iceberg on its maiden voyage in 1912, it took with it more than 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers. As the ship slid deep into the North Atlantic, the secrets of how and why it sank disappeared with it.
"Titanic" (eng. Titanic) is a British transatlantic steamship, the second liner of the Olympic class. Built in Belfast at the Harland and Wolfe shipyard from 1909 to 1912 for the White Star Line shipping company. At the time of commissioning it was the largest ship in the world. On the night of April 14-15, 1912, during her maiden voyage, she crashed in the North Atlantic, colliding with an iceberg.
The Titanic was equipped with two four-cylinder steam engines and a steam turbine. The entire power plant had a capacity of 55,000 hp. With. The ship could reach speeds of up to 23 knots (42 km/h). Its displacement, which exceeded the twin steamer Olympic by 243 tons, was 52,310 tons. The ship's hull was made of steel. The hold and lower decks were divided into 16 compartments by bulkheads with sealed doors. If the bottom was damaged, the double bottom prevented water from entering the compartments. Shipbuilder magazine called the Titanic virtually unsinkable, a statement that was widely circulated in the press and among the public. In accordance with outdated rules, the Titanic was equipped with 20 lifeboats, with a total capacity of 1,178 people, which was only a third of the ship's maximum load.
Titanic (left in photo) in port 
Titanic in port
Two government investigations that followed the disaster agreed that it was the iceberg, and not the defects and weaknesses of the ship itself, that sank the Titanic. Both commissions of inquiry concluded that the ship sank entirely, and not in parts. That there were no major faults. The blame for the disaster, terrible in its scale, fell solely on the unfortunate captain of the ship, I. Smith, who also died along with the entire crew. Smith was blamed for the fact that the Titanic was rushing at a speed of 22 knots (41 km) across a dangerous ice field well known to sailors - in dark waters, not far from the coast of Newfoundland. The Titanic incident was settled – it seemed once and for all.
Titanic before leaving the ocean 
Tail section of the Titanic The answers lay at the bottom of the sea
However, doubts and questions about what could sink the seemingly indestructible ship remained. In 1985, when oceanographer Robert Ballard, after years of searching, finally found the remains of the ship at a depth of about 4 km on the ocean floor, he discovered that the Titanic had actually split in half on the surface of the ocean before sinking.
Why did it split in half? - the experts were perplexed. Was the invincible Titanic weak in design?
Oil painting “The sinking of the Titanic” Several years have passed since Ballard's discovery, and now the first wreckage of the ship has been raised from the ocean floor. A new hypothesis for the death of the Titanic is the low-grade steel used in the construction of the ship. However, a group of researchers came to the conclusion that it was not the steel that was used to sheath the ship, but low-grade steel. The rivets, the critical metal pins that held the steel plates of the ship's hull together, were of poor quality. Moreover, the recently discovered wreckage of the Titanic's bottom clearly indicates that the ship's stern was never raised high into the air, as many Titanic experts, including Cameron, originally believed. In fact, the ship broke into pieces and sank, remaining relatively level on the surface of the ocean - a clear sign of miscalculations in its design, which were hidden after the disaster.
The construction of the Titanic was rushed
The Titanic was created in a short time - in response to the production of a new generation of high-speed liners by a competing company. The Titanic and its smaller siblings, the Olympic and the Britannic, were the most grandiose ships in the history of shipbuilding. These were real colossi! — 275 meters from bow to stern! – even tall skyscrapers gave in to them. Specially equipped to withstand the threats of the North Atlantic, including huge waves and sudden collisions, these sister ships were also - naturally - the safest. The Titanic could stay afloat even if 4 of its 16 watertight compartments were flooded - a real miracle for a ship of such gigantic size!
Titanic at sea On the night of April 14, 1912, however, just a few days into the Titanic's maiden voyage, the Titanic's Achilles heel played its ominous role. The ship was not nimble enough to avoid colliding with the iceberg, which the lookouts shouted about (the only way to spot an iceberg at that time) at the last minute and in pitch darkness. The Titanic did not collide with the fatal iceberg directly, but drove over it on its right side. The ice punched holes in the ship's steel plates, flooding six "watertight" compartments.
Two hours later, the Titanic overflowed with water and sank.
Still from the film “The Sinking of the Titanic” Achilles' heel of the Titanic
Experts continued to search for explanations for the death of the ship, which was equipped according to all safety rules. And they came across a potential weak link: more than three million rivets holding the ship's hull together. Taking a sample of 48 of these metal rods, raised from the ocean floor, scientists found in them a high concentration of “scale” - sediment from smelting. Because of this scale, the metal becomes brittle and can crack.
Not because of cheapness, but because time was running out, the builders of the Titanic began to use low-grade material. When the Titanic struck an iceberg, weak steel rods in its bow cracked, exposing seams in the hull and hastening the ship's demise. It is no coincidence that the water, having flooded six compartments held together by low-grade steel rods, stopped exactly where the high-grade steel rivets began.
Thus, one of the secrets carried away by the Titanic to the bottom of the ocean was revealed. If all the rivets holding the Titanic were made of high quality steel, the disaster could have been avoided. It is not without reason that immediately after the sinking of the Titanic, two other giant ships - the Olympic and the Britannic, built at the same shipyard and at the same time as the Titanic - were urgently and comprehensively strengthened: the steel plating of the hull was doubled and they were raised much higher than the bulkhead . The shipbuilding company clearly admitted the defects and unacceptable mistakes in the speed limit - just to keep up with the competitors! - the race to build the Titanic, tried as best she could to correct them and hide them from experts, insurance agents and all inquisitive humanity.
In 2005, a new expedition went to the site of a long-standing disaster. And very soon I found the answer to everyone’s questions. This time, the divers did not look at the main wreck site on the seabed, but looked a little to the side, where they found two large fragments from the bottom of the ship. When they began to analyze the jagged edges of these bottom fragments, they came to a striking conclusion. It would have been impossible for the ship to break apart in the way that experts had believed for decades, with the stern rising out of the ocean at a 45-degree angle and before the ship's hull split in two. From these significant bottom fragments it can be judged that their split was interrupted in the middle - a sure sign that the ship then tilted at a small angle (about 11 degrees), that its stern still retained buoyancy when it cracked. If rear end the ship rose out of the water at a 45-degree angle, as stunningly depicted in Cameron's film, the stern would quickly break away from the ship's hull and the solid fragments of the bottom found at the bottom would be torn in two.
James Cameron and a team of scientists tried to reconstruct the course of events from the Titanic's collision with an iceberg to its complete sinking:
The tilt of the ship is a matter of life and death
It would seem, what does it matter exactly how the ship split into pieces? For the passengers of the Titanic, it was a matter of life and death. In the movies, the stern of the ship rises up and then goes, along with the entire hull, to the bottom. This is a long dramatic action. In reality, the ship tilted quite a bit as water flooded the bow, giving passengers on board a false sense of security.
The passengers and many of the crew did not understand the seriousness of the situation. When the water sufficiently flooded the bow of the hull, the ship, while remaining afloat, split in two and sank in minutes.
Interestingly, most of the survivors confirm this unexpected course of events. Charlie Jugin, the Titanic's chef, was standing near the stern as the ship began to sink, but he saw no sign of the hull breaking. There was no suction funnel, no colossal splash. Dzhugin said that he calmly sailed away from the ship, without even getting his hair wet.
Farewell, cinematic romantic “Titanic”!
Unlike Cameron's film, there was no giant wave coming from the scene of the disaster - none of those sitting in the rescue boats noticed it when the stern of the ship disappeared under water. One of the former passengers of the Titanic told how he slipped into the water, turned around and did not see the ship.
So, goodbye to the heartbreaking image of the Titanic with its stern raised high, covered with doomed passengers, their common dying cry, and now the ship plunges into the water at a steep angle! Unfortunately or fortunately, nothing like that actually happened.
Although some in the lifeboats saw the ship's stern high in the air, this may have been an optical illusion. With a tilt of 11 degrees, with propellers sticking out in the air, the Titanic, already the height of a twenty-story building, seemed even taller, and its roll in the water was even steeper.
Could the Titanic have been stronger and more durable? Undoubtedly. High Quality steel rivets and a denser, double-skinned hull could have prevented the disaster, or certainly would have kept the ship afloat many times longer.
On the night of April 14-15, 1912, the most modern passenger liner at that time, the Titanic, making its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, collided with an iceberg and soon sank. At least 1,496 people died, 712 passengers and crew were rescued.
The Titanic disaster very quickly became overgrown with a mass of legends and speculation. At the same time, for several decades, the place where the lost ship rested remained unknown.
The main difficulty was that the location of the death was known with very low accuracy - we were talking about an area 100 kilometers in diameter. Considering that the Titanic sank in an area where the depth of the Atlantic is several kilometers, finding the ship was very problematic.
Titanic. Photo: www.globallookpress.com
The bodies of the dead were going to be raised with dynamite
Immediately after the shipwreck, relatives of wealthy passengers who died in the disaster came up with a proposal to organize an expedition to raise the ship. The initiators of the search wanted to bury their loved ones and, to be honest, return the valuables that had sunk to the bottom along with their owners.
The decisive attitude of the relatives came across a categorical verdict from experts: the technology for searching and lifting the Titanic from great depths simply did not exist at that time.
Then a new proposal was received - to drop dynamite charges to the bottom at the supposed site of the disaster, which, according to the authors of the project, were supposed to provoke the ascent of the corpses of the dead from the bottom. This dubious idea also did not find support.
The First World War, which began in 1914, postponed the search for the Titanic for many years.
Interior of the veranda for first class passengers of the Titanic. Photo: www.globallookpress.com
Nitrogen and ping pong balls
They started talking about searching for the liner again only in the 1950s. At the same time, proposals began to appear for possible ways lifting it from freezing the shell with nitrogen to filling it with millions of ping-pong balls.
In the 1960s and 1970s, several expeditions were sent to the area where the Titanic sank, but all of them were unsuccessful due to insufficient technical preparation.
In 1980 Texas oil tycoon John Grimm financed the preparation and conduct of the first large expedition to search for the Titanic. But, despite the availability of the most modern equipment for underwater searches, his expedition ended in failure.
Played a major role in the discovery of the Titanic ocean explorer and part-time US Navy officer Robert Ballard. Ballard, who was involved in improving small unmanned underwater vehicles, became interested in underwater archeology and, in particular, the mystery of the Titanic sinkhole back in the 1970s. In 1977, he organized the first expedition to search for the Titanic, but it ended in failure.
Ballard was convinced that finding the ship was only possible with the help of the latest deep-sea bathyscaphes. But getting these at your disposal was very difficult.
Photo: www.globallookpress.com
Doctor Ballard's Secret Mission
In 1985, having failed to achieve results during an expedition on the French research vessel Le Suroît, Ballard moved to the American vessel R/V Knorr, with which he continued the search for the Titanic.
As Ballard himself said many years later, the expedition, which became historic, began with a secret deal concluded between him and the command of the Navy. The researcher really wanted to get the Argo deep-sea research vehicle for his work, but the American admirals did not want to pay for the work of the equipment to search for some historical rarity. The ship R/V Knorr and the Argo apparatus were supposed to carry out a mission to examine the sites of the sinking of two American nuclear submarines, Scorpion and Thresher, which sank back in the 1960s. This mission was classified, and the US Navy needed someone who could not only carry out necessary work, but will also be able to keep them secret.
Ballard's candidacy was ideal - he was quite famous, and everyone knew about his passion for finding the Titanic.
The researcher was offered: he could get the Argo and use it to search for the Titanic if he first found and examined the submarines. Ballard agreed.
Only the leadership of the US Navy knew about the Scorpion and Thrasher; for the rest, Robert Ballard simply explored the Atlantic and looked for the Titanic.
Robert Ballard. Photo: www.globallookpress.com
"Comet tail" at the bottom
He coped with the secret mission brilliantly, and on August 22, 1985, he was able to again begin the search for the liner that perished in 1912.
None of the most advanced technology would have ensured his success if not for the previously accumulated experience. Ballard, while examining the sinkhole sites of the submarines, noticed that they left at the bottom a kind of “comet tail” of thousands of fragments. This was due to the fact that the hulls of the boats were destroyed when sank to the bottom due to enormous pressure.
The scientist knew that during the dive on the Titanic, the steam boilers exploded, which meant that the liner should have left a similar “comet tail.”
It was this trace, and not the Titanic itself, that was easier to detect.
On the night of September 1, 1985, the Argo apparatus found small debris at the bottom, and at 0:48 the camera recorded the Titanic’s boiler. Then it was possible to discover the bow of the ship.
It was found that the bow and stern of the broken liner were located at a distance of approximately 600 meters from each other. At the same time, both the stern and the bow were seriously deformed when sank to the bottom, but the bow was still better preserved.
Ship layout. Photo: www.globallookpress.com
House for underwater inhabitants
The news of the discovery of the Titanic became a sensation, although many experts hastened to question it. But in the summer of 1986, Ballard carried out a new expedition, during which he not only described in detail the ship at the bottom, but also made the first dive to the Titanic on a manned deep-sea vehicle. After this, the last doubts were dispelled - the Titanic was discovered.
The last resting place of the liner is located at a depth of 3750 meters. In addition to the two main parts of the liner, tens of thousands of smaller debris are scattered along the bottom over an area of 4.8×8 km: parts of the ship’s hull, remains of furniture and interior decoration, dishes, and personal belongings of people.
The wreckage of the ship is covered with multi-layered rust, the thickness of which is constantly growing. In addition to multi-layered rust, 24 species of invertebrate animals and 4 species of fish live on and near the hull. Of these, 12 species of invertebrates clearly gravitate towards shipwrecks, eating metal and wooden structures. The interior of the Titanic was almost completely destroyed. The wooden elements were consumed by deep sea worms. The decks are covered in layers of clam shells, and stalactites of rust hang from many of the metal pieces.
A wallet recovered from the Titanic. Photo: www.globallookpress.com
Are all the people left with shoes left?
During the 30 years that have passed since the discovery of the ship, the Titanic has been rapidly deteriorating. Its current state is such that there can be no talk of any lifting of the vessel. The ship will forever remain at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
There is still no consensus on whether human remains were preserved on the Titanic and around it. According to the prevailing version, all human bodies completely decomposed. However, information periodically appears that some researchers have nevertheless stumbled upon the remains of the dead.
But James Cameron, director of the famous film "Titanic", on personal account who has made over 30 dives to the liner on the Russian Mir deep-sea submersibles, is sure of the opposite: “We saw shoes, boots and other footwear at the site of the sunken ship, but our team has never encountered human remains.”
Things from the Titanic are a profitable product
Since the discovery of the Titanic by Robert Ballard, about two dozen expeditions have been carried out to the ship, during which several thousand objects were raised to the surface, ranging from personal belongings of passengers to a piece of plating weighing 17 tons.
The exact number of objects recovered from the Titanic is impossible to establish today, since with the improvement of underwater technology, the ship has become a favorite target of “black archaeologists” who are trying to obtain rarities from the Titanic by any means.
Robert Ballard, lamenting this, remarked: “The ship is still a noble old lady, but not the same lady I saw in 1985.”
Items from the Titanic have been sold at auction for many years and are in great demand. So, in the year of the 100th anniversary of the disaster, in 2012, hundreds of items went under the hammer, including a cigar box that belonged to the captain of the Titanic ($40 thousand), a life jacket from the ship ($55 thousand), and a master key first class steward ($138 thousand). As for the jewelry from the Titanic, their value is measured in millions of dollars.
At one time, having discovered the Titanic, Robert Ballard intended to keep this place secret, so as not to disturb the resting place of one and a half thousand people. Perhaps he shouldn't have done this.
