Existing comment:
Final Moments:
On Sunday, April 14, nearby ships radioed Titanic to warn of icebergs ahead. Captain Smith did not foresee danger. He believed Titanic could avoid collision and maintained full speed. That night, radio operator Jack Phillips received messages about fields of bergs and pack ice. One warning mapped a dangerous rectangle that Titanic was already inside. At 11:00 pm, the liner Californian radioed that it had stopped amid ice. As none of the messages required Phillips to inform Smith, he put them aside to send telegrams for paying passengers.
The ocean was calm and flat, eliminating waves that would have made icebergs more visible. Just before 11:40pm, foremast lookout Frederick Fleet spotted an iceberg and phoned the bridge to steer wide. It was too late. The berg scraped the starboard hull below the water line. Seawater entered the first six of sixteen watertight compartments formed by transverse bulkheads. The bulkheads had a fatal flaw: they rose only a few feet above the water line. As the weight of incoming water pulled down the bow, the bulkheads sank below the waterline. Spillover topped the bulkheads, sloshing into the seventh compartment, then the eighth, continuing in an unstoppable reaction. |