How many years ago did the Titanic sink? The Titanic is a true disaster story. A set of adverse factors

April 10, 1912 from Southampton Port to her first and last swim The Titanic liner set off, which after 4 days collided with an iceberg. About the tragedy that claimed the lives of almost 1496 people, we know largely thanks to the film, but let's get acquainted with real stories passengers on the Titanic.

The real cream of society gathered on the passenger deck of the Titanic: millionaires, actors and writers. Not everyone could afford to buy a class I ticket - the price was $60,000 at current prices.

3rd class passengers bought tickets for only $35 ($650 these days), so they were not allowed to go above the third deck. On the fateful night, the division into classes turned out to be more tangible than ever...

Bruce Ismay was one of the first people to jump into a lifeboat. CEO company "White star line", which owned the Titanic. The boat, designed for 40 people, sailed from the side with only twelve.

After the disaster, Ismay was accused of boarding a lifeboat, avoiding women and children, and of instructing the captain of the Titanic to increase speed, which led to the tragedy. The court acquitted him.

William Ernest Carter boarded the Titanic at Southampton with his wife, Lucy, and their two children, Lucy and William, and two dogs.

On the night of the disaster, he was at a party in the ship's restaurant. first class and after the collision, together with his comrades, he went on deck, where the boats were already being prepared. First, William put his daughter in boat number 4, but when it was his son's turn, they were in trouble.

Right in front of them, 13-year-old John Rison boarded the boat, after which the boarding officer ordered that teenage boys not be taken on board. Lucy Carter resourcefully threw her hat on her 11-year-old son and sat down with him.

When the boarding process was completed and the boat began to descend into the water, Carter himself quickly got into it, along with another passenger. It turned out to be the already mentioned Bruce Ismay.

Roberta Mahoney, 21, worked as a servant to the countess and sailed on the Titanic with her mistress in first class.

On board, she met a brave young steward from the ship's crew, and soon the young people fell in love with each other. When the Titanic began to sink, the steward rushed to Roberta's cabin, brought her to the boat deck and put her in the boat, giving her his life jacket.

He himself died, like many other crew members, and Robert was picked up by the Carpathia ship, on which she sailed to New York. Only there, in her coat pocket, did she find a badge with a star, which, at the moment of parting, the steward put in her pocket as a memory of himself.

Emily Richards sailed along with her two young sons, mother, brother and sister to her husband. At the time of the disaster, the woman was sleeping in the cabin with her children. They were awakened by the screams of their mother, who ran into the cabin after the collision.

The Richardses were miraculously able to climb through the window into the descending lifeboat No. 4. When the Titanic completely sank, the passengers of her boat managed to pull seven more people out of the icy water, two of whom, unfortunately, soon died of frostbite.

The famous American businessman Isidor Strauss and his wife Ida traveled in first class. The Strauss have been married for 40 years and have never parted.

When the ship's officer invited the family to board the boat, Isidore refused, deciding to give way to women and children, but Ida also followed him.

Instead of themselves, the Strauss put their maid in the boat. Isidore's body was identified by a wedding ring, Ida's body was not found.

Two orchestras played on the Titanic: a quintet led by 33-year-old British violinist Wallace Hartley and an additional trio of musicians who were hired to give Café Parisien a continental touch.

Usually two members of the Titanic orchestra worked in different parts of the liner and in different time, but on the night of the death of the ship, all of them united into one orchestra.

One of the rescued passengers of the Titanic wrote later: “Many heroic deeds were committed that night, but none of them could compare with the feat of these few musicians, playing hour after hour, although the ship sank deeper and deeper, and the sea to the place where they stood. The music they played gave them the right to be included in the list of heroes of eternal glory."

Hartley's body was found two weeks after the sinking of the Titanic and sent to England. A violin was tied to his chest - a gift from the bride. Among the other members of the orchestra, there were no survivors ...

Four-year-old Michel and two-year-old Edmond traveled with their father, who died in the crash, and were considered "orphans of the Titanic" until their mother was found in France.

Michel died in 2001, he was the last male survivor on the Titanic.

Winnie Coates was on her way to New York with her two children. On the night of the disaster, she woke up from a strange noise, but decided to wait for the orders of the crew members. Her patience snapped, she rushed about the endless corridors of the ship for a long time, getting lost.

Suddenly met by a member of the crew directed her to the boats. She stumbled on a broken closed gate, but just at that moment another officer appeared, who saved Winnie and her children by giving them his life jacket.

As a result, Vinnie ended up on the deck, where she was boarding boat No. 2, on which, literally by a miracle, she managed to dive ..

Seven-year-old Eva Hart escaped the sinking Titanic with her mother, but her father died in the crash.

Ellen Walker believes she was conceived on the Titanic before it hit the iceberg. “It means a lot to me,” she admitted in an interview.

Her parents were 39-year-old Samuel Morley, the owner of a jewelry store in England, and 19-year-old Kate Phillips, one of his employees, fled to America from the man’s first wife, seeking to start new life.

Kate got into a lifeboat, Samuel jumped into the water after her, but did not know how to swim and drowned. "Mom spent 8 hours in a lifeboat," Helen said. "She was wearing only a nightgown, but one of the sailors gave her his jumper."

Violet Constance Jessop. Until the last moment, the stewardess did not want to be hired on the Titanic, but her friends convinced her because they thought it would be a "wonderful experience."

Before that, on October 20, 1910, Violet became a flight attendant. transatlantic liner"Olympic", which a year later, due to unsuccessful maneuvering, collided with a cruiser, but the girl managed to escape.

And from the Titanic, Violet escaped on a boat. During the First World War, the girl went to work as a nurse, and in 1916 she got on board the Britannic, which ... also went to the bottom! Two boats with a crew were pulled under the propeller of a sinking ship. 21 people died.

Among them could be Violet, who was sailing in one of the broken boats, but again luck was on her side: she managed to jump out of the boat and survived.

Fireman Arthur John Priest also survived a shipwreck not only on the Titanic, but also on the Olympic and Britannic (by the way, all three ships were the brainchild of the same company). Priest has 5 shipwrecks on his account.

April 21, 1912" New York Times "published the story of Edward and Ethel Bean, who sailed on the Titanic in the second class. After the crash, Edward helped his wife get into the boat. But when the boat had already sailed, he saw that it was half empty and jumped into the water. Ethel dragged her husband into the boat.

Among the passengers of the Titanic was the famous tennis player Carl Behr and his lover Helen Newsom. After the disaster, the athlete ran to the cabin and brought the women to the boat deck.

The lovers were ready to say goodbye forever when the head of the White Star Line, Bruce Ismay, personally offered Beer a place on the boat. A year later, Karl and Helen got married, and later became the parents of three children.

Edward John Smith is the captain of the Titanic, who was very popular with both crew and passengers. At 2:13 am, just 10 minutes before the ship was completely submerged, Smith returned to the captain's bridge, where he decided to meet his death.

Second mate Charles Herbert Lightoller was one of the last to jump off the ship, narrowly avoiding being sucked into the ventilation shaft. He swam to the collapsible boat B, which was floating upside down: the Titanic's pipe that broke off and fell into the sea next to him drove the boat away from the sinking ship and allowed it to stay afloat.

American businessman Benjamin Guggenheim during the crash helped women and children immerse themselves in lifeboats. When asked to save himself, he replied: "We are dressed in our best clothes and are ready to die like gentlemen."

Benjamin died at the age of 46, his body was not found.

Thomas Andrews - first class passenger, Irish businessman and shipbuilder, was the designer of the Titanic ...

During the evacuation, Thomas helped the passengers into the boats. Last time he was seen in the first class smoking room near the fireplace, looking at a painting of Port Plymouth. His body was never found after the crash.

John Jacob and Madeleine Astor, the millionaire science fiction writer, were traveling first class with their young wife. Madeleine escaped on lifeboat number 4. The body of John Jacob was raised from the depths of the ocean 22 days after his death.

Colonel Archibald Gracie IV is an American writer and amateur historian who survived the sinking of the Titanic. Returning to New York, Gracie immediately began writing a book about his voyage.

It was she who became a real encyclopedia for historians and researchers of the disaster, thanks to the information contained in it. a large number the names of the stowaways and 1st class passengers who remained on the Titanic. Gracie's health was badly damaged by hypothermia and injuries, and he died in late 1912.

Margaret (Molly) Brown is an American socialite, philanthropist, and activist. Survived. When panic arose on the Titanic, Molly put people into lifeboats, but she herself refused to sit there.

"If the worst happens, I'll swim out," she said, until eventually someone pushed her into the number 6 lifeboat that made her famous.

After Molly organized the Titanic Survivors Relief Fund.

Millvina Dean was the last of the surviving passengers of the Titanic: she died on May 31, 2009 at the age of 97 in a nursing home in Ashurst, Hampshire, on the 98th anniversary of the liner's launch. .

Her ashes were scattered on October 24, 2009 in the port of Southampton, from where the Titanic began its first and last flight. At the time of the death of the liner, she was two and a half months old.

Many decades have passed since 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 his time, on his very first flight in 1912, he crashed into an iceberg, he took with him to the bottom more than 1,500 of all 2,200 passengers. As the ship slipped in North Atlantic, along with it, the secrets disappeared - how and why it sank.

Titanic is a British transatlantic steamship, the second Olympic-class liner. Built in Belfast at the shipyard "Harland and Wolf" from 1909 to 1912 by order of the shipping company "White Star Line". At the time of commissioning, it was the largest ship in the world. On the night of April 14-15, 1912, during the first flight, it crashed in the North Atlantic, colliding with an iceberg.

The Titanic was equipped with two four-cylinder steam engines and steam turbine. All power point had a capacity of 55,000 liters. 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 widely circulated in the press and among the public. In accordance with outdated regulations, 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 (on the left in the photo) in the port
Titanic in port

Two government investigations that were conducted in the wake of the disaster agreed that it was the iceberg, and not the defects and weakness of the ship itself, that sank the Titanic. Both commissions of inquiry concluded that the ship went to the bottom as a whole, and not in parts. There were no major breaks. The blame for the nightmarish disaster 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) through a dangerous ice field well known to sailors - in dark waters, off the coast of Newfoundland. The Titanic incident was over, it seemed, once and for all.

Titanic in front of the ocean

tail section ship "Titanic"

The clues 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 many years of searching, finally found the remains of the ship at a depth of about 4 km on the ocean floor, he discovered that in fact the Titanic had split in half on the surface of the ocean before sinking.

Why did it split in half? the experts wondered. Was the invincible Titanic weak in design?

Oil painting "The sinking of the Titanic"

Several years have passed since the discovery of Ballard, and now the first wreckage of the ship is 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 went to the skin of the ship, it was low-grade. Of poor quality were the rivets, the most important metal pins that held together the steel plates of the ship's hull. What's more, the recently found pieces of the bottom of the Titanic clearly indicate that the ship's stern never rose high into the air, as many Titanic experts, including Cameron, initially believed. In fact, the ship broke into pieces and sank, floating relatively flat on the surface of the ocean - a clear sign of flaws in its design, which were hidden after the disaster.

With the construction of the "Titanic" hurried

"Titanic" was built on a tight schedule - in response to the production of a new generation by a competitive company high-speed liners. The Titanic and its smaller siblings, the Olympic and Britannic, were the most grandiose ships in the history of shipbuilding. They 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 - as a matter of course - the safest. The Titanic could keep afloat even if 4 of its 16 watertight compartments were flooded - a real miracle for a ship of such giant size!

Titanic at sea

On the night of April 14, 1912, however, in just a few days of the Titanic's maiden voyage, its Achilles' heel played its sinister role. The ship was not nimble enough to avoid the iceberg that the lookouts (at the time, the only way to spot an iceberg) were shouting about at the last minute and in pitch darkness. The Titanic did not directly collide with the fatal iceberg, but drove over it on its right side. The ice tore holes in the ship's steel plates, flooding six "watertight" compartments.
Two hours later, the Titanic overflowed with water and sank.

Frame from the movie "The sinking of the Titanic"

Achilles' heel of the Titanic

Experts continued to look for explanations for the death of a ship equipped in accordance with all safety rules. And they came across a potentially weak link: more than three million rivets that fastened the ship's hull. Taking a sample of 48 of these metal rods, raised from the ocean floor, scientists found in them a high concentration of "dross" - sediment from melting. Because of this scale, the metal becomes brittle and may 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 hit the iceberg, the weak steel bars in its bow cracked, exposing the seams in the hull and hastening the ship's demise. It is no coincidence that the water, flooding six compartments fastened with 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 discovered. If all the rivets that held the Titanic were made of stainless steel, the disaster could have been avoided. Not without reason, immediately after the death of the Titanic, two other giant ship- The Olympic and 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 doubled and were raised much higher than the bulkhead. The shipbuilding company clearly recognized defects and unacceptable miscalculations in high-speed - just to keep up with competitors! - the race to build the Titanic, tried her best to fix them and hide them from experts, insurance agents and all inquisitive mankind.

In 2005, a new expedition went to the site of a long-standing disaster. And very soon I found an answer to the questions that concern everyone. This time the divers looked at seabed not the main wreck, but took 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 fragments of the bottom, they came to a startling conclusion. It was impossible for a ship to split in the way that experts believed for decades - with the stern rearing over the ocean at a 45-degree angle, and before the ship's hull broke in two. From these significant bottom wrecks it can be judged that their split was interrupted in the middle - a sure sign that the ship then listed at a small angle (about 11 degrees), that her stern was still buoyant when she cracked. If the back of the ship were to rise from 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 solid bottom fragments 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 how exactly the ship broke into pieces? For the passengers on the Titanic, it was a matter of life and death. In the cinema, the stern of the ship rises up and then goes, along with the whole hull, to the bottom. This is a long dramatic performance. In reality, the ship listed quite a bit as the water flooded the bow, and the passengers on board had a false sense of security.

The passengers and many of the crew did not understand the gravity of the situation. When the water flooded the bow of the hull sufficiently, the ship, remaining afloat, broke 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 close to the stern as the ship began to sink, but he didn't see any signs of the hull breaking. There was no suction funnel, no colossal splash. Jugin said that he calmly sailed away from the ship without even getting his hair wet.

Farewell, cinematic romantic "Titanic"!

Unlike Cameron's film, she didn't leave the crash site. giant wave- none of those sitting in the rescue boats noticed her when the stern of the ship disappeared under water. One of former passengers The Titanic told how he slipped into the water, turned around - and did not see the ship.

So, farewell to the heartbreaking image of the Titanic with its stern raised high, plastered with doomed passengers, their common death cry, and now the ship plunges into the water at a steep angle! Unfortunately or fortunately, nothing like that actually happened.

Although some of those in the lifeboats saw the stern of the ship raised high in the air, this could be optical illusion. At an 11-degree tilt with the propellers sticking out in the air, the Titanic, already a twenty-story building, seemed even higher, and its roll in the water even steeper.

Could the Titanic be stronger, more enduring? Undoubtedly. High-quality steel rivets and a tighter, double-skinned hull could have prevented disaster, or certainly kept the ship afloat many times longer.

You have already read and heard about the Titanic many times. The history of the creation and crash of the liner is overgrown with rumors and myths. For more than 100 years, the British steamship has been haunting the minds of people trying to find the answer - why did the Titanic sink?

The history of the legendary liner is interesting for three reasons:

it was the largest ship for 1912;
the number of victims turned the catastrophe into a global failure;
finally, James Cameron, with his film, singled out the history of the liner from general list maritime disasters and there were quite a few of them.

We will tell you everything about the Titanic, as it was in reality. About how long the Titanic is in meters, how much the Titanic sank, and who was really behind the massive disaster.

Where did the Titanic sail from and to?

We know from Cameron's film that the liner was bound for New York. The American developing city was to become final stop. But far from everyone knows for sure where the Titanic sailed from, considering that London was the starting point. The capital of Great Britain was not in the ranks of seaports, and therefore the steamer could not leave from there.

The fateful flight began from Southampton, a major English port, from where transatlantic flights ran. The path of the Titanic on the map clearly shows the movement. Southampton is both a port and a city located in the southern part of England (Hampshire).

See how the route of the Titanic ran on the map:

Dimensions of the Titanic in meters

To understand more about the Titanic, the causes of the disaster must be disclosed, starting with the dimensions of the ship.

How many meters is the Titanic in length and in other dimensions:

exact length - 299.1 m;

width - 28.19 m;

height from the keel - 53.3 m.

There is also such a question - how many decks did the Titanic have? Only 8. Boats were located on top, because upper deck called a boat. The rest were distributed according to the letter designation.

A - deck I class. Its peculiarity is limited in size - it did not lie down the entire length of the vessel;

B - anchors were located in the front of the deck and its dimensions were also shorter - by 37 meters of deck C;

C - deck with a galley, a mess for the crew and a promenade for class III.

D - walking area;

E - cabins I, II classes;

F - cabins II and III classes;

G - deck with boiler rooms in the middle.

Finally, how much does the Titanic weigh? The displacement of the largest ship of the early 20th century is 52,310 tons.

Titanic: the story of the crash

What year did the Titanic sink? The famous disaster occurred on the night of April 14, 1912. It was the fifth day of the trip. Chronicles indicate that at 23:40 the liner survived a collision with an iceberg and after 2 hours 40 minutes (2:20 a.m.) it went under water.

Things from the Titanic: photo

Further investigations showed that the crew received 7 weather warnings, but this did not prevent the ship from reducing its speed limit. The iceberg was sighted directly ahead of us too late to take precautions. As a result - holes in the starboard side. Ice damaged 90 m of hull and 5 bow compartments. This was enough to sink the liner.

Tickets for the new liner were more expensive than for other ships. If a person was used to traveling in first class, then on the Titanic he would have to transfer to second class.

Edward Smith, the captain of the ship, began the evacuation after midnight: a distress call was sent, the attention of other ships was attracted by flares, lifeboats went to the water. But the rescue was slow and uncoordinated - there was an empty place in the boats while the Titanic was sinking, the water temperature did not rise above two degrees below zero, and the first steamer arrived in time only half an hour after the disaster.

Titanic: how many people died and survived

How many people survived on the Titanic? No one will say the exact data, as they could not say this on the fateful night. The list of Titanic passengers initially changed in practice, but not on paper: some canceled the trip at the time of departure and were not crossed out, others traveled anonymously under assumed names, and others were listed as dead on the Titanic several times.

Photos of the sinking of the Titanic

It is only approximately possible to say how many people drowned on the Titanic - about 1500 (minimum 1490 - maximum 1635). Among them was Edward Smith with some assistants, 8 musicians from the famous orchestra, large investors and businessmen.

Classiness was felt even after death - the bodies of the dead from the first class were embalmed and placed in coffins, the second and third classes were given bags and boxes. When the embalming agents ran out, the bodies of unknown third-class passengers were simply thrown into the water (according to the rules, unembalmed corpses could not be brought to the port).

The bodies were found within a radius of 80 km from the crash site, and due to the current of the Gulf Stream, many were dispersed even further.

Photos of dead people

Initially, it was known how many passengers were on the Titanic, although not completely:

crew of 900 people;

195 first class;

255 second class;

493 people of the third class.

Some passengers left at intermediate ports, some called. It is believed that the liner went to the fatal route with a staff of 1317 people, of which 124 are children.

Titanic: scuttling depth - 3750 m

The English steamer could accommodate 2,566 people, of which 1,034 seats were for first-class passengers. The half-load of the liner is due to the fact that transatlantic flights were not popular in April. At that time, a coal strike broke out, this disrupted coal supplies, schedules and changes in plans.

The question of how many people escaped from the Titanic was difficult to answer, because rescue operations passed since different courts, and the slow connection did not provide fast data delivery.

After the crash, only 2/3 of the delivered bodies were identified. Some were buried locally, the rest were sent home. In the disaster area, bodies in white vests were found for a long time. From 1500 dead people found only 333 bodies.

How deep is the Titanic

When answering the question about the depth at which the Titanic sank, one must remember about the pieces carried by the currents (by the way, they learned about this only in the 80s, before that it was believed that the liner sank to the bottom entirely). The wreckage of the liner on the night of the crash went at a depth of 3750 m. The bow was thrown 600 m from the stern.

The place where the Titanic sank, on the map:

In which ocean did the Titanic sink? - in the Atlantic.

Titanic lifted from the bottom of the ocean

They wanted to raise the ship from the moment of the crash. Initiative plans were put forward by relatives of the dead from the first class. But 1912 did not yet know the necessary technologies. The war, lack of knowledge and funds delayed the search for the sunken ship for a hundred years. Since 1985, 17 expeditions have been carried out, during which 5,000 items and large plating have been raised to the surface, but the ship itself has remained at the bottom of the ocean.

What does the Titanic look like now?

In the time since the crash, the ship has been covered marine life. Rust, painstaking work of invertebrates and natural decomposition processes have changed the structures beyond recognition. By this time, the bodies had already completely decomposed, and by the 22nd century, only anchors and boilers would remain from the Titanic - the most massive metal structures.

Even now the interiors of the decks have been destroyed, the cabins and halls have collapsed.

Titanic, Britannic and Olympic

All three ships were manufactured by the Harland and Wolf shipbuilding company. Before the Titanic, the Olympic saw the world. It is easy to see a fatal predisposition in the fate of the three ships. The first liner was wrecked as a result of a collision with a cruiser. Not such a large-scale disaster, but still an impressive failure.

Then the story of the Titanic, which received a wide response in the world, and, finally, the Gigantic. They tried to make this ship especially durable, given the mistakes of previous liners. He was even launched into the water, but the First World War disrupted the plans. The giant became a hospital ship called the Britannic.

He then just managed to carry out 5 quiet flights, and on the sixth there was a disaster. Having been blown up by a German mine, the Britannic rapidly sank. The mistakes of the past and the preparedness of the captain made it possible to save maximum amount people - 1036 out of 1066.

Is it possible to talk about evil fate, remembering the Titanic? The history of the creation and crash of the liner were studied in detail, the facts were revealed, even through time. And yet the truth is only now being revealed. The reason the Titanic is attracting attention is to hide its true motive - to create a currency system and destroy opponents.

100 years ago, on the night of April 15, 1912, after a collision with an iceberg in the waters Atlantic Ocean The Titanic sank with over 2,200 people on board.

"Titanic" (Titanic) - the largest passenger ship of the early XX century, the second of three twin steamers produced by the British company "White Star Line" (White Star Line).

The length of the Titanic was 260 meters, width - 28 meters, displacement - 52 thousand tons, height from the waterline to the boat deck - 19 meters, distance from the keel to the top of the pipe - 55 meters, top speed - 23 knots. Journalists compared it in length with three city blocks, and in height with an 11-story building.

The Titanic had eight steel decks located one above the other at a distance of 2.5-3.2 meters. To ensure safety, the ship had a double bottom, and its hull was separated by 16 watertight compartments. Watertight bulkheads rose from the second bottom to the deck. The chief designer of the ship, Thomas Andrews, stated that even if four of the 16 compartments were filled with water, the liner would be able to continue its journey.

The interiors of the cabins on decks B and C were made in 11 styles. Third class passengers on decks E and F were separated from first and second class by gates located in different parts of the ship.

Prior to the release of the Titanic on its first and last voyage, it was emphasized that 10 millionaires would be on board the ship on the first voyage, and gold and jewelry worth hundreds of millions of dollars would be in its safes. American industrialist, heir to mining magnate Benjamin Guggenheim, millionaire with a young wife, assistant to US Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, Major Archibald Willingham Butt, US Congressman Isidore Strauss, actress Dorothy Gibson, wealthy social activist Margaret Brown, British fashion designer Lucy Christiane Duff Gordon and many other famous and wealthy people of that time.

On April 10, 1912, at noon, the Titanic set off on its only journey from Southampton (UK) to New York (USA) with stops in Cherbourg (France) and Queenstown (Ireland).

During the four days of the journey the weather was clear and the sea calm.

On April 14, 1912, on the fifth day of the journey, several ships sent messages about icebergs in the area of the ship's route. Most the day the radio was broken, and many messages were not noticed by radio operators, and the captain did not pay due attention to others.

By evening, the temperature began to drop, reaching by 22:00 zero mark Celsius.

At 23:00, a message was received from the Californian about the presence of ice, but the radio operator of the Titanic cut off the radio traffic before the Californian had time to report the coordinates of the area: the telegraph operator was busy sending personal messages to passengers.

At 23:39, two lookouts noticed an iceberg in front of the liner and reported this by telephone to the bridge. The most senior of the officers, William Murdoch, gave the command to the helmsman: "Left rudder."

At 23:40 "Titanic" in the underwater part of the ship. Of the 16 watertight compartments of the ship, six were cut through.

At 00:00 on April 15, the designer of the Titanic, Thomas Andrews, was called to the captain's bridge in order to assess the severity of the damage. After reporting on the incident and inspecting the ship, Andrews informed everyone present that the liner would inevitably sink.

The ship began to feel a roll on the bow. Captain Smith ordered the lifeboats to be uncovered and the crew and passengers called for evacuation.

By order of the captain, the radio operators began to send out distress signals, which they transmitted for two hours, until the captain released the telegraph operators from duty a few minutes before the sinking of the ship.

Distress signals, but they were too far from the Titanic.

At 00:25, the coordinates of the Titanic were taken by the ship Carpathia, which was 58 nautical miles from the wreck, which was 93 kilometers. ordered to immediately go to the disaster site of the Titanic. Rushing to the rescue, the ship was able to reach record speed at 17.5 knots - at the maximum possible speed for a vessel of 14 knots. To do this, Rostron ordered to turn off all appliances that consume electricity and heating.

At 01:30, the operator of the Titanic telegraphed: "We are in small boats." By order of Captain Smith, his assistant, Charles Lightoller, who led the rescue of people on the port side of the liner, put only women and children into the boats. The men, according to the captain, were to remain on deck until all the women had boarded the boats. First mate William Murdoch on the starboard side to the men, if there were no women and children in the line of passengers gathering on deck.

Around 02:15, the Titanic's bow dropped sharply, the ship moved forward significantly, and a huge wave swept across the decks, which washed many passengers overboard.

Around 02:20, the Titanic sank.

Around 04:00 am, about three and a half hours after receiving the distress signal, the Carpathia arrived at the wreck of the Titanic. The ship took on board 712 passengers and crew members of the Titanic, after which it arrived safely in New York. Among those rescued were 189 crew members, 129 male passengers and 394 women and children.

The death toll, according to various sources, ranged from 1400 to 1517 people. According to official figures, after the disaster, 60% of passengers are in first class cabins, 44% in second class cabins, and 25% in third class.

The last surviving passenger of the Titanic, who traveled on board the liner at the age of nine weeks, died on May 31, 2009 at the age of 97. The ashes of the woman were scattered over the sea from the pier in the port of Southampton, from where the Titanic set off on its last voyage in 1912.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

On the night of April 14-15, 1912, the most modern at that time passenger liner The Titanic, making its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, collided with an iceberg and soon sank. At least 1,496 people died and 712 passengers and crew were rescued.

The Titanic disaster very quickly acquired a mass of legends and conjectures. At the same time, for several decades, the place where lost ship, remained unknown.

The main difficulty was that the place of death was known with very low accuracy - it was about an area 100 kilometers in diameter. Given the fact that the Titanic sank in an area where the depth of the Atlantic is several kilometers deep, the search for 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, the relatives of wealthy passengers who died in the disaster proposed to organize an expedition to raise the ship. The initiators of the search wanted to bury their loved ones and, to be honest, to return the valuables that had gone to the bottom along with their owners.

The decisive attitude of the relatives stumbled upon a categorical verdict of experts: technologies for searching and lifting the Titanic from great depth at that time it simply did not exist.

Then a new proposal was received - to drop dynamite charges to the bottom at the alleged site of the disaster, which, according to the authors of the project, were supposed to provoke the ascent from the bottom of the corpses of the dead. This dubious idea also did not find support.

Started in 1914, the First World War postponed the search for the Titanic for many years.

The interior of the veranda for first-class passengers on the Titanic. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Nitrogen and ping pong balls

Again, the search for a liner was discussed only in the 1950s. At the same time, proposals for possible ways lifting it from freezing the hull with nitrogen to filling it with millions of ping-pong balls.

In the 1960s and 1970s, several expeditions were sent to the Titanic sinking area, but all of them were not successful due to insufficient technical training.

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 the improvement of small unmanned underwater vehicles, back in the 1970s became interested in underwater archeology and, in particular, the secret place of the sinking of the Titanic. In 1977, he organized the first expedition to search for the Titanic, but it ended in failure.

Ballard was convinced that it was possible to find the ship only with the help of the latest deep-sea submersibles. But it was very difficult to get such at your disposal.

Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Dr. Ballard's Secret Mission

In 1985, having failed during an expedition on the French research vessel Le Suroît, Ballard moved to the American ship R / V Knorr, with which he continued the search for the Titanic.

As Ballard himself told 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 apparatus for his work, but the American admirals did not want to pay for the work of the equipment to search for some kind of historical rarity. The ship R / V Knorr and the apparatus "Argo" were supposed to carry out a mission to survey the sites of the death of two American nuclear submarines "Scorpion" and "Thresher", which sank back in the 1960s. This task was secret, and the US Navy needed a person who would not only be able to perform the necessary work, but also be able to keep it secret.

Ballard's candidacy was ideal - he was famous enough, and everyone knew about his passion for finding the Titanic.

The explorer was offered: he could get the Argo and use it to search for the Titanic if he first found and explored the submarines. Ballard agreed.

Only the leadership of the US Navy knew about the Scorpion and Thresher, for the rest, Robert Ballard simply explored the Atlantic and searched 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 start searching for the liner that died in 1912 again.

None of the most advanced technology would have ensured his success if it were not for the experience accumulated earlier. Ballard, when examining the sites of the death of submarines, noticed that they left a kind of " comet tail from thousands of debris. This was due to the fact that the hulls of the boats were destroyed when sinking to the bottom due to the enormous pressure.

The scientist knew that when diving on the Titanic, they exploded steam boilers, which meant that the liner had to leave a similar "comet tail".

It was this trail, 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 find the bow of the ship.

It was found that the bow and stern of the broken liner are located at a distance from each other, at a distance of about 600 meters. At the same time, both the stern and the bow were seriously deformed when diving to the bottom, but the bow was still better preserved.

Ship layout. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Home for underwater inhabitants

The news of the discovery of the Titanic became a sensation, although many experts were quick to question it. But in the summer of 1986, Ballard implemented 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 that, the last doubts dissipated - the Titanic was discovered.

The last shelter 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 fragments are scattered along the bottom in an area of 4.8 × 8 km: parts of the ship's hull, remains of furniture and interior decoration, dishes, personal belongings of people.

The wreckage of the ship was covered with multi-layered rust, the thickness of which is constantly growing. In addition to multi-layered rust, 24 species of invertebrates and 4 species of fish live on and near the hull. Of these, 12 species of invertebrates clearly gravitate towards the wreckage, eating metal and wooden structures. The interiors of the Titanic are almost completely destroyed. Wooden elements were swallowed by deep sea worms. The deck decks are covered in a layer of clam shells, and rust stalactites hang from many of the metalwork.

Wallet recovered from the Titanic. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

All that's left of the people is shoes?

In the 30 years that have passed since the discovery of the ship, the Titanic has been rapidly collapsing. His state of the art 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 have been preserved on and around the Titanic. According to the prevailing version, all human bodies have completely decomposed. However, periodically there is information that some researchers still stumbled upon the remains of the dead.

But James Cameron, director of the famous movie "Titanic", on personal account more than 30 dives to the liner on Russian deep-sea vehicles Mir is sure of the opposite: “We saw shoes, boots and other footwear at the site of the sunken ship, but our team has never come across human remains.”

Things from the "Titanic" - 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 items have been raised to the surface, ranging from personal belongings of passengers to a piece of plating weighing 17 tons.

It is impossible to establish the exact number of items raised from the Titanic today, since with the improvement of underwater technology, the ship has become a favorite target of "black archaeologists" who are trying to get rarities from the Titanic by any means.

Robert Ballard, lamenting this, remarked: “The ship is still a noble old lady, but not the lady I saw in 1985."

Things 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 dollars), a life jacket from the ship (55 thousand dollars), a master key first class steward ($138,000). 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 a secret so as not to disturb the resting place of one and a half thousand people. Perhaps he didn't do it in vain.