How Quickly Did The Titanic Really Sink?

The sinking of the Titanic has been romanticized in movies and literature, but at the very root of it was a disaster that affected lives on a very personal level. It happened on April 14, 1912, when the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and sunk into the icy waters.

There is a lot that is known about the disaster and some facts that are often misconstrued for the purpose of keeping people in theater seats for a little longer. What is it that happened and how long did it take for the Titanic to sink into the sea?

At 11:40 PM on April 14, 1912, the Titanic brushed against the side of an iceberg. A minimum of five compartments that were thought to be watertight began to fill with water. Thomas Andrews, the chief designer of the ship, went down to investigate and discovered that the ship would no longer stay afloat.

Less than 20 minutes later, the crew was already organizing things to prepare the lifeboats and to save as many people as possible. Over the next two hours, however, passengers were woken up from their sleep and loaded into the lifeboats, women and children first.

It didn’t take them long before they realize that there weren’t enough lifeboats to accommodate everyone on the ship. There was a lot of panic that occurred during those minutes that stretched into hours until 2 AM.

It was about 2 AM that the ocean swallowed up the bow of the ship. In fact, it dipped so low into the water that the stern of the ship was above the water.

A final distress call was issued at 2:17 AM by Jack Phillips, the wireless operator. The bow of the ship would continue to dip beneath the waves until eventually, the stern broke off and began to sink as well.

It was completely gone from sight by 2:20 AM. That means that from the time it struck the iceberg until it disappeared beneath the waves just two hours and 40 minutes had passed.

As far as how long it took until the ship was resting on the floor of the ocean, that is something that is up for debate. Robert Ballard, who discovered the wreck of the Titanic thought that it may have taken about six minutes but he also said that there were too many variables involved to say for certain.

In the end, it took 73 years before the Titanic was found by Ballard and his team. It was approximately 13,000 feet under the surface of the ocean, so even though they knew a rough estimate of where it was, searching over 2 1/2 miles down took a long time before the discovery took place.