Mad about Science: The sinking of the RMS Titanic

By Brenden Bobby
Reader Columnist

The story of the Titanic is an infamous one. It has all the makings of a truly great story: wealth, opulence and hubris crushed by the unyielding force of nature. It’s a story so captivating that the Titanic remains one of the only sunken ships to continue claiming lives more than a century after its sinking.

Everyone knows the ship struck an iceberg, which led to its inevitable demise. However, many factors are at play here. The ship didn’t strike the iceberg head on. The block of ice was spotted at about half a mile away, which was too close for the ship to be able to slow down or turn sharply. The ship was around 49,000 tons; and, despite the captain putting the ship into full reverse, it was simply moving too fast and far too heavy to do little more than slightly alter its trajectory on the water.

The ship side-swiped the iceberg on the starboard side.

(Bonus fact: Do you confuse port and starboard? Do you confuse your left and right? Hold your hands up in front of you and stand facing the heading of the ship — that is, the direction it is traveling. Your left hand and thumb is the only one of your hands that makes a true L, indicating your left. Now that you know your left and right, port and starboard are easy. Facing the heading of the ship, port is left, starboard is right. Left and right, port and starboard, driver and passenger. Easy!)

The RMS Titanic in Belfast, Northern Ireland before the tragedy. Courtesy photo.

The collision caused the indentation of a number of the steel hull panels, resulting in water spilling into five of the 16 previously watertight chambers. Water also poured into a sixth chamber, attached to the boiler room, though this was briefly manageable with the aid of pumps to flush the water. 

Analysis of the metal performed in 1991 revealed an important factor as to why this happened.

The steel and wrought iron used in the Titanic was extremely stiff and rigid and not as ductile as aluminum or more the type of steel we see today. This stiffness caused the steel to fracture when it buckled, creating massive voids for water to spill into the ship. Meanwhile, the cold temperatures made the wrought iron bolts even more susceptible to fracturing under force.

As water flooded below deck, the increased weight pulled the bow of the Titanic downward. Roughly two hours of gradual sinking passed before the bow of the ship, now full of water, acted as a ballast that lifted the aft of the Titanic out of the water and the front deck became completely submerged. Over the following five minutes, the ship sheared in half as the immense weight of the stern was pulled downward by gravity and tore through the remaining plates of the hull. 

The sheer volume of ocean water in the bow had virtually doubled the Titanic’s weight. 

A few bands of steel plating acted as a hinge between the two halves of the ship as the bow slipped entirely beneath the surface before finally breaking off and descending into the abyss.

The stern remained upright while listing to the port side as it sank below the waves, the water flooding inward acting as a ballast until it was swallowed by the sea. 

Once below the water, the bow descended like a torpedo in a mostly stable trajectory until it crashed onto the seafloor, releasing an underwater shock wave upon impact. 

The stern behaved very differently, as the open end was exposed to the onslaught of water and pressure, causing a massive implosion and the forcible tearing of tons of material as it twirled and spiraled downward. The stern eventually began to fall with the aft and propellers pointing downward, and, once it finally landed, it heavily compacted against the seafloor amid a scattered field of debris.

The wreckage of the Titanic lies more than 12,000 feet below the surface, where water pressure exceeds 5,000 pounds per square inch. The bow remains fairly intact, though iron-eating bacteria have steadily eroded much of the surface of the ship. It’s anticipated that by 2040, much of the ship’s remnants will fully collapse into the sea floor. 

The stern is in considerably worse condition, in part due to the structural instability sustained during the sinking and the heavy impact on the seafloor. Much of the structure has pancaked and collapsed onto itself. The two halves are forever separated by a span of about one-third of a mile. 

A debris field that spans an area of roughly five miles by three miles surrounds the wreckage of the ship. This debris is a mixture of metal from the ship itself, the belongings of passengers and crew and what remains of those who lost their lives aboard the ship. The bulk of human remains are believed to have been devoured by marine life or buried beneath the ocean floor.

Fueled by scientific advancement and human curiosity since the 1985 rediscovery of the wreck, a number of submersible journeys have been taken to explore what remains of the Titanic. While some of these journeys have rendered incredible scientific discoveries — including full 3-D scans and a greater understanding of how to better build ships in the future. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, though. Many of these missions have created unintentional damage to the Titanic, including at least one submersible directly impacting the ship.

The Titanic’s allure has also created a booming (though niche) tourism industry for the ultra-rich, as the world saw with the untimely destruction of OceanGate’s Titan submersible in 2023.

Stay curious, 7B.