On April 15, 1912, at 02:20 LT, the British ocean liner Titanic disappeared into the depths of the North Atlantic Ocean about 400 miles south of Newfoundland, Canada.
It took 3,000 men and two years to build this massive ship. It’s huge hull was held together by three million rivets and it could transport 2,200 passenger and crew. But having struck an iceberg, the ship took on water before sinking 12,600 feet to the dark depths, never to be fully salvaged.
In this article we will try to answer ‘why the titanic is still at the bottom of the ocean?’ Before we answer this question, let’s first look at what we know about Titanic’s last few days at sea.
On April 10, the RMS Titanic departed Southampton, England, on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. The titanic was designed by the Irish shipbuilder Thomas Andrews and it was owned by Bruce Ismay. It was thought to be ‘unsinkable’.
The ship traveled to Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown, Ireland to pick up some passengers before setting out into the Atlantic full steam ahead to New York.
Titanic was under the command of Capt. Edward Smith, who also went down with the ship. The ocean liner carried some of the wealthiest people in the world, as well as hundreds of emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland, Scandinavia and elsewhere throughout Europe, who were seeking a new life in the United States.
On 14 April, four days into the crossing and about 375 miles (600 km) south of Newfoundland, she hit an iceberg at 23:40 ship’s time. The collision caused the hull plates to buckle inwards along her starboard side and opened five of her sixteen watertight compartments to the sea; she could only survive four flooding.
Meanwhile, passengers and some crew members were evacuated in lifeboats, many of which were launched only partially loaded. A disproportionate number of men were left aboard because of a “women and children first” protocol for loading lifeboats. At 02:20 a.m., she broke apart and foundered with well over one thousand people still aboard. Just under two hours after Titanic sank, the Cunard liner RMS Carpathia arrived and brought aboard an estimated 705 survivors.
The wreck of Titanic was discovered in 1985 (more than 70 years after the disaster) during a Franco-American expedition and US military mission. The ship was split in two and is gradually disintegrating at a depth of about 12,600 feet.
Since then, many attempts have been made to raise the titanic, but the ill-fated passenger ship still lies at the bottom of the ocean.
To know why the titanic cannot be retrieved even after 108 years of its sinking, watch this video till the end:
