What If Titanic Hadn’t Sunk? (2024)

FAQs

What If Titanic Hadn’t Sunk? ›

No lives were lost and her passengers returned to their lives. After that, Titanic would begin a typical life of relative obscurity and routine. Through its natural lifespan, the ship would have served for 25 to 30 years, typical of ships of that era, before quietly meeting its eventual fate in a scrapyard.

If Titanic had never sunk, she would have gone on as a prestigious liner on the North Atlantic passenger run. During World War I, she would have been converted to either a hospital ship or, more likely, a troopship and if she survived the war, she would have again become one of the top liners.

The colossal cruise liner had been built with bulkheads in its bow in the event of a collision. If the ship had hit the iceberg head-on therefore, it's predicted that only the first three or four watertight compartments would have been flooded, a less severe alternative to what actually happened.

An iceberg is far too massive to simply “plow through” by any ship, though if it had hit it head on, it likely would not have sunk.

If there had been no compartments at all, the incoming water would have spread out, and the Titanic would have remained horizontal. Eventually, the ship would have sunk, but she would have remained afloat for another six hours before foundering [Gannon, 1995].

Now it turns out that the Titanic will stay where it is, at least for now, as it is too fragile to be raised from the ocean floor. The acidic salt water, hostile environment and an iron-eating bacterium are consuming the hull of the ship.

In point of fact, the Titanic would not have sunk but for 5-1/2 feet of plate buckling which extended into Coal Bunker No 9. That's how close it was to NOT sinking. His lecture illustrates how most technological advances evolve from high visibility failures of engineering systems.

The Titanic is a whopping 2 and a half miles beneath the surface — far too deep for a human to survive the pressure if not in an equipped vessel. Still, there are other parts of the ocean that are even deeper, and many parts yet to be explored.

The Titanic was about 20,000 times heavier and had the full momentum of all that weight driving it forward. Though the engines were immediately thrown into reverse and the rudder turned hard left, slowing and turning took an incredible distance because of the tremendous weight (or mass) of the ship.

The average lifespan of an iceberg in the North Atlantic is typically two to three years from calving to melting. This means the iceberg that sank the Titanic "likely broke off from Greenland in 1910 or 1911, and was gone forever by the end of 1912 or sometime in 1913."

Could the survivors hear the Titanic hit the bottom? ›

But sound most likely wouldn't have traveled from water to air. We can't hear that well in water because our bodies are not designed to hear in such environments. And although passengers were close to the sinking site, the Titanic still hit the bottom a long distance away — 12,500 feet.

Those changes, along with the advent of superior technologies for navigation and communication, have made the seas much safer since 1912. As such, it is unlikely that the specific circ*mstances leading to the sinking of the Titanic will recur.

In 1912 the merchant steamship SS Mesaba was crossing the Atlantic and sent a warning radio message to the RMS Titanic. The message was received, but never reached the bridge.

Scientists previously believed the fate of the Titanic wasn't down to the course chosen by Captain Edward Smith or a faulty rudder - but now it's thought it could simply be down to poorly designed rivets holding the ship together.

In the case of the Titanic, it is estimated that it would have taken at most 15 to 45 minutes for most people in the water to succumb to the worst effects of immersion hypothermia (if they hadn't drowned).

6 – the number of forward compartments that were ruptured in the collision. 400 miles – the ship's distance from land (640 km), when the iceberg was struck. 160 minutes – the time it took the Titanic to sink after hitting the iceberg (2 hours and 40 minutes).

What would have happened if the Titanic had not turned but struck the iceberg head on? A straight on hit would have severely damaged the bow of the ship, flooding the first one or two watertight compartments, but it would not have sunk. Also, the sudden stop would have injured and possibly killed a few passengers.

If the Titanic was built and designed differently, it would absolutely have prevented its tragic sinking. Some factors could include Watertight Tops or Roofs that could completely seal the compartments and prevent water from spilling over the bulkheads. In reality, the Watertight Bulkheads were only built up to E Deck.

The immediate cause of RMS Titanic's demise was a collision with an iceberg that caused the ocean liner to sink on April 14–15, 1912. While the ship could reportedly stay afloat if as many as 4 of its 16 compartments were breached, the impact had affected at least 5 compartments.