History's Greatest Mysteries: The Truth Behind Titanic's Final Hours (S5)

What caused this "unsinkable" ship to sink? Find out more in this clip from Season 5, Episode 12, "The Sinking of the Titanic."

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[snoopyjace]

Rest in peace to the 1, 500 people who perished in the disaster

[l.riggins]

You say that Murdock looked to the iceberg with his binoculars after hearing the lookout warning bells. If he had binoculars, why wouldn't he give them to the lookouts for them to use in spotting icebergs? Famously the lookouts didn't have binoculars as they were locked away without a key available.

[sptownsend]

*You're wrong, Sami Jarroush;* the watertight bulkheads certainly *did not* hasten the sinking. First off, due to free surface effect, if the ship had no bulkheads, the water would have completely flooded the bow section, making it stand nearly straight up very quickly. The bulkheads held back some of the water from flooding forward, which made the rate of flooding lower than had there been no bulkheads. Fundamentally, ships stay afloat due to an equilibrium of gravitational and displacement (or "buoyant") forces. If a ship has one compartment breached, the breached compartment will fill until the ship has reached a new equilibrium, at which point the waterline in the breached compartment will be equal to the waterline outside of the ship. If more compartments are breached than the ship can withstand, it will sink. As the breached compartments fill with water, the rate of flow will slow, because the pressures of the water outside the ship equalize with the pressure inside the breached compartment. *If there were no bulkheads, the rate of flooding would not be slowed, the free surface effect would not have been mitigated, and the ship would have sank faster than it did.* There are plenty of other disasters that show how quickly a ship can sink without bulkheads; check out the channel Oceanliner Designs. Making such a claim as fact is irresponsible, and calling their design "a catastrophe waiting to happen" is ignorantly arrogant. These were smart men, and they built the world whose benefits you reap. How dare you insult them, and shame on HISTORY for allowing such false information to be broadcast.

[tishfox]

Such an awesome, fascinating story.Bless!😪💜🙏

[kiransrihari]

A calm dark ocean is the scariest place on this Earth

[priorityyouth]

It's terrifying to imagine oneself in the shoes of these people who were seeing death coming and inevitable. Kept fighting a losing battle, knowing that within a few minutes they'd breath their last

[NarayanKulkarni-muyp]

That was tragedy in 1912 this is first big disaster of unshakable titanic

[susanbutler]

Thank you very much❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

[wek]

what a glaring design failure. what is the point of the additional bulkheads if they are not even watertight? the water is guaranteed to overflow eventually. you have to seal the compartment!!

[gary]

To bad the Captain didn't take a more southern route in warmer waters ! Not thinking good !

[MickeySmith]

Alot of important people were on that ship.

[lolo]

Titanic again?.
I'm still waiting for Atlantis.

[albertjosefsson]

We all know what happened. The guys that were supposed to look for icebergs and sound the alarm were distracted as they watched Jack and Rose kissing each other 😅

[davinp]

Titanic was not designed to withstand a collision with an iceberg. They used poor quality rivets which poped off when the iceberg hit as those rivets could not withstand the freezing water. Also, the water tight bulkheads didn't go to top deck, so water could spill over into the next compartment. However, the bulkheads did slow down the sinking.

[jimtaylor]

From ancient to modern, no ship is unsinkable. That's a pure fact.

[TheStudderman]

My thing is, Why wasn’t there any lights in the front that would allow the crows nest to see further out, (aka for object detection) the Titanic was on course through an active iceberg area so some kind of headlights would of made sense.

[LM__]

I wish everyone should address the fact this ship was never meant to be the original it was a quick dash replacement

[plainman]

The unsinkable ship that sunk....with very rich people who opposed central banks.

[turlel]

This contradicts your other episodes that state no binoculars where available