The break up of Titanic.
As the bridge dipped beneath the waves, Captain Smith looked around him as the water was gushing into the seams of the locked wheelhouse doors. He heard the room groaning and creaking as the thin wooden walls were losing the battle to hold the sea out. The room fully had submerged in a couple minutes. Edward looked around him in shock. Then glass shattered and he just made it to the telemotor as the water engulfed him.
Outside on the boat deck passengers and officers scrambled to free Collapsible A and B. Crew were yelling from the cold water biting at them as the overturned collapsible B on the port side, trying to flip the boat over to no avail as the ship sank from below them. Officer Lightoller had climbed on the upside down boat as did those people who could. His weight had him fall off into the water. On the starboard side crew were trying to slice the ropes or falls, holding the boat to the cranked in lifeboat 1 davits. The boat began filling up on the starboard side as the water began filling in and nearly flipped it over before the ropes were finally cut and it had passengers and crew who were aboard drift free of the sinking ocean liner. The rest won the ship ran for the only safety they could, the stern as it rose out of the water. The propellers now exposed like giant bronze boulders rising from the water.
Inside the ship many third class passengers were trying to swim out as the grand staircase was flooding, some screaming from the icy cold water. The glass windows on A deck shattering from the force of the water inside the foyer and outside on the promenade deck hitting the fragile windows full force. People unlucky to be near were sucked into the ship. The ship was in her death throes. As the base of the first funnel was inundated by water, the forward trunk vent was like a vaccum, sucking down water into the boiler rooms 5 and 6. Charles Lightoller was slammed into it and struggled to get free when suddenly a blast of hot air forced him free of the vent as it then sank beneath the surface. He swam to collapsible B quickly and held on. He then heard the sound of cable wire snapping.
Those in collapsible A looked as the first funnel began to groan and steam burst out at it's base as cables holding it snapped like whips, some striking those in the water with fatal results. The funnel began to tip forward and fall to them. Collapsible B was not far ahead and the funnel tore free of it's foundation and fell over. Some in the water looked up as the funnel slammed down hard, pushing both boats further away from the Titanic. Lightoller was missed by being hit by a few inches. The funnel slid off the ship and vanished as water began pouring down the empty uptake. Gym instructor Thomas McCawly flailed as he was drawn into the whirlpool of rushing water and pulled down.
The grand staircase continued to flood as people tried to get out and the water now at the boat deck level roof and rising. The wave made by the funnel collapsing slammed into the glass dome cover and dome itself, smashing it. The roar of the water drowning out the screams of the dying. The pillars holding up the roof of the staircase buckling and the roof caving into the boat deck level by the sheer force.
On the poop deck Father Byles lead a small group in prayer for last rites and salvation. "And God wiped the tears from their eyes and there shall be no more death, nor shall there be sorrow or dying." The ship groaning and creaking. Some people leapt overboard off the poop deck and into the sea, desperate to get away. In the lifeboats people were in utter disbelief from what they were witnessing as the unsinkable was sinking. Unknown to all were forces building to rip the ship apart. Tension was building in the hull as the bottom bean to feel the weight of being pushed further and further past what it was designed to handle. The ship's double bottom and keel were under intense strain. The steel was beginning to buckle and warp as the heavy, flooded bow was pulling on one end, while the lifted up stern was pulling the other way. Not a high angle, but just 12 to 16 degrees, but it was enough to make the keel bar snap. As soon as the keel failed along with the double bottom breaking in two sections the hull was next.
Titanic's break up was very violent as many heard loud explosions and all the lights went out instantly. At the point where the keel fails, the double bottom suddenly gets shorter than the sides. The two forward cylinders of the engines, the watertight bulkhead between the engine room and boiler room 1, and the boilers are heaved violently upward. Much of the hull sides bulge and break loose, opening the Turbine engine room and generators to the sea. Inside the engine room and generator rooms the engineers were caught off guard as the machinery around them came crashing down around them and water violently burst in. The sides of the hull rip off in big pieces, violently being shredded from the hull like ripping paper. The decks below the third funnel were pancaked and the expansion join tore open as the uptake of the funnel and uptake of the engine room split off into huge tower sections and fell into the sea, people stranded were dragged down in the torrent of wood and steel shards. The third and fourth funnels tore off and most of the remaining boat deck from the stern.
People on the ship felt the stern dip then come back up quickly as the heavy bow section fell away. "We're saved!" some yelled,but all too soon the end had come as the stern rapidly began flooding and then heaved to port and rolled on it's side, throwing everyone to the left side of the ship. Chief baker Charles Joughlin climbed over the rail and on the side of the ship as it rolled over, he held on and stepped off just as Titanic went under. He held his flask in his hand, heavily drunk,but alive as he swam for his life. Those in the boats heard the loud rumblings from below as Titanic's stern fell, the cargo holds imploding the deeper the ship went.
The bow section planed away, falling like a leaf, wafting forward and stalling the entire way for two and a half miles before it dug itself into the ocean floor five minutes after the break up. The stern rotating slowly until it faced the other direction, pointing the opposite way of the bow and slammed down rudder first, the keel snapping below the aft well deck and twisting her before the stern settled 2,000 feet away from the bow. The bow pointing north, and the stern facing south. Hull sections and deck pieces fell in a wide debris field moments later, with the two large double bottom sections and third funnel deckhouse pile far to the east. Lighter items like plates and personal items fell for many hours, including bodies trapped in the ship.
On the surface the screams and cries for help filled the air. This lasted for a while then little by little went silent. For the 705 people in the boats all they could do was wait, wait for some hope of rescue.