What caused Titanic to Break Apart during the Sinking? 

Titanic gets such a bad rap about being poorly designed or built. She had damage to over 1/3 of her water tight compartments; an unprecedented amount of damage from a collision. And yet, she still managed 2 hours and 40 minutes; most of which, with the lights on. Great video. Very informative.

you know its going to be a good day when a new historic travels video drops

I remembered watching a documentary a while ago where they discuss the Titanic (I believe something on the lines of 'Drain the Ocean') where they discussed that the ship was not poorly designed, nor was the quality of the steel used in her construction shoddy for the time, the truth was as they said in their words "She was subjected to forces she wasn't designed to handle".

It's amazing that the ship held itself together until the final three or so minutes

Imagine being passenger on one of the lifeboats and hearing the Titanic's hull groaning under the immense strain and finally breaking in two. But all you could see was a black mass under a moonless night.

I love your channel so much!! I seriously can't get enough of your content. I recently re-watched Titanic (1997) and had been watching a bunch of Titanic related videos and suddenly got recommended your channel and have been binge-watching it for days! Thank you for all of the hard work and dedication you put into making these videos!

It was a tug of war between the bow ,wanting to sink and the stern wanting to float. The force of that struggle tore Titanic apart

You explain these "way over my head" pieces of information about this magnificent ship so well! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!

I found your channel 2 years ago and you still amaze me with new things about the Titanic. I fell in love with the Titanic when I was 6 years old (that was back in 2005) and I learned much about the Titanic through out the years but with your channel and Oceanliner Designs I learned so much more about the Titanic and other ships. Thank you, for all your work. Much love from Austria :) Btw. 7 people from Austria were on the Titanic but back in the days it was still Austria-Hungary :)

Thanks for these videos. would you make a video about the official narrative of the ship breaking throughout history ? like of the ship breaking topic the next day , then in the court trials. then what the survivers , governments , companies all said for the next 70 years. Then what Ballard's expedition suspected before finding it. then what the world thought with the proof. stuff like this. ive listened to dozens of hours of testimony and not the slightest mention of a break until 1985 , then it is mentioned prominently.

I think it would be interesting to see a video of what would happen to the Olympic if it sustained the same damage as the Titanic after the refit.

I'm so stoked to see how fast your channel is growing. Congrats. Thanks for another great video, Sam.

This is so interesting, Sam and you did great research! Can you imagine watching that stern rise literally straight UP and out of the water. Or hearing the sounds of bending or breaking steel as she begins to break in two? Just terrifying.. Great vid!

Thank you, sam! Yours is one of my favorite channels in the entire youtube! You're like a comfort channel to me.

At 6:00. I’ve been in that room! It’s the main bar in what is now the Titanic Belfast Hotel, formerly the H&W offices. It’s so amazing to be in a room full of that history (even though it’s about £5 for a Coke!)

What an awesome channel. Thanks pal, when I see an new upload its better than Christmas

I always find a lot of information discussed on these videos and similar channels were stated in the actual movie. Just goes to show how much research and analysis JC and the rest of the team put into the film!

Thank you for another wonderful video. I hope you and all your projects are thriving 🖤

I remember a documentary highlighting the expansion joints that was one of the many flaws in the Titanic.

A rough demonstration of why Titanic's hull broke in two can be done by taking a full length pencil with the tip as the bow and the eraser as the stern. Place the middle of the pencil over a straight edge at at 45 degree angle (a counter or desk for example). Pull down on the top end of the pencil with one hand and the lower end with the other hand. When there is enough force, the pencil will break in two. This is similar to what happened with Titanic's breakup.

Thanks for another great video Sam!

Excellent channel my friend, glad to subscribe 🙂

Your channel is a Godsend. Thank you Historic Travels

i just found your channel a few days ago and i love your videos☺️

Very fascinating and well explained. The animations in your videos are an amazing quality. 👍

This video is so perfect! Very well done!

I appreciate how depict the smooth ocean water. Often with these shows, it is shown choppy, when in fact the witnesses reported it was a "millpond' smooth!

glad to see you back Sam !

Sam, I love your videos. As a fellow Titanic aficionado, I say thank you for constantly and faithfully sharing the story of the Titanic with us. Just out of curiosity, when did you first become interested in the Titanic?

I’m intrigued by the topic of the break up. I recommend, for anyone interested, ‘Titanic: 20 years on with James Cameron’ (1997 film), where JC created a model to investigate the nature of the break-up. Specifically, how long before the bow detached with it’s double keel hanging on and the likely hood of this affect on the stern. It’s incredible and really aligns with peoples accounts that were there.

Great explanation. Every time I watch one of your videos, I learn something new

very nice video, sam. keep it up!

I really love all of your videos and your amazing channel! Your content Allways makes me so happy. Keep it up👍!!!

Very enjoyable Sam excellent presentation as usual.

Your dedication to this craft is astounding and I’m glad I found your channel

It's a good time to be a Titanic youtuber!! 😅😅 Been loving your content!!

This dude rocks! So informative and clear and easy to understand.

Another banger, Sam!!

Thank you so much Sam for remembering all those people that watch your videos that Titanic existed, the Titanic will never be forgotten because of you. Thank you soo much.

Thank you for covering this topic. It's great to learn accurate history of the Titanic. The visual examples were great 👍.

Another great video!

Another Great Video!!

My mind is blown. I was always confused by the watertight compartments because they didn’t go to the top they weren’t watertight. This has explained it so well. Since I was about 6 in the early 90s I’ve been fascinated by the Titanic and also wondered about the bulkheads and the compartments and this explained it so clearly.

I am so obsessed with your videos thank u for sharing ur wealth of info

The weight of the engine room when she started to raise out of the ocean!! Ships aren't designed to have their arse out of the water!

Your videos are great, along with Ocean Liner Designs... With all the Brightside nonsense around, we need people who know what they're talking about! I've learned so much more about Titanic but one thing bugs me: what if they didn't slow down and just turned as hard as they could? Surely the faster a ship is moving, the greater the rate of turn? Surely reversing the engines sealed Titanic's fate? Love a video to clear that up!

love your videos always a good day

Just discovered your channel! Lovin it. 👍

Lately I've been obsessing over your videos. They're really easy to understand and grasp. Are you planning on making a video about the seoul ferry tragedy anytime soon? I think you'd be able to make a good video about it.

great info!!

Marvellous documentary, thank you.

Ty sam for another great video it makes my treatments go better

I love the way you explain to help me understand what your talking about great job

Love Historic Travels videos.... Keep me occupied daily. Thanks buddy

Love your videos about titanic ❤❤

I know this is a thread video but can I just say thank you for keeping us updated when the summer sub went missing I work a lot so I couldn't follow the news about it and your video was extremely Helpful

Great vid!

This is a very informative video. Thank you.

Please never stop making videos i love your boat sinking videos so much and i hope to learn more of it

Great video!

I Love you and your videos, Sam... You make me happy when I am sad ❤

Sam really like your channel. Keep up the good km work

love this channel

Great video. I learned a lot more about this tragedy.

This is the best explanation I've seen by far.

Really good video. Guy knows his stuff

FANTASTIC and very THOROUGH explanation of something that has left me wondering for years! Absolutely excellent video!

Carry on making documentaries videos as they very informative and love the content a lot and we need more shipwreck videos as well ✌️

Damn you're good! You explain things so anybody can understand. Thank you!

Great work

The fact that you have a model of the iceberg made me laugh way to hard

THIS IS THE ONE😎👍🙌 Out of all the documentaries I've seen about Titanic, this is the THE BEST one explaining SPECIFICALLY 🤓☹️ how the Titanic sunk and with GREAT VISUAL PRESENTATION 🖥📽 I'm impressed with all your Titanic videos, but this is THE ONE that answered my question and provided me SPECIFIC and VISUAL understanding of how the Titanic sunk. There is no other RU-vid video that I've compares to this one. You did an EXCELLENT JOB 🧑‍🏫👨‍💻 Keep up the great work and ensure your videos are SPECIFIC and have GOOD VISUAL ILLUSTRATION.😇🤑🤩😁💯🙏🔍💡🎬

I love this channel.

So informative. I fell in love with the Titanic history when i was little thanks to the '97 movie. So cool to see someone young (I'm a 90s kid) have such knowledge and passion. I like that I am still learning new things about the story! Thanks for this video.

Could’ve sworn I saw a video of this before !

Good video. Only thing I think is missing is what started the breakup and it seems to be glossed over a lot. Did the ship break up from the top down or from the bottom up? I believe it was a bottom up scenario. As Sam already mentioned, the hull was under tremendous strain from the bow being underwater and the engines providing a counterbalance to the water flooding in the bow. Of course when a massive structure fails, it does so violently, so the keel fails and bends upwards, making the hull bulge outwards. Inside the ship, the areas directly on top of the now bent keel get shoved upwards into the decks above. This also shortened the ships bottom and now the decks above and super structure are stretched longer than they were designed to be. The bending of the keel and bulging of the hull creates fractures that run up to the top decks, the super structure stretching creates top down fractures that split the ship into the four major sections: the bow, the forward tower (basically the structure around the 3rd funnel uptake down to C or D deck to the aft expansion joint), the aft tower (first class smoking room, part of a dining room, port side of the boat deck, and a deckhouse), and the stern. When the keel bent, the hull rips itself from the inner structure and floods the engine and turbine rooms, the first boiler room is damaged and boilers dislodged, the coal bunker is shoved into G deck, the forward cylinders of the engines snap and break off from the rest of the casing, then the two sections of double bottom and keel fall off of the structure. With nothing supporting these heavy objects, the boilers, coal bunkers, and engine cylinders crash through the bottom of the ship and head to the sea floor. Meanwhile, the two towers are still barely holding together by B deck, which is the lowest super structure deck but was reinforced for better stability and made to resist cracks during high seas. During the breakup, the super structure was stretched, bent, and smashed into itself. Finally B deck fails and the ship is fully separated as the bow twists to port and heads to the sea floor, the two towers following shortly after, leaving the stern alone on the surface to flood.

Good job man 😉

Titanics design for sure had flaws, but it did allow for the ship to remain relatively stable throughout the sinking, despite the massive damage.

Great video

Thank you for telling me facts I’m writing in my journal about.

We learned about this in the 1990's. But never hurts to catch the younger folks up with the whys.

Very awesome!

I watched a documentary a while back and the researchers in it claimed the two sections were still held together by B-deck as the ship was descending to the bottom due to the relatively small debris field. Where as if the two sections went down separately the debris field would be much larger. Very interesting theory.

I really enjoy all the videos and not so well known information you manage to reveal in every episode, I always learn something new every time, “however” my friends and I have started a drinking game that involves taking a drink each time you say “however” lol

Thank you so much for your research! I would love to see videos about these two topics: 1. The fall of the first funnel: what caused the sudden fall of the first funnel? Was it the steam in contact with the cold water? Was it the different pressure from the water and the air inside the funnel? It is weird that it fall over like that because at that time of the sinking the ship wasn’t that inclined yet to provoke that much of tension on the ropes that were holding the funnel. 2. The untouched objects within the wreckage of the ship: there are many pictures of the wreckage showing a few objects untouched in the exact same place and position they were before the sinking. How is that even possible? These objects like the table clock and the plates and glass bowls stored in some cabins are in the exact same spot they were in the ship before the tragedy, how they were not disturbed by the rushing water and the 20/30 degree inclined position of the ship during the sinking? And also the almost vertical position during the plunge to the ocean dephs? Please can you explain how is this even possible?

You’ve presented this clearly and explained this topic professionally.

My kids ran for the tv. Theyve been waiting for a new video and nagging me about it 😂

Hi im a new subscriber🎉

When Roy Mengot studied the breakup of the Titanic, Mengot asked which broke first, the keel or the boat deck? Mengot’s theory is that these opposing forces had the effect of compressing the mid-section of the ship, crushing it, particularly just aft of the accident, until the structure failed, the ship coming apart. This accounts for the missing midsection of the ship’s wreckage, it having been left in such small particles that it has effectively disappeared. Mengot emphasizes that the Titanic was a relatively hollow vessel once its basic structure was breached. He uses the metaphor of the folding of a hollow cylinder, as opposed to the snapping of a stick, the forces ultimately crushing the ship at the bottom. Once this happened, the forward part of the ship, heavy with water and suddenly freed from much of the weight of the stern, detached afore the third funnel, and pulled away, at some point separating completely from the stern. In one respect Mengot seems to be in agreement with the popular conjecture discussed below. Once the stern became completely severed from the rest of the ship by the initial break-up, it first fell back onto the ocean, in Mengot’s view from a 10 to 15 degree angle out of the water. Then, like a bobbing cork finding temporary equilibria, its Poop Deck briefly rose up out of the water again, after which this last remanant of the Titanic went under, sinking until at some two hundred feet below the surface it imploded. The 1998 analysis offers an alternative view. It refers to new evidence from the severed keel gathered during the 1998 expedition, indicating that there was excessive wear and tear of the keel. This leads to the conclusion that the keel remained attached to the stern, which was dragged down by the bow before being led down under the ocean, still loosely attached. The stern implodes, causing explosions some 200 feet below the surface. It is then said to detach completely from the keel some 500 feet below the water surface.

You have a good passion for your preferred subject. If your tapped out content remember their is a Titanic conspiracy where they switched the olympic and the Titanic for insurance reasons before the sinking. Its pretty good

WOULD be interesting to see a video completely about the iceberg, where did it possibly come from, how it got there, how big it was actually under the water and above the water, and where it floated afterward when it struck the Titanic. Did any other ship saw particularly that iceberg nearby and so on.....

Good morning. I would like to point out a few factors about how the Titanic really sank from that iceberg that she hit as well how the bow & stern broke apart too. First off, Titanic did have her side plates ripped open from the berg, but what the people who were doing their resources was that the hull was also scrapped from the bottom of the ship which made the freezing ocean water gush in the bow. And Second during Titanic's breakup of her bow & stern, I watched something on the Discovery Channel 12 years ago that these gentlemen had found Titanic's piece of her hull that broke off between her third & fourth funnel which was about 300-500(or more) feet away from the stern of the ship & that it was the very first thing that hit the ocean floor way before the bow hit & then the stern. So I just wanted to let you know a little bit more about the hull piece that the researchers missed out on.

One of The most accurate titanic youtuber 😊

You are absolutely correct on the break up and what we all thought as well. Also when you look at the bow wreck all that deck housing at the break was right before the 3rd funnel. when the stern went down it imploded due to it going open end first with all the trapped air inside. Then the stern leveled itself going into a corkscrew sheering the 3rd funnel area and decks below it. I find it insane and scary how violent that part of the wreck is poop deck peeled back like a sardine can, starboard side exposed, port side blown out and the outer propellers bent upward went it hit the bottem.

Yessir a new video!

When I first became interested in the Titanic as a kid in the late 90s, I remember my uncle used to tell me that the ship actually broke into three pieces. I never believed him and dismissed his theory. Now all these years later after discovering where the Titanic actually broke in half, I think he really was onto something. In some ways, my uncle was kind of right. Great video!

The 1953 version of Titanic with Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck (which IMO was the greatest goodbye scene in the history of cinema) didn't show the ship break in half. Did they discover that when they found the wreckage in 1985?

I don't know why I am so excited to have this knowledge. But I am!

Very well explained in laymans terms. Not to mention the details given about the sinking. Good job HT.👍

I can imagine, if you survived, the screams would forever haunt your dreams...