Titanic Research Paper

The Titanic was the dream ship that was thought to be completely unsinkable, but did not take the safety of the passengers into deep enough consideration. They neglected safety standards and procedures which proved to be the cause of death of many of the passengers on board. On the early morning of April 15th, 1912, that passenger filled ship collided with an iceberg causing over 2,200 passengers to struggle to survive through hypothermia, drowning, lifeboat scarcity, and other conditions that occurred while the ship sank down to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The most prominent cause of death aboard Titanic was the shutting down of vital organs due to the extremely cold temperature of the water, also known as hypothermia. This …show more content…
Drowning, in its simplest definition, is classified as death following the immersion of the mouth and nostrils in liquid. Contrary to popular belief most drowning cases did not actually occur on the outside of the ship, but on the inside where water trapped passengers. Due to how early the disaster occurred, many passengers were still in bed and were not fully aware of what was happening around them. As the ship’s end began to turn downwards and the ship began to fill with the water, most passengers either became trapped in their room or had their room slowly filled with water leading to their death. Aside from the passengers that were in their rooms, crew members were also caught in the lower parts of the ship. It is unknown exactly how many deaths occurred from drowning because most went unnoticed seeing as death by drowning is a very silent one due to water filling the victim’s lungs with liquid. Researchers were also unable to find the exact number through body count as the bodies sank to the bottom of the ocean floor and were not capable of being …show more content…
As the ship’s tilt became more increased, more people would have fallen, either against other people and/or parts of the ship, or into the water. The further the fall, the greater the injury. Most of those that fell from higher points on the ship ended up dying due to crashing in to obstructions like building structures, posts, and wires for example. There were few that survived by clinging on the structures as the ship slowly lowered in to the icy waters. “As the stern of the ship became closer to perpendicular, the likelihood increased of muscle strength failing and victims falling from up to 200 feet into the water.” Falling only impacted a small amount of the passengers, much like the suicides that occurred on the ship. Many different methods for suicides were used as the passengers began to panic and not see any possible way of survival. Some used guns that were stored on the ship and some decided to simply jump off the edge in to the water. There is only evidence of a handful of suicides, the most popular stories being those of the officers. It is rumored that the First Officer, instead of helping passengers load on to life boats, killed himself giving the only proven and documented suicide, but through word of mouth and different survival stories it has