12. The world was stunned by the discovery of Titanic’s wreck and subsequent examinations
Titanic had been the subject of several films before its wreckage was found, as well as historical reports and fictional works. Even the Nazi propaganda machine had made a film about the ship, which depicted upper-class British passengers acting in a cowardly and panicked manner as the ship went down, with lower-class passengers in steerage kept from the lifeboats at gunpoint. Many conflicting stories of the events of the night it struck the iceberg, the heavy loss of life, and the failings of the ship itself had developed before it was found. Once it was, international attention reached a point near that of the aftermath of its loss in 1912.
For decades it had been believed and was demonstrated in films, that the iceberg the ship had struck had torn a gash along the ship’s starboard side, flooding the ship’s four forwardmost compartments. Subsequent visits to the wreck established that the theory was incorrect. Instead, the impact had caused rivets holding the plates of the hull to the ribs and each other had been sprung and the resulting gap is what allowed the fatal flow of water into the hull. As the forward compartments flooded and the bow sank deeper into the water, each succeeding compartment overflowed into the one behind, like an ice cube tray sinking in a sink full of water.
