At 2:20 AMon April 15, 1912, the Titanic plunged to the bottom of the North Atlantic in 12,500 feet of water.
A fatal collision with an iceberg had doomed over fifteen-hundred passengers and crew to a watery grave, leaving survivors, contemporaries, and historians alike to start question the what if scenarios.
What if the Titanic was slower?
What if the Titanic had more lifeboats?
What if the Titanic had struck the iceberg head on?
Another what if that is not discussed as much is a matter of geography and oceanography: what if the Titanic had sunk in shallower waters?
This may seem like an outlandish scenario, given the depth that the ‘unsinkable ship’ now rests, but it is actually a very poignant question.
It may surprise readers to know this, but it is estimated that a mere seventy kilometres is all that separated the ship from the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.
This is only slighty farther than the Connecticut city of Stamford from Manhattan — the latter being downtown New York City, which the ill-fated steamship would have docked had tragedy not dictated otherwise.
Titanic wreck site (red) in the North Atlantic (dark blue) just south of shallow waters (light blue)
Theoretically speaking, in the 160 minutes it took for the vessel to go down, she could have travelled over 62 nautical miles — or 115 kilometres — giving her more than enough time to reach the vicinity if she had not been sinking.
In reality, she would have probably gone down further, so that was not an option.
So we go to another very real question:
What if Captain Edward Smith had taken the Northern Route instead of the Southern Route?
The Northern Route was about 200 kilometres north of where the Titanic sank, which would have placed her well inside the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.
This was intended to be the original destination of the Titanic — a course that would have actually shortened the voyage by 200 kilometres, due to the smaller circumnavigational sphere the higher north one travels, further disproving the myth that she was attempting to break a transatlantic record — which was only diverted on the day leading up to the sinking when a larger volume of icebergs were spotted in the vicinity.
Iceberg fields were much thicker here, so if she could not avoid striking a block of ice taking the Southern Route, we can “assume” that her luck would run out here as well.
Only she would no longer be facing a watery grave some 3,800 metres deep.
We would be talking about a much shallower grave.
Much shallower.
As in under 100 metres deep shallow.
The Titanic herself was over 270 metres long, meaning the depth of the water even 70 kilometres north of her historical position was barely one-third of her length.
This would have surely prevented her from breaking apart at the surface.
But would it have kept her afloat?
No.
At 100 metres deep she would have probably gone down similarly to the Lusitania — another ship of similar length and tonnage who sank in water of a similar depth.
In this situation, the only thing that may have been to the ship’s advantage is that if the water depth had been even moderately shallower, the stern would not have risen so high in the air, which would have prevented the air from being ejected so quickly during the “final plunge” — likely delaying its demise by at least several minutes or more.
According to some general research I have done, it appears that the bow of the Titanic itself was a little over 18 metres high when, while the boat deck — the tallest part of the ship, minus the funnels and masts — was 29 metres.
Were there any areas in the Grand Banks of Newfoundland that were shallow enough for the Titanic to sail to?
Yes.
Various shoals across the region have been reported to have depths that were under 30 metres, with some areas being as little as 15 metres deep — these are prehistoric islands that were submerged approximately 13,000 years ago during the last great Ice Age.
The Southeast Shoal was the strongest bet, since she was not only the closest major region to the wreck site, her average depth of 40–50 metres would have been only a fraction the length of the Titanic, with some specific spots reportedly having only 15 metres of depth — far more shallow than the height of the bow itself, and nearly twice the height of the ship at boat deck level
If the Titanic had been able to scout a nearby shoal during her doomed hours, she could have potentially survived by not fully submerging beneath the surface — leaving even the bow a little above water in the most shallow spots.
These are a big what if, because there are several reasons as to why it would not have made any practical sense to tempt this in 1912:
- The Titanic did not have the means to scan the seabed floor with modern instruments
- Even if the Titanic had found a shallow area, there is no guarantee that currents would not have pushed it back out into deeper water
- Though hindsight proved otherwise, the Titanic could have just as easily have capsized, as many ships throughout history have done, making this shallow depth practically useless, and wasting precious minutes
In the end, the crew did what was best, given the circumstances and what they knew in 1912.
History is filled with close calls, and the sinking of the Titanic was no exception.
Nonetheless, that question will remain in the minds of those alternative history enthusiasts who will never know the answer one way or another…
What if?