Those who survived were later picked up by the passenger liner Carpathia and taken to New York.
As a result of the disaster, stricter safety regulations were introduced and an international iceberg patrol was established.
The sinking of the Titanic is now past history, but the story – told in dozens of books and at least seven films – has lived on into our time.
Adventurers dreamt of finding raising the wreck, and in 1985 a team of American and French scientists actually discovered and photographed it 21/2, miles down on the North Atlantic ocean floor.
The great ship that sank quietly into the calm sea on that icy night in 1912 had stopped being a ghost and was becoming real again.
Did it have any secrets, and if so, would it give them up?
It looked as if at least one important question could now be answered: that of the ship’s exact location when it sank.
In other words, how close to the Californian had it been?
The scientists answer was that the distance had actually been less than ten, possibly only five miles.
Their conclusion: «The passengers could have been rescued.