On April 10, 1912, the Titanic left Southampton on its maiden voyage to New York. Next day the ship received radio messages telling of large icebergs that were much farther south than usual. Captain Smith accordingly altered course toward the south, maintained speed at twenty-two knots and gave instructions to lookouts to be especially vigilant.

Close to midnight, as the Titanic pushed ahead, lookouts in the crow's nest, high up on the foremost mast, spotted an iceberg off the right side of the ship, almost directly ahead and towering sixty feet above the water. The warning signal was triggered. The engine room was ordered to stop the ship and then go full speed astern, but the warning came too late. Even as it began to swing away toward its left side, the ship hit the iceberg below the surface. The ice gashed a series of openings in the steel side of the ship and five compartments were flooded.

The ship's designers knew that the Titanic could stay afloat if four of its sixteen watertight compartments were flooded, but it could not survive if five were flooded. No one ever suspected that as many as four would be flooded at one time and this fact may have given rise to the idea that the ship was unsinkable.

Within three hours from the initial collision, the Titanic broke apart and foundered, with well over one thousand people still aboard. Only 705 of the 2,224 passengers and crew survived the accident. A disproportionate number of men were left aboard because of a "women and children first" protocol followed by some of the officers loading the lifeboats.