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Almost all of those who jumped or fell into the sea drowned or died within minutes due to the effects of cold shock and incapacitation. The Titanic sank with over a thousand passengers and crew still on board. Poor management of the evacuation meant many boats were launched before they were completely full.
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In accordance with existing practice, the Titanic 's lifeboat system was designed to ferry passengers to nearby rescue vessels, not to hold everyone on board simultaneously therefore, with the ship sinking rapidly and help still hours away, there was no safe refuge for many of the passengers and crew with only 20 lifeboats, including 4 collapsible lifeboats. Titanic had been designed to stay afloat with up to four of her forward compartments flooded, and the crew used distress flares and radio ( wireless) messages to attract help as the passengers were put into lifeboats. Unable to turn quickly enough, the ship suffered a glancing blow that buckled her starboard side and opened six of her sixteen compartments to the sea. Titanic received six warnings of sea ice on 14 April but was travelling at a speed of roughly 22 knots (41 km/h) when her lookouts sighted the iceberg. Her sinking two hours and forty minutes later at 02:20 ship's time (05:18 GMT) on Monday, 15 April, resulted in the deaths of more than 1,500 people, making it one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history. The largest ocean liner in service at the time, Titanic had an estimated 2,224 people on board when she struck an iceberg at around 23:40 ( ship's time) on Sunday, 14 April 1912. The Titanic sank in the early morning hours of 15 April 1912 in the North Atlantic Ocean, four days into her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. The sinking of the Titanic as depicted in Untergang der Titanic, a 1912 illustration by Willy Stöwer
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