Near midnight on April 15, 1912, HMS Titanic rammed into an iceberg about 325 nautical miles south-southeast off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. The iceberg gouged a fatal hole in her side, and after two hours and 40 minutes, she slid below the surface, leaving 2,240 passengers and crew fighting for severely limited lifeboat space.

More than 1,500 did not survive the ordeal of being cast into 28-degree Fahrenheit water. Physiologists determined that the average passenger had just 15 minutes of consciousness before slipping beneath the waves to die, not by drowning, but by hypothermia. Those that could not find a piece of flotsam to grasp onto were forced to swim, and this hastened their demise.

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