Titanic rammed by iceberg

The passenger ship “Titanic” sinks in the night from 14 to 15 April 1912. A few hours earlier, the Titanic rams an iceberg in the North Atlantic. Around 1,500 people die in the shipwreck. Around 700 are rescued, most of them women and children.

It is the first voyage of the luxury steamer Titanic, which is praised as “unsinkable”. On 10 April, the huge ship leaves the port of Southampton in southern England. Its destination is New York, with 2,200 people on board. None of them suspects at this point that for many it will be their last voyage. Only four days later, on 14 April, the Titanic’s last hour has struck. Around 11:40 p.m., the lookout Frederick Fleet sounds the alarm: “Iceberg dead ahead!”

The Titanic tries to turn away quickly, but the iceberg is already too close. At full speed, the Titanic rams into the colossus of ice. The front five of the sixteen watertight compartments are slit open and fill up. The bow of the Titanic plunges further and further into the water. Three quarters of an hour after midnight, the first lifeboat is launched. But there are far too few boats – after all, the Titanic was considered unsinkable. At 2:20 a.m., the hull of the ship can no longer withstand the forces of the water and breaks apart. The Titanic sinks, its wreckage hits the seabed at a depth of almost 4,000 metres. 1,500 people die in the shipwreck in the North Atlantic, including Captain Edward John Smith.

The survivors in the lifeboats are picked up about two hours after the sinking by the British passenger ship RMS Carpathia, which arrives in New York on 17 April.

Iceberg alert

Two years after the sinking of the Titanic, the “International Ice Patrol” was founded in 1914. 16 countries that operate shipping in the North Atlantic joined forces to form this patrol. Their mission: to prevent accidents with icebergs.

From Newfoundland, the Ice Patrol regularly flies over the North Atlantic to locate and observe icebergs. Especially between January and July there is a lot of activity here: 40,000 icebergs break off Greenland’s glaciers every year and drift out to sea. There they pose a danger to ships and drilling platforms. That is why the experts of the Ice Patrol try to predict the course of the ice giants. And with great success: since the Ice Patrol has been in existence, no more accidents have occurred in this area.

Where do icebergs come from?

Although icebergs float in the sea, they are not made of frozen seawater, but of freshwater. This is because they come from the huge glaciers in the polar regions. At their edges, the polar glaciers protrude into the sea. Pieces of them break off regularly – the icebergs. One also speaks of the glacier “calving”. And because ice is lighter than water, it floats around in the sea without sinking.

The polar oceans are between -4 and 0 degrees Celsius. That is why the icebergs thaw only very slowly. When the current drives them into warmer waters, they melt somewhat faster. Nevertheless, large icebergs live for decades.

Some icebergs are huge and flat: the tabular icebergs. They form when the glaciers on the coast push far out to sea. Then large sheets of ice float on the sea, but they are still connected to the glacier. This “ice shelf” can be between 200 and 1,000 metres thick. The largest areas of ice shelf are in Antarctica, on the coasts of Greenland and Alaska. When large pieces of the ice shelf break off, they float out into the Arctic Ocean as tabular icebergs.

Icebergs are very dangerous for shipping because only their tip is visible above water. Most of the iceberg is under water. Ships must keep a sufficiently large safe distance from the white giants so that they are not damaged by the sharp edges of the iceberg.

However, there is also ice that freezes from seawater: First, ice floes of salt water form on the water surface. When these ice floes are pushed together, a coherent sheet of ice forms – the pack ice.

Polar Regions – Arctic and Antarctic

The largest ice surfaces on earth are around the North Pole and the South Pole. Because of their special location, the polar regions receive very little sunlight and solar heat, and the summers are particularly short there. That is why it is always extremely cold there – temperatures of up to minus 70 degrees Celsius prevail throughout the year. The cold has allowed huge masses of ice to form in the polar regions.

The Arctic ice around the North Pole covers a large part of the Arctic Ocean in winter. It then covers an area of several million square kilometres. For the most part, this is a layer of ice that floats on the sea. In addition, the Arctic ice covers the northern areas of Europe, Asia and North America.

In contrast, the South Pole is located on a continent, Antarctica. Antarctica is the coldest place on earth. Its land mass is almost completely buried under a carapace of ice and snow up to 4 kilometres thick. Almost three quarters of the fresh water on Earth is stored in this ice.

Humans, animals and plants have adapted to life in the “eternal ice”. Polar bears or reindeer, for example, protect themselves against the cold with a layer of fat and thick fur. Only a few people inhabit the Antarctic, the Arctic is somewhat more densely populated. The best-known inhabitants of the Arctic are the Inuit in North America and Greenland, but there are also the Lapps in northern Scandinavia and indigenous peoples in northern Siberia. In the past, they lived there as nomads and moved around with dog sleds. Today they use snowmobiles and many of them live in cities.

Hardly anything grows in the ice deserts around the poles because of the great cold. The ground between the polar regions and the cold temperate zone is permanently frozen to great depths. This ground is therefore also called permafrost after the Latin word “permanere” for “to last”. It only thaws slightly a few months a year. Then particularly hardy plants such as mosses, lichens or dwarf shrubs can grow on it. This region around the polar regions is also called subpolar tundra.

The polar regions are the coldest areas on earth. It is also here that it is apparent that the Earth is heating up: for some years now, researchers have been observing that the ice masses of the Arctic and Antarctic are melting. The consequences of this warming cannot yet be precisely estimated. But it is already clear that many habitats are threatened by the melting of the poles.

The world of oceans

Many secrets still lie dormant in the depths of the oceans. Large parts of the world’s oceans are still completely unexplored. We even know the moon better than the deep sea. What we do know, however: Almost all the water on this earth – 97.5 per cent to be exact – laps in the five oceans.

The largest of all oceans is the Pacific. Its water surface measures a total of 180 million square kilometres! This means that it accounts for about half of all ocean surfaces. At the same time, this world ocean is home to the deepest place on earth: it descends up to 11,034 metres into the Witja Deep in the Mariana Trench, a deep-sea trench in the western Pacific.

The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest ocean. It was formed about 150 million years ago when the primeval continent of Pangaea broke apart. With its 106 million square kilometres, it covers one fifth of the earth’s surface.

Most of the Indian Ocean lies in the southern hemisphere. With an area of just under 75 million square kilometres, it is a good deal smaller than the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Its deepest point is called the Diamond Low, which lies 8,047 below sea level.

The Southern Ocean is also called the Southern or Antarctic Ocean. It includes all sea areas south of the 60th parallel in the southern hemisphere. Sailors consider it the stormiest of all seas. Typical of the Southern Ocean are also the large tabular icebergs that float in its waters. They have broken off from the ice shelf that has formed around the Antarctic continent.

Around the North Pole lies the Arctic Ocean, also known as the Arctic Ocean. It is the smallest of the five oceans. About two-thirds of the Arctic Ocean is covered with ice in winter. But its ice cover, like the ice of the Southern Ocean, continues to melt due to global warming.

Even if we live several hundred kilometres away from them: Oceans are of great importance to us. Their currents and the evaporation of seawater have an enormous influence on our weather. A large part of the air we breathe is also produced in the oceans: Algae that live here convert carbon dioxide into oxygen when exposed to sunlight.