WI: Titanic sinks without a trace?

I don't believe anyone can state with any certainty which would have been better for the ship, to hit a glancing blow or head on. While we know what happened with the glancing blow, what occurs with a head on collision is speculation on our parts. Loss of first two compartments, certainly. Third compartment, probable to progressive flooding. Fire, distinct possibility. Loss of electrical power for some time, probable. Loss of radio, probable. Massive casualties, certain. (this is before the sinking, as no one will be prepared for it, and will certainly overwhelm the ships medical capabilities) It MAY however, shock the command into accepting what a terrible dilemma they are in, and reacting more proactively to get boats into the water. My SWAG, if no fires break out, the radio doesn't break free from its mountings and is repaired in time to send a distress call, the death toll will be less. There is no way she can go down without a trace, simply too much time will elapse before she goes under, boats will be lowered, deck chairs etc will float free, in addition to the thousand and one other things that come up as a ship sinks.
 
It would be at least a week before any search parties got to the area. The complete loss of communications would cause steadily growing concern, but it wouldn't be until the Titanic's failure to arrive in New York on schedule two days after that night would really set off alarm bells. Some debris and bodies would likely be found, as would be the iceberg with the telling red paint (in OTL the iceberg that probably sank the Titanic was photographed by the chief steward on a German ocean liner the following day before he had even heard of the disaster, when he noticed a streak of red paint smeared across it that indicated a recent collision with a ship). The investigation would have quickly come to the right conclusion: that it was sunk by an iceberg. However, it would still be a great mystery that would enthrall people for decades, and might spark more intense search efforts.
 
I don't think it'd take two full days. The loss of communication would be noticed quickly. The following morning, hopefully, the Californian would report that it had seen lights to the south, which seemed to come from a ship but eventually disappeared. It is also likely that Titanic would have launched at least a few distress rocket signals, since if the radio was destroyed they'd still have the rockets and Morse lamp to call for help, even if they only had 15 minutes. Putting two and two together, radio operators would figure out that Titanic disappeared south of Californian's position, and they would stumble on debris and bodies.

Titanic did have a small emergency radio set which would almost certainly have survived even if the main set did not, and there were ships close enough to Titanic to receive a distress signal, particularly at night.

I find it doubtful that there could be no survivors, even if the ship sank very quickly. At least some lifeboats would float away -- even if their tackle was strong enough to pull the main lifeboats underwater, the collapsibles would break loose and float. So, in a worst case scenario there could have been maybe 50 survivors. As for finding the survivors, OTL, at least one boat had signal flares. (A ship's officer launched green flares from one of the boats as the Carpathia approached.)

Let's say 50-100 people do survive. That's about the fewest I can imagine. That means over 2100 dead, ranging from millionaires to immigrants, and the public outrage would be proportionately higher than it was OTL. There would be no noble stories of "women and children first." The inquiries might have demanded more changes than OTL.

It's my belief that the ongoing interest in Titanic is because it took her so long to sink and because the lifeboats, with two exceptions, were launched successfully. Two hours and 40 minutes is enough for hundreds of terribly human stories of survival and loss to be written for the telling later on. If there had been far fewer survivors and a much faster sinking, then a few people would have tales of survival against the odds, but there wouldn't have been the grandiose story of humans challenging nature and being humbled by an iceberg. It would have been just another shipwreck.
 
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