Investigator:
Mr. Paul K. Matthias Polaris Imaging, Inc., Wakefield, Rhode Island

It had long been held that the iceberg ripped a 300-foot gash in Titanic's starboard bow, thus allowing the onslaught of water that caused the vessel to sink. When the bow of the Ship hit the ocean floor it was buried under 45 feet of mud and the supposed gash was buried with it--out of the view of scientists and naval architects until Expedition 1996. 

During that expedition, Paul Matthias (right) of Polaris Imaging, Inc. used a sub-bottom profiler, which emmitted low-frequency acoustic signals, to penetrate the mud surrounding that section of the bow. The acoustic signals sent back an image revealing, for the first time, that the hull had not been gashed, but had been punctured in six of its forward compartments with a series of thin slits amounting to no more that 12 square feet.*

These slits, the first occuring just below the water line with others as deep as 20 feet below that, took on water at a rate of seven tons per second.  As the water in the forward compartments rose, collapsing the bulkhead of boiler room five, the water spilled over into boiler room four, causing the bow to plunged farther and farther underwater.  It is estimated that by 2AM the Ship had taken on 39,000 tons of water. Her stern rose in the cold night air, her steel was stressed, her midsection weakened, and she was sent to the bottom--breaking apart in the process.

*(In 1912, Harland and Wolff naval architect, Edward Wilding, had testified during the British inquiry into the disaster that the damage had not been a gash, but something much smaller amounting to approximately 12 square feet.  It took 84 years to prove him right.)