simple enoguth to understand really

hear hear

Would she have gone down faster?

Killian,

It gets technical hear, the ships some 46,000 tons is spread fairly evenly as to keep the ship straight and true, instead of titing towards one side, the compartments at the back still only went to E-deck, I think the last few compartments where smaller in size than the ones at the front, though i cant be sure. If she was struck in the stern by the same type of damage I.e a gash in her side going almost 300 feet, Titanic may have lasted another 10-15mins acording to a mathamatical equation I saw, tacking this stern theroy into practise. Plus take into acount the boilers and engines are in the back

depends how much weight is on or around the stern

Would the stern still be in the condition it is today?

Killian,

the bacteria and fungi down there might have eroded the stern a bit

Well If the ship went down by the stern then the break may have hapened beteween the 1st and 2nd funel and the bow section would be in as bad condition as the stern is now. Basically just the opposite side to what did happen.

if the titanic hit the berg head on, only 1 or 2 compartments would have flooded and she would have stayed afloat.

what, but wouldn't the water just flow into the other compartments one after the other?

Interesting questions on the possibility of Titanic hitting the iceberg with her stern instead of the bow. Depending on how she hit the berg with her stern there's the possibility that not as much damage would have occured. Being that you have on each side two propeller shafts and in the middle another propeller and a rudder that some exclaimed to be the size of a giant elm tree, there's a chance that if she did strike the berg from the stern that their "might" not have been as much damage caused to the area below the water line. If this senerio would of occured she would most likely have damage yes, but no where near as severe as a strike on the bow. She'd be still in a very bad situation with her propeller's damaged or engine area flooding but she may have floated longer of possibly just had minor flooding.

The events by 1st Officer Murdoch on the bridge are what made Titanic's fate sealed. He did correct by ordering Quartermaster Hitchens to turn the ship "hard-a-starboard" but by reversing the engines he caused a burbling effect in the water, causing there to be no clean or smooth water going by Titanic's rudder. (compare this to stiring a bucket of water with a big spoon...keep stiring really fast until you get a whirlpool effect...then stop and begin to turn in the opposite direction...the water gets choppy and doesn't know where to go). This gives you a idea of what happened when he ordered the propellers to reverse after going at about 21 knots. If he had just said full speed ahead and hard-a-starboard...its very likely they would have missed the iceberg. They only sideswiped it in the first place... just a little more and they would have likely cleared the berg and any of it that remained under the waterline.