It took about 2 hours and 40 minutes for the Titanic to sink after hitting the iceberg.

Quick Scoop

The Titanic struck the iceberg at around 11:40 p.m. on 14 April 1912 and disappeared beneath the surface at about 2:20 a.m. on 15 April 1912, a 2-hour-40-minute descent that felt agonisingly slow for those on board. In that time, the ship’s forward compartments steadily flooded, the bow went lower and lower, and the stern gradually lifted out of the water before the hull ultimately broke apart.

Timeline in simple steps

  1. Iceberg collision: Around 11:40 p.m., the Titanic grazed an iceberg along her starboard (right) side, tearing open several watertight compartments.
  1. Realisation of the damage: Within about 30–45 minutes, designers and officers realised the ship was doomed because too many compartments were flooding to stay afloat.
  1. Lifeboats launched: Over roughly the next 1½ hours, lifeboats were loaded and lowered, often not filled to capacity, while the ship developed a stronger forward list.
  1. Final moments: Shortly after 2:15 a.m., the stern rose steeply as the bow pulled downward, the ship broke into two major sections, and by about 2:20 a.m. the last visible parts slipped under the surface.

A quick extra detail

After disappearing from the surface around 2:20 a.m., the broken sections of the ship likely took only a few minutes to reach the ocean floor nearly 4,000 metres below, plunging in darkness long after the surface chaos had gone quiet. This stark contrast—hours of desperate evacuation followed by a rapid fall to the seabed—adds to why the sinking still fascinates and horrifies people more than a century later.

TL;DR: The Titanic took roughly 2 hours and 40 minutes to sink from the iceberg collision to disappearing beneath the ocean.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.