What this was was the ship’s bow slamming into the sea floor. "Britannic" was over 800 feet long, and it only sank roughly 400 feet of water, so the bow hits the sea floor before the stern was completely submerged. Once this occurred, it caused massive structural damage to the "Britannic"’s hull and we can see the evidence of this in the wreck today there’s a massive hole in the bow section. Then, at roughly 9:07 AM, "Britannic"’s stern slowly dipped beneath the surface, 55 minutes after the explosion by a naval mine. The German newspapers claimed that the ship had been sunk by a torpedo because it might have been carrying soldiers. The captain of the U-73 said this was not true, he had only been laying the naval mines. The survivors believe the "Britannic" was torpedoed.