Here are a number of accounts that indicate what may have happened.
Harold Bride
"The Captain told us we had been struck amidships, or just aft of amidships." (damage to engine room?)
Mr. Woolner
"We felt it under the smoking room." (damage to engine room?)
Fred Scott
"I felt a shock and I thought it was something in the main engine room which had gone wrong." (damage to engine room?)
Mr. C. Andrews
"I thought something might have gone wrong with the engines."
Mr. Ray
"I thought something had gone wrong in the engine room."
Mr. Beesley
"There came what seemed to me nothing more than an extra heave of the engines"
Mrs. Collyer
"We saw a stoker come climbing up from below. He stopped a few feet away from us. All the fingers of one hand had been cut off. Blood was running from the stumps and blood was splattering over his face and over his clothes. The red marks showed very clearly against the coal dust with which he was covered. I went over and spoke to him. I asked him if there was any danger. ‘Danger’, he screamed at the top of his voice. ‘I should just say so. It’s hell down below, look at me. The boat will sink like a stone in ten minutes.’ He staggered away and lay down fainting on a coil of rope. At this moment I got my first grip of fear, awful sickening fear. That poor man with his bleeding hand and his speckled face brought up a picture of smashed engines and mangled human bodies. (damage to engine room?)
Here is a low pressure engine cylinder that possibly fell out when she listed heavily to port and everything not bolted down would crash through her side.
Mr. Keene
"It appeared to us that when the ship had listed heavily to port the engines fell out and crashed through the side. The second funnel broke off, and killed a number of people in its fall.....One of the engineers got horribly jammed when the doors in the bullkheads were closed. His injuries were terrible, and, as there was no chance of releasing him, he implored that he might be shot to be put out of his misery. This I have been told was done."
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