[Calvin Locke]

I thought somebody already proved, like 20 years ago, that the rivets were substandard, allowing more damage then would have occurred, that is, allowing water into more compartments than if more of the rivets held?

[hecticskeptic]

I thought somebody already proved, like 20 years ago, that the rivets were substandard...<.I>

Bingo. The wrought iron rivets pulled up by the salvagers were tested and found to have three times as much slag in them as specified....likely as a consequence of rushing to finish the boat. When the iceberg was spotted, the captain pulled hard to port and the starboard side slid along the side the berg for a few hundred feet and many of those substandard rivets popped off. The rest as they say is history. Now could a serious fire onboard before the ship left have caused even more damage that weakened it further? Yes... likely.

[Celtic Conservative]

Substandard rivets and steel that was brittle at the temperatures encountered that night.

CC

[Flick Lives]

As with many catastrophes, there are often a series of individual defects that happen to line up to produce the disaster. In the case of the Titanic, you have possibly substandard rivets, water tight bulkheads that didn’t reach the full height of the hull, a dark night, a really big ass iceberg, an attempt at a speed record to reach NYC meaning they were moving too fast to effectively maneuver, and too few life boats.