Posted on 12/05/2005 12:02:23 PM PST by ZGuy
The discovery of two large pieces of the Titanic's hull is changing the story of how the luxury ocean liner sank 93 years ago.
Undersea explorers said Monday that the Titanic broke into three pieces, not two pieces as commonly believed and portrayed in James Cameron's 1997 film version of the catastrophe. That means the ship likely sank faster than believed.
The hull pieces were found this summer by an expedition sponsored by the History Channel. Its leaders called it the most significant find at the site since undersea explorer Robert Ballard discovered the wreck 20 years ago and declared that the ship had broken in two.
"The breakup and sinking of the Titanic has never been accurately depicted," Parks Stephenson, a Titanic historian, said Monday at a conference at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, where scientists discussed the findings.
The 46,000-ton luxury liner was billed as "unsinkable" by its owner, the White Star Line. But it sank after striking an iceberg on April 14, 1912, on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic. About 1,500 people were killed.
Ballard discovered the bulk of the wreck in 1985 in 13,000 feet of water, about 380 miles southeast of Newfoundland. A portion of the ship's bottom was missing, and Ballard's team presumed it had fragmented into hundreds of small pieces.
The discovery of the two hull pieces about 500 meters from the rest of the wreck indicate that the piece came off the ship intact and later broke into two large sections, the explorers said.
"That's X marks the spot," said Richard Kohler, who led the expedition. "Right above that is where the Titanic broke."
Ballard did not immediately return a call for comment.
Whether the ill-fated Titanic was doing 55 m.p.h. or 100 m.p.h. on her way to the bottom...I still find that shockingly fast. The silt and mud must be incredibly soft for many of the artifacts to have survived the violent collision ninety-three years ago.
The sunken ship is less than three miles away, but it might as well be on the moon for all that we know about it at this point. This is definitely an interesting topic!
~ Blue Jays ~
It was like an ice tray with water rolling over to the next level. Why the bulkheads didn't go all the way to the next deck is amazing.
The watertight bulkheads stopped when they rose to the level of passenger territory. It wouldn't do to let the passengers wonder about these complex falling doors... might make them uneasy.
Once the ship no longer retained bouyancy, it was just so many tons of dead weight resisted only by the drag of water. The silt is soft...
I suppose the best way to consider the unlucky ship is as if it were a heavy bowling ball moving rapidly towards the bottom of a swimming pool. My amateur guess was that the mangled ship wouldn't be too "hydrodynamic" on its way down, but I could be wrong. It did weigh 117,174,400 pounds after all.
~ Blue Jays ~
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