Titanic, left, and Olympic sat next to one another in a double gantry in the last photo of the two together,
weeks before Olympic set sail
Posted on 04/15/2008 5:17:12 AM PDT by Pharmboy
Titanic, left, and Olympic sat next to one another in a double gantry in the last photo of the two together,
weeks before Olympic set sail
Researchers have discovered that the builder of the Titanic struggled for years to obtain enough good rivets and riveters and ultimately settled on faulty materials that doomed the ship, which sank 96 years ago Tuesday.
The builder’s own archives, two scientists say, harbor evidence of a deadly mix of low quality rivets and lofty ambition as the builder labored to construct the three biggest ships in the world at once — the Titanic and two sisters, the Olympic and the Britannic.
For a decade, the scientists have argued that the storied liner went down fast after hitting an iceberg because the ship’s builder used substandard rivets that popped their heads and let tons of icy seawater rush in. More than 1,500 people died.
When the safety of the rivets was first questioned 10 years ago, the builder ignored the accusation and said it did not have an archivist who could address the issue.
Now, historians say new evidence uncovered in the archive of the builder, Harland and Wolff, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, settles the argument and finally solves the riddle of one of the most famous sinkings of all time. The company says the findings are deeply flawed.
Each of the great ships under construction required three million rivets that acted like glue to hold everything together. In a new book, the scientists say the shortages peaked during the Titanic’s construction.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Andy, great headlines!
Can you get Cheney and Rumsfeld in there, too?
Another McCain campaign story.
Oooooh. That’s cold!
It has. I read about this years ago.
Thank you, Rosie (the Riveter??)
And Halliburton must have been involvded in some way...
Well, like, yeah, if you go around driving into icebergs and mines.
Like, duh...
DEMOCRATS CLAIM CHENEY PLANTED ICEBERG IN PATH OF SHIP: CONGRESS VOWS INVESTIGATION. RUMSFELD EXPECTED TO HAVE NO COMMENT ONCE BORN.
Actually there were some dives done recently on the Britanic. They were focusing on the expansion joints to see if the builder had modified them in the aftermath of the Titanic sinking. The idea was that a stress concentration due to an improperly designed expansion joint caused the ship to fracture (split in half) causing a rapid sinking before help could arrive.
Keep-your-eyes open bump.
The think sunk, get over it already!
The cracked hull theory is still relevent. Both forms of damage may have played a part, but without direct observation of the damaged areas, it will be impossible to tell which is prevalent.
I wrote my undergrad metallurgical engineering report on this subject in 1990, well before any analysis was made of actual Titanic steel. I tested scrap steel left over from a remodel of the Hiram Chittenden locks in Seattle. The locks date from 1912, and the steel, although American-made, was produced with a similar process to British steel at the time. My results showed an overwhelming increase in brittleness at freezing temperatures.
Eventual analysis of Titanic’s steel showed that the bad alloying elements were even worse than the samples I had worked with. Much worse.
Obviously, the iceberg and number of lifeboats were primary ingredients in the tragedy. The major element of the steel controversy is that the damage was probably light enough where steel quality would have made a difference. If Titanic could have stayed afloat approximately twice as long as she did after the collision, help would have arrived, lifting the death sentence on many of the 1,500 innocent lives lost that night.
Two facts, the ship was damaged by an iceberg. And the company was responsible for the massive deaths, not becuse of rivits, or any structual issues, simply because they lacked sufficient lifeboats.
“I’ve built you a good ship, Rose. She’s all the lifeboat you need.”
Har Har.
Next you'll probably tell me that left-handed pitcher for the Red Sox became the greatest homerun hitter in baseball.
Prior to the loss of Titanic no ship anywhere carried, or was required to carry, sufficient lifeboats for all passengers.
It was considered extremely unlikely that a ship would remain afloat long enough to launch all her boats, and that no other ships would be able to come to her rescue.
In fact, Titanic was a unique shipwreck in that she sank (1) in midocean with no other ships nearby; (2) in ideal weather conditions (good visibility, dead calm); and (3) almost three hours after the initial impact.
And (I think) there has not been a subsequent shipwreck of that kind. Empress of Ireland and Lusitania sank so fast that lifeboats were nearly irrelevant; Andrea Doria sank so slowly that ample assistance from other ships were available.
I have a hard time faulting the White Star Line for failing to have enough boats for a once in a century event. Building the ship with too small a rudder and proceeding at high speed into an ice area, that's a different story.
BTW, google SS Eastland for a story of how adding lifeboats actually killed almost a thousand passengers.
Not anymore but we won’t go into that. :)
If you look at the pattern of failure, you have massive crushing at the bow, and another failure just below the first funnel. Now, the bow was probably total loss, no matter what, because the impact was just too great. However, it was the split farther back along the ship that was the fatal failure.
The first four tears would have flooded all of the compartments forward of watertight Bulkhead C. Now the legend has it that four compartments could be flooded before the ship sinks, so the ship would have survived if this had been the only flooding. However, a split between Bulkheads E and D flooded that section as well. This was enough to put the bow under the water, and down she went.
Now, the question is, if the bow had been stronger, would the tears further back, such as the one between Bulkheads E and D been better or worse? I think a fair argument could be made that the massive failure of the iron riveted section acted something like the crumple zones in a car protecting the occupants in a front-end collision, and cushioned the rest of the ship. In other words, the tears at the front of the ship would have been caused by crushing, but the tears further back would have been caused by buckling from the sudden deceleration. Any deformation that can lessen that deceleration will help protect the rest of the ship.
So one could argue, quite persuasively IMHO, that the use of stronger structures and steel rivets in the bow sections would have worsened the tearing further back, and the ship would have sunk even faster. There was no construction that could have prevented massive failure forward of Bulkhead C, but a stiffer structure in the bow could have made failures further back even worse.
Now, I am not going to pretend that the designers of the Titanic intentionally included crumple zones in the design, but that seems to be how things worked out at the end of the day. If the force of impact had been slightly less, the steel riveted seam between Bulkheads E and D might not have failed, in which case the ship would have performed magnificently, and we would be studying it in schools to this day as an example of ingenious design.
I've driven a car for 1/3 century without ever having an accident, yet I have to pay extra for insurance, air bags and other safety equipment that add to the cost. Chance favors those prepared.
Britannic was not completed IIRC until some time later, after Titanic was sunk....
but its all a moot point
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