Did Female Shipbuilders Sink the Titanic?

AsMaineGoes ^ | Apr 18, 2008 | CARLEY PETESCH

[fight_truth_decay]

Book by metallurgists blames rivets for Titanic tragedy

[Note: The October 1942 photo of a WWII American woman worker was taken about 31 years after the first rivet was hammered into the Titanic during its construction phase in Ireland.

A photo of any WWII American working during the massive WWII War effort is not appropriate in a story about the possible cause of the Titanic’s tragic demise. The photo has been removed. ]

NEW YORK - The tragic sinking of the Titanic nearly a century ago can be blamed on low grade rivets that the ship's builders used on some parts of the ill-fated liner, two experts on metals conclude in a new book.

"Under the pressure to get these ships up, they ramped up the riveters, found materials from additional suppliers, and some was not of quality," said Foecke, a metallurgist at the U.S. government's National Institute of Standards and Technology who has been studying the Titanic for a decade.

[fight_truth_decay]

Book by metallurgists blames rivets for Titanic tragedy

More than 1,500 people died when the Titanic, advertised as an "unsinkable" luxury liner, struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage in 1912 and went down in the North Atlantic less than three hours later.

"The company knowingly purchased weaker rivets, but I think they did it not knowing they would be purchasing something substandard enough that when they hit an iceberg their ship would sink," said co-author Jennifer Hooper McCarty, who started researching the Titanic's rivets while working on her Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in 1999.

On The Early Show Saturday, Jeff Glor asked McCarty if she felt the company was using sub-par iron.

"Exactly," she responded. "A rivet works by holding two plates together on a ship. And, during the collision, pressure, or load on that plate would have caused the heads of the rivets to pop open. So, the theory really is that the sub-quality iron caused weak rivets, and therefore, the seams were weak, and opened up during the collision.

McCarty says it was "an engineering decision" to use the rivets they did, "and, considering the other safety factors on the ship, they felt it would be OK to do so. I mean, it was a one-in-a-million chance that all of these events would come together and cause this disaster. So, it's difficult to say that they could have known something like this would happen."

The company disputes the idea that inferior rivets were at fault. The theory has been around for years, but McCarty and Foecke's book, "What Really Sank the Titanic: New Forensic Discoveries," published last month, outlines their extensive research into the Harland and Wolff archives and surviving rivets from the Titanic.

"It's difficult for them to be able to counterpoint all of our arguments," McCarty remarked to Glor, "given that there's so much in the (company) archives that we've gone through."

McCarty spent two years in Britain studying the company's archives and works on the training and working conditions of shipyard workers. The Titanic’s shipbuilders had been under pressure to get the job done quickly.

Shipyard archives revealed that the yard was short of employees, especially competent riveters, McCarty says. The Titanic’s sister ship, the Olympic, had been launched first, suffered damage in a collision, and was brought back to the yard.

It all spells pressure, and stress, on both workers and materials. “So they’re building the largest man-made moving object in the world,” McCarty says. “Just about the time they’re going to finish the Titanic, the Olympic has to come in for repairs. They’re trying to finish the Titanic on time, but they have to pull people off the Titanic to work on the Olympic.

“They’ve got a lot of materials they’ve got to put together. A lot of steel and a lot of iron. They were in a frantic situation trying to fix one ship and get the Titanic finished with 3 million rivets.”

CSI:Titanic

[The KG9 Kid]

The men running the ship into the big ass iceberg had nothing to do with it.

It was the dumb broads what made them lousy rivets.

Sure, that excuse oughtta fly some 100 years later.

[Revolting cat!]

It’s all your fault, Rosie!

[DieHard the Hunter]

> Did Female Shipbuilders Sink the Titanic?



Not on Rosie's shift!

[fight_truth_decay]

Related News:

A Titanic survivor who spent her long life trying to avoid publicity about the 1912 disaster that killed her father and three brothers will have that privacy breached today. A collection of 37 items from the Shrewsbury home of Lillian G. Asplund will be on the auction block today in England. Ms. Asplund, who died two years ago at 99, was the last American Titanic survivor.
TELEGRAM & GAZETTE

[Man50D]

I’ve heard a variation on the rivet theory. The ship's owners wanted to set a speed record from London to NYC. In order to accomplish that feat is was necessary to fire up all the boilers. The heat from the boilers softened the rivets causing them to pop out of their sockets when the ship struck the iceberg forcing the plates to separate and thereby allowing the water to rush into the ship. It seems there are more theories than there were passengers on the ship.

[Onelifetogive]

said Foecke...

I wonder how that is pronounced...

[skr]

There were female riveters before WWI?

[PotatoHeadMick]

Female shipbuilders in Belfast in 1912?

Somehow I doubt that very much. I’m fairly certain you could count the number of women riveters who have ever worked at Harland & Wolff on the fingers of one hand in its entire history, never mind back in 1912.

[fight_truth_decay]

Riveters played a vital role in shipbuilding when Britain’s shipyards boomed as the Empire expanded and the Royal Navy dominated the seas. Riveting was the only method of fastening together the plates and frames of early iron and steel ships. It was a very laborious process and accounted for much of the banging and clattering associated with traditional shipbuilding.

About three million rivets were used to hold Titanic together. Rivets recovered from the wreck were apparently made of poor quality iron. One theory about the sinking claims that the impact with the iceberg caused the heads of the rivets to break off and sections of Titanic to break up. Better quality rivets, it is argued, may have prevented the ship sinking.

The most effective way of making rivet holes was with an hydraulic punch. By the 1870s such machines were capable of punching up to 30 holes a minute in half-inch thick plates. When riveting was done by hand, large shipyards such as Cammell Laird’s employed more than 100 riveting squads, each with five men. They were:

• The heater, usually the youngest of the team, who softened the rivets in a portable forge before picking them up with long-handled tongs and throwing them to …
• The catcher who caught the rivets in a tin then, with short-handled tongs, placed the rivets in the holes where they were held by …
• The holder up whose 14 lb hammer kept the rivets in place while they were hammered by …
• The riveters who worked in pairs with hammers weighing between three and five lbs to round over the ends of the rivets, thus fastening the plates together.

http://blog.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/AuthorView,author,stepheng.aspx

[goldfinch]

ok. I read the whole article twice. I did not see any mention of the use of female riveters in building the Titanic. It would have been highly unusual and would have certainly been remarked on in the newspapers of the time...and in all the reading I have done on the Titanic, I have never seen it.

Where is the evidence that supports your headline?

[buccaneer81]

Female shipbuilders in Belfast in 1912? Somehow I doubt that very much. I’m fairly certain you could count the number of women riveters who have ever worked at Harland & Wolff on the fingers of one hand in its entire history, never mind back in 1912.

I have to agree with you. The article sounds like a re-write of history to me.

[TChad]

Where does the title of this piece come from? The text focuses on the rivets, not the sex of the riveters.

[goldfinch]

There were female riveters before WWI?

Rosie the Riveter was a WWII icon. Although women did move into the workplace during WWI, it was much more limited than in WWII. I don't know if there were any women riveters during WWI...but I don't think it was a common thing like it was in WWII.

[buck jarret]

As recorded by Anita Ellis, for the singing
voice of Rita Hayworth in the film “Gilda”:

When Mrs. O’Leary’s cow
Kicked the lantern in Chicago town
They say that started the fire
That burned Chicago down
That’s the story that went around
But here’s the real low-down
Put the blame on Mame, boys
Put the blame on Mame
Mame kissed a buyer from out of town
That kiss burned Chicago down
So you can put the blame on Mame, boys
Put the blame on Mame

Remember the blizzard, back in Manhattan
In eighteen-eighty-six
They say that traffic was tied up
And folks were in a fix
That’s the story that went around
But here’s the real low-down
Put the blame on Mame, boys
Put the blame on Mame
Mame gave a chump such an ice-cold “No”
For seven days they shovelled snow
So you can put the blame on Mame, boys
Put the blame on Mame

When they had the earthquake in San Francisco
Back in nineteen-six
They said that Mother Nature
Was up to her old tricks
That’s the story that went around
But here’s the real low-down
Put the blame on Mame, boys
Put the blame on Mame
One night she started to shim and shake
That brought on the Frisco quake
So you can put the blame on Mame, boys
Put the blame on Mame

They once had a shootin’ up in the Klondike
When they got Dan McGrew
Folks were putting the blame on
The lady known as Lou
That’s the story that went around
But here’s the real low-down
Put the blame on Mame, boys
Put the blame on Mame
Mame did a dance called the hoochy-coo
That’s the thing that slew McGrew
So you can put the blame on Mame, boys
Put the blame on Mame

[cherry]

if women worked on the Titanic, which I have no idea they did, it was the rivets themselves that were bad to start with....

besides....that is just a theory......many have claimed that its all a bunch of hooey.......

[Westlander]

http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-victims/

[thulldud]

I don't know if there were any women riveters during WWI...but I don't think it was a common thing like it was in WWII.

Somehow it seems that airframes would be less physically demanding on the riveters than ship hulls.

[Disambiguator]

said Foecke...

I wonder how that is pronounced...

I don't know, but however you decide to pronounce it, you're screwed.

;^)

[Maine Mariner]

Perhaps another reason the Titanic sunk-she did not have water tight bulheads to the main deck. After hitting the iceberg, water flowed into two (several?) forward compartments. As each compartment filled, the water flowed over into the next compartment and eventually the ship sunk.
After the Titanic sunk, ship designers corrected the design flaw. Bulkheads extended to the main deck and so if one or two comparments flooded, the rest of the ship was not in danger.