[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.

[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?

[TChad]

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

[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

[Westlander]

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

[Sapper26]

If any woman was responsible it would have to be Violet Jessop. She was a stewardess on the Olympic (Titanic’s sister ship) when it had it’s collision. She was a stewardess on the Titanic. She was also a nurse on the Britannic (Titanic’s other sister ship) when it was sunk during WW1.

The woman was cursed.

[LibFreeOrDie]

Why link to a dumba** forum that changed the title of the original article? The photo is from WW2. The original article says nothing about women being involved.

[Caramelgal]

Did Female Shipbuilders Sink the Titanic?

First of all your headline has nothing to do with the article posted. There were no female shipbuilders during that time.

Secondly, those American women who took factory and industrial jobs during WWII, jobs traditionally held by men, men who were now serving in battle overseas, where not doing so out of some call to “feminism”, but out of a call to Patriotism. And there is nothing to substantiate any claim that those women didn’t do a “kick ass job”. I don’t recall any stories about inferior work performed by “Rosie” and her “sisters” that caused any WWII warship or airplane to fail because of her faulty workmanship or “workwomanship”.

[cynwoody]

Riveter at work on Consolidated bomber, Consolidated Aircraft Corp., Fort Worth, Texas.
October 1942

Not ship. Not British. Wrong time period.

[RayChuang88]

I think people forget that not only were the rivets sub-par in quality, but the structural steel was found to contain a fairly high amount of impurities, which made the steel very brittle in the low temperature waters of the North Atlantic at that time of the year in April 1912.

This meant that even if the Titanic successfully made its maiden voyage, the ship would probably have ended up back at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in a few years to repair the metal fatigue damage from the use of sub-par structural steel. Remember, after the Titanic sank the earlier sister ship Olympic underwent major structural upgrades to ensure the ship would stay afloat longer in case of another impact with an iceberg.

[RightWhale]

It was the tanks of fresh water they had to carry because they didn’t have desalinization and when salt water got in those tanks the ship became too heavy to float.

[anymouse]

Crap blog post.

Photo is of WWII era female riveter, using air impact rivet gun.

The Titanic was riveted the old fashioned way with red hot rivets pounded into drilled holes in the hull. Even Rosie wouldn't have the muscle to manage that task. That required stout Irishmen.

[RJL]

the Titanic, advertised as an "unsinkable" luxury liner

I read a report saying that neither the owners or the builders of the Titanic made the "unsinkable" claim, it was purely created by the press.