It was the dumb broads what made them lousy rivets.
Sure, that excuse oughtta fly some 100 years later.
besides....that is just a theory......many have claimed that its all a bunch of hooey.......
The ship was supposed to survive holing as I recall and folks were surprised when it failed.
i agree though it’s convenient to blame women....there is more to ship building rather than simply who rivets
I doubt the shipyards in northern Ireland used women as riveters prior to WWI.
The pictures at this post are all circa WWII.
It was the dumb broads what made them lousy rivets."
Many theories about the sinking have been floated over the years.
I suppose rivets is as good as any but a headline blaming the women riveter's?
I blame a lousy editor for that.
My personal theory favorites are the following:
1)Hydrogen embrittlement and sulfide steel cracking.
Testing of the ship's metal indicates there was a rather high sulfur content of approximately 0.065 to 0.069%. The manganese content was too low (0.47 to 0.52), as manganese will help bind sulfur. This contributed to the brittle nature of the ship.
The Titanic was so brittle that it should never have left port.
There is a point known as the transition temperature, which is the temperature at which steel transitions from a ductile (flexible) state to a brittle state.
A ship made with ductile steel will flex upon collision, whereas brittle steel will break apart like a dropped flower pot.
The transition temperature for the Titanic steel was 40o C or greater. The ocean temperature was -2o C.
In other words, the ship was more than 40o below its ductile temperature, and it was like sailing across the North Atlantic in an eggshell.
2) the faulty expansion joint theory.
Titanic was twice as large as any ship ever built, it's engineers decided (rightly so) that expansion joints would be necessary. The length would cause excessive flexing thus the necessity.
As far as I know it was the first ship designed with them and as with any experimental design it;s hard to get it right the first time.
After the sinking the designers and engineers suspected the rapid sing was due to a problem with the joints.
Her sister ship (Britannic) was quietly redesigned.
(The blueprints do not indicate the change)
Only recently have teams dove on the wreck, they found the joints were indeed very different than Titanic.
Britannic's rapid sinking were not found to be related to faulty expansion joints.
Another interesting fact is Titanic’s hull was constructed of overlapping steel plates held together by iron rivets.
A little known fact is that ships of this type of construction are weakest when they are first launched and actually become stronger as they age.
This phenomenon is due to the fact that the shear strength of the rivets holding her plates tightly against one another at each of the lapped joints is the primary basis of hull integrity of a new ship employing this type of construction.
New steel plates have clean smooth surfaces and remain that way until sea water has the opportunity penetrate the tightly lapped areas held together by rivets.
This water penetration is facilitated by a process known as “capillary attraction” and is aided by the normal flexing of the hull over a period of service in a seaway.
Until this penetration and resultant surface corrosion is allowed to occur, the coefficient of friction between the mated surfaces of overlapping plates is relatively low.
However, once these surfaces become slightly corroded, the coefficient friction is vastly increased and thus inhibits the possibility of plate movement when subjected to lateral stress.
Keeping these thing in mind many things attributed to Titanic's rapid sinking the actual cause however is not in dispute.