[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.

[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

[fso301]

It seems there are more theories than there were passengers on the ship.

My personal theory is she went down due to a failure to maintain bouyancey.

[tanknetter]

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.

Sure are on the theory front. IIRC, tho, White Star's Olympic Class ships were by design too slow to contest for the Blue Ribband, which at the time was held by a Cunarder. White Star deliberately chose to trade speed in favor of selling passengers (particularly first-classer) on shear oppulance.

However it is well known that Capt. Smith sped up going into the ice field in order to arrive in NYC early enough to have the arrival make the papers.

Back to the multitude of theories - one of the ones that's amused me for some time now has White Star "switching" the identities of the Olympic and Titanic in order to deliberately sink Olympic (operating as "Titanic") for insurance money. Olympic had been in a couple back collisions, and the theory is that she was going to cost so much to repair that they just patched her up and were going to scuttle her mid-voyage in an area known to be highly trafficked by other vessels.