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"There was peace and the world had an even tenor to it's way. Nothing was revealed in the morning the trend of which was not known the night before. It seems to me that the disaster about to occur was the event that not only made the world rub it's eyes and awake but woke it with a start keeping it moving at a rapidly accelerating pace ever since with less and less peace, satisfaction and happiness. To my mind the world of today awoke April 15th, 1912."
-- John B. "Jack" Thayer, TITANIC survivor

"I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder. I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to this vessel. Modern ship building has gone beyond that."
-- Captain E. J. Smith, Commander of the TITANIC

"God Himself cannot sink this ship."
-- Unknown TITANIC crewmember to embarking passenger, Mrs Sylvia Caldwell.

Ah, hubris.

'Zoont.

Never say God can't do something. It's not a good idea to dare a deity.

"I'll see your bet, and raise you an iceberg!" - God

Nope... not a good idea...

Well, to be fair to them, the material science behind the failure of their ship hadn't been discovered yet. The engineers thought that it would fail in a ductile fashion, when it in fact failed in a brittle fashion, thanks to a change in the metal's crystal structure, thanks to the temperature and particular alloy they used in the ship's contruction.

Titanic failed because of knowledge they didn't have, and finding out the hard way their 'worst case scenario' wasn't the true worst case.

This is why good engineers never say 'it can never happen'. Titanic, Tacoma Narrows Bridge, New Orleans Leeves. There is always some new twist, or something your calcs failed to consider that can bite you on the ass. Though in the last case politics and siphoned funds seemed to have contributed.

As it is the way Titanic went down wasn't the worst way to sink even, most ships that sink tend to go down so fast the crew can't even get all the lifeboats off in time.

I forget all the reasons they listed for the ship's failure, and the loss of so many lives.... among other things they supposedly cut corners on how many rivets they used....

The three big failures in the Titanic were two metallurgical, and one design. The design was that the 'water tight bulkheads' didn't go all the way up, making the hull about as watertight as an icecube tray, once the water got high enough it spilled into the area behind the bulkhead.

The metallurgical ones were in the hull steel, and the rivets. The steel had a high sulfer content, so that when the steel got cold (like the North Atlantic in April) it became brittle and cracked rather than bending and tearing. Bottom line it took less force to break and leak water into the ship. The other failure was substandard rivets, mostly slag metal IIRC so the other theory was that they failed when hit by the iceburg, causing the hull plates to come apart like a cheap zipper.

The biggest and most glaring failure of the Titanic was not carrying enough lifeboats for all. Had she being carrying full capacity every lifeboat sailing away fully loaded would have barely held 1/3 of those aboard.

I cannot imagine what those survivors endured sitting in those lifeboats listening to the sound of 1500 people drowning in sub-freezing water.

"The sounds of people drowning are something that I can not describe to you, and neither can anyone else. Its the most dreadful sound and there is a terrible silence that follows it." -- Eva Hart, Titanic Survivor

The question that always draws me ultimately to Titanic is the simple question....what would I have done? Standing on deck with no lifeboats left, knowing the end was coming. What would any of you have done? Play cards in the first class lounge waiting for the end? Huddle in prayer on deck? Perhaps fashion a crude raft out of deck chairs like one survivor did.

I like to think I would have tried to find a way off, but I really don't know. I ask again....what would YOU have done?

GrayTiger wrote:The biggest and most glaring failure of the Titanic was not carrying enough lifeboats for all. Had she being carrying full capacity every lifeboat sailing away fully loaded would have barely held 1/3 of those aboard.

It is even worse - the lifeboats they had were lowered when they weren't full (usually 50-60% capaciy).

Yeah, I remember that. I watched a special once on the Titanic that dealt with the design phase. I think it was on the History Channel. Anyway, they went from the first blueprints to the beginning of its maiden voyage. Along the way, there was conflict between two brothers responsible for the design. One thought they had enough lifeboats, since the bare minimum had been met for the regulations. The other insisted on more, declaring that his plans went beyond the regulations. In fact, they probably made the regulations obsolete! In the end, he was over-ruled, and Titanic got the bare minimum of lifeboats to meet regulations.

The brother who protested walked off the project. I've no idea what happened to him, but he no doubt washed his hands of the entire affair. If they wanted to be fools playing with people's lives, let them. He refused to have any part of it.

I feel that, were I in the same position, I would have done the same. When the fools refuse to listen to reason, the best thing to do is walk away and leave the responsibility with them.

[...unWARP!!!]

Good evening.


I think I saw that same documentary, or if it was a slightly different one. There was a blueprint that specified the number of lifeboats required, and the number was enough for EVERYONE on board. Then an updated blueprint was found with a lower number of lifeboats.

No one knows who authorised that change.


Well, don't take my word for it. I can't remember what documentary I saw that on.


¡Zacatepóngolas!

Until next time, remember:

I

AM

THE

J.A.M. (a.k.a. Numbuh i: "Just because I'm imaginary doesn't mean I don't exist")

Good evening.

[WARP!!!]

Narnian wrote:

GrayTiger wrote:The biggest and most glaring failure of the Titanic was not carrying enough lifeboats for all. Had she being carrying full capacity every lifeboat sailing away fully loaded would have barely held 1/3 of those aboard.

It is even worse - the lifeboats they had were lowered when they weren't full (usually 50-60% capaciy).

The practice was to lower the boats partially loaded, to make it less likely to shift and spill the passengers, then once lowered they come back to take on more people. Except the boats never came back. And 50%-60% had to be an average, the most egregious lack of use was in one boat that had 14 people, and one dog, on board, in a lifeboat that was rated for 50 to 60 adults, and in the calm seas of that night could have safely been 'overloaded' to 70, just like they did in the harbor tests during construction.

Nikas_Zekeval wrote:The three big failures in the Titanic were two metallurgical, and one design. The design was that the 'water tight bulkheads' didn't go all the way up, making the hull about as watertight as an icecube tray, once the water got high enough it spilled into the area behind the bulkhead.

I think i remember reading that even with that it was still able to float with the first four of its compartments breached but (im not sure if it was the iceberg directly or some other design flaw) when they did an inspection after the collision they found water filling the first five.

BlasTech wrote:

Nikas_Zekeval wrote:The three big failures in the Titanic were two metallurgical, and one design. The design was that the 'water tight bulkheads' didn't go all the way up, making the hull about as watertight as an icecube tray, once the water got high enough it spilled into the area behind the bulkhead.

I think i remember reading that even with that it was still able to float with the first four of its compartments breached but (im not sure if it was the iceberg directly or some other design flaw) when they did an inspection after the collision they found water filling the first five.

In addition, there was no time to cast a correctly-sized rudder for the ship. Instead, they used a "stock" rudder of approximately half the required size. Just in case you ever wondered just how they could hit an iceberg.

The poor captain... he went down with his second shipwreck in a long career.

Yours truly,

The historical,

Wanderer

To harp on another theme (20/20 hindsight); I was watching the History channel and they discussed some earlier naval disasters:

The first involved a ship going down off the coast of New York with some 300 - 400 souils aboard. No one survived. Part of the reason attributed to the total loss of life was way too few lifeboats and that the crew had never been trained to properly deploy them. Regulations should have been changed, but it was written off as a "horrible tragedy" the victims were all working class, and their survivors had no political power.

The second, (about ten years prior to the Titanic, I think) involved a mid sea collision between a luxury liner and a freighter. Both ships were lost, but due to the heroic efforts of the telegraph operator and the nearness of several ships only two lives were lost. The telegraph operator was lauded as a hero, but he was far more skeptical. If the rescue ships hadn't been nearby, or if his ship had sank faster, there were again, not enough lifeboats to hold all passangers and crew of both ships.

His warnings fell on deaf ears. "Aid is only a distress call away!" Wireless travels at the speed of light, not steamships. He was proven right when the Titanic disaster struck. Legal reform would happen now that several hundred of European and American social elites were feeding fish in a most undesirable fashion.

I'm not a big fan of doomsayers, but...