Build the Titanic!

[CJvR]

Going into reverse was the probable cause of the accident in the first place. Had full ahead been maintained the ship would have turned more quickly and almost certainly completely avoided the iceberg given how glancing the blow already was.

IIRC at best they could have started slowing to reverse the reciprocating engines before striking. There was no way they could have thrown the engines in reverse in the time allowed even if the machine telegraph was hit the moment the alert arrived at the bridge and was noticed instantly in the engine room.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Well, it's still going ahead. Last week's update:
Titanic 2: Mixed reaction at Southampton launch event

The building of a replica of the ill-fated Titanic has received a mixed reaction at a launch event in Southampton.

The man behind the project, Clive Palmer, was absent from the event in the building which was formerly the Southern Western Hotel.

But invited local guests watched a video presentation as they ate a breakfast based on Titanic's menu - featuring soda and sultana scones, Parma ham and lamb collops.

Briefings about Titanic 2 plans have already been held around the world, but this is surely the most emotive location.

Just a few hundred metres away is the quayside from where the original Titanic slipped her moorings for its maiden voyage in April 1912.

The hotel was where many of the first-class passengers stayed before embarking.

Mr Palmer, an Australian mining billionaire, is not short of either cash or slogans.

He promises "a ship where dreams will come true", "a class above any ship in the world", to "rebuild a legend" and to "set sail on our own sea".

He laid out the plans for a faithful copy of the Belfast-built original to be constructed in a Chinese shipyard.

It is being constructed at a shipyard in China. Work is due to start in the next few months.

'Irish jig'

Mr Palmer said 40,000 people had already registered for tickets on the first voyage, which will "complete the journey" of those who left Southampton in 1912.

Clive Palmer made his fortune in mining
More than 540 people from the city were among the 1,517 who perished when the liner hit an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic.

The Titanic 2 brochure promises an "authentic Titanic experience" with the ship including the grand staircase, reading room and Turkish bath.

Key differences from the original include air conditioning, a hospital, helicopter landing pad - and most notably, a modern quota of lifeboats.

As with the original, there will be first, second and third classes of passenger and they will not be allowed to mingle. Ticket prices are yet to be revealed.

Mr Palmer he insists he will travel in third class for "the human experience".

"To have a bit of Irish stew, to grab a fiddle and a drum and do an Irish jig - what more could a man want than that?" he said.

The scale of the loss in Southampton was felt for generations and families with Titanic connections have mixed feelings about the plans for a re-creation.

'Painful stories'

Dave Fredericks whose great grandfather Walter survived the disaster, said he was "not convinced".

"It was a maritime disaster which affected this city and although there are no survivors left, there are stories passed down and those are quite painful.

"Dressing up as characters who perished is distasteful."

Dave Fredericks and Mary South had ancestors on Titanic
However Mary South whose grandfather, a first class steward also died, admitted she was "warming" to Titanic 2.

"With the centenary everything was a bit raw in Southampton, but now I'm beginning to think it would be nice to hark back to see what travelling was really like at that time.

"The thought of seeing such an iconic silhouette back in Southampton will be quite something."

There is undoubtedly enduring interest in the Titanic story - Belfast and Southampton both opened museums dedicated to the liner during the centenary year.

For council leader Richard Williams the project is "really exciting" and a chance raise the city's profile.

"It keeps the focus on the city in a world market and that's really important for the cruise industry but also the wider economy.

"I hope the way it develops is respectful to the memory of the people from the city who were lost. There is still that personal feeling of loss here - it's important there is a balance there."

Mr Palmer dismisses accusations the project is in bad taste.

"It's in good taste - I respect all those people who were lost, they are still contributing today to an ideal.

"We will take up the torch and we will complete the journey," he said.

There may still be scepticism and questions over taste, but if the distinctive four funnels of Titanic 2 steam out of Southampton Water in 2016 as planned, the world will certainly be watching.

Source 1

It looks like the Titanic. It is meant to feel like the Titanic. But the Australian billionaire who on Tuesday unveiled blueprints for a successor ship to the doomed ocean liner is confident his dream project will not sink like the Titanic.

At a news conference in New York, mining tycoon Clive Palmer said his ambitious plans to launch a copy of the Titanic and sail her across the Atlantic would be a tribute to those who built and backed the original.

“We will complete the journey. We will sail into New York on the ship they designed,” he said at the event being held inside the Intrepid aircraft carrier that is now a museum in the city.

But Palmer, a jovial and brash mogul who likes to style himself "professor", refused to be drawn into predicting that his new boat would be “unsinkable” – and thus avoided repeating an act of hubris that the backers of the first Titanic famously made. “Anything will sink if you put a hole in it,” Palmer admitted of Titanic II. But he joked that due to global warming the risks of travelling through the waters near the Arctic circle had lessened considerably. “There are not so many icebergs in the North Atlantic these days,” he said.

But the main designer of the new ship, Markku Kanerva, did skirt the line of giving the project a small hostage to fortune. “I can assure you, from the safety point of view, it will be absolutely the most safe cruise ship in the world when it is launched,” he said.

The outline of Titanic II is an almost exact match to the original ship, which struck an iceberg and sank on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York in 1912. That means its silhouette as it travels across the waves will be virtually indistinguishable from the first ship, complete with four rear-slanted funnels.

Titanic II is set for launch in 2016 and will mostly mimic the same route from Europe to Americas. Already 40,000 applications have been submitted to be part of the maiden voyage in what is surely a triumph of hope over experience – and a sign of the clever marketing campaign that lies behind the project.

In New York a throng of journalists were treated to a video presentation of the Titanic II, set to soaring and jaunty music and animated images of guests aboard the new vessel decked out in Edwardian splendour and looking like extras from Downton Abbey, the hit TV series – which opened with news breaking of the first Titanic’s dreadful fate. Palmer said that guests aboard the new ship would have the option of wearing period costume.
Australian tycoon Clive Palmer talks about his plan for building a successor to the Titanic. Photograph: Don EmmertaAFP/Getty Images
Perhaps nervous about the idea of reminding people of the suffering and agony of the world’s most famous maritime disaster, Palmer was careful to bring out a descendant of a Titanic survivor to endorse the project. Helen Benziger was a granddaughter of Molly Brown, a socialite who became famous for persuading a lifeboat to turn around and search for survivors. She heartily backed the new venture. “Bringing this ship back? I don’t know the words,” she said. “It is a chance to go back in time.”

But the Titanic II itself will be – hopefully – less prone to sinking in such dramatic fashion. It will have a crew of 900 looking after some 2,435 passengers. Just like the original Titanic the new craft will boast a Turkish Baths, a smoking room, a grand staircase and a gymnasium. It is even split into three different classes, replicating the original ship where poor immigrants took steerage while the highest echelons of Edwardian society enjoyed luxury in first class. Palmer said the guests would be segregated into the different classes just like on the Titanic, though he claimed he wanted to journey in steerage because – just like in James Cameron’s movie Titanic – that was where the fun people would be travelling. “I will be in third class. I will enjoy it,” he claimed.

Unlike the original, however, Titanic II will feature a modern hospital, a helicopter landing pad, full air-conditioning and access to high-speed internet. Also, unlike the first ship, it has more than enough lifeboats and evacuation equipment for all passengers and crew should the unthinkable happen and history repeat itself. It was a point that Palmer was careful to dwell on. “They are very safe,” he said of the fleet of lifeboats that Titanic II will carry. “They are modernised. They are enclosed. You could go around the world in them,” he said.
The third-class dining room on the Titanic II, as illustrated in a computer-generated picture. Image: Blue Star LineAn image of the grand staircase in the Titanic II, a successor to the doomed cruise ship, due to launch in 2016. Image: Blue Star Line
In another departure from the original story the Titanic II is being built, not in the proud boatyards of Belfast, but in the Jinling shipyard in China. However, just as the Titanic was seen as a symbol of the power of British imperialism and the height of early twentieth-century modernism, perhaps being manufactured just outside Nanjing is an equally apt metaphor for how times have changed in just over 100 years.

Palmer said that there was huge demand for the Titanic II’s maiden voyage. He said more than a dozen eager customers offering to pay up to a million dollars to snag a first class cabin. But he was less eager to reveal details of the cost of building the ship. Palmer founded Blue Star Line just to build the boat and he has ploughed part of his own fortune into it. “I’ve got enough money to pay for it,” he said when asked if he needed to borrow to raise funds. “Cost is not what it is all about.”

It is also just the latest in a long series of unusual ventures that the Australian businessman has taken on. Though he is a major player in the mining industry, Palmer also owns golf courses and vacation resorts. Previously he has entertained the idea of building Zeppelin airships. His lavish lifestyle includes 100 vintage cars, 150 race horses, five private jets and a large collection of dinosaur fossils. But Palmer shook off criticism that Titanic II seemed like a personal vanity project rather than a solid business idea. “What’s eccentric about building a ship?” he said.

Source 2

[Scrib]

Calling it Titanic II though? This is just tempting fate.

The Titanic didn't sink because someone called it unsinkable, it sank because it crashed into an iceberg. It only tempts fate if you share in that sort of magical thinking.

Well, it is tempting fate in the sense that, if it sinks, we will never hear the end of it. The "magical thinkers" will crow for all fucking eternity.

[Sea Skimmer]

You can find an awful lot of ship names that have been reused multiple times, and sunk multiple times for that matter, I can't put the words too it at the moment but I believe at least one RN name has been sunk four times. With warships its considered an honor to launch a new one after one gets lost, not really different with merchants, its just less likely to occur.

Titanic got so much attention not just because she was so high profile in general, but because seafaring was only just then getting into a regular routine of major ships sinking at sea from accidents and storms all the freaking time not being, well, routine. 30 years earlier nobody would have batted an eye at a liner going down with almost everyone.

[Thanas]

Regarding the full ahead option - If avoiding the iceberg, wouldn't going full ahead make that a bit harder, considering the ship's speed?

Another possibility I have heard is that Murdoch attempted a port-around maneuver.

[Sea Skimmer]

That actually gets involved with the ships specific rudder and hull configuration and if it was optimized for producing rapid initial turning movement, minimal loss of speed in a turn or minimal turning circle. Generally though more speed will produce actual turning movement sooner and in larger amounts then less speed. We know Titanic had a undersized rudder for her size, and generally rudder design was still in its infancy at the time so the ship may actually have been optimized for nothing. Turning trials were carried with Olympic after the sinking, but I know nothing of the exact results.

As for porting around, sounds plausible, but I'd want to see more of the original documents the guy is drawing on before forming much more of a opinion on it. It may well have been the case that a hit could not be avoided, in which case a solid bow on impact was by far the best option, though one would then expected hundreds of people with broken bones and a trip to New York steaming astern at seven knots. Any damage further aft was was very dangerous for Titanic, as it is for any modern ship. Four bow compartments could flood, but only two main compartments. This is still the design standard for modern ships including Costa Concordia. Too bad she had random as yet unexplained leaks into four, even though only two flooded initially.

Ironically Olympic and Britannic as rebuilt post Titanic were much safer then any modern liner. They could take six bow compartments flooding, and the engine and boiler spaces were given double hulls without (as is now done on oil tankers) thinning out the outer hull, which otherwise leads to no real increase in protection against anything but the most minor hits, and less protection against a lot of other things. But hey, environmentalists feel happy. Ugh.

[dragon]

ok what would be so special cruise liners are already bigger than the Titanic was.
Titanic 46,000 tons, 882 ft, 92 ft beam while Allure of the Seas by Royal Caribbean is 225,000 tons, 1181 ft with 154 beam. And it's faster to.
The Costa Concordia, Queen Mary 2 and many more are also bigger.

link

So

[Thanas]

I wish they would rebuilt some of the classic liners of the 30s. I always loved the lines of the Bremen or the Normandie.

Also dragon, you are kinda missing the point. The allure of the myth is the selling point, not the size of the ship.

[Flagg]

Ok, I only read the OP and it's probably been said in some form but I'm compelled to add:

Only a brainless rich twat who deserves to have his fortune confiscated by the government and given an allowance would build a boat based on a vessel whose one claim to fame is sinking on it's first trip out and killing 3/4 of the people on it. Then again, most of the people who died were the poor ones in the bowels of the ship, so maybe it's a tribute to class warfare?

[Zaune]

Actually, there was a story int he Telegraph about six months ago about some numbnuts in Kent who named his 16 ft yacht thingy Titanic II. True to form it sprang a leak and sank before he made it out of Dover harbour.

You got a link for that?

[Crossroads Inc.]

I wish they would rebuilt some of the classic liners of the 30s. I always loved the lines of the Bremen or the Normandie.

Also dragon, you are kinda missing the point. The allure of the myth is the selling point, not the size of the ship.

See this I agree with... I have NO problem with someone recreating one of the 1920's "floating palaces" I would pay quite a bit to take a cruise on a ship recreated from the opulence of that time period.

I just think it is tacky using "Titanic" as a name

[Thanas]

Excuse me while I gush over these beautiful and unequalled lines..

[Skywalker_T-65]

Personally, I could care less about the Titanic name, because its the Olympic class I love, not the Titanic. Honestly, I would have preferred an Olympic II over a T2.

Though like Thanas, I wouldn't mind seeing ships like his pic too. Older liners are so much better looking than modern cruise liners.

[ray245]

I wonder how well the plan to segregate passengers based on class is going to work out. There are going to be plenty of romantics that wishes to role-play the characters in Titanic and sneak into different classes.

[montypython]

Personally I would have preferred something more like the RMS Aquitania of 1913 over the Olympic class, all things considered.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Actually, there was a story int he Telegraph about six months ago about some numbnuts in Kent who named his 16 ft yacht thingy Titanic II. True to form it sprang a leak and sank before he made it out of Dover harbour.

You got a link for that?

Behold. Turns out it was West Bay harbour in Dorset, but hey, I read the article two years ago.

[Sea Skimmer]

ok what would be so special cruise liners are already bigger than the Titanic was.
Titanic 46,000 tons, 882 ft, 92 ft beam while Allure of the Seas by Royal Caribbean is 225,000 tons, 1181 ft with 154 beam. And it's faster to.
The Costa Concordia, Queen Mary 2 and many more are also bigger.

link

So

Titanic is a little bigger then Costa Concordia as far as displacement is concerned, gross tonnage is one of the most useless measurements ever, except for implying just how dangerously unstable modern liners are and questionably calculating certain safety regulations. We could easily make Titanic 5,000 gross tons bigger just by glassing in some her her existing decks. Queen Mary II has nearly twice the gross tonnage as Queen Mary I, and yet displaces slightly less! But most modern liners on the planet are not ultra huge in the first place, as the very existence of Concordia, one of a large class, shows so this is not that important. The name is special, and the interior style would be much different then the floating amusement park approach of modern liners. You wouldn't want such a specialized ship to be huge, it'd be impossible to keep her booked in operations.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Actually, there was a story int he Telegraph about six months ago about some numbnuts in Kent who named his 16 ft yacht thingy Titanic II. True to form it sprang a leak and sank before he made it out of Dover harbour.

You got a link for that?

Behold. Turns out it was West Bay harbour in Dorset, but hey, I read the article two years ago.

To be fair it doesn't say he named it himself but got it second hand. I wonder if the £1,000 valuation was before or after it sank

[Irbis]

ok what would be so special cruise liners are already bigger than the Titanic was.

What's so special about Mercedes? Better models of, say, Volkswagen tend to be as good or better than your average Merc, yet virtually anyone will agree the latter is preferable to have even at higher price.

[Zaune]

Behold. Turns out it was West Bay harbour in Dorset, but hey, I read the article two years ago.

Yep, that's pretty much what I expected. Clapped-out piece of shit sold off for a song on eBay or in the small ads to some poor rookie who wouldn't know any better.

[fgalkin]

ok what would be so special cruise liners are already bigger than the Titanic was.

What's so special about Mercedes? Better models of, say, Volkswagen tend to be as good or better than your average Merc, yet virtually anyone will agree the latter is preferable to have even at higher price.

Good marketing?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[aieeegrunt]

I don't know about the modern Benzes but as far as the ones made pre 90's you couldn't be more wrong. Those things were absolutely the best made cars in the world and with a modicum of maintenance could easily last decades, particularly the diesels.

I had a 75 300D I found sleeping under a lean to in a conservation area, patched up the body, replaced the normal wear components/hoses and drove it for ten years. I'd be driving it now if my first wife wasn't such a cunt. The 2001 Mazda protege that replaced it went to the wreckers this year; the "fuck you" 1978 300D I got after remarrying is still going strong. There is some minor body rust starting that is needs tending to when the weather clears, and I think the glow plugs are getting weak (they're at least 15 years old), other than that, the car just keeps going.

My father sold cars his whole life, I noticed that VW was one of the few brands of cars he absolutely refused to ever own. We even had a Peugot at one point (not a bad car). My mother in law has a newish VW and I swear the thing is in the shop every week with electrical gremlins.

[fgalkin]

Modern Benzes are absolute pieces of shit. Their current model (at least for the lower-end cars) seems to be make them as cheap as possible, sell them as cheap as possible, then make the difference in repairs and maintenance as the cars basically fall apart around you over the next few years. If you want a kraut luxury car of the same class, get a Beamer. They seem to have gotten over the early computer glitches that led to things like the car shutting down and refusing to start while speeding down the highway (actually happened to a family friend in the early 2000s).

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Sleck]

The second was that the ship could not reverse very quickly, the main engine going only forward and the auxiliaries for maneuvering could only slow the ship somewhat if the main engine weren't cut first.

Wait, what? The two piston driven propellers could and did go in reverse - it was the centre propeller (which ran on exhaust steam) which could not reverse.

EDIT: After the disaster, one of the Titanic sister ships (I think the Brittanic) had the Titanic's flaws corrected, such as bringing up the bulkheads to higher decks. It didn't help - someone left a passage (the 'Fireman's tunnel') open between the firemen's quarters and engine room, letting the water past the bulkhead when the ship struck a mine. Or got hit by a torpedo.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The mere fact someone still brings up the torpedo canard about HMHS Britannic is possibly one of the most ridiculous things I've seen on this board... Which is saying a lot. I thought this had been definitely settled in, oh, about 1920?