RMS Titanic sinking

[Guardsman Bass]

Titanic exceeded the requirements of all safety regulations of the time. The problem is the regulations had simply not been updated to account for the fact that liner displacements had quadrupled in less then 20 years.

Yep. If the book I have is right (Titanic: An Illustrated History by Don Lynch), British Board of Trade regulations required that any boat over 10,000 tons required a minimum of 16 lifeboats with at least 5,500 cubic feet of space. Meaning, of course, that the Titanic was only required to carry lifeboats enough for 962, which they went beyond by adding 4 additional boats.

True, but don't forget people will remember this disaster, and now the company has suddenly lost lots of customers

Avoiding that was one of the un-stated goals of the British Board of Trade investigation after the event (although it did result in some long-overdue reforms, like additional lifeboat requirements). It's part of the reason why they came down so hard on the Californian and its captain.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Actually we very much could say with a high degree of certainty, if anyone had the turning radius-speed curves for Titanic around. I am sure they exist somewhere unless the Harland and Wolf archives burned in WW2, as she ran complete sea trials and these did include turning trials. An agile ship Titanic was not because of the undersized rudder, but we know for a fact she was not commanded in a way to optimize her turning radius because of the order to reverse engines. The nature of the damage strongly suggests that even another 10-20 feet of clearance would have been enough to avoid impact.

Ask and ye shall receive.

[General Trelane (Retired)]

Ask and ye shall receive.

Thanks for posting that link. It made for a compelling read, and it's interesting to compare a snippet from Halpern to a snippet from Collins:

If the Titanic, travelling at full speed ahead, had hit an iceberg, the force of the impact would have been equal to a momentum of 52,310 tons displacement moving at 37 feet per second. The kinetic energy of the impact would have been enormous. A major part of this energy would have been absorbed almost instantly by the destruction of the ship's hull.

The total loss of energy by the ship during the initial contact with the iceberg was very small, only 31,540,000 ft-lbs compared to 2,070,000,000 ft-lbs of total kinetic energy before collision. That is a loss of about 1.5% due to the crushing of ship structure. The ship's speed immediately after the impact was not significantly reduced, and only a very small sway component and an extra rotational component was imparted. All this matches well with the many eyewitness accounts that the collision was barely perceptible.

One of these two is way out of their league, and it's not Halpern.

[Captain Seafort]

One of these two is way out of their league, and it's not Halpern.

Collins, in that sentence, wasn't talking about what happened - he was talking about what would have happened had the stern pivoted hard into the berg according to his theory. The likelihood of that happening has been demonstrated above to be much less than he believes, but I object to the strawman that they're both talking about the same event.

[Isolder74]

One of these two is way out of their league, and it's not Halpern.

Collins, in that sentence, wasn't talking about what happened - he was talking about what would have happened had the stern pivoted hard into the berg according to his theory. The likelihood of that happening has been demonstrated above to be much less than he believes, but I object to the strawman that they're both talking about the same event.

Please explain to me how comparing the explanations of the physics of the collision is a strawman. A strawman is an argument unrelated to the topic that throws attention away from the real point. Seeing that the point that was being made was that Collins is clearly not understanding the physics of the situation and is hoping that his reader doesn't as well in order to make his point. As such your calling it a strawman is clear evidence that you don't know what a strawman is.

It also further invalidates the logic that is being used by Collins to justify his theory on the events of the night. The paper clearly shows that not only did the ship behave as it was described to have done by the survivors it pretty much is only going to behave that way.

[Captain Seafort]

Please explain to me how comparing the explanations of the physics of the collision is a strawman.

Your source refers to the bow impact. Collins probably underestimated the recoil from that impact and referred to the entire starboard hull hitting the berg while swinging towards it (not away from it as the bow was). This is not a difficult concept to grasp.

[Isolder74]

Please explain to me how comparing the explanations of the physics of the collision is a strawman.

Your source refers to the bow impact. Collins probably underestimated the recoil from that impact and referred to the entire starboard hull hitting the berg while swinging towards it (not away from it as the bow was). This is not a difficult concept to grasp.

As a comparison of their grasp of physics, it is completely relevant. It shows he doesn't really know what he is talking about.

[General Trelane (Retired)]

One of these two is way out of their league, and it's not Halpern.

Collins, in that sentence, wasn't talking about what happened - he was talking about what would have happened had the stern pivoted hard into the berg according to his theory. The likelihood of that happening has been demonstrated above to be much less than he believes, but I object to the strawman that they're both talking about the same event.

In addition to Isolder's cogent rebuttal, I'll add that one did the math and the other didn't. Drastically different leagues.

[CJvR]

An intresting comparisson of Titanic and Great Eastern.

http://www.cuug.ab.ca/~branderr/risk_es ... cture.html