RMS Titanic sinking

[Isolder74]

There were several flaws in the design of the Titanic. The biggest one was that the Watertight doors and compartments did not extend above E Deck. This allowed the compartments to leak into the next at a much lower angle then if they had extended to A deck like warships at the time required.

Many like to point fingers at the steel as being the main problem and design flaw but keep in mind that is a materials flaw not a design flaw. More to the point it was mainly the rivets that failed in the impact zone.

On the topic of it being pack ice that they hit, it was definitely an Ice berg. From multiple sources then Iceberg is documented. Also the berg that they hit was what is often called a black berg. That is an Iceberg that had recently turned over exposing the blueish waterlogged ice making it appear dark at night.

Having a larger rudder would not have helped as many others have pointed out would have resulted in the damage having been inflicted more aft then historically and therefore resulting in a faster sinking and possibly more damage and listing. Any turn at the distance the berg was spotted would mean a collision as the berg(at 100 yards) was unavoidable.

The Proper response should have been lock rudder ahead, full reverse. That would have resulted in less damage.

[Captain Seafort]

How does he explain the iceberg spotted by a German liner in the vicinity with the paint at its base?

That it wasn't paint - it simply doesn't stick to ice for that long, if at all. Since the berg would have passed through a mass seal cull a month earlier the red discolouration was probably blood.

And how does he explain the eye-witness accounts of an iceberg sliding alongside the ship?

As I said before, it was impossible for the ship to simply pass alongside the berg without contact - it would have been smashed against it. The apparent height of the ice was due to the optical illusion I described - the eyewitness you mention was QM Rowe.

And the deck littered with ice? Were those just imaginations as well?

As the ship passed through the ice the pack broke, and the inward edge of the slabs were submerged (effectively the ship drove over them). This caused the outer edge to be flipped upwards, tossing any ice that was lying loose on top of the pack into the well deck. There wasn't much of it from the testimony of the crew and officers - far from the great heaps of ice some people apparently described. If it had been broken off a berg then there should have been damage to the ship above the waterline where the lumps were knocked off. There was none.

[Captain Seafort]

From multiple sources then Iceberg is documented.

Three sources, AFAIK - the two lookouts and Rowe. I've already explained how their descriptions of 60 or 100-foot tall icebergs are consistent with optical illusions created by the conditions, and that the damage the ship would have suffered if it had hit a berg would have been enough to sink her within minutes.

The Proper response should have been lock rudder ahead, full reverse. That would have resulted in less damage.

Agreed - it would have spread the impact across port and starboard bow plates, pushed through the ice and kept going. It was putting the full force of the entry impact on the starboard plates that did for her.

[Lord Relvenous]

So, to my layman's understanding, hitting the ice (of whatever nature) head on would have only opened the hull in only one watertight chamber, meaning the height of the watertight sections wouldn't have mattered, as the bow would not have dipped low enough for the water to spill over into the next compartment. Is this correct?

How would the Titanic pushed through packed ice though? She wasn't designed as an icebreaker, AKAIK. Wouldn't trying to have pushed through caused enough damage to sink her?

[Captain Seafort]

So, to my layman's understanding, hitting the ice (of whatever nature) head on would have only opened the hull in only one watertight chamber, meaning the height of the watertight sections wouldn't have mattered, as the bow would not have dipped low enough for the water to spill over into the next compartment. Is this correct?

Basically, yes

How would the Titanic pushed through packed ice though? She wasn't designed as an icebreaker, AKAIK. Wouldn't trying to have pushed through caused enough damage to sink her?

No. She'd certainly have suffered damage, probably enough to flood the forward compartment(s), but the damage wouldn't have extended far enough aft to sink her. The problem was that by entering at an angle she put a lot more strain on the starboard plates than would have been the case had she gone in square, and also caused the damage to extend beyond the fourth compartment (which was the limit of her survivable damage).

[Lord Relvenous]

Yeah I get how an initial impact straight on is much better than the impact she made. What I don't get is how the Titanic could push through and keep going. If it was pack ice and not an iceberg, the Titanic would have to push through quite a lot of ice. Because her bow wasn't reinforced like an icebreaker, that would probably sink her. The first five watertight compartments would all be scraping the ice looks like, which means they all fill and the ship sinks.

Even if it can survive pushing through with some damage, after the impact the bow would be damaged and the ship taking on water. I doubt that the attitude of the crew would be "push through, it'll only damage the ship a little more". Seems more likely they would reverse off of the ice, signal their situation, and attempt repairs.

I'm not arguing that a straight impact would have been better, or that there is a possibility of pack ice, I just doubt the Titanic's ability to push through pack ice, or the willingness of the crew to due so.

[Captain Seafort]

She was going too fast to do anything else - the engines didn't have time to respond to full reverse until she was through. As for pushing through, she wouldn't have had to physically push right through the pack - the impact would have split it, and before the serious damage extended far enough aft to threaten the ship it would have been pushed away from her sides. Any that did bump her could be handled, given that even with the full force of the impact against the starboard bow the physical damage was quite slight. With the impact distributed evenly between both bow plates, and most of it absorbed by the stem bar, the damage would have been limited to the first compartment or two. You have to remember that this is a fairly small strip of pack ice we're talking about, nothing close to the size of the sheets that Arctic or Antarctic icebreakers have to force their way through.

[Lord Relvenous]

And now I know. Thanks, that explains it.

[Crossroads Inc.]

I've heard for quite some time that if the Titanic had done a combination of Full Reverse mixed with going straight TOWARD the iceberg would have saved it.

The Full Reverse wouldn't have stopped it, but slowed down its forward momentum enough to reduce the damage when it hit the berg. By going forward instead of turning, the impact would have been localized only to the front of the ship instead of all along the side like it was.

[Ziggy Stardust]

That it wasn't paint - it simply doesn't stick to ice for that long, if at all. Since the berg would have passed through a mass seal cull a month earlier the red discolouration was probably blood.

Paint is going to stick to ice longer than blood. Hell, blood that's been exposed to air for a month won't even be the color red. Furthermore, the Minia also reported wreckage and bodies in the vicinity of the iceberg.

Also, the type of optical illusion you mention does not necessarily point to pack ice. Indeed, the iceberg that the Minia found was really lower in the water, and could easily have created the same type of illusion.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

There was an iceberg, and I take considerable excepton to the idea that there wasn't. Collins' basic argument, that an iceberg would have ripped the entire ship open due to contnued swinging by the helm, completely ignores serious collision dynamics. The Iceberg's course will be changed by the impact with the ship. Remember that the iceberg's kinetic energy is going to be dictated by a drift speed of only a few knots, the ship was making close to 20 knots at the time of impact. Kinetic energy is primarily dictated by velocity, not mass. The iceberg may be huge, but the ocean liner will also be imparting a considerable degree of motion into the iceberg. But so will the iceberg... So just think about it for a moment, it's like billiard balls, your collision dynamic is that the impact of the Titanic against the iceberg drives the iceberg on a slightly different course, and it is also going to displace the ship to port. In short it's exactly the same sort of thing which happens when you ram up against a dock; the dock sure as hell doesn't move but the ship is recoilled back. Well, in this case the iceberg is moving too, if very slightly.

The iceberg was found and documented with paint on it (pictures exist, sheesh) and the fact that icebergs were monitored and tracked extensively in years to come whereas pack ice is a very minor phenomenon in that area of the North Atlantic argues for the principle of parsimony to confirm the generally established story. Collins' book is sensationalist because the idea that the stern will continue to turn to starboard and scrape along the iceberg ignores how the movement arcs and vectors of both the iceberg and the ship are going to change, and when the contact was so insubstantial to begin with, that is quite sufficient to make the stern miss the iceberg.

Also, and most importantly, I'll add that the general consensus is that a small portion of the iceberg underwater was what dealt the fatal blow.... And it might easily have broken off, since it is a protrusion which would have most of the force of the collision concentrated on it. If it broke off, the distance the stern would have to skew to starboard in the turn is even greater before contact would be resumed with the iceberg, and at that point the ship would have lost a fair bit of momentum anyway.

And finally, "haze" is one of the most generic words for a vast variety of effects in different atmospheric conditions as could be possible. What kind did he specifically say wasn't possible?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

On a completely unrelated note, I'd like to add that the steel brittleness issues which contributed to the sinking of the Titanic were actually only discovered during the Liberty Ship programme in WW2 when, in combination with welded hulls, they led to some major hull fractures.



This being an example of a tanker from the major Portland/Vanport wartime shipyard. It was discovered by British metallurgist Constance Tipper when investigating major hull fractures including loss of ships with lives. These happened on 12 occasions to the early war mass production designs, and one result was the replacement of the Liberty Ship with the far better Victory Ship which was designed in part to mitigate the problem, since she proved it wasn't due to poor weld quality but due to the cold water critical temperature at which the steel was changing from ductile to brittle and, due to the welding, the cracks formed under stress in those conditions could then spread on a very large scale through the hull structure.

[erik_t]

Momentum is conserved when two objects collide. Kinetic energy is not. This is not a minor point.

[Isolder74]

I find it hilarious that this guy is only using one very sensational source.

As a big Titanic buff and history enthusiast, I have a large collection of books on the Titanic including transcripts of the hearings on the sinking. When I said multiple sources reported an iceberg I wasn't talking about Titanic sources but other ships that took part in the rescue. My multiple sources for it being an iceberg include, the Carpathia, the California and others that took part in the rescue operation all that noted the multiple icebergs, and likely suspects, in the vicinity of the debris field. The water was glass still that night so don't dare say the ice moved away!

One nail in any pack ice theory is the lifeboats themselves. If there had been any pack ice they would have been quickly inundated in it before the rescue ships arrived. They only had people propulsion!

Sadly I can't go into citing all my sources and quoting them as all my books are in a box somewhere.

[Ziggy Stardust]

The iceberg was found and documented with paint on it (pictures exist, sheesh) and the fact that icebergs were monitored and tracked extensively in years to come whereas pack ice is a very minor phenomenon in that area of the North Atlantic argues for the principle of parsimony to confirm the generally established story.

I agree with you on all points, though I must point out in all fairness that there WAS pack ice reported in the vicinity. The last ice warning received by the Titanic before it hit the 'berg did warn about "heavy pack ice." I am not trying to refute your point, because the collision was incontrovertibly caused by an iceberg, I am just bringing this argument up before Captain Seafort does.

[Sea Skimmer]

Titanic would have been saved if the order been given only to reverse the port screw, instead of reversing both port and stardboard screws while the centerline shaft, which could not reverse, was left to feather. This lack of forward power reduced her turning rate, and given that the iceberg was almost barely avoided anyway, it would have been easy for that extra thrust to have been enough to steer her clear.

Deliberately plowing into the iceberg head on might have saved her, but its hardly a good idea to do. Since only two engines could reverse, and and did not shift from all ahead to all reverse quickly (remember these are big reciprocating engines with tremendous mass that must be stopped and then reversed) the breaking effects would have been minimal. Meanwhile the massive force of a head on impact would make the entire ships hull want to telescope. The shock of such a hit could have made the bow break off, and might have caused shock damage and bending along most of the ships length. Said damage could open up flooding paths, and leave Titanic to sink the exact same way she did anyway. So no one on the bridge would have ever adapted that strategy when it still looked like they had a chance of turning.

The design was flawed from the onset because designers were forbidden to raise the watertight bulkheads above E deck as they had wanted to do. The double bottom also could have been extended higher as a double hull. However the reality is that the flooding standard Titanic had is still largely used today. First four compartments, or any two main machinery compartments. The latter two units had enormously extended bulkheads to allow for five forward compartments to flood, but that isn't typical nor that useful because of the large number of hatches in the bulkheads. The main defense for ships today is far more pumping capacity per ton of displacement. With latter specifications Titanic would have been simply able to pump herself afloat, and maybe even gotten back underway.

In the end everyone could have been saved on Titanic anyway even after the iceberg was hit. The solution was simple, counter flood the stern and double bottom tanks. This was not done because counter flooding was not an idea anyone really trained to do at the time, and even in warships it was a novel concept. Counter flooding might not have have saved her from sinking outright, but it would have delayed sinking long enough for Carpathia to show up.

[Captain Seafort]

Paint is going to stick to ice longer than blood.

Depends, I suppose on how much paint and how much blood your talking about - the seal cull was huge, involving hundreds of thousands of animals. The more blood is in the water, the more discolours the berg and the longer (I presume) it stays put.

Hell, blood that's been exposed to air for a month won't even be the color red.

Furthermore, the Minia also reported wreckage and bodies in the vicinity of the iceberg.

The Titanic had just sunk in the area - of course there's going to be wreckage and bodies around.

Also, the type of optical illusion you mention does not necessarily point to pack ice.

It does, however, show that eyewitness accounts of 60- or 100-foot high icebergs are unreliable.

[Captain Seafort]

There was an iceberg, and I take considerable excepton to the idea that there wasn't. Collins' basic argument, that an iceberg would have ripped the entire ship open due to contnued swinging by the helm, completely ignores serious collision dynamics. The Iceberg's course will be changed by the impact with the ship. Remember that the iceberg's kinetic energy is going to be dictated by a drift speed of only a few knots, the ship was making close to 20 knots at the time of impact. Kinetic energy is primarily dictated by velocity, not mass. The iceberg may be huge, but the ocean liner will also be imparting a considerable degree of motion into the iceberg. But so will the iceberg... So just think about it for a moment, it's like billiard balls, your collision dynamic is that the impact of the Titanic against the iceberg drives the iceberg on a slightly different course, and it is also going to displace the ship to port. In short it's exactly the same sort of thing which happens when you ram up against a dock; the dock sure as hell doesn't move but the ship is recoilled back. Well, in this case the iceberg is moving too, if very slightly.

So, just to make sure I understand this correctly, is your argument that an impact on the starboard bow would push the berg away from the ship as fast or faster that the portion of the ship abaft the bridge would be swinging round towards the berg? Wouldn't the considerable area of the berg beneath the surface have produced a great deal of drag, and substantially reduced the recoil you'd expect from modelling the two objects as particles, while the ship's streamlined and far smaller underwater profile would not have acted in the same way?

The iceberg was found and documented with paint on it (pictures exist, sheesh)

An iceberg was spotted with discolouration around the base, if I understand the descriptions correctly. Collins specific statement is that "paint does not adhere for any length of time to ice", and suggests that the discolouration was more likely to be due to passing through the culling areas off Newfoundland.

Collins' book is sensationalist because the idea that the stern will continue to turn to starboard and scrape along the iceberg ignores how the movement arcs and vectors of both the iceberg and the ship are going to change, and when the contact was so insubstantial to begin with, that is quite sufficient to make the stern miss the iceberg.

Surely the fact that the contact was insubstantial would mean the momentum transfer was likewise insubstantial, causing the berg to repeatedly strike the starboard side (although perhaps not with the force my earlier description implied).

And finally, "haze" is one of the most generic words for a vast variety of effects in different atmospheric conditions as could be possible. What kind did he specifically say wasn't possible?

He did not - he simply noted that the lookouts saw a shadow lying across the horizon, and that the weather conditions - perfectly clear, fine and cold precluded any likelihood of it, going on to state that no other haze was observed by anyone else on the night.

[Captain Seafort]

When I said multiple sources reported an iceberg I wasn't talking about Titanic sources but other ships that took part in the rescue.

None of whom saw the impact. They simply turned up, saw icebergs, and had Titanic's distress signal that she'd hit a berg.

The water was glass still that night so don't dare say the ice moved away!

I'm not - although it's likely the Titanic herself moved away before came to a full stop.

One nail in any pack ice theory is the lifeboats themselves. If there had been any pack ice they would have been quickly inundated in it before the rescue ships arrived. They only had people propulsion!

Why? I'm not talking about a huge field of the stuff, but a fairly small, narrow strip of it. The Titanic passed completely through it and stopped some distance out the far side.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Momentum is conserved when two objects collide. Kinetic energy is not. This is not a minor point.

Quite, and I shouldn't have written that when I was about to go to bed, it came out very discombobulated. The end result of the collision is still going to be substantial displacement from the original course of the Titanic, however. General behaviour here is all we can really talk about, since we don't know the drift speed or mass of the iceberg.

[Thanas]

Why? I'm not talking about a huge field of the stuff, but a fairly small, narrow strip of it. The Titanic passed completely through it and stopped some distance out the far side.

If it passed through it, why was only one side damaged? Why do reports exist of ice littering the deck of the titanic? Why was an iceberg with the paint scheme of the titanic photographed?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

So, just to make sure I understand this correctly, is your argument that an impact on the starboard bow would push the berg away from the ship as fast or faster that the portion of the ship abaft the bridge would be swinging round towards the berg? Wouldn't the considerable area of the berg beneath the surface have produced a great deal of drag, and substantially reduced the recoil you'd expect from modelling the two objects as particles, while the ship's streamlined and far smaller underwater profile would not have acted in the same way?

Push the ship away from the berg. Have you ever been on a ferry landing at dock? I have, several hundred times, and each time it's just a collision, one damped by rubber bumpers but a collision nonetheless, and oftentimes you're substantially recoilled to port or starboard or aft depending on where you hit and at what angle. Remember that the penetration into the hull was something that's best measured in inches. It would not take a lot for the iceberg to miss the ship, especially since we don't know the drift direction of the iceberg or speed. The iceberg won't be moving much at all due to the collision, it's true, and honestly I could have damn near dropped that point. The ship's speed and direction after impact is far more important, as is the original drift speed of the iceberg before the collision.

An iceberg was spotted with discolouration around the base, if I understand the descriptions correctly. Collins specific statement is that "paint does not adhere for any length of time to ice", and suggests that the discolouration was more likely to be due to passing through the culling areas off Newfoundland.

Paint doesn't adhere to ice because the surface of the ice melts in the sunlight even as the rest of the 'berg remains solid. If the area the paint was on was shaded by other portions of the iceberg, the paint would still be there.

Surely the fact that the contact was insubstantial would mean the momentum transfer was likewise insubstantial, causing the berg to repeatedly strike the starboard side (although perhaps not with the force my earlier description implied).

Not necessarily. The direction of velocity of the iceberg's drift is also crucial, and again, I have seen a four thousand tonne object recoil by a couple dozen feet--I've been on it when it happened--after striking a solid fixed object. And note that such an impact entails no damage whatsoever. Also the ship's velocity will be substantially less than before. She is slowing down, she is losing velocity from turning, and then she will lose more from the impact. She will both recoil and no longer be contributing nearly as much energy into later impacts, should they occur.

He did not - he simply noted that the lookouts saw a shadow lying across the horizon, and that the weather conditions - perfectly clear, fine and cold precluded any likelihood of it, going on to state that no other haze was observed by anyone else on the night.

So there's really no good answer there, okay.


Now, here's the biggest point--does he have any answer for what would happen if part of the iceberg broke/sheered off in the collision? Because if as is generally agreed a spur of the iceberg underwater is dragging along the hull, there's going to be a lot of potential for that spur cracking.


And finally, does he ever provide a satisfactory explanation for why this supposed floating sheet of pack ice didn't hamper the handling of the lifeboats in the water? Because under those conditions its drift would not be at a very great speed whatsoever.

[Isolder74]

When I said multiple sources reported an iceberg I wasn't talking about Titanic sources but other ships that took part in the rescue.

None of whom saw the impact. They simply turned up, saw icebergs, and had Titanic's distress signal that she'd hit a berg.

The water was glass still that night so don't dare say the ice moved away!

I'm not - although it's likely the Titanic herself moved away before came to a full stop.

One nail in any pack ice theory is the lifeboats themselves. If there had been any pack ice they would have been quickly inundated in it before the rescue ships arrived. They only had people propulsion!

Why? I'm not talking about a huge field of the stuff, but a fairly small, narrow strip of it. The Titanic passed completely through it and stopped some distance out the far side.

Immaterial. If pack ice thick enough to have caused the damage was present they WOULD have reported it. They did not. Not being present at the time of collision does not negate their observations? Did your magic pack ice melt before they arrived?

As others have said already, if the Titanic had plowed through an ice pack large enough to do said damage then both sides would have been damaged rather the documented Starboard side only. Since it was turning as they hit it, after stopping should have been on their Starboard side. Lightoller also spoke of an iceberg nearby an how it was off the starboard while lifeboats where being loaded and launched.

Glass smooth water means that there is NO current to move the ice away from the impact area making it so that the offending Iceberg was right there when rescuers arrived. If Pack ice was present the debris from the sinking and the lifeboats themselves would have been quickly inundated with them narrow strip or not. The rescue ships spent a good part of a day retrieving bodies. They did not report any pack ice.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Depends, I suppose on how much paint and how much blood your talking about - the seal cull was huge, involving hundreds of thousands of animals. The more blood is in the water, the more discolours the berg and the longer (I presume) it stays put.

You must be joking. You yourself noted that the cull was months before the Titanic disaster. First off, seals don't live on icebergs, and thus won't be killed on them. Second, even hundreds of thousands of animals being killed isn't going to stain all of Baffin Bay red. Third, even if blood did get onto the iceberg in the first place, it is going to lose almost 90% of its mass due to melting and breaking before it reaches the North Atlantic shipping routes. How on earth is the blood going to avoid exposure to sea water and melting over the course of several months (I also like how you ignored my point that blood doesn't look red anymore when it is more than a few minutes or hours old; it looks dark brown)? And how is blood a more likely scenario then paint (which won't last long, sure, but it is more likely to last the several hours that elapsed between the sinking and the sighting than the blood will)?

It does, however, show that eyewitness accounts of 60- or 100-foot high icebergs are unreliable.

So? How does this prove that pack ice is responsible and not, say, a smaller ice berg? Note that the ice berg found by the Minia was around 40 to 50 feet high ... less than the eyewitness accounts. Again, why does this type of optical distortion necessarily point to pack ice?

[Thanas]

Here is a link to the photo, showing the red smear: link.

How would blood be that consistent and thick after exposure, as said by Ziggy Stardust?