RMS Titanic sinking

[Captain Seafort]

This guy is the RSA of the Titanic.

Not even close. The RSA of the Titanic is the guy who thinks the ship that sank on 15 April 1912 was the Olympic, which had originally been planned to be scuttled as part of an insurance scam, but collided with one of the ships prepositioned to evacuate her.

[Isolder74]

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.

I really, really dislike (and mistrust) this style of writing. He states the mass and the speed but is too lazy to work out the momentum. An enormous kinetic energy? With the mass and the speed, he can work that out too, but apparently he thinks 'enormous' is an adequate quantification of that energy. Just how much is a 'major part of this energy'? How does he justify his conclusion that a 'major part of this energy would have been absorbed almost instantly by the destruction of the ship's hull'?

Personally, this sounds like writing simply to make a buck off a pet theory. If he's serious, he really should go the extra length.

Considering L M Collins; I haven't read his book, but I found this interesting quote from Samuel Halpern summarizing some of Collins' rather bizarre theories in Encyclopedia Titanica:

There has been much speculation over the years since the discovery of the wreck to explain these positions. Some of these explanations are quite imaginative, almost bordering on the absurd. In 2002, Captain L. Marmaduke Collins suggested that Boxhall’s CQD position was correct, but it was the submerged hulk of the Titanic, still holding some buoyancy from trapped air inside, that was carried by strong underwater currents until it came to rest several miles to the east from the CQD position. Capt. Collins also believes Titanic did not strike an iceberg, but instead struck a patch of pack ice. He also believes that the ship later broke in two while on the bottom of the Atlantic from a 7.2 magnitude earthquake centered about 100 miles from the wreck site on November 18, 1929.

Collins has also contributed a few articles to ET.

The site appears to be down.

I have read the book and not only is it filled with poor science it practically ignores all of the evidence against his pet theory. The book is a convoluted self contradictory mess that was very hard to get through.

This guy is the RSA of the Titanic.

Not even close. The RSA of the Titanic is the guy who thinks the ship that sank on 15 April 1912 was the Olympic, which had originally been planned to be scuttled as part of an insurance scam, but collided with one of the ships prepositioned to evacuate her.

Actually that guy is the Ralph René(moon hoax nut) of the Titanic. You may or may not know where we are coming from when we use the term RSA.

[Captain Seafort]

You may or may not know where we are coming from when we use the term RSA.

I've run into Darkstar once or twice. I simply can't see the same degree of trouble with "the Titanic ran into pack ice" (which is at least reasonable given the evidence on hand, though Occam'd by the arguments presented above) as with "humans have metal spines and can be combat-ready after several days in a cramped fighter cockpit".

[Sky Captain]

Well, there were plenty of engineering flaws in Titanic like too low bulkheads, no longitudinal bulkheads, no watertight decks, no full double hull. Another amazing ship - Great Eastern built half a century before Titanic had all of those safety features. Great Eastern even once hit a rock causing damage similar to Titanic, but there were no serious flooding thanks to double hull. So all in all a Great Eastern was better designed ship than Titanic from safety point of view. Had the Titanic been designed similarly to Great Eastern it would still reached New York with just banged up starboard side and some flooding in space between inner and outer hull.

[Sea Skimmer]

Longitudinal bulkheads cause capsizing, they are just a plain bad idea on ships and should not be used on anything with less then 100 feet or beam and without a military crew well trained in counter flooding and damage control. Even giant CVNs don't use them though. Great Eastern had cross flooding ducts which would have reduced listing from off center flooding, but they could not stop it. Cross flooding ducts never work well anyway, and mean that by default you have extra flooding paths through watertight bulkheads which is BAD. The double hull was real nice though. Great Eastern of course was a total economic failure, in large part because the ship had to be so stupidly huge to hold all those safety features, making it a real fuel hog.

In the end safety doesn't matter if the ship doesn't even sail.

Why do people always think that safety regs are optional? Why, I ask you?

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.

[Night_stalker]

Yeah, I agree regarding the lifeboats, as White Star actually provided more than was required, but not learning from this vessel was a major oversight. Not even counting the radio operators NOT EVEN WORKING FOR WS Line, but for the wireless company, and ignoring Ice warnings up to the night of the sinking!

[Isolder74]

Yeah, I agree regarding the lifeboats, as White Star actually provided more than was required, but not learning from this vessel was a major oversight. Not even counting the radio operators NOT EVEN WORKING FOR WS Line, but for the wireless company, and ignoring Ice warnings up to the night of the sinking!

The Radio Operators not working for White Star is really a non issue.

To really be fair the entire concept of a 24 hour radio watch resulted because of the Titanic sinking. Not only was the California running with the radio off for the night, the Carpathia was about to shut its own radio off when the distress call was received. At the time it was the common practice to turn off the radio for the night.

[Night_stalker]

Yeah, but isn't it conflict of interest tp have wireless company employees running the radio? Why not have crew members who could do it without being too concerned with sending out the passenger's messages first, then deal with the ice warnings?

[fgalkin]

Yeah, but isn't it conflict of interest tp have wireless company employees running the radio? Why not have crew members who could do it without being too concerned with sending out the passenger's messages first, then deal with the ice warnings?

Because radios were fairly difficult to operate correctly, and the wireless companies could provide the necessary training to its employees? Besides, I don't see how it's a conflict of interest- the radiomen were contracted by WS, not the passengers, why would they give priority to the passengers' traffic?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Night_stalker]

Well, considering the head radio operator interupted ice warnings, telling them to get off the air, he was talking with Cape Race...

[Sky Captain]

Longitudinal bulkheads cause capsizing, they are just a plain bad idea on ships and should not be used on anything with less then 100 feet or beam and without a military crew well trained in counter flooding and damage control.

But watertight decks still is a good design feature because they allow to limit flooding to only 1 - 2 decks high instead of letting water to flood the whole section like it was in case of Titanic. If Titanic would have 3 - 4 watertight decks it would have taken less water onboard and the bow wouldn't sunk so low to let water flood over the bulkheads.

Great Eastern of course was a total economic failure, in large part because the ship had to be so stupidly huge to hold all those safety features, making it a real fuel hog.

Yeah that's pretty much true. Safety costs money and less safe ship will always be cheaper to build and operate.

[Night_stalker]

Yeah, until the ignoring safety for profit comes back to haunt you in the form of negligence lawsuits...

[Sea Skimmer]

But watertight decks still is a good design feature because they allow to limit flooding to only 1 - 2 decks high instead of letting water to flood the whole section like it was in case of Titanic. If Titanic would have 3 - 4 watertight decks it would have taken less water onboard and the bow wouldn't sunk so low to let water flood over the bulkheads.

That would be nice, but watertight decks are way easier said then done. Great Eastern might have had a water tight deck, but it also would have had horrendous conditions under it, but then that was true of about all ships of the time. You not only need the basic stability margin to make it happen, you need a way to close off every stairway, cargo hatch, pipe and ventilator quickly. Since you cannot and would not want to automate this process like Titanics existing watertight doors you now need to crew to be well drilled to do the job. You then must also install escape trunks into every compartment below so that people under the deck aren't sentenced to death. This is a huge liability since Titanic had passengers on very low decks, and they must have a secure means of escape. Warships can just cruise around with a lot of the hatches closed and only small scuttles open, this is not realistic for a passenger liner. Warships also have the advantage that everyone onboard is trained do close up the hatches . Even for all this Titanic would also remain vulnerable to what was seen as the most likely senario then ramming ice, the ship being rammed by another ship into the engine rooms. Titanic could only survive two main compartments flooding like that, and a watertight deck wont help because the machinery spaces are very tall.

Just embarking enough lifeboats, installing more pumps and raising the vertical bulkheads would be a lot more realistic, and above all more reliable means of protecting the ship. A watertight deck can be nullified by a single forgotten hatch or even just a lot of bad leaking, and you can be sure such a deck is going to leak. Maybe not on the maiden voyage, but you have no means of testing it (vertical watertight bulkheads are tested by flooding the compartment in construction) and its going to spring leaks. Warships were horrendously vulnerable to progressive flooding through leaks back then, and a merchant would be far worse off. That's how HMS Audacious was single by a single small mine.

Safety isn't just about costs, its about reliability. Very safe features that don't work or aren't used mean nothing.

Yeah, until the ignoring safety for profit comes back to haunt you in the form of negligence lawsuits...

That wasn't that big a deal back then, people didn't run out and sue for 100 million dollars per dead person like they do today and winning such suits in court was very very hard. White Star Line paid about 660,000 dollars in lawsuits in the end, against the 7.5 million it spent to build the ship. A lot of the lawsuit money was only paid to claims against lost cargo, much easier to prove at the time.

[Night_stalker]

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

[Isolder74]

And you point is? You keep making all these tiny nonsensical posts that really have nothing to do with the discussion of Titanic Disaster. Yes they lost lots of customers but what does that have to do with the lack of safely features on the ships.

One of the many things that would have saved the Titanic include having a full double hull instead of its lauded double bottom. Full water-tight compartments. Increased awareness of icing issues in the Grand Banks area. Many things could have all saved the ship from sinking. The number of lifeboats being enough for everyone. Loading them properly before debarking them....

One thing that can't be forgotten is that it was the sinking of the Titanic that brought most of these issues to light and without it they aren't addressed. It took the loss of such an important vessel as the Titanic was for the authorities company and government alike to take notice of the safety issues involved.

[Night_stalker]

I just point out what I perceive as oversights. My bad. One thing that I have to admit was just plain stupid of WS Line was to have the Titanic race across the Atlantic at top speed, without even considering the safety ramifications of that possibility. I mean, were the boilers even rated to run at such high speeds for so long?

[Isolder74]

I just point out what I perceive as oversights. My bad. One thing that I have to admit was just plain stupid of WS Line was to have the Titanic race across the Atlantic at top speed, without even considering the safety ramifications of that possibility. I mean, were the boilers even rated to run at such high speeds for so long?

They were. Also the ship wasn't running at full max boiler capacity one of the main boilers was not being ran at full capacity. So to answer your question, was the boilers on the ship were rated to be running for an entire course of an atlantic passage. The Answer is a resounding yes. The ship was not traveling at the max speed it managed during its sea trials.

So keep that in mind the ship could have been traveling faster when it hit the iceberg.

[Night_stalker]

Now that is a sobering thought. I don't think the ship would have survived 2 hours afloat if it had been going at its full speed.

[Sea Skimmer]

At full speed the ship might have been able to turn hard enough to escape impact. Titanic also simply was not the fastest liner around, but any fast liner had to go nearly full speed to be economical at all. The machinery was not designed for cruising at lower speeds, and this is a particularly annoying issue for Titanic which had a hybrid plant with the triple expansion engines exhausting into the centerline turbine. As far as I can tell the turbine had no cruising stage at all.

[Night_stalker]

It might have, or it might have made it worse. We can't really say with any certainity, and those that could are no longer with us.

May God have pity on those 1,517 souls who never left the vessel, especially the crew who stayed at their duties to the last possible moment.

[Sea Skimmer]

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.

[Night_stalker]

Arguably if the ship had missed, it would've been worse. If it hadn't sunk, then I'm sure the pathetic safety measures would've continued to be used for God knows how long.

[Sea Skimmer]

I'm sure they'd be updated as soon as the first liner gets sunk in WW1, a war in which a thousand dead at one place or another being added means about nothing. I don't think it would make any great difference really. The regulations might have been updated without an accident, once the 30,000 ton liner became the norm, not the brand new exception. Titanic basically had safety regulations intended for 10,000 ton ships, and even at her time most liners were still about that size.

In fact it could be ideal if Titanic survives, and then regulations are changed after Lusitania is sunk. Because Lusitania sank too quickly and too much of a angle of heel to launch most of her life boats, it would make no actual differene if she had just 16 on board or enough for everyone. But the shear scale of the disaster is bound to attract the same attention to detail that Titanic's loss did.

[CaptHawkeye]

I seriously doubt Titanic's future would last much longer even if it did survive the sinking. World War 1 was just a suicidal enviornment to operate a ship in. Carpathia, Californian, and Britannic were all lost to the war. It's difficult to express just how close Olympic came to being sunk. I don't doubt Titanic would have ended up in front of some U-Boat's periscope sooner or later.

[Sea Skimmer]

14 four funnel liners were built, 9 allied and 5 German. Three of them were sunk in WW1, plus Titanic sunk before the war, and another one sunk in WW2. Of the three sunk in WW1 one was German, Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse and sank from the gunfire of a British cruiser early in the war when operating as a raider. Lusitania was sunk by a submarine torpedo and Britannic hit a mine. The last unit, Windsor Castle, was only finished in 1922 and sank by aerial torpedoe in 1943 with the loss of one life. The high speed of the big liners was a very good defense against U-boat attack, Lusitania was very unlucky. Ships like Californian only had about half the speed and made much easier targets.

So the odds pretty well favor survival of the war for Titanic. But who knows. She might have just burned and sank at the pier while being refitted....