Titanic on the History Channel

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I've always been fascinated the Titanic disaster, It offers a glimpse into life at the turn of the century, as well as a look into the engineering and design of massive mechanical vessels. I know the Titanic has been a favorite infactuation of other aspies as well, so I figured I'd post this info. Chances are though, if you are a Titanic nut, you probably watched this!! !

One of the things the TV show tonight revealed were two large sections of the hull that broke off right at the split between the two hull sections. The discovery of these pieces changes all the thinking for how the ship broke apart on the surface. It was previously believed that the vessel split when the stern rose at a high angle from the surface. These hull sections however reveal that the spit began occuring at an earlier time in the ship's sinking , when the vessel was just less than 11 degrees or so from the surface. The massive sections of the hull reveals that they came off the boat through a tearing, like if they were being pulled apart, not being crushed together as previously believed.

When the splitting of the fore and aft sections occured, the center of the ship started breaking apart, and water started leaking in through cracks in the sides. This water leaking in weighted down the center of the vessel, and the "pivot" of the breakup was at the bottom of the ship, not at the top. The stern rose into the air, while the bow settled almost level directly below the surface at a comparitvely low angle. This resulted in the crushing pattern noticed on the decks on the stern section when it was found. The two hull plates discovere pulled apart from the boat when the bow and stearn separated. At this point the stern section pointing high in the air came back down before sinking completely.

How is this significant? Well, it raises questions if the ship really did sink from the iceburg, or if it sank from structural failure. While yes, the ship did suffer damage from the iceburg, the iceburg may not have caused it directly to sink. the iceburg caused the bow to dip low as it filled with water, but the ship COULD have stayed afloat in this position for considerable time. It answers the debate over how many water tight compartments could have filled with water and have the boat stay afloat too! It also answers the question as to why many of the lifeboats left half-empty, and why people were not panicking enough when the disaster started. Basically put, the boat was sinking very slowly due to the ice damage at first, but it wasn't until after the hull started breaking apart that the boat started sinking rapidly, and bringing panick into the passengers. Unfortunatley, by the time this occured, all the lifeboats were gone!

This is very interesting information that to me affects modern ship design. Many of the safety features of modern ships are to compensate for hull breaches just like this. The only problem is that hull failure due to bending probably has not been accounted for! Simply put, in order for the boat's engineered safety features to work, it must stay intact!! !

This is interesting date that explains

I missed the show, but was obsessive about the Titanic disaster in the 3rd grade. The memories your post brings back! Amazing they're finding out so much more about it now, 94 years later, thanks to all the new technology and dives they have done in deepwater submersibles.

There are so many theories out there about it, and a lot of them focus around the quality of the steel used to build the Titanic (scientific tests on samples recovered from the Titanic revealed they were weaker than most regular steel, and became even more brittle in cold water).

Still amazing that it sank on its first voyage, and not some random sailing 5 or 10 years later (a la it's competitor for the North Atlantic Luxury Liner business, the Lusitania).

Actually, it's been shown many times that the damage from the iceberg was sufficient to sink the ship. I believe that was already apparent in the hearings and caused the redesign of Britannic, her sister ship. The watertight compartments went higher to prevent the kind of overflowing that occured.

I'd expect that the structural damage would accelerate the process, though, but pretty early on, the extent of the damage done by the iceberg was clear to Captain Smith. This is one of the things the movie got about right. It's also why the crew started lowering lifeboats very early on.

I'm looking forward to seeing that documentary, though. I've been pretty obsessive about the Titanic for the last 35 years or so.

The steel became brittle in cold water, btw, but wasn't any worse than the steel of other ships at the time. This has been shown many times. The initial tests (done by the National Geographic channel, I believe) compared the steel to modern steel.

My grandparents are buried in the Fairview Cemetary about 50 feet away from the Titanic victims. It's an interesting place to visit. The Titanic graves are laid out in the shape of a broken ship's hull. The first-class passengers were buried in coffins in individual graves, while the 2nd and 3rd class passengers were buried in long trenches. The grave of "Unknown Child, Age 2" (who has since been identified) was the most famous until the movie turned J. Dawson into a fictional hero. The real J. Dawson was a Star Line employee and is buried in Fairview as well. There's a map of the burial site here.

What's particularly interesting (and relevant) to me is that my great-great-great-great-grandparents were shipwreck survivors themselves. They were enroute from Ireland to New York when their ship sank at Sable Island (a.k.a. "Graveyard of the Atlantic") in 1824. They were rescued by the "Humane Establishment" (a permanently-manned rescue station on the island from 1801 to 1958) and taken to Halifax, where they settled.

Although the Titanic gets most of the spotlight, the White Star Line's history record shows that the company was notorious for shipwrecks! They were constantly running them aground, setting them afire, capsizing, and various other disasters. Many didn't kill as many people, but likewise, their track record was hardly good!

Yeah. Of the three Olympic Class ships White Star had, Britannic sank before completing a single revenue run, Titanic had a run-in with an iceberg, and Olympic, well, it had issues (ramming cruiser during WWI issues).

Then again, White Star's rival competitor wasn't spotless, either. After all, the Titanic was built to compete with the Cunard Line's Mauretania and Lusitania, the second of which got torpedoed during WWI with a loss of life almost as severe as the Titanic.



You know, I really wonder what would happen if WP made a transportation discussion board. Maybe not as specific to the Titanic, but since it's SUCH a common AS interest, and since a lot of AS folk overlap between systems and modes. There's already one for computers (the other "most common" AS interest, if my research is correct). Just curious.

That would be a cool thing! I definitey know I went off the deep end when I flew to New York just to ride the Subway for a day! I've had so many people tell me how crazy I was about that, but I tell you what, they LOST serious money on me that day when I bought a $6 day pass, and checked out close to 80 stations! I got the weirdest looks taking camcorder footage of trains pulling into the stations! Be it planes, trains, automobiles, boats...if it moves, I'm fascinated by it!

Wow! How far did you fly from to get to New York City for that trip? And I'm suprised that all you got was weird looks with the camcorder, I've heard horror stories of railfans getting harassed, and some cops even making up laws that are not on the books on the spot, in order to try to get people to stop photographing/videotaping the subway system (there is no written law against it).

I've ridden all of the NYC Subway system (except for that stretch of the N they were rehabilitating about a year ago), along with the entire Washington Metro and about a half dozen other systems.

The weirdest moment I remember, in relation to a crazy transit trip, was in January of last year. I was on Amtrak's Empire Builder, somewhere between Portland and Spokane, sitting in the lounge car. Some neurotypicals were socializing at the other end of the lounge car, sipping their beers and what not. I overhear one say "This guy where I work at the software company, he's sooo weeeeird man, he once came down to Portland for a day just to ride the light rail out to Gresham, turn around, and ride it to Hillsboro. He just rode the light rail all day. He's really socially awkward at work, and I think he has something [neurologically]."

In my seat about 25 feet away I just froze, reached into my pocket, pulled out the Portland Tri-Met All Day Pass I used earlier in the day to ride the entire Portland Light Rail and Streetcar systems, and smiled.

I asked Alex to make a "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" forum several months ago and he refused, saying there are already too many forums on here. Too bad.

I've never gone anywhere *just* to ride the public transit, but it's always a big part of my photo album when I get home. I have a wonderful T-shirt from Paris with a map of the trains on it. I like to buy the passes so that I can keep the ticket at the end of the trip and include it in the album with all the pictures. Sometimes it's not possible, though. Some cities only do point-to-point using tokens you lose when exiting the station.

My other weird hobby is collecting "air sickness" bags (unused, of course) from airlines. My collection includes many bags from airlines in North America (Air Canada, Jazz, Zip, Westjet, Northwest, American), plus Air China, China Northern, China Eastern, Bangkok Airways, China Airlines and Japan Air. I'll be adding Quantas to the collection very soon.

I wonder if that'll stay the case, as WP seems to be growing so fast (1,300 members when I joined to 3,845 as of this morning in a matter of months).

now is this another new documentary?
cause they had one that found and raised one of those center hull pieces.
it was led by the French frogs, Canadians, and Bob Ballard didn’t do it!! !! !! !! ! WTF!! !

now with the Lusitania wasn't a good ship to begin with.
first after the titanic mishap, the bulkheads weren’t raised, all they did was add more lifeboats and add more space for lifejackets.
The RMS Lusitania was an ocean liner of the British Cunard Steamship Lines. Built by John Brown and Company of Clydebank, Scotland, and launched in 1906, the ship and its sister, Mauretania, were built to compete with the fast German liners of the time. As such, Lusitania held the Blue Riband a number of times, notably in 1907.
The ship was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-Boat on May 7, 1915, on her 202nd crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. The incident played a role in the United States' entry into World War I on April 17 1917. President of the United States Woodrow Wilson, who was officially promising to keep the US out of the war, may have falsely claimed that the Lusitania was a wrongful victim, if indeed the ship had been carrying munitions as the Germans claimed.

and the Britannic didnt sink after trial runs. it was torped or hit a mine in around Athens, Greece on the 21 November 1916. it was transporting causalities from the front lines back to America.
The real reason why she sank is still not known. However, the most likely cause is thought to be that she hit a mine laid by U73. Technically she should have been able to withstand this single impact due to her enhanced water tight bulkheads (additional, stronger and higher compared to the Titanic). However, it is thought that the nurses may have opened many of the lower deck portholes to air the wards prior to picking up her next load of wounded soldiers at Mudros, and effectively negating the safety aspects of the bulkheads

and plus they proved that the steel that was used to build the ship had too much Slag in it.
that way that the slag made the steel more brittle and more appt to buckle.

What I was referring to was the Britannic went straight into hospital ship service after construction, without ever completing an actual regular fare-paying-passenger trip across the Atlantic (a "revenue run"). But it's true, there's a lot of theories about the Britannic out there too, just like the Titanic.

By the way, anyone know if the History Channel is doing some sort of shipwrecks week? Everything they've had this week seems to have been about ships and related disasters...last night the Germans scuttling their fleet after WWI, and diving to find the Alexandria Lighthouse, today the "Marine Electric" sinking off the US East Coast, and of course the Titanic the other night?

I wish someone would do a documentary on Andrea Doria. It's been ages since I saw anything on her, and she was always my favorite wreck.

yes the Andrea Doria is a sad story.
Horatio Spafford daughters were killed in that crash. he went on the write "it is well with my soul"
This hymn was writ­ten af­ter two ma­jor trau­mas in Spafford’s life. The first was the great Chi­ca­go Fire of Oc­to­ber 1871, which ru­ined him fi­nan­cial­ly (he had been a weal­thy bus­i­ness­man). Short­ly af­ter, while cross­ing the At­lan­tic, all four of Spafford’s daugh­ters died in a col­li­sion with an­o­ther ship. Spafford’s wife Anna sur­vived and sent him the now fa­mous tel­e­gram, “Saved alone.” Sev­er­al weeks lat­er, as Spafford’s own ship passed near the spot where his daugh­ters died, the Ho­ly Spir­it in­spired these words. They speak to the eter­nal hope that all be­liev­ers have, no mat­ter what pain and grief be­fall them on earth.

my friends independent film company is going to do a documentary on his life. after they get the money that is.