Talk:Titanic

It's funny, there was actually a documentary on the other day about the Titanic, which stated that there were several myths about it's sinking. One, is that topping off the compartments would have only slowed it's sinking. Two, is that the rudders for the ship would be considered within standards even today. Three, the flaw of the lifeboats was due to a ship's lifeboat count being related to it's weight at the time, rather than it's max passenger number and it actually had MORE than that legal standard (lifeboats by ship weight.) Four is that the coalfire in it's storage had little if anything to do with how fast it sank. Just bits of info I managed to pick up from said documentary. (In short the documentary said that none of the designs flaws within the Titanic if fixed would have prevented it from sinking.)

Matthew Lenz --- 2008 03 2nd

Topping the compartments might have only slowed the sinking, but that might have been enough to save lives depending on the amount it slowed. The Carpathia arrived on the scene about four hours after the sinking. If Titanic had managed to stay afloat even five more hours, the death toll would have been considerably smaller. It might have helped had the bulkheads been higher, thought that did not save Britannic (which, admittedly, had a great deal more damage and open portholes near the waterline.)

The rudders might have met legal standards of the day, but that wasn't what the problem was with the "hard a starboard, engines full astern" command that was given. It's hard to fault the Chief Officer because he literally had seconds to make the choice, but his ideal command would have been rudder hard a starboard (which at the time would turn the ship port) and starboard engine full speed ahead, port engine full reverse. By going full astern with both engines, he may have reduced the water flow and actually hindered the turn. Of course, we have the benefit of years to analyze what he had a split second to do.

The Titanic did have more lifeboats, four more. But they were all "collapsible" boats that had to be partly assembled and put into the davits. As they were more complex, they were the final boats launched. In fact, two of the, stored over the officers quarters, had been placed there with no method of actually getting them down to the boat deck. As it was, one was pushed off and landed upside down (several men survived standing on it, including Second Officer Lightoller, who was the highest ranking survivor) and the other was swamped with the sides down when Funnel One collapsed. Even if they'd been launched full, it would likely have only saved about 80 more lives.

The coal fire thing is a relatively new theory, and probably had nothing at all to do with the sinking. While such things can cause massive damage when they explode, no one reported anything of the sort that night before the ship broke in half, by which time that bunker was deeply underwater.

Sorry, I'm a Titanic nerd. :)

I recall reading a couple of ideas for seemingly counterintuitive ways that Titanic could have survived, or at least slowed its sinking long enough for Carpathia to arrive. One was that if Titanic hadn't turned at all and had instead rammed head-on into the iceburg, only one or two of the watertight compartments right at the front would have been breached and the ship would have stayed afloat. The other was that if they'd opened the watertight compartments and allowed the water to flood the ship more evenly it wouldn't have gone nose-down and it would have taken longer for the water to start flowing in over the top. Of course, both of these fail due to the 20/20 hindsight thing. Bryan 16:50, 2 March 2008 (EST)

The ramming theory has actually got some merit. There was a ship several years before Titanic that did just that, it rammed an iceberg in the middle of the night. The crew didn't see it, she they hit it at speed. IIRC, the ship didn't sink even with massive damage. A more modern example is the Stockholm, which rammed the Andrea Doria broadside. It lost a large area of the bow, but stayed afloat and even participated in rescue. I believe it was returned to service.

Again, it's also hard to fault the Chief Officer for trying to avoid it. In fact, he almost did.

The opening of watertight doors was tested in small scale on some special a few years back. The problem that they found was stablity. As the water flowed back into the compartments that made up the boiler rooms the ship settled deeper and got highly unstable. In the test, the model actually capsized well before it would have sunk. Of course, unless we build a full sized Titanic replica, we'll never know for sure. :-) --Eirik 17:25, 2 March 2008 (EST)