Hello everyone, let's understand the detailed physics behind the Titanic disaster. Before you leave, please don't forge to support us on Patreon - / sabinsmechanical Cheers Sabin Mathew
Hello everyone, let's understand the detailed physics behind the Titanic disaster. Before you leave, please don't forge to support us on Patreon - www.patreon.com/SabinsMechanical Cheers Sabin Mathew
Not that much when Quartermaster Robert Hitchens was referred to as the "steering guy." Or perhaps Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee being labelled the crows nest guy. Please. 🤦🏼♂️
Dumb, this guy did literally nothing. It’s tts and premade assets slapped together with a surface level understanding of the topic. This truly is the era of lazy RU-vid content.
That's one downside. The other is the sheer amount of steam it takes to run the thing. Running it on the exhaust of the triple expansion engines was a pretty good efficiency gain actually, instead of having dedicated boilers, it runs off the waste heat coming out of the other engines. Like a turbocompressor in a car, except this one goes directly towards propulsion.
@@AlejandroPineda-nq8so The docking wheel situated at _Titanic’s_ stern assisted with maneuvering and docking in and out of ports. Its presence effectively serves as a redundant set of navigational elements to be used under any particular circumstance.
First Officer Murdock did not throw RMS Titanic's engines into reverse as part of his iceberg avoidance maneuvers. Judging by the short distance between ship and berg upon discovery of the iceberg he simply cut the steam to the reciprocating engines while allowing the ship's inertia to help port around the iceberg. As the wheelhouse telegraphs didn't directly control the engines like modern day bridge controls he likely knew there wasn't enough time to execute a crashstop order. Aside from steering, all helm orders regarding adjustments in speed, etc. required crew members below to make manual changes to the ship's propulsion system which, depending on crew alertness, entailed a turn around time of varying lengths. Plus doing so would eventually negate rudder control buy reversing the waterflow passing over the rudder thus causing the opposite effect of the rudder's hard over position. It's important to understand that the rivets used below the waterline was necessarily lower in quality due to the inability of using Harland & Wolff's hydraulic rivet machine at the angles involved in the varying contours along the ship's bow and stern areas. Rivets along this section of the hull had to be driven in by a two man riveting team. The steel alloy, incorrectly referred to as wrought iron, was actually steel with a low carbon composition. The higher the carbon content in steel, the stronger the steel however, it is much harder to work with. Only with hydraulic riveting can high quality high carbon rivets be rivetted into place. Softer, low carbon steel rivets that can more easily be hand riveted between two hull plates were used along the curvy areas of the ship's hull below the waterline where the hydraulic riveter couldn't be used. Had higher quality steel been used along these sections of the ship's hull a two man riveting team simply could not achieve the seal between two plates before the rivet cooled. Even today there aren't many ships that utilize a double hull system with an outer and inner skin holding back ingress from entering the hull. Such a double hull configuration only covers the bottom. Such double membrane systems have caused destabilizing lists due to uneven flooding caused by the ingress of water along the extreme edges of the vessel. We only have to look at the modern cruise ship Costa Concordia to see such a system wasn't used. Upon collision with underwater rock formations there was just one layer of hull that was punctured, not two.
What effect would running the ship in reverse after the collision have on the flooding of the forward compartments? Could this have also slowed the flooding?
@@user-qb2vf6kg3b I believe it's been shown that running a ship in reverse with allisions suffered in the hull's bow area has the effect of reducing the head pressure thus the rate of ingress into the hull. Obviously the night of April 14th the ship's bridge wasn't in the business of conducting theoretical experiments of the like. Indeed moments after the collision Captain Smith ordered Titanic's engines to half-ahead while the ship was being sounded by its officers until members of the black gang warned the officers that the ship's engines needed to be cut off completely as the forward motion actually increased the rate of ingress.
@@MrChilongaso First Officer Murdoch who was in command of the bridge unfortunately didn't survive, so there's no testimony from that first hand source. However we have plenty of evidence supporting the fact that the ship wasn't put into reverse. Frederick Barrett, chief fireman in Boiler Room No. 6 gave testimony that before the collision the engine telegraphs signalled STOP. Upon seeing this he immediately yelled to the stokers to "Shut the dampers!" You do this to help reduce steam pressure being fed to the engines further abaf in the ship. The other thing you do is to divert incoming steam pressure via a bypass valve straight into the engine's condensing units converting the steam back into water which is fed back into the boilers. If there had been a helm order of "full reverse" the engines would have required an uninterrupted supply of steam meaning the black gang below would continue feeding the boilers with coal as normal. 🙃
Quite a few mistakes or omissions here. Let me address a few of them: *Titanic's designer:* Thomas Andrews wasn't the only designer of the Olympic-class ships, and he wasn't even originally in charge of the project. That honor fell to The Right Honorable Alexander Carlisle with Andrews and another naval architect, Edward Wilding, as his junior assistants. Andrews eventually took over about three years into the project and two years into the first two ships' construction after Carlisle retired in June 1910. *Titanic's Captain's Ideas:* Captain Smith was certainly a very smart and experienced man, but much of what he did was in consultation with Thomas Andrews who, along with several other Harland and Wolff shipyard employees who went on the maiden voyager as part of builder's "Guarantee Group". *Terminology:* The "driver" of a ship is a helmsman, and the wheel used to steer the ship was in a special room on the bridge called the "wheelhouse". The helmsman that night was a man by the name of Robert Hitchens, who was one of seven quartermasters of the ship, and he would've been the one to carry out First Officer William Murdoch's "Hard a' starboard" order to avoid the iceberg. The wheelhouse itself was kept separate so that low-light conditions and comfortable temperatures maintained for the helmsman while providing him windows to view through the windows of the gangway shelter, but the windows usually had blinds drawn and the helmsman relied on the compass bearing and orders from the officers. When in port, the wheel in the gangway shelter would be used along with the order telegraphs. *Left out crucial flaw of Titanic's engines:* Titanic and her two sisters' single turbine engine did indeed make use of triple expansion engines' exhaust steam, but there was no provision for the turbine engine to work in reverse. When the engines were ordered Full-astern and then Stop, the center propeller would not have functioned, and thus there would've been no direct flow of water from it over the propeller which in turn would reduce its effectiveness slightly. *Titanic's steel quality:* Actual tests with samples taken from the wreck show that the steel on Titanic was actually fairly good for the day and the use of best-best quality rivets were used in the area where the ice would've scraped along the hull. Further tests shows that even using modern steel would not have made much difference as the forces acting in the collision were simply too overwhelming. *Titanic and ice warnings:* The two wireless operators were not White Star Line employees, they were working for the Marconi Wireless Company and wireless was still a big novelty, mostly provided on ships for passengers to send messages or receive them for a fee. Ship-to-ship navigation messages were more of a courtesy rather than a requirement. Captain Smith did not ignore the ice messages he did get, steering Titanic on a course that added 200 nautical miles to the journey in order to avoid ice. Unfortunately, this wasn't far enough and the day before the sinking, the wireless set broke down. But rather than switch to the lower-power backup set as Marconi policy dictated, the two operators spent over 6 hours fixing the main set, and then had to deal with a backlog of message traffic. Some of the last ice warnings on the day of the sinking were lost in this backlog and never reached the bridge.
The ship's steel tested out at 378 megapascals in stress tests of both 1998 and 2018 - to put it into modern context, passenger ships these days are built at around 400. Meaning the Titanic's steel quality was excellent for the day, the very best that they had available. Also, she wasn't thrown in reverse. The engines were only ordered All Stop.
@@pc_buildyb0i935 That's a matter of some question, and the exact order given varies. There's some really great discussion on this on Encyclopedia Titanica that's well worth going over. "Titanic's Final Manoeuvre" by by Captain Lewis Marmaduke Collins quotes from the inquiry: "To the U.S. Senate inquiry, Fourth Officer Boxhall said he heard First Officer Murdoch tell Captain Smith, "I put her hard astarboard and run the engines full astern, but it was too close; she hit it before I could do any more. I intended to port around it." To the British enquiry he said he heard Murdoch tell Captain Smith: " I hard-astarboarded and reversed the engines, and I was going to hard-a-port round it but she was too close. I could not do any more." For the sake of the video, I'm just pointing out that the order given would result in steam being cutoff to the turbine and why.
No no no you got your info wrong dude. The ship was never going full speed to do that all the boilers would have to be going and they weren’t. No one on the crew believed the ship was unsinkable that was something the media ran with. Smith received multiple ice warnings and he adjusted his corse slightly unfortunately that adjustment put them in the path of the iceberg.
Really well animated except for a few goofs, like the left and central propeller running the wrong way! But other than that, it's really nice to see a detailed cross section and a VISUAL guide on how the water flowed over the bulkheads. As someone who has worked with CAD software a bit, I can imagine the effort that went into this. Thank you! Edit: I just watched further and I am thoroughly impressed by the educational value of this video. From the physical demonstration with a piece of metal, to the explanation of the pumps used to keep her afloat, as well as physical models implemented REALLY shows the amount of work put into this.
Nice video. I would like to precise that the turbine could not be reversed, so the center propeller could only be stopped. Also to start the turbine, the ship had to be already in motion (at least 5 knots, but not sure), because the steam had to build up after being used 3 times (they were Triple Expansion Engines, the steam was use 3 times in the reciprocating engines and one more time in the turbine, then it was recycled back into the system (cooled then condensed then resteamed). I'm an heavy Titanic enjoyer since I was a kid, and I love your video so far (barely 5 minutes into it) I just wanted to add that detail
They would not close in a few seconds, it would take quite some time for them to close, the alarm bell would also ring for about 20-30 seconds before the door actually started moving down. We also are not 100% certain that the ship did indeed reverse its props as oppose to just setting them in neutral. Like you said, stopping in time for an iceberg that close is impossible so the only way would be to avoid it. Reversing the props would not have slowed down the ship in time and would just have caused a lot of discomfort for a lot of passengers and most crucially of all it would have disrupted the flow of water on the rudder and made it harder for the ship to steer which is the most important aspect here. Its not uncommon or bad practice to go full speed ahead in situations like these cause even at slow speed stopping in time would not be possible and even a slight survivable collision would be unacceptable as an excuse as it should never have to be the solution to survive an incident like this in the first place, the only valid option is to avoid. Edward Smith did NOT believe that the ship was unsinkable, the reason he went ahead was because the weather was clear and visibility good, at least it seemed that way but he was worried and although there were some iceberg messages not relayed fully they most certainly knew of them. I would also like to point out that even though it didn't have enough life boats for all passengers they wouldn't have had time to launch anymore life boats anyways and therefore that fact can be disregarded in Titanic's case.
Well done. It’s the totally inadequate number of lifeboats that still gets to me the most. Ugh. To venture so far out into the cold unforgiving sea, and think that …oh well… so many lives are ‘expendable’ …is absolutely unacceptable dipshittery. Finally, perhaps ships should been constructed using the same material as the life preservers?
Made no sense to me..Why didn't the water tight bulkheads go all the way up to the ceiling why were they constructed like an ice tray where the water could spill over into the next one instead of just being isolated to the damaged areas??
Because the bulkheads would have interfered with the passenger hallways in the upper class areas..in otherwards there would have been doors to crawl through that the designers didn't want in those areas..plus no one imagined a gash in the hull over the lengths of 5 compartments. Had 4 compartments flooded, she doesn't go down at the bow, 5 compartment, she does. Just bad luck.
I’m now satisfied with the true process of how the Titanic sank; that the crew did everything possible to keep it from sinking. The creator of this videos is very talented at explaining engineering concepts. Great job! We need more videos. Thanks:)
I've always wondered if a water tight compartment got breached could in theory if the compartment was sealed could you increase the air pressure in the affected compartment to match the water pressure coming into the compartment thus stopping the flow.
Correction and more elaboration: the middle propellor was ran by a "Low Pressure Turbine" while the two others were ran by "High Pressure triple expansion reciprocating engines"
Costa Concordia was welded. but is an example of failure in 2012, it hit an out crop of rock. It was opened up like a can opener. It would have sunk if it wasn't for the shoal that it came to rest on and rolled over on its side.
Probably it wasn't exactly like in the movie, but very close. The breakage of the hull is very likely to be the cause of separate parts on the bottom, as it wasn't made to bear the forces, which developed as front part was submerged. Cheers.
Sadly we saw a similar situtation with a modern day ocean liner called the Costa Concordia where just like the Titanic the ship struck an underwater rock that punctured the hull in a similar manner to the Titanic that knocked out the ships electronics and the Concordia capsized onto her starboard side and the loss of life was at around 80 people or more and it was all because of her captain being a showoff and that he deserted the ship and ignored the Coast Guard when they repeatedly ordered him to get back onboard and help with the evacuation.
13:00 Titanic (like most big ships of that time and later) had a "crumple zone" in its bow, which would make any head-on collision very unlikely to go anywhere beyond 2nd compartment even in a full speed hit against a "solid" (in comparison) object, like the iceberg. If the ship wasn´t made with the risk of head-on collision in mind, it might have produced a shockwave travelling through the hull and wrecking the bulkheads. But luckily the designers weren´t stupid. They were just unlucky, because a hit like in the case of Titanic is super rare, and is practically impossible to absorb by any protective means. That´s also why almost 100 years younger Costa Concordia also got sunk, despite the advancements in shipbuilding.
Not that it matters that much, but your animation is missing a horizontal bulkhead dividing in two the forepeak compartment. Also, a 6th compartment was actually breached, in a small section of the coal bunker of Boiler Room 5 (which your red lines actually show correctly at 13:14).
Almost 100 years later just months before the centenary of this regrettable incident another passenger ship the Costa Concordia founders after a hull breach.Remarkable timing that should be significant to crews of every ship.Management of evacuation was compromised in both instances, one wonders how an emergency on one of the bigger is better ships with thousands of people would be managed given the unpredictable listing & the size of the superstructure being a huge wind catcher on a ship with no power particularly in heavy seas or strong winds.
Both of the ships were admittedly really cool, though. But, yeah. Direction and management of human (particularly passenger) behavior is probably one of the number one things to account for in these super-structure bits. The quote "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, and dangerous animals" comes to mind
Wasn't the quote more along the lines that he couldn't imagine a situation where the ship could founder, not that he outright said it couldn't founder?
"I will say that I cannot imagine any condition which could cause a ship to founder. I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to this vessel. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that." This is what Captain Smith said, describing Adriatic
@@gokulgopan4397 Thanks. So yeah he did avoid saying the ship cannot sink or calling it unsinkable, at least in an outright sense. He may not have conceived of an event that could sink the ship, but just because he couldn't imagine it doesn't mean it can't happen.
@@justinlynch3 Apparently, the most common incidents were ship-to-ship collisions or groundings. Iceberg collisions were extremely rare, less than 10, I believe. And none of them were side scraping. They built with these incidents in mind. The compartment design would protect from ship-to-ship collisions and the double bottom prevents grounding. Nobody envisioned iceberg side scraping to open up 6 compartments. The most damage they could think of, obviously based on their experiences, were a2 compartment damage. Olympic class was outdone to withstand 3 compartment damage.
The rivet issue is redundant. Although the Foecke and McCarty metallurgy research team found that an external pressure of 9,000 ft lb was needed to make a Titanic bow rivet fail (due to wrought iron impurities, etc), versus a steel rivet tested to 20,000 ft lb, the Ship's estimated kinetic energy before impact was 2,070,000,000 ft lbs, so the steel rivet would've still failed: merely deforming momentarily (due to superior ductility) rather than fracturing instantly.
The powerful riveting machine couldn't reach around the contours and bends on Titanic's stern and bow, so softer (lower carbon) steel rivets was used so they could be hammered in by hand. But if you look at wrecksite, especially at the break, which is where they used the stronger high carbon rivets, you see lots of plating that isn't actually twisted/torn off, but rather with empty rivet holes where there should have been high carbon ones. Meaning even these stronger rivets snapped cleaned off, by the absolute thousands. And then look at the great piece they brought up (the one that broke off as the break area got compressed), we're talking massive forces at play, so massive the piece got torn along the rivet holes. It's a solid reminder no material on g*ds green earth was going to save Titanic. And yet in spite of that, shipmakers today don't build civilian ships that takes that amount of compromised adjacent compartments, and they don't build civilian ships that takes the amount of damage that Titanic did, and stays afloat for closer to 3hrs which is what Titanic did, much less on an even keel... yep, Titanic did that too. So it kind effs me when Harland & Wolffe are portrayed as some... quack amateur shipbuilders, such as a lot of CC's tend to make it out. H&W actually knew their stuff. The only thing H&W did wrong was not equipping her with more lifeboats, not that they would have done any good, but still. And yeah that was H&W's call, not Ismay's. Compared to any other ocean liner afloat by the time Titanic was finished, apart from the Olympic (which was the same class) they skimped on absolutely nothing. That iceberg completely dwarfed Titanic in weight & tonnage, Titanic might as well have slammed into solid rock, newer and larger ships have done that too btw, as I like to put it, Concordia got stoned and fell over. With Titanic the plates buckled in a bit, with Concordia the whole thing got pushed in like paper, so it makes you wonder about modern shipbuilding quality & workmanship.. And how much good did double hull & longitudinal bulkheads do civilian ships at the time? Let's look at the Lusitania for instance, oops, made her list so much the crew couldn't launch lifeboats on both sides. What led to her loss wasn't coal fire or rivets, it was a combination of operator error and outright greed. they only had but a year experience operating a ship that size, and during that year there was at least one major accident. Even on Titanic's leaving port there were signs of incompetence, those who know knows and those who don't can google it. The crew had criminally little knowledge and training on competently operating ships of that size, they also had astronomically little training & knowledge on lifeboats on the Olympic-class ships. Add to that, with Phillips & Bride (who were employed by Marconi, not WSL) trying to send off backlogged messages (which paid very handsomely) instead of taking icefield/berg messages seriously. Smith received the first few ice warnings, immediately adjusted for a more Southerly course, then received no further ice warnings. And that was simply the final nail in the coffin, smaller ships couldn't get through and had to stop, wireless operators on many of these ships sent ample warning, and at least one of them was told by Phillips to stuff it because Titanic cool and Phillips bigger nerd. With crew / operator attitudes like that the Titanic had no chance, they were sailing for doom. Phillips was sending these passenger messages even after Titanic had struck the iceberg. And before anyone says it, specifically Harold Bride's excuse that ice warnings weren't afficed 'MSG' (for the Captain), Phillips didn't use them either, to the point Carpathia's wireless operator, Harold Cottam, had to ask if he should tell the captain, as the transcript indeed shows. Phillips wasn't the nerdy hero such as portrayed, in fact the way he spammed the wireless actually hindered effective communication between rescuers. He stayed as long as possible because of guilt, same as anyone else in his shoes would. He goofed around and found out.
Interesting modeling, but you should take into account that the ships often list when they are sinking, and indeed the Titanic had a slight variable list while she was sinking. What about the speed of the ship. It's not true that the captain chose and kept a high speed because he thought the ship was unsinkable. Even if he thought that the ship was unsinkable, he had no intention to test it. He didn't want any collision because even if the ship do not sink, she'd be damaged (which will cost money to the company), and they''ll be late, and that would not be good for the image of the ship. He was just following the common practice. When the whether is clear, all the captains keep high speed, if not full speed. That's because in the dangerous region where the icebergs cross the path of the ship, the captains fear another thing, and that's the fog. Which is common in that region were the warm Gulf stream meet the cold Labrador current. When there's a fog and you can't see, you can crash even with a low speed. When weather is clear and there's no fog, you can see, so you can avoid the icebergs. And you hurry to pass the region while the weather is still clear. Unfortunately the weather that evening were quite deceiving, and the iceberg was spotted too late. Despite that, the officer in charge Murdoch without knowing it, made a mistake, trying to slow down the ship, and in this way he compromised the ability of the ship to turn. The Olympic class ship were actually very responsive ships for their size, thanks to the central propeller in front of the rudder. They were turning better at high speed. Despite that, in less than a minute the Titanic (being the biggest and the heaviest ship in the world) was able to turn twice: first to the left (port) and then to the right (starboard). But Murdoch couldn't know it because these ships were brand new, they were considerably bigger than the other ships the company had, so nobody had experience with such large ships, even captain Smith with his 40 years at sea.
13:52 if you do the math, he will find that you are wrong here as well. Titanic is said to have had lifeboats for only half passengers however, this number was for a sold out titanic which the ship was not sold out. The number of lifeboats was sufficient to evacuate every single passenger as well as 100 crew members. Unfortunately, the officers lowered lifeboats have full.
You the movie the reason why titanics middle Propeller didnt spin when they put the ship into reverse is because like he said they used steam and a Turbine to make the middle propeller spin and it can only spin in one direction so thats why
I wondered why the bulk heads didnt go all the way up.ive heard this before.but couldn't remember, either way it was a huge blunder,just have one go all the way up would of saved her if it were located in the right place
There is small mistake in this. Third propeller (on the middle) can't spin backwards because it was powerered by exhaust steam from the external propellers. Turbo cannot do that.
The double keel is the reason why the ship went between 35' to 50' angle before breaking apart Otherwise the sheer weight would have collapsed the ship in half and forced a drag underwater much quicker I reckon this and the brave workers pumping all the water they could gave the ship that additional 30mins-1h of survival over what was estimated at the time of the disaster
The first 3 minutes was very fast paced, then the reader seemed to relax a little bit and explain more slowly, that's the only critique I have of the video.
Leaves me to wonder, what if all the manpower and people worked together to only stop the 5th compartment's leak? What if they threw all beds and everything they could find in the sea to potentially block that one leak.
For people that are wondering the ship could not float with any 4 compartments flooded. Even if the first compartment was not breached the ship would have still sank. You could have eliminated the first 3 openings the iceberg made and the ship would have still sank and in about the same amount of time.
Titanic could've floated with either 4 adjacent compartments at the front or at the back flooded. Or it could float with any 2 or 3 adjacent compartments flooded midships. That night, 6 forward compartments were flooded.
18:07 Another reason why they thought it was "unsinkable"... HMS Hawk crashed into the side of RMS Olympic which Captain Smith was captaining at the time and it survived with 2 compartments damaged
The damage sustained by Olympic was sufficent to render her repair as uneconomic by the Owners. Olympic was renamed "Titanic" and sent off to an ice field to have a contrived accident that would result in the loss of the ship and full insurance claim. The ships sent to recover passengers were in the wrong position and turned up too late to save most. The hull launched as Titanic sailed on as Olympic.
@@GraemeSPa It's amazing how they managed to swear so many of the workers necessary to make the switch to secrecy and that "the truth" only came out when somebody decided to write a book about it over 50 years later
@@Appetite4Rose Most of the workers there just do what they are told, even the managers. There is a lot hidden from the public - until someone finds out and writes a book about it , upon which , people like yourself shout "conspiracy theorist" .
The author of this video sure has a gift for hyperbole. Referring to the Titanic as steel hulled vs iron? And then you mean to tell me that in 28 degree water that night. It made the iron of the ship brittle? Really? I got say I loveed the part where you slip away from the engineering to passenger accomodations and then abandoned it after 2 facts.
by the way, the place where the people that saw Titanic iceberg it’s wrong in your shipwreck, facing forward in the actual shipwreck. It collapsed on top of the bridge.
I wonder what would have happened if the titanic never turned and went head on into the iceberg? I believe the ship SS Grampian hit an iceberg head on and survived the collision. It had severe damage to the front of the ship but it stayed afloat.
There are quite a few errors in this, there is a comment below that explains them, but I enjoyed it. Although, I don't think you can guarantee the ship wouldn't have sank with a head on collision. That much force could have easily warped the structure resulting in the watertight doors not being able to close. This is the what happened to the sister ship Britannic when it hit a mine during WWI.
If anyone in the back was in an air pocket when it went down, if it was like being in an elevator when the cable breaks? Or did the ship float down slowly and softly like a feather? It seems to me like without any displacement, it’s like dropping an anvil into water. How fast does that fall down 4k meters?
The back of the ship imploded quickly once it went under. To properly explain why would take way too long, but suffice it to say that if anyone would’ve been in an air pocket they would’ve died very quickly.
I think that someone still could’ve been trapped for a few hundred feet in some tiny anomaly of a pressure pocket, although there’s no way for us to go back and interview them. I am wondering if there is reliable information about the velocity of the titanic as it sank to the bottom. Just how much speed does something pick up sinking through water?
I feel like it would have been like a combination of the Paria divers, and the man closest to the door in the Byford Dolphin. As soon as vacuum seal of the air pocket is broken (a rivet holding a wall or door together breaking, for instance) a large destructive vacuum force would be made. Either the room would fill up with water and the person's body would be crushed into whatever surface they were next to like a flapjack, Or, they would get whooshed through whatever was creating the vaccuum in the Dolphin-style way. Either way, the person 95% probably wouldn't know what hit them or what happened when it happened!
