RMS Titanic: Factors of Destruction 

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@Roy Marley instablaster :)

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@Roy Marley glad I could help :D

Just out of interest, one apparently looks for the 'absence' of stars when searching for bergs in such conditions at night.

there's also one british shipwreck I've read about about (in the early steam era) as it's bow slipped beneath the waves, the men aboard stood on the poop deck and sang firing the signal gun until it fully sank, and only women and children survived. so I think there's examples in history where it's gone both ways. I'm trying to remember the name and date of the wreck, once I do I'll post an edit.

@@MaskedVengeanceTV HMS Birkenhead? Though I'm pretty sure that some men did survive that wreck.

@@macktheinterloperHMS birkenhead? that sounds familiar. I'm sure it wasnt just all women and children that survived, but the majority. If I recall correctly I read about the wreck and The Time Life seafarer series of books, a absolutely wonderfully well done and gorgeously illustrated series I highly recommend anybody reads

@Daniel Solis Rodriguez Different Sinking.

Other shipping disasters from that era are always overshadowed by the disaster of the Titanic. I didn't know that about the SS Atlantic. That is pretty interesting..how many total survivors were there?

Hi, it has been a year or more since you wrote your very insightful comment concerning Mr. Ismay's authentic history vs the common-held beliefs of him being a 'scoundrel'. I have full faith in your account as there just are too many myths in history, that remain officially uncorrected and therefore not well publicised, consequently maintaining the proliferation of inaccuracies. Thank you for sharing this, sincerely I am most interested indeed to learn more about this popularly-held historical blunder. I would be enormously grateful if you could provide some factual reference of where I can learn more about the true events that transpired, vs the fairytale most people (including myself until just now), have been lead to believe as true. Upon discovering more, perhaps in some way I can do my part to contribute with clearing this man's sullied reputation. If I can show evidence for these claims concerning Mr. Bruce Ismay, it might well be worth writing to one of the national TV news producers for material used general interest pieces they request occasionally, sometimes featuring following the main presentation, one can only but try! Although in the absence of evidence it would be deemed little more than an anecdote, naturally they certainly would not accept that nature of information to present. Fact checking and confirmation is clearly quite important. So if you would kindly direct me to any appropriate evidential references you are aware of, I would indeed be most grateful. I am just about to comment myself regarding Capt. Stanley Lord of the SS Californian, and the abhorrent manner his reputation, and maintained public opinion of, was completely destroyed. He was accused of disregarding the distress signals and flares from the Titanic. The abusive personal ridicule he suffered throughout his life is a total miscarriage of justice and a deplorable vilification of a good and decent man. Science has since proved that he could never have sighted any distress flares or Morse lamp signals, as was claimed by the post-disaster investigators due to a unique meteorological phenomenon that night which created mirage-like optical illusions I suspect it would not matter so much to him now, although at least history knows the truth, as history also ought to surrounding the erroneous reputation of Mr. Bruce Ismay. So many of Titanic'c survivors had even frequently stated how peculiar the stars appeared that night, both prior to and throughout their horrific ordeal. At the time this was never taken in to account, I expect it would have had little relevance to the scientific understanding of the time. Although for entirely different reasons, a Japanese gentleman who survived the disaster was similarly unreasonably vilified. Japanese culture of that time deemed it dishonourable that he should survive an event with such a great loss of life. It seems to be a ludicrous notion, who's survival then ought to be considered 'honourable'? The magnitude of such indefensible sentiments toward one while attempting to manage profound survivor guilt does't bare comprehension. Thank you again for the extremely interesting clarification of this historical inaccuracy. I do hope to hear from you if you are interested and/or able to assist me with my query. With best wishes and kind regards, Anton

Yeah, seems like there always has to be an 'evil, rich villain' in these stories.

@Logan English yess. I very much appreciate your comment ..👏👏👏💯

@Frank Jaxtyn Is she a looker? Yeah,gimme her name and I will message her..

What a load of rubbish! Ships of the Titanic era usually had steam steering gear. The reference to a tiller in this narrative has nothing to do with what you have written. Prior to WW1 helm orders were given relating to the position of the tiller. The tiller is that part of the steering gear fitted to the top of the rudder stock. Thus helm orders at this time were the opposite to modern convention. So hard a port in modern parlance would be hard a stbd. This was acknowledged in the film. Marine Steam Turbines, or in fact land turbines certainly do have moving parts. Attempting not to be too rude, but what are you talking about? Almost all vibration on Turbine Steamers was propeller induced, not due to alignment. As for those stupid remarks about the fore and aft vibration on steam locomotives. A propeller operates in a hydraulic medium, ie water, which damps out that type of vibration.

Modern cruise liners all have diesel propulsion, not turbines. Only vessels with turbines these days are naval or gas carriers

I agree, no-one was going to drive straight into it. However ships have suffered similar damage and survived.

Absolutely spot on. It would be totally counter intuitive to steer into the iceberg. The ship could have ended up grounded on the iceberg or capsizing. Murdoch is in the clear as far as I'm concerned.

I'm not sure, but I have read about troubles with the smoke rotting them.

I do know during sea trials they made it go full steam ahead then break and it took 5 minutes and like 1,000 feet which was deemed to be a good time

I think it was also used to ventilated the boiler rooms and engineering spaces. I'm sure I've read about, or seen pictures of heads sticking out of the fourth funnel as she leaves Southampton too.

fourth funnels were oiftnen dummies, sometims hiding dog kennels as well as extra ventilation!

According to 2nd officer Lightoller, the Captain did not want to delay or cancel the 10.30am Sunday Divine Service in the 1st Class Dining Saloon.

@@johnking5174 Yeah doing a lifeboat drill on a Sunday would of been looked at as a bad omen then...plus they did get all the boats launched before it sank anyway just wasn't enough

It was a veteran crew tho.

Something of a red herring. The fire, which was probably more of a smouldering, was extinguished a day before the collision. It was probably irrelevant anyway as the bulkhead was going to be overflowed as its top went below the waterline outside the ship. There’s no conclusive evidence of any bulkhead collapsing either. The testimony relating to this probably refers to a non watertight coal door bursting as the bunker behind it flooded. The watertight bulkheads were straddled by the bunkers of each of the adjacent boiler rooms. The bulkheads between each bunker and the boiler rooms proper where not watertight. The overflowing of the W/T bulkhead would have taken place inside the coal bunker and be unseen from inside the boiler room. A flooded bunker would quite possibly result in a bursting coal door, which would result in a deluge of water into the next boiler room. The whole bulkhead collapsing would probable have prevented anyone escaping to give such testimony. The whole fire business has been massive exaggerated. Especially with the nonsense of making the ship steam too fast. Over consumption of coal in one bunker of one boiler room could easily be compensated for in the others. Also, the ship had enough coal for two days’ steaming after arrival so the whole fire forcing them to race and destroying watertight integrity etc is exceedingly dubious.

@@ccalthrop6347 Thank you. That is a most carefully considered response for which I am very grateful.

@ C Calthrop; Further to your excellent post. Bunker fires of this type were quite common at the time and were considered more an inconvenience than a threat. Workers were well used to dealing with the issue.

No one EVER said she was unsinkable.

White Star Line was still using "the tiller method" of giving course corrections. In this system, if the watch commander wanted to turn the vessel port, he ordered a turn to starboard as if a tiller was the means of steering the ship.

@Uncle Joe Isn't sailing uniquely more reliable in the Pacific because if winds and weather?

You're right, but I don't know of anyone who blames just one individual.

Technical blame goes to the captain and bridge crew of ship as they are ultimately responsible for the safety of the ship. However, there were numerous issues with the Titanic that compounded the blunders of the captain and her officers making a serious error much worse. This was recognized at the time during the US and British hearings.

I see your points, and agree on the brittle steel theory being debunked. However, the rivets are another matter; it has been shown that some of the rivets were indeed of inferior quality. Further, riveting at the curved surfaces at the bow and stern could only be done by hand, hydraulic riveting machines being unable to reach such awkward curved surfaces. Modern recreations of the process have shown that while the rivet gangs at Harland & Wolff were well trained, even then mistakes such as loosely fitted rivets could creep in. As a result, much of the damage caused by the iceberg strike was rivet heads popping off and opening seams between plates as they bent against the iceberg. Regarding the engines, it is true that early non-geared steam turbines such as those used on the Olympic Class could not reverse; for reversing maneuvers the reciprocating engines would be used as they could operate just as easily backwards as forwards. The main purpose of the center turbine was to provide an extra boost of speed while making one last use of the exhaust steam from the reciprocating engines before passing it on to the condensers and feeding it back into the boilers. This was a common problem in the early days of maritime steam turbines, as seen on the Mauritania Class and on early turbine-driver warships like HMS Dreadnought; smaller reversing turbines had to be provided to compensate, taking up large amounts of space to solve a fairly basic problem. Indeed, it was one of the reasons why the German and American navies stuck with piston engines for their first generation dreadnoughts along with other advantages like ease of maintenance. An oft debated claim is that this inability to reverse her center turbine-driven propeller contributed to Titanic's demise; the water flow interrupted by her stopped center screw reduced the effectiveness of her rudder. I will agree though that Ruairidh has the vibration problem backwards; it was the piston engines that caused the vibration, not the turbine, an issue particularly noted in Olympic's early years resulting in modifications to Titanic, including enclosing half her A Deck promenade to help stiffen the hull and thus reduce vibration.

If you look into it a bit more thoroughly, you will see that the redundancy levels with riveted construction was more than adequate, and a small number of poorly fitted rivets was quite irrelevant. Modern construction would probably be weaker as the constant quest for lower Light Tonnage has led to very light scantlings, albeit of HTS. Incidentally, the difficulty of using the hydraulic riveter was mainly in the turn of the bilge. The whole argument is largely academic since no ship before or since can expect to hit a large iceberg and steam off unscathed. Gearing or lack of it, on any steam Turbine plant, has no bearing on its ability to reverse. With no separate astern turbine there is no reversing capability. Gearing was introduced to simply reconcile the fact that turbines work best at higher rotational speed than propellers. If you see the turbine velocity diagrams for those early direct drive turbines you will see what I mean. Reversing or astern turbines never compensated for anything to my knowledge. By definition they were always separate from the ahead and this applied to Direct drive, single reduction, double and triple reduction gearboxes throughout the 80 years or so of steam turbine ships. So I'm not sure what your talking about there. As for the astern turbines taking up large amounts of space - have you actually seen any? Because I can assure you, even on a cross compound set, with good astern power, they're quite small for the power output. As for the KM not using turbines on the first Dreadnoughts...... they didn't have any ready to install.... their yards had to obtain the manufacturing rights. The USN at the time of the Dreadnought was very conservative, and besides didn't count anyway.

If there was a fire in the bunkers she would not have sailed, the board of Trade would never have allowed it. It’s a fallacy

Yes, true...because by the time Murdoch came to the helmsman's cabin, the ship had already crashed into the iceberg. There was no point in commanding "full astern" then.

@@mcbigweener When live steam to a reciprocating engine (even a big one) is cut off, it stops pretty quickly, at which point the reversing mechanism is engaged. Take a trip on a Lake Geneva paddle steamer and you'll see how easily and quickly they go from ahead to astern. There's no question of 'crashing gears' in the way you've implied. Sure: it's unlikely there would've been time to actually put a bridge order for full astern into effect before impact, but that doesn't mean it wasn't given.

@@nilanjanmoitra4249 There was no such thing as a 'helmsman's cabin' (the Wheel was on the Navigating Bridge) and Fourth Officer Boxhall testified that he heard three alarm bell rings from the crows nest and then heard First Officer Murdoch call out orders to Quartermaster Hichens to put the wheel hard over, and the noise of the engine room telegraphs ordering the reversal of the engines.

@Ged 103. Where did you get that from Ged? Fourth Officer Boxhall testified that he heard the noise of the engine room telegraphs ordering the reversal of the engines.

@@elrjames7799 boxhall wasn't actually on the bridge at the time and only assume the order given was full astern whilst a surviving fireman stated he saw the order full stop

Because this is actually footage of the Olympic and its tenders, that has been crudely "edited" by literally scraping the Olympic name from the newsreel frame by frame. This was done because there was and is very little film footage of the Titanic, but more exists of the Olympic, and so a little bit of trickery was used in order to portray the Olympic as the Titanic.

There was a fire in one of her bunkers. Such a thing was not uncommon in the coal fired ships of the day, and it was handled in the usual manner, by using up the coal from the affected bunker first. Evidence was given at the Inquiry which stated that the fire had been extinguished by the day before the collision.

That maybe the case for a warship, but Titanic's design was typical of ocean liners of the era, a large rudder with 1, 2, or 3 propellers. Even today the most common configuration for a commercial ship is 1 or 2 propellers and rudders to match

^ Typical aye, though it is a demonstrable fact that four screws is the better configuration, as far as course changing is concerned. These days the existance of variable pitch prop's, azimuth thrusters, bow thrusters and less emphasis on speed and all weather seakeeping in favour of range & capacity (largely due to Ocean Liners being supplanted by Airliners, leaving little besides Cruise Ships) mean the equation is radically different for passenger ships in general. Cargo ships though... their propulsion methods are more readily comparable from past to present, as the business model is essentially still the same.

Generally 4 shaft ships had one rudder. Conversely triple screw warships, mostly German, had 2 rudders.

@@bobcornford3637 Depends. The QE class Battleships were quad-screw, yet had twin rudders.

The attitude in 1912 was that Titanic and Olympic were life boats themselves. They were so huge, it was unthinkable they would ever sink. With wireless in both ships, they were confident that if any disaster happened, help could be summoned fast without life boats needed.

Actually, the prow is _part_ of the bow. The bow from my unuderstanding is the overal front section of the vessel, while the prow it the pointed section which lets the vessel cut through the waterline. It's it's in the front and above the surface, it's the prow

In a way, this incident was also a good thing, since after this ship safety was much more stringent. I would never wish for these people to die myself, but unfortunately this was a necessary evil to improve safety on ships.

They were the first with a double keel and watertight compartments were pretty new then.

@@jimcrawford5039 They most certainly were not the first with a double bottom or watertight doors.

It's rudder. There's no w.

Mirza Ahmed yes; don't know how that typo got in there

on ships with wheels and cables, the cables were called tiller lines and the portion of the rudder out of the water attached to the lines was called the tiller, I suppose it's very likely crew would refer to the tiller rather than the wheel or rudder, don't know.

@@zopEnglandzip he said tiller twice. One time it might be an indirect reference to the rudder as you suggest. The other was unambiguously about the rudder. Personally i doubt there was anything called a tiller anywhere, even deep in the guts of the ship, but i could be wrong.

Alignment issues, probably.

Gosh.... resonance and alignment!

@@bobcornford3637 yes, of course; but part of making it work is getting them to the point where the resonance is not a problem at the speed they rotate.

Yes

This is correct, if a turbine starts to vibrate you better run

@@Captainmckurk lol

Good points! Also, don't forget that the Titanic's radio was broken and the two operators, Phillips and Bride, spent much of the previous day (the 13th of April) and the early morning repairing the radio set. On top of that, they were backed up with telegrams the passengers wanted to send to shore. Phillips was tired, and there were already a lot of ice messages sent by other ships (side-note, the wireless telegraph sets were all on the same frequency, so the Titanic's radio operators could basically "listen in" on other conversations), so one can kind of understand his frustration when the Californian's signal boomed into his headset. If you want to, here's a link to a BBC produced podcast that covered the radio messages on the night of the 14th-15th of April, 1912: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DqstKa3qcTw.html

There were warnings and maps posted all over the bridge before the message from the Californian. The crew knew they were sailing into an ice field but they wouldn't slow down until they sighted danger.

The film is of Olympic in New York, because there was very little recorded film of Titanic the names were rubbed out to make it appear to be her. The names would have given the game away.

@@Dizzy19. oh... if that's a genuine attempt to pass off the footage as titanic that's both deceitful and very silly.

:3c

You can email Rory His email is in the description

The Britannic had all its portholes open to air the hospitals, as she was close to docking.

Yeah I know! We'll design it to hit everything it encounters head on!!!

Are you sure that's correct? Apparently the passengers didn't want to leave the ship initially. Many left only partially filled, by the time people realised that the ship was Indeed going to sink it was too late.

@@rob5944 yeah of course, try organising 2000 people without an intercom and see how well you do.

@@hawkerhellfire9152 it seems that you didn't read my post properly. Try again, you can do it with a bit of concentration. 👍

Because this is actually footage of the Olympic and its tenders, that has been crudely "edited" by literally scraping the Olympic name from the newsreel frame by frame. This was done because there was and is very little film footage of the Titanic, but more exists of the Olympic, and so a little bit of trickery was used in order to portray the Olympic as the Titanic.

The Cunard Line offered more faster services.