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Titanic sank due to human error

Agatha said:
First Officer Murdoch gave the order hard-a-starboard (the correct order) to turn the ship to port. The ship turned to port and the iceberg hit the ship on the starboard side. It is conjectured that had the ship continued and hit the iceberg head-on, it would not have sunk; but one can never be sure of what might have been.

Second Officer Lightoller testified that he was in his cabin with his light out, just going to sleep, at the moment of the collision, and that he went to the port side of the boat rather than the bridge when he got up, then to starboard, and then to the bridge.

Since Lightoller was not on watch at the time of the collision, I doubt that the orders given and the course of the ship would have had any bearing on Lightoller's reputation.
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I would have to disagree. The ship was put into reverse which means the water flow over the rudder was reversed, meaning to make a true starboard turn the vessel should have put to starboard

If they had ordered full stop of the engines, let the ship coast, the rudder would have had more bite and possibly saved the ship

Also - and no sailor would think this way - hitting the berg head on probably would have saved the ship
 
Dave Rogers said:
And yet, it didn't sink the ship when it was outside it. Are we supposed to believe that moving it to the inside - a distance of a few inches - was enough to sink an ocean liner 880 feet long?

Dave
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roflmao
 
Dave Rogers said:
And yet, it didn't sink the ship when it was outside it. Are we supposed to believe that moving it to the inside - a distance of a few inches - was enough to sink an ocean liner 880 feet long?

Dave
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Maybe we can get a Truther to re-enact the accident in his bathtub with a milk carton and some ice-cubes.

I smell Youtube gold in this one.
 
Dave Rogers said:
And yet, it didn't sink the ship when it was outside it. Are we supposed to believe that moving it to the inside - a distance of a few inches - was enough to sink an ocean liner 880 feet long?

Dave
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Ah - damn these unsinkable ships!

Wasn't the Yamato also supposed to be unsinkable?

Or was that just in the film Tora! Tora! Tora! ?

:)
 
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It also sunk at free-fall speed. No ship of that size has ever sunk that fast from an ice berg before.
 
MG1962 said:
I would have to disagree. The ship was put into reverse which means the water flow over the rudder was reversed, meaning to make a true starboard turn the vessel should have put to starboard

If they had ordered full stop of the engines, let the ship coast, the rudder would have had more bite and possibly saved the ship

Also - and no sailor would think this way - hitting the berg head on probably would have saved the ship
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The inquiry found that the ship's head had gone round to port and testimony was that the order was given to hard-a-starboard to make the port turn, and that the engines were switched to full astern. http://www.titanicinquiry.org/BOTInq/BOTReport/BOTRepCollision.php I agree that running into the iceberg, which may have saved the ship, would never have been a likely choice. The iceberg was only about 500 yards from the ship when it was seen, and the warning sounded, and at the Titanic's speed she therefore hit it roughly 37 seconds after the warning.
 
The sinking of the Titanic is obviously caused by the sudden and drastic increase in weight due to all the time-travelers arriving to witness that moment in history.
 
Eddie Dane said:
The Titanic sank because of all the icy water coming _inside_ the boat.
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Nonsense !
~~~~~
Nonsense back at you! I saw the movie. When water enters a ship it is no longer icy. Those people would not have survived if the water was still icy.

Confirmation: when Jack was out in the open water, he died. (And there was much rejoicing)
 
Thunder said:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100922/lf_nm_life/us_britain_titanic_book

fascinating.

in the movie, the ship completely stops. I guess this is false.

and in the movie, the ship does try to steer to the left of the iceberg. I guess this is also, false.
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Whether Quartermaster Hitchens made a fatal mistake is probably unknowable (though it strikes me as unlikely), but the claim about the 10 minutes of "ahead slow" causing any significant additional damage or flooding is demonstrably incorrect.

http://titanic-model.com/articles/Somewhere_About_12_Square_Feet2/Somewhere_About_12_Square_Feet2.pdf

Assuming the ship was moved forward at slow speed ahead which corresponded to about 8 knots (about 30 revolutions on her reciprocating engines with the turbine disengaged). Eight knots is 13.5 feet per second. The added pressure due to forward motion is turns out to be equivalent to a pressure head of 2.85 feet, an increase of only 11.4% over the elevation pressure head of 25 feet. This is the ram affect caused by forward movement of the ship. The initial rate of flooding at t=0 would increase by only 5.5%, or 14 tons per second instead of 13.3 tons per second. And all this assumes that our 12 square feet of damage was straight across the bow and not along the side of the ship. For damage along the side the situation is much more complex because of the changing streamlines of the water flow past the hull. Near the bow there would be an increased pressure where the streamlines curve away from the centerline of the ship. Further back the pressure will decrease as the streamlines bend the other way trying to parallel the ships centerline again. It becomes a very complex problem to solve analytically. But what we can say is that the flooding will be far less than the case which we have considered where the damage is directly across the bow.

The bottom line in all of this is that the forward movement of the Titanic that took place after the initial stopping of the vessel could not have significantly contributed very much to the overall flooding situation if the movement did not continue for any significant length of time at any appreciable speed. [notes omitted]
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MG1962 said:
I would have to disagree. The ship was put into reverse which means the water flow over the rudder was reversed, meaning to make a true starboard turn the vessel should have put to starboard

If they had ordered full stop of the engines, let the ship coast, the rudder would have had more bite and possibly saved the ship.
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Actually the flow across the rudder didn't reverse. The Olympic class had three screws, each with it's own engine. The outboard engines were conventional triple reduction piston engines, which were reversible. The center engine was a turbine that ran off the exhaust steam from the piston engines, it was not reversible. When the mains were thrown into reverse the center engine stopped receiving steam and (by normal procedure) would be braked. This would cause a disruption of the flow over the rudder, but not a reversal.

Tests made with the RMS Olympic after the loss of Titanic showed that a smaller turning circle could be achieved by reducing the power, rather than reversing it. The smallest turn was achieved by reversing the engine on the inside of the turn, and running the outboard and center at maximum, with the rudder hard over.
 
Agatha said:
The inquiry found that the ship's head had gone round to port and testimony was that the order was given to hard-a-starboard to make the port turn, and that the engines were switched to full astern. http://www.titanicinquiry.org/BOTInq/BOTReport/BOTRepCollision.php I agree that running into the iceberg, which may have saved the ship, would never have been a likely choice. The iceberg was only about 500 yards from the ship when it was seen, and the warning sounded, and at the Titanic's speed she therefore hit it roughly 37 seconds after the warning.
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Interesting Pope pointed out the center screw didn't actually reverse but stopped and the out board screws went into reverse......Which blows my theory out of the water
 
Pope130 said:
Tests made with the RMS Olympic after the loss of Titanic showed that a smaller turning circle could be achieved by reducing the power, rather than reversing it. The smallest turn was achieved by reversing the engine on the inside of the turn, and running the outboard and center at maximum, with the rudder hard over.
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Did they offer a time frame for achieving this?
 
It has been proven that any vessel transiting the Norther Atlantic in iceberg season carrying Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, *and* Billy Zane will definitely sink!! What other proof do you need??

They *did it* in a car! Zomg! It was soo romantic!

Also, this was pre-Liberty Ships. Metallurgy was not so good...
 
Pope130 said:
Actually the flow across the rudder didn't reverse. The Olympic class had three screws, each with it's own engine. The outboard engines were conventional triple reduction piston engines, which were reversible. The center engine was a turbine that ran off the exhaust steam from the piston engines, it was not reversible. When the mains were thrown into reverse the center engine stopped receiving steam and (by normal procedure) would be braked. This would cause a disruption of the flow over the rudder, but not a reversal.

Tests made with the RMS Olympic after the loss of Titanic showed that a smaller turning circle could be achieved by reducing the power, rather than reversing it. The smallest turn was achieved by reversing the engine on the inside of the turn, and running the outboard and center at maximum, with the rudder hard over.
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When the mains were thrown into reverse the center engine stopped receiving steam and (by normal procedure) would be braked. This would cause a disruption of the flow over the rudder, but not a reversal.
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Disruption is good. With no prop ahead of the rudder you get laminar flow over rudder. Turning prop disturbs the water and gives turbulent flow - more grip. Stationary prop still disturbs the flow. But as you said - turning prop is even better.
 
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