102 Years Ago Today - Titanic Sank on Her Maiden Voyage.

[N2NH]

And the legend began. Interestingly, a recent study found that 1912 was not an exceptionally high iceberg year for the North Atlantic. There were others that were higher. Maybe there's a message there somewhere...


On April 10, 1912, the RMS Titanic embarked on its maiden voyage, sailing from Southampton, England, to New York City. One of the largest and most luxurious passenger liners at the time, the Titanic was also considered by many to be unsinkable. On April 14, however, the ship struck an iceberg, and early the next day it sank. Some 1,500 people perished. Because of the tragedy, the Titanic became perhaps the best-known ship in the world, capturing the public imagination and inspiring popular books and movies. After the 1985 discovery of its wreckage, interest in the famed liner only increased. Some 100 years after its sinking, the Titanic remains an enduring legend.

Titanic: The Unsinkable Ship (http://www.britannica.com/titanic/)


...There have been a number of theories about the iceberg; where did it come from, why were there so many icebergs in the area at the time, how big was it, and so on. It has become general belief that the number of ice bergs in the area was exceptionally large. However, a new paper released a few minutes ago suggests that this is not the case, and also questions some of the other theories about ice berg calving that year are also now in question.

The paper is “Iceberg risk in the Titanic year of 1912: was it exceptional?” by Grant R. Bigg and David J. Wilton of the University of Sheffield, published in the journal Weather.

Yes, there were a lot of icebergs that year, about 2.5 times above the average year. Iceberg experts focus on the number of ice bergs that float south of 48 degrees N latitude, and during the iceberg season of 1912 it is estimated that 1038 of the things passed that line. So that’s a lot, but according to this research, it is less than the 90th percentile for the century-plus period for which data are available.

Importantly, the number of icebergs in the region has gone up recently...

New Research on RMS #Titanic, Icebergs, Climate Change (http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2014/04/10/new-research-on-rms-titanic-icebergs-climate-change/)

[KG4CGC]

Arrogance sank the Titanic from the builder of the ship to the captain and the crew.

[K0RGR]

No, actually, the prevailing theory is that the Titanic sank before it hit the iceberg. This was due to the weight of thousands of time travelers suddenly appearing on deck to warn the captain of the ships impending doom...

I saw the Titanic exhibit at Luxor in Las Vegas recently - very impressive... they have a huge piece from the hull of the ship on display, which gives you a small idea of how titanic it really was. At 882 feet long, it was not much smaller than the largest cruise ships today.

[K7SGJ]

12091

"What the fuck was that funny noise"?

[W3WN]

< snip >
I saw the Titanic exhibit at Luxor in Las Vegas recently - very impressive... they have a huge piece from the hull of the ship on display, which gives you a small idea of how titanic it really was. At 882 feet long, it was not much smaller than the largest cruise ships today.

LMFD & I saw the exhibit (or one very much like it) at the Carnegie Science Center a few years back.

There were a lot of factors involved in the Titanic sinking. Had any one or two of them not happened, the ship would probably have survived the collision... or there might not have been one. Some of these were design... I don't want to say defects, but design decisions that might have gone differently. There was the speed of the ship in hazardous waters. There was the lack of binoculars for the lookouts (binoculars that were locked up and unavailble). And there's a theory that says that before sailing, there had been a fire in one of the coal bunkers. Had that fire not happened, or if the ship's departure had been delayed and that part of the hull inspected... well, the theory is that the fire weakened the hull enough that the collision cause a breach much worse than it should have been -- or there might not even have been one.

The loss of life wouldn't have been so severe, if only there had been more lifeboats. If only the radio officers had put a higher priority on iceberg warnings over the messages that they were sending out (as per their orders from the Marconi company). If only the unknown ship, if it actually existed, had seen the signal flares (which may not have been sent out correctly, according to some sources), and arrived to help.

If, if, if.

The Titanic disaster sparked a lot of changes in how ships travelled, prepared for emergencies, and communicated. Odds are pretty good that many more lives have been saved, compared to what is suspected could have happened, had those changes not been made. But that doesn't mitigate the loss of life that occurred, ultimatly due to human nature.

[K7SGJ]

LMFD & I saw the exhibit (or one very much like it) at the Carnegie Science Center a few years back.

There were a lot of factors involved in the Titanic sinking. Had any one or two of them not happened, the ship would probably have survived the collision... or there might not have been one. Some of these were design... I don't want to say defects, but design decisions that might have gone differently. There was the speed of the ship in hazardous waters. There was the lack of binoculars for the lookouts (binoculars that were locked up and unavailble). And there's a theory that says that before sailing, there had been a fire in one of the coal bunkers. Had that fire not happened, or if the ship's departure had been delayed and that part of the hull inspected... well, the theory is that the fire weakened the hull enough that the collision cause a breach much worse than it should have been -- or there might not even have been one.

The loss of life wouldn't have been so severe, if only there had been more lifeboats. If only the radio officers had put a higher priority on iceberg warnings over the messages that they were sending out (as per their orders from the Marconi company). If only the unknown ship, if it actually existed, had seen the signal flares (which may not have been sent out correctly, according to some sources), and arrived to help.

If, if, if.

The Titanic disaster sparked a lot of changes in how ships travelled, prepared for emergencies, and communicated. Odds are pretty good that many more lives have been saved, compared to what is suspected could have happened, had those changes not been made. But that doesn't mitigate the loss of life that occurred, ultimatly due to human nature.

One of the things that I found interesting, was the discussion of the hull plates. Investigators theorize that had the plates been of a different composition, they would not have been as brittle, especially in the cold Atlantic water, and wouldn't have buckled and broken like they did. That alone may have saved the ship, or at least delayed the sinking. That may have allowed the Carpathia and other rescue ships to get to her in time to save many of the lives that were lost.

[KG4CGC]

I agree with Ron and Rat. It's only an opinion but it has been shown that the metal used for the rivets was not the best. Combine with the cold, they were already weaker, substandard.
There has long been discussion of the hull sections, the doors that sealed out the water, not being closed thus allowing water to flood more than just the damaged section.
The radio operators were getting tips from passengers to run messages thus ignoring maritime radio traffic, weather and water warnings.
There is a theory that they didn't actually see the iceberg until they were right on it due to the light from far away bending along the horizon causing an optical illusion and thus camouflaging the iceberg.
Finally, when they did see the iceberg, the ship's pilot or captain or whoever was at the helm ordered full stop or even just slowed the ship down too fast. This would cause the wave behind the ship to catch up to the stern and push the ship forward. This while turning hard to port, would have tilted the ship over on her starboard side. The combination of these maneuvers increased the ship momentum as she went both forward and sideways to starboard while tilting into the iceberg. When the rivets started to pop, the opened up like a zipper. The damaged section flooded which on its own would not have been so bad but like I said earlier, the hull doors were open causing the undamaged sections to flood as well.

I won't get into the lack lifeboats but this lack did play into the arrogance I mentioned in another post. The manufacturer said that the Titanic was unsinkable. The advertisers of the day played it up in the media that the ship was unsinkable. It was the "meme du jour" that the ship was unsinkable and complacency set in before the ship ever left port.

[kb2vxa]

Man said "She's unsinkable." God said "Oh yeah?"

[NQ6U]

No, actually, the prevailing theory is that the Titanic sank before it hit the iceberg. This was due to the weight of thousands of time travelers suddenly appearing on deck to warn the captain of the ships impending doom...

Aliens, man. And Bigfoot.

[n2ize]

Aliens, man. And Bigfoot.

HAARP !!

[N2NH]

I agree with Ron and Rat...

As do I. It signaled the end of the Victorian Era and it epitomized the greed that was all too much of that era too. Titanic was a big ship, designed to carry people in classes, but the biggest was the 3rd class, steerage. European immigration was at a peak and one of the reasons I heard that there were so few lifeboats (besides being 'unsinkable') was that they didn't count the passengers that would travel steerage. They just didn't count. Most of the dead were from steerage.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Titanic_Survival_Stats.svg/640px-Titanic_Survival_Stats.svg.png

In the end, the power elite who had to travel the latest, 'safest' and fastest ship, the ones that had to pay the cool tax, perished - victims of the institutionalized greed of their time. Talk about a new world order. Many of the movers and shakers of their day were lost on 4/15/1912.

[WA7PBE]

more importantly fenway park opened the same week... just kidding it really is tragic what happened to all those lost

[W9JEF]

.



Tragically Ironic:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/17/world/asia/south-korea-ship-sinking/