erikem Despite the stories of inferior steel used in the building of the Titanic One of the more credible theories I've read on the Titanic was that it was the poor quality of the wrought iron rivets used in the first and last fifth of the hull (the rest of the hull was joined with steel rivets). The rolled plates held up, but the joints between plates were sprung because of the rivets.
Despite the stories of inferior steel used in the building of the Titanic
The authors of the book I read seemed to blame the slag inherent in wrought iron. In addition the authors were pointing their fingers more at the Board of Trade than Harland and Wolff for not properly regulating the manufacture of wrought iron. They specifically mentioned that wrought iron rivets were used on the bow and stern because there wasn't room for the hydraulic press needed for steel rivets.
FWIW, the authors also maintained that icebergs are more like a firm slush as opposed to coral reef like hardness, which also goes along with the plates bending rather than fracturing.
Leo Ames,
Regarding shipwrecks of Lake Superior. "The lake it is said never gives up her dead when the witch of November comes stealing!" This is a line from the song "The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot. You can hear it on u-tube. He wrote the song to comemorate the shipwreck.
The crew has been found as you say thrown from the pilot house and on the floor of the lake in front of the bow of the ship. There are color photos on the internet somewhere taken by remote vehicle or when Jacques Cousteau viewed the wreck by submarine.
There are some deep water US Navy wrecks in Lake Ontario near Niagara Falls that were similar to the United States "man-of-war" NIAGARA. A squadron of these warships was hit by a squall during the War of 1812 and sunk. These authentic sailing ships from the war are undeteoriated on the bottom of the lake complete in sails, rigging, and with the sailors in uniform on the wreck. Jacques Cousteau discovered these wrecks also. The Canadian Government asked the US Government for title to the ships which was given by President Ronald Reagan under the condition that the bodies if recovered would be returned to the United States.
Winter wrecked at Isle Royal in the middle of Lake Superior in December 1927 was the steamship SS Kamloops. This misfortunate ship was making the transit of the lake in the late fall before the ice set in. An engine malfunction caused the ship to go adrift with passengers and crew, which then drifted onto the rock shoals of the island. The crew was glad to reach shore but the winter was setting in and the drifting ship was using its fuel to heat the cabins. Frantically the ships engineers were using the on board tools to remove the cylinder head of the steam engine to effect repairs before it drifted in shallow grounded and went over on its side. Time ran out and the ship listed on the shoal which rose up from 160 foot to 280 foot lake bottom. Kamloops quickly flooded trapping the repair crew in the engine room. The remaining crew and passengers fled the ship and later died of exposure on the island before winter abated, the shipwreck is still on the lake bottom near "12 O'clock reef."
Scuba divers traveling to Isle Royal National Park regularly dive the wreck and report encountering the bodies of the repair crew who have been floating inside for almost 100 years. "The flesh was of a waxy appearance."
Quoting from Shipwrecks of Isle Royale National Park, The Archeological Survey by Daniel J. Lenihan Principal Investigator, "Southwest Cultural Resources Center Professional Papers Number 8", 1987. Published by Lake Superior Port Cities. p201.
"One human body was confirmed present in the engine room by the ROV. Reliable accounts by sport divers indicate there are more, with the number varying from two to five. The body observed and filmed by the robot vehicle seems to be in a sopafied state. This could not be confirmed by touch, but the appearance is white and appears textured. Adipocere formation is common for suberged corpses. This is a process in which soft tissues are converted into a soft waxy-type substance, frequently compared to soap. That this condition should still be noted after 50 years is remarkable, but apparently not unique in the Great Lakes, since at least one other case on an Isle Royal shipwreck is known. Again, there is not convergence from viewers of the tape regarding the issue of whether or not the clothing has survived intact. Although common sense would suggest this to be the case, and some divers have reported that at least one of the individuals was wearing bib overalls, this is not confirmed by the ROV..."
Yes, fresh water can have some remarkable preserving qualities, especially in the deep cold.
It might be interesting to note that among the natural substances of the earth, water is one of the few that upon becoming solid has greater boyancy than when liquid. Ice floats upon its warmer unsolidified mass. All other substances do not have this property, otherwise the solidified ice would be at the bottom of the water it is made up of!
Doc.
Just to keep this a tiny bit on topic, I'd like to retract an earlier post where I essentially gave this a zero percent chance of realization. Now that I've learned about the team behind this, while they no doubt have a long road ahead with a high chance of not realizing their dream, it certainly is the best team one could put together in North America today to give this dream its best chance of being realized in the end.
I know I won't be counting them out.
54light15 I have to disagree with you on that.
I have to disagree with you on that.
Disagree about what? If it was what I said about water depth, you went on to immediately agree.
Although it's worth noting that Yorktown sunk 30 years later than the Titanic and that the Titanic was in much better shape when she was first discovered than she was just 10 years later when expeditions to her started to regularly occur for a few years (They even used to land subs at such spots as the deck above the Marconi room, now collapsed, in the earliest years). Plus, she was obviously built to somewhat lighter standards than a fleet carrier would be.
But only Heaven knows what she would've looked like in the late 1960s.
Firelock76 Yorktown was built of much better steel than the Titanic was, and throw on a cover of that good tough Navy paint and it's no surprise she still in pretty good shape. Despite the stories of inferior steel used in the building of the Titanic, in actual fact it was rolled iron, not steel, so those iron-eating bacteria going to work on it have had more than enough available to satisfy their case of the munchies. Oddly, the iron-eating bacteria's supposedly unique to that spot of the North Atlantic. Poor old Titanic couldn't even sink in the right place.
Yorktown was built of much better steel than the Titanic was, and throw on a cover of that good tough Navy paint and it's no surprise she still in pretty good shape.
Despite the stories of inferior steel used in the building of the Titanic, in actual fact it was rolled iron, not steel, so those iron-eating bacteria going to work on it have had more than enough available to satisfy their case of the munchies.
Oddly, the iron-eating bacteria's supposedly unique to that spot of the North Atlantic. Poor old Titanic couldn't even sink in the right place.
The Titanic's hull was built of steel. And top quality steel at that, which I think someone already even mentioned earlier in the thread. The bits that have been put through lab tests from the so called "big piece" of steel plating and rivets that was recovered back around 2000 or so held up extremely well.
It was brittle in the cold, but so was all steel until advances in metallurgy in the postwar years cured that issue.
erikemOne of the more credible theories I've read on the Titanic was that it was the poor quality of the wrought iron rivets used in the first and last fifth of the hull (the rest of the hull was joined with steel rives). The rolled ito plates held up, but the joints between plates were sprung because of the rivets.
That theory was essentially debunked in those tests that I mentioned. A rivet failed, but it didn't open up the entire riveted seam and the other rivets took up the load.
I believe that this has more recently been proven again, with modern steel plates and rivets of similar composition that were assembled per how it would've been on the Titanic, which was put through stress tests. Once a rivet failed, the others similarly held instead of parting at the seam, with the seam remaining watertight.
I believe that the theory with the widest acceptance in recent years with the discovery of portions of her double bottom on the seafloor, is that she actually rode up on top of a submerged portion of the iceberg.
The commonly held line of thought since 1912 of a big gash opening on the side, which was continually revised downwards since exploration started, seems quite possibly entirely incorrect.
Firelock76 I've heard the poor-quality rivet story myself, and all I can say is Harland and Wolff, the builders of the Titanic were a first-class outfit who didn't cut corners. If there was a problem with some of the rivets it certainly wasn't intentional, and at any rate the below the waterline rivets were of the "flush" type to reduce drag on the hull. There wouldn't have been any protruding rivet heads for the iceberg to impact. The damage to Titanic was pretty much to be expected when a 45,000 ton moving object collided with a one million ton non-moving one. Something had to give, and unfortunately it was Titanics riveted plates.
I've heard the poor-quality rivet story myself, and all I can say is Harland and Wolff, the builders of the Titanic were a first-class outfit who didn't cut corners. If there was a problem with some of the rivets it certainly wasn't intentional, and at any rate the below the waterline rivets were of the "flush" type to reduce drag on the hull. There wouldn't have been any protruding rivet heads for the iceberg to impact.
The damage to Titanic was pretty much to be expected when a 45,000 ton moving object collided with a one million ton non-moving one. Something had to give, and unfortunately it was Titanics riveted plates.
I said this in another thread a while back about boiler explosions, and think it's worth quoting again.
Leo_AmesLost in the disaster with the Titanic is that she was a fine vessel that was extremely well built and should be remembered as one of the heroes of that tragic night instead of being viewed as responsible. She was simply a victim of extremely bad luck and recklessness. If only more of her crew could've lived up to what the ship accomplished that night instead of sailing at high speed into iceberg infested waters that they were warned about, sending lifeboats out nearly empty, and so on. She'd probably be almost forgotten about today. Instead, she stayed afloat with mortal damage for nearly 3 hours (And significantly longer than her designer's estimation of how long she had to live). She saved many lives that night and did something extremely uncommon, she sunk on an almost even keel rather than capsizing (Probably due to many unsung heroes in her engineering department, I suspect, that were handling her ballast tanks and flooding compartments throughout the tragedy to keep her on an even keel until the end). As such, lifeboat operations were able to continue right up until the final moments and her crew needed every second of that.
Instead, she stayed afloat with mortal damage for nearly 3 hours (And significantly longer than her designer's estimation of how long she had to live). She saved many lives that night and did something extremely uncommon, she sunk on an almost even keel rather than capsizing (Probably due to many unsung heroes in her engineering department, I suspect, that were handling her ballast tanks and flooding compartments throughout the tragedy to keep her on an even keel until the end).
As such, lifeboat operations were able to continue right up until the final moments and her crew needed every second of that.
Dr DThe crew has been found as you say thrown from the pilot house and on the floor of the lake in front of the bow of the ship.
Doc, I'm familiar with all of that and never disagreed with how the Great Lakes preserves what ends up at its bottom (Witness all the wartime aircraft wrecks off our two sidewheeler training carriers that have been recovered in recent years looking beautiful outside of the fabric covered control surfaces), although the invasion of the zebra mussel obscures and is wrecking much of it these days.
But what I said about her crew is accurate. The rumored discovery of a body at the bottom of the stairs into the pilothouse has never been confirmed by anyone on that expedition. So it remains just a rumor.
And the body off the pilothouse, while confirmed, has had a bit of doubt casts in the years since. While it seems highly unlikely some other poor sailor ended just feet away from her pilothouse, some have speculated that the life vest he's wearing is of a much older style than the Fitz would've had onboard (If described accurately, since I believe no pictures of the discovery were released out of respect for the loved ones).
And as I recall, the body wasn't found by Jacques Cousteau. In fact if my memories are accurate, he wasn't even onboard when they made their short dive of only a few minutes on her during their Great Lakes cruise. This discovery was 10+ years later.
Leo, I am not agreeing with you about depth. Yes, the Yorktown and the Titanic are both at very deep levels, not sure that the variances in depth would make that much difference but one is heavily corroded, one is not. The President Coolidge was wrecked off Espiritu Santu in 1942 and is in very shallow water and remains in good condition.
I've read and I don't remember where unfortunately, that a divot of metal that was left after punching out a rivet hole in one of the Titanic's plates was used as a paperweight in someone's office. Many years later it was chilled to the temperature that the Titanic experienced. An impact test shattered it.
54light15 Leo, I am not agreeing with you about depth.
Leo, I am not agreeing with you about depth.
The level of oxygen, as well as what organisms can be supported, is a function of depth. That's why, for instance that ancient wooden vessels that sank thousands of years ago in the Mediterranean, at certain depths, have been preserved as if time has stopped.
The Yorktown is a full mile lower than the Titanic. There was no marine growth on her when she was discovered and the oxygen content, necessary for corrosion and to support marine life, is all but non-existent. There's an abundance of life at the depth of the North Atlantic where the Titanic rests, including the rusticles that are formed by microbes eating away the steel of shipwrecks such as her and the Bismarck.
And everything else equal (Which it certainly isn't), RMS Titanic was first located in 1985. The Yorktown was found with the better part of 20 fewer years under the ocean waters in comparison. Nobody knew where the Titanic was back in 1968, nor do we know how she appeared (There was still plenty of hull paint to be seen in the 1980s on Titanic, for instance of how quickly things changed by the time most of the expeditions, and high quality camera and video footage, was undertaken that we're most familiar with). Nor have we returned to the Yorktown since 1998.
Their varying conditions have no bearing on the quality of the steel used on Titanic. There was nothing inferior with her steel, which has been proven in tests. It was brittle in frigid temperatures, but so was the steel used aboard the Yorktown and every other steel hulled ship until the 1950s when the problem was cured.
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