Titanic

[daleyd]

http://www.titanicswitch.com/evidence.html

It just never happened, there are far too many changes that would have been needed to be made, and the loss of reputation for White Star line would have been far more costly than any supposed insurance gains. It was an interesting theory but I'm afraid it's up there with "Common Law" and Scandinavian bank note conspiracies.

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

@the snooper
http://www.williammurdoch.net/articles_34_Titanic_switch_theory_01.html

Have a read through that, lots of interesting points.

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

http://www.titanicswitch.com/evidence.html

It just never happened, there are far too many changes that would have been needed to be made, and the loss of reputation for White Star line would have been far more costly than any supposed insurance gains. It was an interesting theory but I'm afraid it's up there with "Common Law" and Scandinavian bank note conspiracies.

Next it will be " we did not land on the moon"

 

[Wendelspanswick]

AAH Is that the reason for some of your post's being quite poisonous

Only if it's justified!

 

[cumbriasteve]

I love conspiracy theories

99.9% of them are rubbish and I will bet my lucky shilling the Titanic is resting in Davey Jones locker.

I would write more to prove my comment but Elvis is on the car wash today and makes such a lovely job of my alloys...got to rush.

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

@cumbriasteve
I thought Elvis was on one of the moons of Saturn?

 

[cumbriasteve]

@cumbriasteve
I thought Elvis was on one of the moons of Saturn?

Only on his day's off from the wash.

 

[the snooper]

I love conspiracy theories

99.9% of them are rubbish and I will bet my lucky shilling the Titanic is resting in Davey Jones locker.

I would write more to prove my comment but Elvis is on the car wash today and makes such a lovely job of my alloys...got to rush.

Are you sure elvis isn't working in a chip shop ? The song says he is

 

[knighty]

not really my kind of thing, but I've copied and pasted this from reddit because you guys might like it:

here's a link directly to it
https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/c...normous_uncontrollable_fire/dbvlteg/?contex=7

all credit goes to a guy called pheosang :-)

For anyone actually interested in the "fire" theory, it is just that; a fire theory.

We've known of a fire being on Titanic since the survivors testified at both American and British inquiries in 1912. This is not new information.

Furthermore if you really want to blow this 'fire' theory to bits, the fire was in the starboard forward end of Boiler Room 6 (the boiler room nearest the front of the ship).

"But omg if the fire weakened the steel it would have doomed the ship omg omg omg." - typical conspiracy theorist.

The truth of the matter is that the iceberg opened up 6 compartments to the sea:

• Forepeak Tank
• Hold 1
• Hold 2
• Hold 3
• Boiler Room 6
• Boiler Room 5

At the time, Belfast shipping yard had concluded that Titanic could stay afloat with the first 3 or rear 3 compartments flooded, along with any combination of other 2 flooded. After the disaster took place, a naval architect from Belfast who worked on the Titanic did various calculations and concluded that they had actually designed Titanic better than they had thought. He surmised that the ship could stay afloat with the first 4 or rear 4 compartments flooded, or a combination of any 3 center compartments flooded.

As has been discussed above, here are the facts:

• Titanic can stay afloat with her first 4 watertight compartments breached
• Titanic can stay afloat with her rear 4 watertight compartments breached
• Titanic can stay afloat if any 3 central watertight compartments breach.

And now for the doosey:

• The iceberg opened up 6 compartments to the sea.

At the time of the incident, Thomas Andrews was well aware of the "she can stay afloat with 3 flooded" saying, BECAUSE HE HELPED DESIGN THE SHIP. From roughly 11:45PM - 12:15PM he toured the damaged compartments and took note of how fast each was flooding, how seriously they were damaged, everything he could note...he noted.

No doubt that once he saw that not only where the first 3 compartments flooding rapidly (14ft of water above the keel in 10 minutes) along with 3 more compartments flooding, he knew the ship was doomed. And thus relayed this information to the Captain.

The fire is null and void in this scenario. "oh but it weakened the steel you see! ha ha! Steel weakened = ship sinking ha ha !" No. Again, floats with 4 compartments flooded, sinks with 5. Iceberg opened 6.

Now here is where the bit with the fire gets interesting.

The stokers had been combatting the fire ever since Titanic arrived in Southampton to take on supplies before passengers boarded, and they had just extinguished the fire mere hours (I believe 6 or so) before the ship collided with the iceberg. To do this, they shifted coal that was not on fire over to the Port Side coal bunker for Boiler Room 6. It was then that they got the fire under control and everything was all well in Boiler Room 6 finally.

BUT! All of that extra weight shifted over to the port side of Boiler Room 6 caused the ship to list (lean) to port (left) by around 2.5 degrees. Passengers had even started to notice by Sunday noon. Surviving passenger Lawrence Beesley noted that as he was at lunch with a group of other passengers they noted that if they looked out the Port windows they could not see the horizon, only the sea. If they looked out of the Starboard (right side) windows they couldn't see the sea, only the sky. This would mean that the ship was listing to the left, but not by a huge margin, as most passenger didn't even notice.

edit, as a user pointed out I am going to add this here as I did in a comment down below "This is all speculation and hypotheticals beyond this point"

What makes this lean to Port important is.....the iceberg strike. The coal had not yet been moved back to starboard at the time of the collision, and so the ship was still listing anywhere from 2-2.5 degrees to Port.

Quartermaster Hitchens later testified that at roughly 11:45PM (5 minutes after the collision) that Captain Smith re-entered the Bridge and noted there was a 5 degree list to starboard (right).

Meaning that the ship went from a 2-2.5 degree list to Port to a 5 degree list to starboard in only 5 minutes.

Why is that initial port list important, you might ask? What would happen if it weren't there, and the ship had struck the iceberg at an even trim. Assuming that the force of the water caused the ship to take on the same degree of downward movement, Titanic would be suffering from a 7-7.5 degree list to starboard in only 5 minutes after hitting the iceberg.

At that severe of a list, lifeboats on both sides of the deck would find it very troublesome to launch, not to mention that they had to be readied yet. On the port side the boats would be practically grinding along the hull as they lowered, where on the starboard side they would be swinging anywhere from 10-15 feet away from the boat deck edge, pretty much guaranteeing that anyone to board a lifeboat would have to have the athleticism of a gymnast or they would simply not be able to enter.

And here is an even scarier scenario. As a ship sinks, its center of gravity is constantly changing. It moves from near the bottom of the ship to up near the top as more water floods in, this is hastened by lists. Which is why if you've ever taken a ship model, or seen videos of ships sinking on youtube they always roll over on one side.

It is now 11:45PM. Everyone on board is aware of a frightening list developing to starboard, but instead of stabilizing at 7-7.5 degrees it gets worse. As the center of gravity rises, the ship continues to roll over to starboard, eventually laying over all the way on its side where it then proceeds to sink beneath the waves at roughly 12:00AM - 12:10AM.

Why is this such a scary scenario? Besides the obvious reasons....the first lifeboat never left Titanic until 12:40-45AM. And the first confirmed wireless signals calling for help left only a few moments later. Captain Smith was not aware that the ship was doomed until 12:15AM - 12:20AM...

To put it shortly, the fire saved Titanic by causing the port list before the collision ever took place. If it had not had been for that fire, Titanic may have very well slipped beneath the waves with a 100% mortality rate, and not a single piece of evidence to suggest that she'd gone down. It would have become a ghost ship, and would likely still remain hidden on the ocean floor to this day.

 

[knighty]

and his replies to a couple of posts

The designers of the Titanic and Olympic could not fathom an accident causing 3 or more compartments to be opened to the sea. This is why they designed the ship to still float with 3 forward or rear compartments flooded. As I stated in my comment above, Edward Wilding calculated at the British inquiry that she could have actually stayed afloat with 4 forward or rear compartments flooded. An accident that opens 3 or more compartments is clearly inconceivable. They were relying on the fact that the ship was so large, and able to maneuver quite well despite her size (don't pay attention to myths that say the rudder was too small. Titanic exceeded the expectations of her maneuvers during her sea trials). Surely anything that could be any real danger to the ship would be seen in time for them to quickly get away from danger.

This was not the case with the iceberg. A chain of events took place that practically guaranteed that Titanic was going to strike the iceberg, the fatal one being a cold-air mirage which hid the iceberg until it was literally too late to do anything about. Normally an object could be seen from 12 miles away from Titanic's crows nest. Taking into account the speed she was traveling when the iceberg was spotted and how long it took to impact (generally agreed to be 30-37 seconds), the berg wasn't spotted until it was around 1,200 FEET from the ship. That is simply too short of a distance for the ship to get out of the way.

Another comparison would be the AirBus flight in 2011 that struck a flock of birds, lost engine thrust in both engines, and had to land in the Hudson River. The engines were designed to deal with collisions with birds, but not Canadian Geese! Canadian Geese weigh slightly above the mass that the engines are built to withstand. And so when a flock of them collided with the engine, the engines became inoperable.

The designers of Titanic installed safety parameters to ensure that their vessel would have a healthy lifespan like any liner did, roughly 15-20 years of service. They did not, and simply COULD not, account for a freak accident like what actually occurred.

Exposure of the hull to the ice is what caused the tears in the seams of the hull plates, so the coal being moved would have been very negligible. The coal in Boiler Room 6's starboard compartment had been moved, but the room just behind it (Boiler Room 5) still had its coal there, and was still flooding.

As to the location of the tears in the hull plate seams, they vary. In regards to Boiler Room 5 and 6, we have the only eye witness survivor account by a man called Fireman Barrett.

He was in Boiler Room 6, his assigned duty area, when the collision occurred. At the moment he heard water coming in he looked to the starboard side and saw water coming in with the strength of a fire hose 2 feet above the plate (floor). Immediately he and a man next to him turned and dove through the watertight door connecting rooms 5 and 6 just before it slammed shut. (Contrary to popular depiction like in James Cameron's Titanic the doors were mechanically closed until they were around 3 feet above the floor and then they would release and allow gravity to slam them shut to ensure a watertight seal)

When Barrett and this other workman got on their feet in Room 5 they noticed that water was flooding the forward starboard coa bunker, also with the strength of a fire hose just about 2 feet above the plate floor.

The plate is roughly 35 feet below the waterline, so for boiler rooms 5 and 6 yes the damage was well below the waterline.

If you want an idea of where the damage was this image serves well: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...700px-Titanic_side_plan_annotated_English.png

Very small tears in the seams of the hull plates. Edward Wilding concluded (the architect from Belfast I mentioned in my comment up above) that not only could Titanic stay afloat with 4 forward or rear compartments breached but that the total surface area open to the sea was somewhere in the vicinity of 12 square feet.

This figure was ludicrous to the British Inquiry officials, and they concluded that nothing short of a 200-300 foot gash in Titanic's side could have sank the ship. It wasn't until a recent expedition in 2012 where the team used advanced SONAR to penetrate the sea bed did we find evidence of iceberg damage (which is where the markings are on the picture above).

Interesting factoid about the discover of the sonar identified iceberg damage, when totaled up it equated to 12 square feet, confirming Wildings calculations from 1912..

 

[Mee]

You are correct, but this was discounted as opinion only because they couldn't physically count the engines as the deep water technology didn't exist to physically count them for irrefutable proof and when it did exist the ship was too far deteriorated to allow entry by an ROV to actually film them for irrefutable evidence.

My thoughts are that I will never see irrefutable proof either way, in my lifetime so we may not know the answers in our lifetime.

 

[Wedg1e]

My understanding is that the big T has been somewhat desecrated in the 30 years since she was found, I heard tales that explosives were used to gain more points of access to plunder stuff... even on the first Fench raid in '86(?) there was stuff retrieved that could only have been extracted using force (the phone from the crow's nest, for example).
Same fate has befallen the Wilhelm Gustloff as the Russians were convinced there was lots of plundered gold etc. aboard - they just blew the ship apart looking for it.

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

not really my kind of thing, but I've copied and pasted this from reddit because you guys might like it:

here's a link directly to it
https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/c...normous_uncontrollable_fire/dbvlteg/?contex=7

all credit goes to a guy called pheosang :-)

That is a good read, Thank you.

 

[daleyd]

You are correct, but this was discounted as opinion only because they couldn't physically count the engines as the deep water technology didn't exist to physically count them for irrefutable proof and when it did exist the ship was too far deteriorated to allow entry by an ROV to actually film them for irrefutable evidence.

My thoughts are that I will never see irrefutable proof either way, in my lifetime so we may not know the answers in our lifetime.

Well, that and the fact there's another shedload of evidence against the conspiracy theory (See the above links, plus plenty more easily found, a lot of which are backed up by actual peer reviewed papers and not written in crayon) and none actually for it. Given that state of affairs my money is on it being 99.9% certain it IS Titanic, and a slim possibility it might be otherwise, unless you have some other evidence?

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

@daleyd
Extra information on the extra engines.

ach boiler, double ended or single ended had it's own ducted exhaust. They rose up and increased into bigger ducts.
Think Gas turbines ducting on type 22's. So by counting the ducts you could make an educated guess on the numbers of boilers.

Double ended boilers used one duct to balance the "Draw" of the fire in the box.

The First 3 funnels on the Olympic class were for boiler, engine and aux power and aux machinery rooms and spaces.
The forth was for galley, restaurants and the laundry spaces. Oddly on the Britannic The potatoes prep room was ducted into first class smoking room fire chimney. This was a documented design changed.

So counting them is easy.
Oh yes the Turbine was steamed through the after boilers if not powering the triple expansion engines.

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

the Titanic was 4" longer than the Olympic.
This caused some heated exchanges between the Port authorities in Cherbourg, as they carge the docking fees by measured length. Not by declared length. Something the got from Italy. makes more local tax's

That's why on the Med coast in france they more a lot of ships aft end in. Not so now for the big ships, but they tax rate is by length.
Money grabbing ...........
So they knew the length Of the Titanic.

One extra bit of pop quiz. The German battle ships of the Bismarck class were set to a size they could not only fit into German yards, sail the Kiel canal. But to fit in the Normandy dock in France.

 

[Tinbasherdan]

You are correct, but this was discounted as opinion only because they couldn't physically count the engines as the deep water technology didn't exist to physically count them for irrefutable proof and when it did exist the ship was too far deteriorated to allow entry by an ROV to actually film them for irrefutable evidence.

My thoughts are that I will never see irrefutable proof either way, in my lifetime so we may not know the answers in our lifetime.

I see the irony of not believing something without hard evidence is lost on you

 

[mike os]

over 100 years and no evidence has come to light of a switch, despite plenty of pillocks speculating..... how likely is it that some drunken dock worker or crew would say something to someone if they were involved in it? or did aliens or pixies do the switch while the crew was being probed?

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

@Wedg1e

My understanding is that the big T has been somewhat desecrated in the 30 years since she was found, I heard tales that explosives were used to gain more points of access to plunder stuff... even on the first Fench raid in '86(?) there was stuff retrieved that could only have been extracted using force (the phone from the crow's nest, for example).
Same fate has befallen the Wilhelm Gustloff as the Russians were convinced there was lots of plundered gold etc. aboard - they just blew the ship apart looking for it.

She has bean robbed, at the start it was stuff from the debris field, not then classed as the final resting place. But since Dr Ballard found her, she has bean robbed.
I call it grave robbing.

Sadly there is no international law to stop it.

Unlike a warship (underwater craft included) which remain the property of the sovereign government what can only be dived to look at, ships like the Titanic can be robbed, as long as no human remains are disturbed.

Oh yes, any mail or stamped goods, still belong to the sender, not the ship owners.
Human remains are under the duty of care of the ship owner, unless they are no longer in existence. In that case they come under the care of the flag she flew under.

 

[Wedg1e]

@Wedg1e

She has bean robbed, at the start it was stuff from the debris field, not then classed as the final resting place. But since Dr Ballard found her, she has bean robbed.
I call it grave robbing.
Sadly there is no international law to stop it.
Unlike a warship (underwater craft included) which remain the property of the sovereign government what can only be dived to look at, ships like the Titanic can be robbed, as long as no human remains are disturbed.

I read somewhere that Jacques Cousteau owned an island near the Britannic and that once sport diving her became feasible it was very soon discovered that the ship's bell was missing...

As you say, no international law to stop it (Ballard's crew placed a plaque on the big T that politely asked future visitors to leave her alone but being brass it was probably robbed by some thieving ocean gyppos ) - I think the thing that gets people annoyed is that until recently the sinking was within living memory; with, say, an ancient Greek galleon the plundering is the same but somehow it becomes 'marine archaeology'