100 Years Ago This Week.... She Was A Fine Ship. R.M.S. Titanic

[twyacht]

Some may not know that I work on large yachts, and cruise ships, even mega-liners per se,....But nothing compares to the pinnacle of technology and innovation,... of the Titanic at that time.  An amazing ship, destined for history, and took over 1500 souls with her. The size and scope of power, electricity, and scale had never been done before.

The proclamation by White Star Line to state "God Himself Couldn't Sink Her", was the prideful curse that took her...Fate and human audacity can be a bit** that way....and a reminder.

But 100 years ago this week, the mystique, the story, the fate that awaited Titanic will be a part of history. An amazing time, and an amazing tragedy.  She rests and decays upright,....a true statement to her stature....

Moonlight Sonata, by Beethoven seemed fitting.

RIP.

[tombogan03884]

If she'd been going any faster, or any slower, she would have drove her bows straight into the berg which would not have opened up enough compartments to sink her, or else she would have missed entirely.
Instead, she scraped along the side of the berg ripping open to many compartments to survive.
70% of her passengers and crew died over a couple MPH.

[sledgemeister]

Its amazing to think that the first class ticket on the Titanic back then was $4500.00 US.
To put that in perspective:

Average Income (year) ........................ .............. $1,033
New Home (median price)........................ ..............2,750
New Car (average cost)........................ .................$941
Gas (gallon) ........................ ........................ .......... 7¢
Stamp................... ........................ ........................ 2¢
Bacon (pound)........................ ........................ .....24¢
Bread (loaf)........................ ........................ ...........5¢
Butter (pound) ........................ ........................ .... 37¢
Eggs (dozen)........................ ........................ ........34¢
Milk (quart)........................ ........................ ............9¢
Sugar (pound) ........................ ........................ ...... 7¢
Steak (pound)........................ ........................ .......23¢

Simply amazing eh.

RIP to all those poor bastards that died that day and as a result in the years to come.

[twyacht]

If she'd been going any faster, or any slower, she would have drove her bows straight into the berg which would not have opened up enough compartments to sink her, or else she would have missed entirely.
Instead, she scraped along the side of the berg ripping open to many compartments to survive.
70% of her passengers and crew died over a couple MPH.

+1

Capt. Smith ordered flank speed, in an inside the uniformed "stripes" boastful test to also set the transatlantic record....Ignoring warnings from several other ships in the area about icebergs, and a flank speed of 26 knots, (God bless those poor bastard stokers),...

It was like turning a school bus with flat tires on a moonless night..and the watertight doors only went up 9 decks....Not the 14 aboard Titanic,,,,so as one flooded it spilled over to the next, and the next.....and the next......to her demise....

Titanic would have been better off with a direct hit, as her bow would have flooded only 2 compartments, but it was the perfect combination of disaster.

Many SOS, distress, and maritime rescue protocols were implemented after this tragedy, and are still in effect to this day.

A tough lesson learned, but saved many lives going fwd. Except for the R.M.S. Lusitania sunk by a German U-Boat, just a few years later....

[tombogan03884]

RMS Titanic was the first ship to use the signal "S-O-S", to request rescue.
The proscribed signal had recently been changed from the previous "C-Q-D"
Carpathia, the first rescue ship on the scene was the sister ship of Lusitania and was also sunk by a U Boat, U-55 in 1915.

[Sponsor]

[Pathfinder]

Fine ship? To paraphrase Moriarity from Kelley's Heroes, "she's a piece of crap!" I'm thinking mostly of the substandard rivets they discovered were used in an effort to save money. Like the whole "not enough lifeboats" thing. Well, the lack of lifeboats was also driven by aesthetics.

If you traveled 1st Class, yeah, it was a wonder, all of the comforts of home. For the rest, meh, not so much.

To be fair, TW, yes White did speed up but he also re-routed the ship to the south, away from the sighted ice field.

There is also a report that when the iceberg was sighted (on a moonless night in an unusually calm ocean making the berg very difficult to detect visually) the helmsman was ordered "hard a-board" meaning away from starboard, but being younger did not understand that meaning and turned instead to starboard. It was corrected fairly quickly, but even that little bit of mis-direction contributed to the loss.

When you stop and look at the entire sequence of events, it really was a charlie-foxtrot all around.

Or, as TW noted in the OP, perhaps a series of Divinely directed events.

There's a newly released photo today showing a tiny fraction of the human loss. The picture was shown before, but heavily cropped to show only a single boot. Now the pair of boots, and the remains of a jacket next to them, are clearly the evidence that this is where one of the bodies ended up.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/04/15/officials-say-human-remains-may-be-at-titanic-shipwreck-site/#ixzz1s5K79C9U3?test=latestnews

[tombogan03884]

The things that made Titanic so famous was mostly media hype because of the 1st class passengers such as J. J. Astor, and of course "Unsinkable" Molly Brown.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Brown

For real, long term tragedy read up on the SS Central America, or the steamer General Slocum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Central_America

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS_General_Slocum

[twyacht]

The rivets were fine right up until impact...and that 300+ ft rip...Yes the watertight doors were the Achilles Heel, but most naval architects don't spend enough time away from their drafting tables. (Holds true today)...

The lifeboats, or lack there of, were not mandated by any oversight committee, or statute/law etc,....(they were after Titanic), as the post sinking trial revealed.

http://www.history.com/news/2012/04/15/titanic-on-trial/

Fantastic resource of the second "Charlie Foxtrot",...after the sinking and investigation.

While the Capt. adjusted his course, an unusually cold Winter kept the ice farther south than what Capt. Smith "assumed" would be Wide Open Throttle to NY.

[Pathfinder]

The rivets were fine right up until impact...and that 300+ ft rip...Yes the watertight doors were the Achilles Heel, but most naval architects don't spend enough time away from their drafting tables. (Holds true today)...

My reading has been that the rivets were of a low-grade iron because the high-carbon steel rivets couldn't be shipped fast enough and were too expensive. Recent metallurgical studies have shown how poor the iron was in the rivets using non-visual techniques such as x-ray and microscopic analysis of the metallic structure which showed large (relatively) chucks of non-ferrous materials.

Still and all, agreed on the doors, but then back then who designed to that level of worst case scenario. And the Titanic was a fluke, hence the CF notation. A perfect storm of coincidences, or . . . .

And even recently, we've had our own CF moments, such as the Challenger, Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the walkway in the KC Holiday Inn, et al.

[Timothy]

I saw an interview with a forensic metallurgist who identified that the steel used in both the ships hull and the rivets was of inferior materials.  That, coupled with the colder water of the north Atlantic, was instrumental in making the material far more brittle than it should have been.

As to watertight compartments, this was a commercial vessel, I doubt they ever considered losing one compartment, let alone several.  

For the souls that went down with her, I wish Ballard had never found her!  She was the bait the Navy used to propel him to survey the Scorpion and the Thresher.