Titanic: What Caused the Ship to Crash

--Rudder was too small
--Cavitation induced by reversing engines reduced turning ability
--Propeller immediatly forward of the rudder was stopped, reducing turning ability
--Traveling at too great a speed (disputed)
--No wind making the berg difficult to see (no waves breaking at its base)
--Turning the ship versus maintaining course
--Brittle metal
--Water-tight doors did not extend high enough in the hull
--Maritime law did not mandate enough life boats (current law in place in was written in 1894)
--Boats sent away at less than full capacity
--Either the ship was too far north or the bergs were farther south than normal
--Water temperature was said to be fatal after four minutes exposure
 
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The love between a man from a lower class social structure and a woman from a high society social class and finally her jealous husband to be!!!

This similar type of love triangle also was the source of the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese thus launching the US involvement in WWII!

Tragedy is always traced back to LOVE!:love
 
Ultimately the cause rests with the Captain.
Barring an act of God, it starts and ends right there in my view as harsh as that can seem sometimes.

Being more proactive about a known threat, they took a more southerly course to get away from icebergs, but clearly it was not enough.
 
PHArchivist said:
--Rudder was too small
--Cavitation induced by reversing engines reduced turning ability
--Propeller immediatly forward of the rudder was stopped, reducing turning ability
--Traveling at too great a speed (disputed)
--No wind making the berg difficult to see (no waves breaking at its base)
--Turning the ship versus maintaining course
--Brittle metal
--Water-tight doors did not extend high enough in the hull
--Maritime law did not mandate enough life boats (current law in place in was written in 1894)
--Boats sent away at less than full capacity
--Either the ship was too far north or the bergs were farther south than normal
--Water temperature was said to be fatal after four minutes exposure
Click to expand...

do you think the ship's binoculars played a significant role in the disaster?

I know there were several arguments regarding the binoculars....such as could they see the iceberg in time with it and what happen to the Titanics pair...

I know some say David Blair accidentally took the key to the binoculars' locker when he was transferred off the ship or it was his personal pair that he took with him etv etc
 
Wolvster1 said:
I know another thing I read a long time ago
they had commented that pretty much ANY
kind of impact would have sunk her because of
VERY cheap metal used in her construction !

:unsure

They said the ship yard that was responsible for
building the Titanic was so rushed to get it done
they used substandard metal for the plates and bolts.

They had Engineers that theorized with the below
freezing water add on top of the substandard metal
the hull would have buckled with any kind of impact...
Click to expand...


Yes/No

Metallurgy was not what it is today, meaning that they didn't know that the sulfer content of the rivets would make them brittle in cold water. This was a problem discovered with WWII Liberty ships. When that ship went into the freezing North Atlantic, it made it brittle and when it hit the ice berg, it popped the rivets along the whole side of the boat, and water flooded in.

There are many details to the sinking, like tumblers in a lock, that matched up just perfectly, at the right time. No ONE thing was the ONE cause.



The lady has a book to promote, don't take it too seriously
 
EvilRocketeer said:
I came across this article online a few minutes ago and wondered if this is just a publicity stunt to promote her book or is it actual truth...


The granddaughter of Lighttoller (the senior surviving officer and second officer) says that her grandfather kept it a secret that the ships steering crew member turned the ship in the wrong direction when the look out crew spotted the iceberg...

She has a fictional book coming out soon about a banker who survive the titanic and she was going to incorporate her grandfather's secrets into the book.

Officer's Granddaughter, Novelist Louise Patten, Says Steering Error Sank Titanic
Click to expand...

I wouldn't believe one word she said if she'd prepared to sully her grandfathers name in such a cavalier fashion.

what she's effectively saying is that if that story is true, her grandfather lied to the official enquiry at the time. if true, then he's pretty low, if not, then she's even worse.
 
Regarding this new "revalation" about steering mistakes, I think this gal is clearly just trying to cash in. I think its been pretty clear in history for quite some time that the ship could have been navigated better.

Interestingly, in 1995 I read "A Night To Remember" by Walter Lord. Damn thing read like an action adventure. My thought at the time was that this would make a GREAT big budget film. That, yeah, we've had Titanic films before, but not for years, and with modern film-making techniques and budgets, it would be a mind-blower.

Guess I wasn't the only one thinking that in 1995!

More interestingly (and on topic) I'd have centered the story on Lighttoller. He had quite a night. I recall reading that after the forward funnel had collapsed, he got sucked down into the gaping hole with the torrent of rushing water, only to be blasted back up and out, clear of the ship, by an internal explosion.

Whether that really happened or not, it'd work great on film!
 
PHArchivist said:
That much (binocs) i have not read about...

News is on Yahoo too:

Titanic sunk by steering mistake, author says - Yahoo! News
Click to expand...

I read about it a few months ago...
here is a little excerpt on the Binocs and Keys:

"When Blair left the Titanic on 9 April 1912 he took with him the key to the Crow's nest locker, presumably by accident. This is believed to be a reason why there were no binoculars available with the crew during the voyage. According to other versions, the binoculars were not in the locker, but were left behind in his cabin,[1] or he took them along with him when he left the ship, as they were his personal set of binoculars. The absence of binoculars being a factor in the sinking of the Titanic, became a point of investigation in the subsequent inquiries into the sinking.
The lookouts at the time of the collision Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee maintained during the inquiries that they were informed they were to have no binoculars during the voyage. Fleet, when asked by a commission of inquiry composed of members of the United States Congress whether or not they would have seen the iceberg from farther away, replied that he would have seen it "a bit sooner". When asked "How much sooner?", he responded: "Well, enough to get out of the way."[4] According to legal expert Gary Slapper, though, Blair's "forgetfulness wasn’t a material reason for the disaster" as there were other intervening causes.[5]
The key itself survived and was donated by Blair's daughter to the International Sailors Society.[6] On 22 September 2007, it was sold in a group of items via auction held by Christie's, including a ticket from Belfast that fetched £32,000 and a postcard sent by a passenger which sold for £17,000.[7] The key was purchased by Shen Dougjun, the CEO of jewelry retailer TESIRO's Chinese division for £90,000, and is currently on display in Nanjing.[8]
The auctioneers said about the importance of the key that, it was a conjecture that the key could have saved the Titanic had it not left the ship. They also said that the money from the auction of the key will be used to set up bursaries and scholarships in Blair's name.[6]"

I read somewhere else that Lightoller mentioned he would buy a pair when he got to new York on the ship...
 
Little info on Blair jsut incase people dont know about him

"Captain Edward J. Smith gave Henry Wilde, of the Olympic, the post of chief officer, demoting the original appointee William McMaster Murdoch to first officer and Lightoller to second officer. The original second officer, David Blair, was excluded from the voyage altogether, while the ship's roster of junior officers remained unchanged"
 
Another contributing factor was that both Olympic and Titanics' hull plating was too thin. Thomas Andrews, the ships' builder wanted to use 1 ¼ thick plating, but was over ruled by Bruce Ismay, the ships', owner, who insisted on one inch thick. There was nothing illegal about this change, it was just a cost cutting move. No one had ever built a ship that big before and the accepted construction practices and codes weren't good enough. The builders and owners knew from Olympic's sea trials that both hulls might be weak and took steps to strengthen Olympic's hull. Titanic broke apart at a far shallower angle than the movies have it because her fragile hull. After her lose, Olympic's double bottom was extended all the way up the sides.
 
Curious how many other steel-hulled ships that went down by the head experienced an actual breaking of the hull.

Titanic is the only one I've heard about.
 
the titanic had a natural weakness in her longitudinal members from stress due to the lift shafts and the grand staircase roughly 2/3 of the way along the hull, that made for a weak section.

saying that though, the design was never envisioned having to take the weight of at least 1/3 of the ship being out of the water at an acute angle so the point is moot anyway.

the olympic sailed for years with no problems whatsoever so I also think the argument over weak rivets is poor.

any ship from that period would have had some weak rivets just as you can buy a pack of nails today and some of them might be low grade mixed into the batch by accident.
 
You are all wrong:

jameson_whiskey.jpg
 
The need to break a record getting to New York caused it to sink. If they had slowed down it they wouldn't have been where the iceberg was when the iceberg was there.
 
rose being a tramp sank the titanic
Had she not been banging jack and stayed faithful to her fiance, the crewmen in the crows nest would not have been distracted by them playing grabass on deck and would have seen thea ice berg in time to avert disaster.
But that's just my take on it.
 
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