Had the “Titanic” been running under a slow bell, she would probably have been afloat to-day.
The Fatal Blow.
There were the usual lookout men at the bow and in the crow's nest, and officers on the bridge were straining their eyes for indications of the dreaded ice, when the cry suddenly rang out from the crow's nest, "Berg ahead,” and an iceberg loomed up in the ship's path, distant only a quarter of a mile. The first officer gave the order "Starboard your helm." The great ship answered smartly and swung swiftly to port. But it was too late. The vessel took the blow of a deadly, underwater, projecting shelf of ice, on her starboard bow near the bridge, and before she swung clear, the mighty ram of the iceberg had torn its way through plating and frames as far aft as amidships, opening up compartment after compartment to the sea.
Thus, at one blow, were all the safety appliances of this magnificent ship set at naught! Of what avail was it to close water-tight doors, or set going the powerful pumps, when nearly half the length of the ship was open to the inpouring water. It must have taken but a few minutes' inspection to show the officers of the ship that she was doomed.
Left: A very stout electrically operated bulkhead of the general type installed in the Titanic. Right: All the watertight doors could be closed automatically from the bridge. Credit: Scientific American, April 27, 1912
Half Speed Would Have Saved the Ship.
And yet that underwater blow, deadly in its nature, would scarcely have been fatal had the ship been put, as she should have been, under half speed. For then the force of the reactive blow would have been reduced to one-fourth. The energy of a moving mass increases as the square of the velocity. The 60,000-ton "Titanic," at 21 knots, represented an energy of 1,161,000 foot-tons. At 10 knots, her energy would have been reduced to 290,250 foot-tons. Think of it, that giant vessel rushing on through the ice-infested waters, was capable of striking a blow equal to the combined broadsides of the twenty 12-inch guns of the “Delaware” and “North Dakota,” each of whose guns develops 50,000 foot-tons at the muzzle!
Work of One Million Foot-tons of Energy.
Little wonder is it that the ripping up of the frail 3/4-inch or 7/8-inch side plating and the l0-inch frames of the "Titanic" had little retarding effect upon the onward rush of the ship. So slight, in proportion to the enormous total energy of the vessel, was the energy absorbed in tearing open the hull or the bottom, or both, that the passengers were scarcely disturbed by the shock.
Newton's first law of motion "will be served."
But had the speed been only one-half and the energy one-fourth as great, the ship might well have been deflected from the iceberg before more than two or three of her compartments had been ripped open; and with the water confined to these, the powerful pumps could have kept the vessel afloat for many hours, and surely until a fleet of rescuing ships had taken every soul from the stricken vessel.
There is remarkable unanimity of testimony on the part of the survivors as to the slight nature of the shock; and this, coupled with the universal confidence in the unsinkability of the vessel, and the perfect quiet of both sea and ship, contributed no doubt to the marvelous absence of panic among the passengers.
The Call for Help.
The wireless again, as in the case of the "Republic," proved its inestimable value. The collision occurred at 11:40 Sunday night in latitude 41.16 north, longitude 50.14 west. The call for help was heard by several ships, the nearest of which was the "Carpathia," which caught the message at 12:35 A.M. Monday, when she was 58 miles distant from the "Titanic." Setting an extra watch the captain crowded on all speed, reaching the scene of the disaster by 4 A.M.
See what we're tweeting about
3 Comments
Add CommentInteresting how, in the last paragraph of the article, the author dismisses eyewitness accounts of the ship breaking apart and imagines the Titanic impaling the ocean floor and standing upright.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGreed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJ.P. Morgan's greed killed the Titanic, by building the world's three biggest ships simultaneously, despite a clear lack of skilled workers and steel. He wanted to get these death traps in the water and earning to pay off the massive loan, and beat Cunard Lines.
So he was allowed to use thin, brittle, sulfur-contaminated hull plate, smaller iron rivets instead of steel, and less than a third the needed number of lifeboats because his ad copy fooled maritime regulators. They really did believe she was unsinkable. Those unsightly boats just cluttered up decks passengers need for gamboling and shuffleboard! Begone!
Morgan's bean counters continually overruled the inexperienced engineer and puked out the Olympic, a ship so flimsy, the sides could be seen "panting" (flexing in and out by over three inches) at speed. The Olympic's frame began cracking on the first day of sea trials and workers slapped steel bandages all over it to make it seaworthy. Her sister ship, the Britannic, snapped in half and sank just four years later after hitting a mine in WWI. She sank in less than an hour. Her watertight doors and portholes had been left open.
Eyewitness testimony as to the flimsiness of these craft was suppressed, from the Titanic snapping in half, to White Star attempting to spirit several officers out of the country to prevent them from testifying at the inquiry. We will never know just how bad these ships were, because many of those who knew went to the bottom. But we DO know what J.P. Morgan did on that fateful night.
He inexplicably changed his plan to make the maiden voyage, and stayed home to deal with a change in art import laws as he raped Europe of priceless antiquities.
Most people didn't even know Morgan owned the Titanic, much less that he killed over a thousand people by trying to be the biggest and the cheapest. The press reprinted White Star Lines advertising copy verbatim, as the era's latest version of "too big to fail."
And it didn't fail, for Morgan. After the rigged inquiry blamed the idiot captain, E.J. Smith, for speeding into a known ice field at night without even bothering to provide his lookouts with binoculars, the insurer paid Morgan his money back. Smith may have been chosen for his recklessness, having caused three collisions with other ships by tearing around in port at full speed, and crushing the top of a tug with the Olympic's giant rudder. If anything went wrong, Morgan could blame the captain's inability to keep track of where other objects were in relation to the floating city.
The original report on the Titanic sinking is a model of good reporting: a credit to the Scientific American of old! The lack of lifeboats is a terrible comment on bad old British malpractice (I am a British citizen), in a world dominated by the bean-counters and people deluded enough to believe their own publicity. There never has been, and probably never will be, an unsinkable ship. The sinking of the Costa Concordia shows that there are no limits to human stupidity and arrogance.The ship sank probably because the captain was showing off to a pretty girl(see your other article about men being "cognitively impaired by attractive woman"). The passengers of this ultra-modern ship had not yet had their lifeboat drills, as the ship had only left port that morning. The Spirit of Free Enterprise (British Ferry) sank within minutes of leaving harbour a few years ago. So accidents can happen at any time, in the calmest weather.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this