Did only 2 ft doom the Titanic?

[PeterChappell]

Thanks Sam. I think that just about sums up the situation.

Peter, if you have not already done so, I suggest reading Chapter 6 of Sam Halpern's RITLOTSST: A Centennial Reappraisal. Sam has calculated that BR5 was taking in over 4 long tons of water per minute and by 12:25am, had 180 long tons in it. I believe Wilding (and so probably Sam) used imperial ton measures and so BR5 was flooding at the rate of over 1000 gallons per minute. I think repair work under those circumstances would have been difficult, to say the least.

I'm completely confused what relevance BR5 is to this discussion, since according to Wilding it played no significant part in the sinking. Wasn't the leakage rate described as equivalent to that of a fire hose? A modern fire hose would be around 325 gallons per min or 1 1/2 tons per minute, but I guess early 20th century hoses were less powerful. Assuming the BR5 leak was much higher at 4 long tons per minute, that is almost the same as the pump in BR5 so it would just keep up with the flooding.

Surely BR5 was the one leak they could access and attempt to reduce if they had any screws wedges etc I've know idea if they attempted to, but does anyone know, since so few survived from that part of the ship? Isn't this speculative scene in the forgotten heroes of the Titanic disaster meant to depict this?

 

[Steven Christian]

Can really compare warship design to passenger liners. Very different needs.

Yes true. Different needs. But the physics are the same. Too much water on the inside that's supposed to be on the outside and to the bottom they will all go.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

However, the notion that damage control only started in WW1 isn't true.

Only that's not what I said. What I said was

"The absolute reality is that none of the understanding and knowledge gained over the course of two major wars just didn't exist, and niether did a lot of the equipment."

That doesn't mean that damage control only started during the wars. (It didn't. Sailors have been improvising for centuries.) It only mean that the understanding gained over the course of two world wars had yet to be learned. They were all on a learning curve and some were more ahead of the game than others.

 

[yotsuya]

Only that's not what I said. What I said was

"The absolute reality is that none of the understanding and knowledge gained over the course of two major wars just didn't exist, and niether did a lot of the equipment."

That doesn't mean that damage control only started during the wars. (It didn't. Sailors have been improvising for centuries.) It only mean that the understanding gained over the course of two world wars had yet to be learned. They were all on a learning curve and some were more ahead of the game than others.

Ship's carpenters have a long history of enacting repairs on ship. The change from wood to metal hulls changed things a bit, but I'm sure many of the same procedures remained the same. For Titanic, there was just too much damage. There were some valiant saves in the age of wood and sail by ship's carpenters.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

Ship's carpenters have a long history of enacting repairs on ship. The change from wood to metal hulls changed things a bit, but I'm sure many of the same procedures remained the same. There were some valiant saves in the age of wood and sail by ship's carpenters.

I suppose that legacy from the wooden hull days one of the reasons why Hutchinson and others were still called "carpenters". I wonder how much actual wood work the average Ship's Carpenter in 1912 had to do.

For Titanic, there was just too much damage.

Agreed. Unless I am mistaken, the initially visible part of the damage to BR5 was about 2 feet long and also 2 feet above the stokehold plates. With water rushing in through there at around 4 long tons per minute, by the time the crew got their weighted rope and rolled-up blankets and arrived, the damaged area would have been submerged, making attempts at repair work............well, very difficult to say the least.

It is conceivable that something along the lines Matthew suggested might have reduced or stopped the flow in BR6 & 5

Unless I am mistaken, according to Sam Halpern's well researched calculations, BR6 had 7 feet of water above the stokehold plates only 10 minutes after the collision (p113....A Centennial Reappraisal). How could any crew have conducted repair work there, much less stopped the flow?

 

[yotsuya]

I have noticed two things about the sinking that have changed my views on it. I think two of the compartments were flooding fast due to the amount of damage. Two more almost as fast, and the last two slower. The arguably the forepeak was smaller so a smaller split could fill it as fast. But from what I have been reading, there is no sign that water flowed over the watertight bulkheads from BR 6 back. BR 5 was flooding on its own at a good pace. BR 4 had a small leak under the stokehold plates. But the water was not rushing aft in a great wave as it got to the top of the watertight bulkheads. I think that is because once they got to the top they then had to find a way through. All the WTB were extended up on Olympic and Britannic. How did they do that without ripping those parts of the ship apart?

I think the bulkhead already went higher, it was a matter of installing water tight doors where needed to make the safety level higher. So many of the sinking simulations have the water just flow over and fill the next compartment and I'm not seeing that in the accounts. I think water was getting in and was moving back and was going to flood all those areas very soon, but I don't see the path for water to just flow over those bulkheads. It has to find stairs and hallways and some way to get from one side to the other and the builders did not make it easy. I personally think that if someone had gone to all the cabins, got people up and closed all the ports, the ship might have lasted longer. I suspect that a great many of the ports were open, or were opened to see what was going on. It would be interesting to see how many are open vs. closed on the wreck.

 

[Steven Christian]

Ship's carpenters have a long history of enacting repairs on ship. The change from wood to metal hulls changed things a bit, but I'm sure many of the same procedures remained the same. For Titanic, there was just too much damage. There were some valiant saves in the age of wood and sail by ship's carpenters.

Ships carpenters (Carpenters Mate) were renamed in the Navy to Damage Controlman a few years after WW2. They had the same duties. My grandfather was a Chief Carpenters Mate that retired for the second time right at the end of the war. At the start of the war they brought him out of retirement pretty much for the reason to teach damage control to the new guys. It's a good job to have. Qualified DC's are sought after in industry. They have a diverse skill set. Cheers

 

[PeterChappell]

I think the bulkhead already went higher, it was a matter of installing water tight doors where needed to make the safety level higher. So many of the sinking simulations have the water just flow over and fill the next compartment and I'm not seeing that in the accounts. I think water was getting in and was moving back and was going to flood all those areas very soon, but I don't see the path for water to just flow over those bulkheads. It has to find stairs and hallways and some way to get from one side to the other and the builders did not make it easy.

Reports suggest the water was allowed to access the various stairs adjacent to the wide Scotland Road passage (at around 12:25 and 12:45).

I've previously attempted to determine the rate of flooding verses time based on the graphs published in Stettler & Thomas (below). The change from a reduction to an increase in flooding rate seems to coincide with the water being seen, flowing the 1st class stairs which is aft of WTB F at around 12:45, this is 65 minutes after the collision.

 

[Steven Christian]

Reports suggest the water was allowed to access the various stairs adjacent to the wide Scotland Road passage (at around 12:25 and 12:45).

I've previously attempted to determine the rate of flooding verses time based on the graphs published in Stettler & Thomas (below). The change from a reduction to an increase in flooding rate seems to coincide with the water being seen, flowing the 1st class stairs which is aft of WTB F at around 12:45, this is 65 minutes after the collision.

View attachment 111570

View attachment 111569

Interesting. I'll have to go and and see if I can find that paper. Thanks for posting the graph. Cheers.

 

[yotsuya]

Reports suggest the water was allowed to access the various stairs adjacent to the wide Scotland Road passage (at around 12:25 and 12:45).

I've previously attempted to determine the rate of flooding verses time based on the graphs published in Stettler & Thomas (below). The change from a reduction to an increase in flooding rate seems to coincide with the water being seen, flowing the 1st class stairs which is aft of WTB F at around 12:45, this is 65 minutes after the collision.

According to the times I'm going by, at 1:45 Barret in LB 13 notes the forecastle head is not yet underwater and Assistant Steward Nichols in LB 15 notices the propellers are half out of the water. That is an hour after the time you are listing. From the layout of deck E, there really is no access for water to fall behind WTB F. At 12:45 water is going from E deck to F deck near WTB D. And even when water floods E deck and can flow down the stairs to F deck, there is no way for it to flow down to G deck or the boiler rooms. The only doors open the wrong way and the water would hold them closed until they broke. None of the stairs go down past F deck. Scotland Road does have doors that access all the boiler rooms, but they have elevated sills so they would be the last thing to even leak. As the water reaches a certain level and power it is going to start breaking things and getting everywhere, but with a deck or less of water depth, I don't see it doing much. But at 12:45 the water was definitely not as far aft as WTD F.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

Reports suggest the water was allowed to access the various stairs adjacent to the wide Scotland Road passage (at around 12:25 and 12:45).

I've previously attempted to determine the rate of flooding verses time based on the graphs published in Stettler & Thomas (below). The change from a reduction to an increase in flooding rate seems to coincide with the water being seen, flowing the 1st class stairs which is aft of WTB F at around 12:45, this is 65 minutes after the collision.

View attachment 111570

View attachment 111569

That's certainly a very interesting diagram and graph. I downloaded this article from ET https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/community/attachments/study-titanic-pdf.39309/ and am going to read it slowly. Looks like something right up Sam Halpern's expertise and it would be nice if he would comment on both the article and the graph.

 

[Steven Christian]

That's certainly a very interesting diagram and graph. I downloaded this article from ET https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/community/attachments/study-titanic-pdf.39309/ and am going to read it slowly. Looks like something right up Sam Halpern's expertise and it would be nice if he would comment on both the article and the graph.

Nice. Thanks for the link. Saved me the hunt for it. Looks most interesting. Cheers.

 

[Steven Christian]

Nice. Thanks for the link. Saved me the hunt for it. Looks most interesting. Cheers.

Ok. I read thru that paper. It was interesting but I will have to go thru it more slowly. My first impression is that its a very technical analysis that concludes with this is "our best guess". To their credit that's pretty much what they state themselves in the conclusion section if I read it right. They are educated way above my level. I'm just a simple technician. But some of the stuff I read in it makes me step back and say hmmmmm. Cheers.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

Looks most interesting

It is very interesting and you might want to read it alongside Chapter 6 of Sam's book (A Centennial Reappraisal). IMO, the Stettler-Thomas article is technically very detailed but Sam's analysis is more reader friendly to the likes of me from other fields. The Stettler-Thomas article can be a bit confusing about the bending stress level on the keel and how it led to the break-up; this is where Sam explains it better.

At about 02:15am, the bow was down by about 10-degrees with the Crow's Nest just touching the sea and water coming over the wheelhouse. It also coincided with the time when the bending force on the keel was close to its maximum (see graph on p119); it was also at that point that Sam calculates that the Titanic suddenly lost its longitudinal stability and started to tip over, dramatically increasing the rate of dipping of the bow. The resultant sudden displacement of a very large volume of water was what many survivors described as a "wave" that washed sternwards.

Thus, Sam has demonstrated that the bending force on the keel reached its maximum at about 11-degrees trim and very likely it and the deck plates started to fail at that point. But with so many decks and the keel itself forming part of the whole unit, the ship would not have simply 'snapped' in two. Even as the various levels were failing, the bow continued sinking rapidly because of the reasons mentioned above; as result of that the stern continued to rise and likely reached an angle of around 23 to 24 degrees when the full, catastrophic break-up, as seen and reported by some survivors, occurred - likely at about 02:18am.

 

[PeterChappell]

That's certainly a very interesting diagram and graph. I downloaded this article from ET https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/community/attachments/study-titanic-pdf.39309/ and am going to read it slowly. Looks like something right up Sam Halpern's expertise and it would be nice if he would comment on both the article and the graph.

Note, I derived the graph of flowrate from the one in Settler & Thomas, which shows total volume of water into the ship. I recall there were three curves, and this is based on the middle, or average one.