Grounding of the Titanic

[Arun Vajpey]

I also have issues in the grounding theory, if Boiler Room 4 was affected, then how come Boiler Room No.s 5 & 6 weren't affected?

That's a good question. Sam Halpern makes a good case about why the Titanic could not have 'grounded' on a shelf like projection of the iceberg during the collision in his article about flooding of Boiler Room 4.

If I have understood his explanation correctly, Sam says that such grounding of the still moving and turning Titanic would have caused far more severe damage to the double bottom of the ship both forward and aft of BR4. The resultant flooding would have caused loss of the Titanic's transverse stability soon after the first hour and the ship would have capsized.

Sam feels that the relatively small damage to the floor of BR4 could have been caused by a small spur in the iceberg that was not involved in the initial collision itself. As the Titanic continued to move forward while turning to port, it momentarily lost contact with the berg after the first 2 feet of forward part of BR5. Seconds later however, that aforementioned spur opened up a small seam in the double bottom under BR4 as it passed. The resultant flooding was slow but steady with the water accumulating under the stokehold plates. By about 01:10 am this continued flooding combined with the 4-degree downward trim of the bow caused the water to 'pile up' at the forward part of BR4 and appear above the stokehold plates as noticed by the crew.

 

[yotsuya]

And let's not forget that they have scanned the wreck and detected the damage to the side of the ship which is consistent with the flooding. And the two pieces of double bottom that were found show no signs of any ice damage. If the ship had ridden onto and ice shelf, the damage would have extended much further aft. The claims that a side swipe of the iceberg would cause the ship to jerk sideways ignore that the impact was a near miss and the ship slid along the iceberg with rough spots ripping different seams as it glanced along the side. Also the bilge keel was found to be undamaged so there is no evidence that any part of the iceberg extended under the ship or caused any additional damaged from what was discovered on the wreck.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

And let's not forget that they have scanned the wreck and detected the damage to the side of the ship which is consistent with the flooding. And the two pieces of double bottom that were found show no signs of any ice damage.

The problem with the first proposition is that there's no way to distinguish between iceberg damage and the damage the bow section would have suffered upon it's nearly 22mph impact with the bottom.

The problem with the second part is that the double bottom sections you refer to wouldn't be likely to have iceberg damage from a grounding or otherwise because it didn't come from the compartments which were breeched.

A word to the wise, try actually reading the White Paper before you praise of damn it. Most of us have over 23 years ago.

THEN follow along with the discussion so you know and understand what points and counterpoints were actually made.

 

[yotsuya]

The problem with the first proposition is that there's no way to distinguish between iceberg damage and the damage the bow section would have suffered upon it's nearly 22mph impact with the bottom.

The problem with the second part is that the double bottom sections you refer to wouldn't be likely to have iceberg damage from a grounding or otherwise because it didn't come from the compartments which were breeched.

A word to the wise, try actually reading the White Paper before you praise of damn it. Most of us have over 23 years ago.

THEN follow along with the discussion so you know and understand what points and counterpoints were actually made.

23 years ago most of the data that I am going by didn't exist. I'm not going to read an outdated paper when more recently gathered evidence, not to mention logic, contradicts it.

You have to start with the path the Titanic took and the only eye witness to the damage.

Murdoch ordered hard to starboard to avoid the iceberg and then hard to port as the bow scraped the iceberg to avoid the damage extending all the way to the stern. This resulted in the entire length of the ship going over the same spot. So if there was a shelf of ice that stuck out under the ship, it would have done damage from the bow to the stern, including the two double bottom pieces.

But more important is the account of Fireman Barret who was in Boiler Room 6 when they struck. Water came in from 2 feet above the floor. Interestingly enough this can be checked out because the outside of Boiler Room 6 is available to examine.

This corresponds exactly to where Barret described.

And all the survivors reported that the roughness that they felt as Titanic was in contact with the iceberg stopped at the same time as the ship moved away from the iceberg. A shelf of ice under the ship would have continued longer instead of stopping.

So all the evidence that I have been gathering says there was no shelf of ice under the ship. It was a glancing blow that ripped open several seams and rained ice down on the forecastle and forward well deck.

Titanic's course past the iceberg is a given. It could vary by a small bit, but nothing significant. The orders given and the accounts of the ship passing by the iceberg confirm both the initial tiller to starboard and then to port. The position of the bow on the bottom confirms that the Titanic stopped with her bow pointed north. The direction Boxhall traveled after she sank confirms this as well as he thought he was going west but was going more south, directly toward the Carpathia. All the pieces fit together with no need to add a complicated and impossible grounding event for which there is no evidence.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

The claims that a side swipe of the iceberg would cause the ship to jerk sideways ignore that the impact was a near miss and the ship slid along the iceberg with rough spots ripping different seams as it glanced along the side.

Yes, the ship did not jerk to one side during the collision, but Sam Halpern mentioned something about "sway velocity" involved in the physics of such impacts. I understood that to mean that there could have been an almost imperceptible 'swaying' port-ward lateral movement of the Titanic as the iceberg bumped and scraped along the first 250 or 260 feet of its starboard side. That could have been just sufficient for the 2 objects involved not to have any further contact despite remaining very close.

Even though Murdoch gave the "Hard-a-port" order after the impact (or was it during the latter stages of the continued contact?), the inertia from the first starboard helm order would have meant that the Titanic was still turning to port even after it lost contact with the iceberg after 250 feet. QM Rowe on the "afterbridge" thought that the iceberg was so close to the ship that there was going to be (further) contact, but there wasn't.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

23 years ago most of the data that I am going by didn't exist. I'm not going to read an outdated paper when more recently gathered evidence, not to mention logic, contradicts it.

Congratulations: You contrived a strawman. You did not answer the points I made, nor did you really refute them.

I know where the observed damage is located. It's been identified by expeditions which photographed the visible and got the rest of it by way of side scan sonar. It doesn't, nor can it, differentiate between iceberg damage and impact damage with the bottom.

Nor does it rule out the possibility of damage along the FORWARD sections the double bottom which is where you would expect to see grounding damage. You would NOT expect to see it on the double bottom sections which were identified in the debris field as they were too far back aft to be affected.

And you bloody well better read that paper. If you're going to be critical of what's in it, you better know what's in it and you don't. You also better read the debate that follows so you understand what the points and counterpoints were, what held up, what didn't, and why it didn't.
Oh, and a point of order, invoking "logic" in this context is just another example of the appeal to "common sense fallacy."

Seriously, just don't bother trying that one to me.

 

[yotsuya]

Congratulations: You contrived a strawman. You did not answer the points I made, nor did you really refute them.

I know where the observed damage is located. It's been identified by expeditions which photographed the visible and got the rest of it by way of side scan sonar. It doesn't, nor can it, differentiate between iceberg damage and impact damage with the bottom.

Nor does it rule out the possibility of damage along the FORWARD sections the double bottom which is where you would expect to see grounding damage. You would NOT expect to see it on the double bottom sections which were identified in the debris field as they were too far back aft to be affected.

And you bloody well better read that paper. If you're going to be critical of what's in it, you better know what's in it and you don't. You also better read the debate that follows so you understand what the points and counterpoints were, what held up, what didn't, and why it didn't.
Oh, and a point of order, invoking "logic" in this context is just another example of the appeal to "common sense fallacy."

Seriously, just don't bother trying that one to me.

When you track the ship's path as it first steers to avoid the hitting the iceberg and then steers again to avoid the rest of the ship hitting the iceberg it causes the entire length of the ship to pass near the iceberg. If there is a shelf that is sticking out that's causes grounding damage on the bow back as far as boiler room 6, it's going to keep causing damage all the way back to the two plates that were discovered. Titanic did not have a good turning radius. The rudder pushes the stern over but does not move the bow or the middle of the ship.

The survivor accounts of the collision all agree that the iceberg hit near the bow and the ship scraped along the side about even with the bridge. The people who came out on scene after saw the huge gray shape off to the side of the ship or receeding in the distance. Titanic was so close to the iceberg that it scraped off ice onto the deck. The well deck was covered with ice debris. That is from the side impact. That is the damage that sank the ship. Anything that would have cut open the double bottom would have cut into the ballast tanks and would not have impacted the sinking of the ship in the slightest. But because of the course of the ship past the iceberg the damage would have extended much further back than the sideswipe damage. Titanic only had to move a foot away from the iceberg to avoid further damage along the side. An ice shelf that was damaging the double bottom would have caused damage all the way back and possibly even damaged the starboard propeller. But according to survivor accounts when the iceberg was about a midship or just past the bridge, they didn't feel anything again.

We need to be going by the wreck, survivor accounts, and what logically makes sense. And grounding damage fails on two of those counts.

 

[yotsuya]

Congratulations: You contrived a strawman. You did not answer the points I made, nor did you really refute them.

I wanted to confirm before I addressed this... my comment was not a strawman argument. I suggest researching what that is before you make that claim again. I was making a valid claim that further discoveries over the past 22 years have rendered that paper outdated.

And you bloody well better read that paper.

I don't have time to waste on outdated ideas. They went back to the wreck to investigate this idea and didn't find any evidence for it.

What it comes down to is that we have solid evidence of damage to the side of the ship (Barret and wreck survey) and there is no evidence of grounding. It is a theory and the theory does not hold up to a detailed analysis of the iceberg impact or how the ship sank. A great many theories have been put forward by Titanic experts and a great many of them have been contradicted by later discoveries. This is one such theory. That is how science works. New discoveries invalidate old theories all the time. Should new evidence come to light, it might be worth revisiting, but at the present it has been surpassed by our ever growing body of knowledge of the wreck.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

Yes, your comment was a strawman. You didn't address my points, you ignored them. A couple of points:
- Don't waste my time appealing to "common sense." Common sense has a wonderful track record for being wrong.
- Witness statements while they cannot be dismissed in toto are nevertheless notoriously unreliable.
- Actually READ the White Paper.
I didn't say accept it, I said read it. THEN read all the follow up discussions so you understand the give and take on what's held up and what hasn't.
- After that, read Sam Halpern's book on the subject. I have. Until you do all of that, you have zero standing to take issue with anything.
Oh...a little help finding Sams book:

Amazon.co.uk