Magnesium Explosion

[Aaron_2016]

Did the survivors witness a magnesium explosion?

Here is footage of magnesium reacting violently to water hoses.



A number of Titanic's survivors saw something very similar. e.g.

- A bright flash
- A thunderous roar
- A huge column of smoke
- Smoke illuminating the night sky into a firey red glow
- Millions of sparks and coal raining down
- Smoke rising up in a high column and flattening at the top like a mushroom

Is this what the survivors saw?

Emily Hart
"She appeared to be breaking in halves.........For a few moments we could see everything that was happening, for, as the vessel sank, millions and millions of sparks flew up and lit everything around us, and in an instant the sea was alive with wreckage, with chairs, pillows, and rugs, benches, tables, cushions, and strangely enough, black with an enormous mass of coffee beans."

Roberta Maioni
"Rising above the din of the explosion of the boilers. For a moment the sky was lighted up, with black masses thrown up into the air."

Mr. Carlsson - Great-granddaughter:
"He watched as the ship took its final bow and described it as great flashes of light much like fireworks."

Harold Bride (after freeing himself from under the collapsible boat)
"Smoke and sparks were rushing out of her funnels. There must have been an explosion, but we heard none. We only saw a big stream of sparks."

Charlotte Collyer
"It came with a deafening roar that stunned me. Something in the very bowels of the Titanic exploded and millions of sparks shot up to the sky, like rockets in a park on the night of a summer holiday. This red spurt was fan shaped as it went up, but the sparks descended in every direction in the shape of a fountain of fire. Two other explosions followed, dull and heavy, as if below the surface. The Titanic broke in two before my eyes."

Jack Thayer
"One of the funnels seemed to be lifted off.....with a mass of sparks and steam coming out of it. I saw the ship in a sort of a red glare, and it seemed to me that she broke in two just in front of the third funnel." "The ship seemed to be surrounded with a glare, and stood out of the night as though she were on fire........a cloud of sparks."

Philip Mock
"After the noise I saw a huge column of black smoke slightly lighter than the sky rising high into the sky and then flattening out at the top like a mushroom."

Fred Barrett
"When the ship was sinking a volume of smoke came up."

Frank Osman
"After she got to a certain angle she exploded, broke in halves.....You could see the explosions by the smoke coming right up the funnels.....Looked like as if it was lumps of coal, and all that.....Through the funnels. Just after the explosion. Pretty big lumps.

A number of survivors were approached by reporters in New York. Their collective summary of the events had described the same event e.g. smoke, steam, flame, and sparks shooting out of her funnels.

The second explosive sound appeared to do the most damage according to a number of survivors. Survivor Frederick Clench was asked:

Q - How long a time would you say it was after the second explosion before she sank out of sight?
A - I should say a matter of about 20 minutes.

This would indicate that the explosive forces witnessed had taken place long before the stern went down, and were not a result of the ship rapidly going down, but rather an event that took place just prior to the shpi breaking in two.

Any ideas what this was? Did magnesium react in some form or other when the ship was flooding, and hot boilers and decks were compressing? I remember reading there was magnesium in the ship's metal, and I recall Germany was using magnesium in their wood to make it stronger. Was there deposits of magnesium in the wood, the ship's metal, or in the coal and ash?

 

[Rob Lawes]

Until it was banned, magnesium was used in the construction of parts of F1 cars, most notably the tyre hubs.

I'm not sure where in the construction of the Titanic a significant amount of magnesium would have been used?

 

[marina_irc]

Magnesium present on Titanic is insufficient and in the wrong state to cause these effects, which are distorted accounts of the uprush of burning cinder through the uptakes as the hot boilers were overcome with the inrush of cold seawater.

Not even a WW2 aircraft with a very high magnesium content would burn in contact with water. I am afraid there is no grounding for the hypothesis.

 

[Steven Christian]

Magneseium won't ignite because of water but once burning it will react violently with water. Plus its hard to get inginited. When I was in high school there were a lot of desert keggers going on and sometimes someone would bring an old VW engine block to the party. It took a road flare or 2 to get them going. Also when I went to aircraft fire fighting school they would torch off an aircraft wheel and it wasnt easy to get it going either. Once burning you never sprayed water on it...they had this sort of goo/foam you sprayed on it to contain it. Sodium is a different story but I've never heard of either of those metals being used on the Olympic class liners.

 

[marina_irc]

The key thing is just the total absence of sufficient magnesium fractions (industry didn't have techniques for using them in 2912) and the total absence of a fire hot enough.... You are talking about a torpedoed oil tanker, not some casual ignition from coal cinders. Magnesium fires are a risk in kinetic events, they're not plausible in Titanic sinking and of course nothing onboard had enough magnesium in it, in quantity enough to be a factor. Honestly I find this line of inquiry a bit odd. Coal and coal dust is plenty flammable.

 

[Steven Christian]

Yes I agree. It was probably coal dust ignited by some ingnition source. The witnesses reported a firey red glow. Magnesium burns white hot.

 

[Oliver K]

As a photographer i have a camera and a laptop that both have some sort of magnesium alloy roll-cage inside them, i once knocked water onto the laptop, it survived and did not explode, nor has my camera exploded from being rained on, i think magnesium is only volatile to water in its powder form, not in an alloy, it is also important to note, that while i'm not a chemist, any chemical element with the suffix of "ium" will react violently with water, there could have been other "iums" on the titanic.

I'm going to go with the coal explosion theory, interesting theories either way, we can only speculate by using what the survivors said.

While no boilers on the wreck are damaged or exploded, apart from over 100 years worth of water damage, i can only guess that i was some sort of reaction between hot and cold, causing massive pressure and coal plus fire to be shot through the uptakes and into and out the funnels, maybe the ship itself sinking tipped more coal from the bunkers into the boilers? causing a massive fiery reaction and the explosion as a result.

 

[marina_irc]

Most of the "explosion" was likely just displacement of air by water. You are correct, short of an immensely hot preexisting fire magnesium should burn in powder form only. Granted nearly anything can burn in a hot enough environment--which didn't exist on Titanic.

 

[Rancor]

Think I may have posted this in other threads, but I think a coal dust explosion is most likely based on the testimony and also this video demonstration showing how 5kg of coal dust can cause quite a big fireball.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

but I think a coal dust explosion is most likely based on the testimony

Is it? By the time the ship was breaking up, most if not all of the coal bunkers would have been flooded out and the only fires remaining would have been whatever was on the furnaces. A sudden inrush there could force quite a shower of sparks up through any openings topside. All that metal coming apart at the time of the break up would also have caused quite the fireworks display.

 

[Kyle Naber]

Could cost dust in the funnel itself ignite?

 

[Rancor]

Is it? By the time the ship was breaking up, most if not all of the coal bunkers would have been flooded out and the only fires remaining would have been whatever was on the furnaces. A sudden inrush there could force quite a shower of sparks up through any openings topside. All that metal coming apart at the time of the break up would also have caused quite the fireworks display.

I was thinking it would be more coal dust/soot in the uptakes and funnels being forced out by a rush of air as the boiler rooms flooded, but like many details of the sinking it is hard to know for sure!

 

[Aaron_2016]

I used the magnesium explosion as a hypothesis as it presented many similarities with the survivor accounts. e.g.

To summarise what the above survivors saw based on each of their perspectives around the ship we have the following clues to go by:

- An explosion is heard above the surface (exterior burst of interior material?)
- Two more explosions follow and are believed to have come from deep inside the ship (interior collapse of bulkheads or buckling of the ship?)
- The ship breaks apart (visible on the surface)
- A heavy steam cloud pours out of her funnels and masks the ship in a fog
- Millions of sparks shoot out of the 2nd funnel
- The sparks illuminate the heavy steam cloud which creates flashes of light.
- For a few moments they can see everything that is happening.
- The ship is breaking apart on the surface.
- They can see wreckage from deep inside the ship is all over the sea.
- The lights on the stern glow red, and as it rises up through the steam it creates the impression she is surrounded in a firey red glare, or possibly the "millions of sparks" are illuminating the steam cloud and creating the red glare around the ship.
- Meanwhile heavy plumes of black smoke are shooting out of the funnels, and rise high up into a column above the ship and flatten out at the top like a mushroom cloud as the smoke reaches a layer in the atmosphere above the ship.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

I doubt very much that there would have been sufficient coal dust in the stacks to be a matter for concern. Soot to be sure, but that would have already been combusted.

A lot of eyewitness testimony is pretty lurid and it's often all we have to go by, but by the same token, how much had been debunked over the years by the forensics? (Answer: Quite a bit!) Before you try to explain all of this, ask yourself one question: Is it even real?

 

[marina_irc]

I used the magnesium explosion as a hypothesis as it presented many similarities with the survivor accounts. e.g.

To summarise what the above survivors saw based on each of their perspectives around the ship we have the following clues to go by:

- An explosion is heard above the surface (exterior burst of interior material?)
- Two more explosions follow and are believed to have come from deep inside the ship (interior collapse of bulkheads or buckling of the ship?)
- The ship breaks apart (visible on the surface)
- A heavy steam cloud pours out of her funnels and masks the ship in a fog
- Millions of sparks shoot out of the 2nd funnel
- The sparks illuminate the heavy steam cloud which creates flashes of light.
- For a few moments they can see everything that is happening.
- The ship is breaking apart on the surface.
- They can see wreckage from deep inside the ship is all over the sea.
- The lights on the stern glow red, and as it rises up through the steam it creates the impression she is surrounded in a firey red glare, or possibly the "millions of sparks" are illuminating the steam cloud and creating the red glare around the ship.
- Meanwhile heavy plumes of black smoke are shooting out of the funnels, and rise high up into a column above the ship and flatten out at the top like a mushroom cloud as the smoke reaches a layer in the atmosphere above the ship.

Aaron, eyewitnesses are frequently wrong, that is scientific fact. Human memory is inaccurate. Provide real evidence to support your theory. Cargo manifests, traces of magnesium fires on the wreck, material data showing what, where, was impregnated with magnesium dust. Tell me all of that info and ignore the eyewitnesses.