Magnesium Explosion

[Aaron_2016]

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?

Forensics have debunked the brittle steel theory, and the giant gash created by the iceberg theory, and the belief that the ship sank intact theory, but other than that I don't recall anything else that has proven to be useful. No expeditions have examined the portholes to see how many are open and closed which would tell us a great deal on where the water entered the ship and how far aft it was, and it could explain the heavy port list if they discovered that more windows are open on the port side, and we have no idea what condition the boiler rooms are in, apart from a few forward and aft. Simple things like that are vitally important to discover what happened, and yet the expeditions appear to be more interested in retrieving items on the sea floor that will provide a handsome profit.

Survivor Alfred White worked in the electrics department below the 4th funnel. He said:

"At one o'clock Mr. Parr and Mr. Sloan came below. I was on watch at that time and he said to me, 'We are going to start one more engine." (This could mean the fires were re-lit and the ingredients for a boiler explosion were in the making). "They went to the main switch board to change over. We knew that the ship had struck something but took no notice. Work was going on as if nothing had happened. When at twenty-to-two the ship seemed as if she had started up again and flung us off our feet." (There is a theory that boiler room 4 had either exploded or imploded, or possibly the captain wanted to move the ship closer to the Californian and in the process of getting her started again she buckled and tore herself apart, or it could simply have been a forward bulkhead wall collapsing which gave the ship a violent lurch.) "Mr. Sloan and Mr. Parr said to me, "Go up and see how things are going and come and tell us." (He climbed up the 4th funnel and he could see the ship had broken apart. This could indicate that the explosive event and the sparks and smoke etc had occurred when he was below decks and they were thrown off their feet, and when he reached the top he could see the aftermath and the separation of 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.

Everything is based on what other people witnessed and felt. e.g. We have faith in the very few survivors who saw the iceberg collision and they all pretty much contradicted each other and described all kinds of various differences. Those who felt it also described different sensations. Yet we still have absolute trust in those accounts. I believe the same method should be applied to those who saw the shower of sparks, a cloud of steam, a firey glow, and a mushroom cloud of smoke. I don't have access to a submersible, so I can't tell you what you want to know unless you are willing to finance an expedition deep inside the wreck and examine the blast zones. All we can do is speculate and debate what may have occurred. Coal dust, boiler explosions, bombs, implosions, hull compression, water pressure, air pressure. I don't believe it was a magnesium explosion. I am only observing the similarities and putting out the question, and since we don't know what really happened we are left with open questions and speculation with an open mind to every possible scenario.



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[Steven Christian]

According to some research this is what I found about Magnesium. Up untill 1916 there was only one commercial plant producing magnesium and it was located in Germany. Industial uses were pretty much limited to some aircraft components in the luftwaffe during WW1. After the war it became more popular for parts primarlily in the aircraft industry. Volkswagon starting using it in the 1930's. But magnesium alloys didnt become widespread for use in the automotive industry untill after the 1970's oil crisis when they were trying to make vehichles lighter. I doubt there was any magnesium alloy parts on Titanic and it was not a factor. Today magnesium alloys are used in pretty much everything and it use is projected to increase substanially.

 

[marina_irc]

Aaron, you are asserting we have absolute faith. But that's not the case. We take generalisations, but the details are based on the expeditions. You seem to have a real issue with applying doubt and doing research beyond witness testaments, that's the real concern.

 

[Aaron_2016]

I have no issues at all - hence why I started the topic with an open question and not a statement of confirmation. There are no details in the expeditions because no expeditions have gone that far inside. So everyone is free to speculate as much as they wish until that section of the ship has been thoroughly explored and documented and their findings released, so until then we can only guess what happened.


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[Aaron_2016]

According to some research this is what I found about Magnesium. Up untill 1916 there was only one commercial plant producing magnesium and it was located in Germany. Industial uses were pretty much limited to some aircraft components in the luftwaffe during WW1. After the war it became more popular for parts primarlily in the aircraft industry. Volkswagon starting using it in the 1930's. But magnesium alloys didnt become widespread for use in the automotive industry untill after the 1970's oil crisis when they were trying to make vehichles lighter. I doubt there was any magnesium alloy parts on Titanic and it was not a factor. Today magnesium alloys are used in pretty much everything and it use is projected to increase substanially.

I recall a number of Titanic related websites which said there was a very high quantity of magnesium sulphide in the steel. This is what happens when it is heated.





Alfred White said they were going to light up a boiler after 1am. Perhaps an unregulated fire in the boilers or steam in the pipes had got out of hand when the firemen rushed to the boat deck, and something overloaded and caused a terrific explosion up the second funnel?

 

[Rob Lawes]

All I can find in relation to Magnesium Sulphide in Steel is that Magnesium is introduced in the steel making process to remove the Sulpher from the molten iron. The Magnesium reacts with the sulphur on a larger scale to that shown in those Youtube clips above and the resulting compound floats on the surface of the molten metal and can be scraped off. To the best of what I could find, while this process was invented in the mid 1850's it did not become comercially scaled and viable until after the 2nd world war. Therefore, the steel in Titanic's hull does not appear to be the source of the Magnesium and, in the highly unlikely event there was Magnesium Sulphide in the steel it would have been inert as it wasa there as a result of a reaction that had alread occured during the manufacture process.

Further,

In your quote regarding Alfred White, Aaron, I'm having difficulty working out what is from White's mouth and which aspects are your speculation of the comments made. Was White suggesting they were attempting to move the ship at some point after 0100?

For the states of boilers. We know that the boilers in rooms 6, 5, and 4 were raked or underwater. We know that the boilers in room 1 were never lit and were never usually lit at sea anyway. We can only guess at the state of the fires in boiler room 3. The outer boilers closest to the port and starboard bulkheads in boiler room two were used to provide steam to run the dynamo's so they were running and there is a statement that the last 3 boilers to be lit and connected on that Sunday night were the 3 others in boiler room 2.

It's difficult to imagine what boiler they would light and what good that would do given that the ship would never have had long enough to live to light one. It takes hours for a boiler to be fuelled, lit and brought up to an operational temperature to provide steam at the correct pressure.

A very strange story.

 

[Aaron_2016]

Alfred White's account can be found here with various theories and speculations as to what he was describing included e.g. boiler room 4 imploding.

 

[Rob Lawes]

OK. Too much for tonight. I'll tackle it in the morning.

Doubt it was boiler room 4 though. The fires in there had long been raked down when Barrett left after his green foamy water encounter. If Boiler room 6 failed to implode when drenched in freezing water at their hottest its far less likely the cooler and vented boilers in 4 would have gone.

 

[David G. Brown]

Imagination is a wonderful thing. Reality something else.

-- David G. Brown

 

[Steven Christian]

Forensics have debunked the brittle steel theory, and the giant gash created by the iceberg theory, and the belief that the ship sank intact theory, but other than that I don't recall anything else that has proven to be useful. No expeditions have examined the portholes to see how many are open and closed which would tell us a great deal on where the water entered the ship and how far aft it was, and it could explain the heavy port list if they discovered that more windows are open on the port side, and we have no idea what condition the boiler rooms are in, apart from a few forward and aft. Simple things like that are vitally important to discover what happened, and yet the expeditions appear to be more interested in retrieving items on the sea floor that will provide a handsome profit.

Survivor Alfred White worked in the electrics department below the 4th funnel. He said:

"At one o'clock Mr. Parr and Mr. Sloan came below. I was on watch at that time and he said to me, 'We are going to start one more engine." (This could mean the fires were re-lit and the ingredients for a boiler explosion were in the making). "They went to the main switch board to change over. We knew that the ship had struck something but took no notice. Work was going on as if nothing had happened. When at twenty-to-two the ship seemed as if she had started up again and flung us off our feet." (There is a theory that boiler room 4 had either exploded or imploded, or possibly the captain wanted to move the ship closer to the Californian and in the process of getting her started again she buckled and tore herself apart, or it could simply have been a forward bulkhead wall collapsing which gave the ship a violent lurch.) "Mr. Sloan and Mr. Parr said to me, "Go up and see how things are going and come and tell us." (He climbed up the 4th funnel and he could see the ship had broken apart. This could indicate that the explosive event and the sparks and smoke etc had occurred when he was below decks and they were thrown off their feet, and when he reached the top he could see the aftermath and the separation of the ship.)




Everything is based on what other people witnessed and felt. e.g. We have faith in the very few survivors who saw the iceberg collision and they all pretty much contradicted each other and described all kinds of various differences. Those who felt it also described different sensations. Yet we still have absolute trust in those accounts. I believe the same method should be applied to those who saw the shower of sparks, a cloud of steam, a firey glow, and a mushroom cloud of smoke. I don't have access to a submersible, so I can't tell you what you want to know unless you are willing to finance an expedition deep inside the wreck and examine the blast zones. All we can do is speculate and debate what may have occurred. Coal dust, boiler explosions, bombs, implosions, hull compression, water pressure, air pressure. I don't believe it was a magnesium explosion. I am only observing the similarities and putting out the question, and since we don't know what really happened we are left with open questions and speculation with an open mind to every possible scenario.



.

Well forensics proved that some of the rivets were made of inferior steel and possibly gave way sooner than higher quality ones would have causing the plates to buckle and opening her hull to the sea. I would think thats pretty useful information. It could be argued that that wasn't discovered all during the time that riveted ship ships were being built so it didn't help them but as for the study of the Titanic saga it pretty useful info IMHO. I know its been argued a lot about the rivets. Wether they popped or were sheared off ect ect but forensic testing did prove some were inferior, having four to five times more slag than the higher quality ones.

 

[Rancor]

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?

I think we have to go by the eye witness testimony until it can be proven incorrect by examination of the wreck or other forensic means. Otherwise we wouldn't even be able to say that the Titanic hit an iceberg!

In the case of the 'explosion' in the second funnel it seems to have been mentioned by enough survivors that there has to be some truth to the claim of an event taking place, though we could certainly debate the likely cause and intensity. To me coal dust seems the most likely but I'm very keen on hearing other possible explanations.

 

[Kyle Naber]

While I don't find it impossible, it's also likely that plain sparks would fly when a steel funnel collapses.

 

[marina_irc]

Rancor, that's not quite how evidence works.

Let's say the proposition is that the ship sank. We have 800 eyewitness accounts give or take. They ALL agree the ship sank--that's a very high certainty that the ship sank, not only because they all agree but because there's so many of them.

Let's say there's 20 people who say there's an explosion and 777 who say nothing and 3 who say there wasn't. We may be reasonably certain an explosion happened if we assume the 777 people were distracted/busy and couldn't observe, but our certainty is low.

Now let's say 10 people describe features of the explosion and 5 say it was white and five say it was red and five say it was coal sparks and five focus on the snapping funnel stays--

Now you have no certainty of anything and cannot discern based on witness testimony any details of the event. You must build a hypothesis on the details from physical evidence only.

Aaron very consistently ignores the significance of probability and statistics and uses evidence in an unscientific manner which prevents any real conclusions from being drawn. I hope he is interested enough in learning to take a class or self study and begin to apply the scientific method as he is very eager and puts an enormous amount of effort in, which is commendable. But it all goes nowhere because he does not know how to analyze evidence.

 

[Steven Christian]

"Aaron very consistently ignores the significance of probability and statistics and uses evidence in an unscientific manner which prevents any real conclusions from being drawn." Aaron asked a question. He asked if magnesium was a factor. I didn't see where he said it was a definant factor. I liked the question as it caused me to go look stuff up and I learned a few things I didn't know. From what I found I don't think magnesium was a factor at all. It was not a bad question to ask.

 

[Rob Lawes]

I really can't understand how Alfred White went from crashing down in a collapsing funnel and then ending up several hundred feet forward at Collapsible A. Its no wonder he had a memory blackout recalling that bit. Parts of his letter are very interesting and, as we know now, the bit about the break up was correct. There are chunks of stuff that don't make much sense.