The break up and descent

[Michael H. Standart]

>>Are there any eyewitness reports that describe the breakup from the inside?<<

Anybody who was still inside the ship to see the breakup almost assuredly did not live to talk about it. By the time it happened, the final plunge was already well underway. There may well have been an earwitness by way of the baker who reported hearing noises while inside the ship which he thought was something giving way. I'd offer the testimony but the Titanic Inquiry Project website appears to be down at the moment.

 

[Bill Wormstedt]

>>Are there any eyewitness reports that describe the breakup from the inside?<<

As Mike said, those who saw the breakup inside the ship did not live to tell about it. However, Baker Joughin claimed (BI 6040):

- I went to the deck pantry, and while I was in there I thought I would take a drink of water, and while I was getting the drink of water I heard a kind of a crash as if something had buckled, as if part of the ship had buckled, and then I heard a rush overhead.

This could easily have been the start of the ship breaking apart.

Mike - the Titanic Inquiry site appears to be just fine now.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>the Titanic Inquiry site appears to be just fine now.<<

Thanks Bill. I just checked it out. Probably cyber-gremlins at it again. It appears to be fine now.

 

[Ryan McKeefery]

I thought I would take a drink of water

Did he not translate "Water" into Russian?
But not what I'm here for.
Has anyone noticed that in the break-up diagram in "Her Name, Titanic", Pellegrino Illustrated the two large cross-sections of double-bottom that were discovered in 2005?
I was just flicking through the book t'other day and 'twas there.

 

[Samuel Halpern]

It shows up in his Timeline of Descent.

 

[Bill Wormstedt]

I checked around last night, and my friend George Behe mentioned that he has at least one 'interior breakup' interview from 1912, though he can't vouch for it's reliability.

Sam - thanks for pointing us to Pelligrino's chart. Very interesting - did you notice he had the first lifeboat launch time as 12:40 a.m.?

 

[Tad G. Fitch]

Another eyewitness, Greaser Alfred White, has been mentioned as allegedly being in the dummy smokestack, seeing the second funnel just peeking above the water, and having seen the ship break up below him from this vantage point, before falling into the water with the funnel and surviving.

However, in April 1912, White gave multiple press interviews in which he states that sometime after 1:30 a.m. he was released from below deck to find out how serious the situation was, and made his way up on deck via a ladder in the "escape funnel." He claims that seeing the bow so far down he headed forward and once the boats were gone, he jumped overboard. He was eventually rescued in Lifeboat #4, not Collapsible A as some list him in. He mentioned nothing about being aboard as the ship split in two in these interviews, and certainly not from the vantage point of a funnel.

By the time he wrote a private letter to the brother-in-law of the late Harland and Wolff Guarantee Group member William Henry Marsh Parr on June 21, 1912, White’s story had changed, and he was claiming that he was in the fourth funnel when the ship split in half, and that he fell into the ocean with the funnel.

These two stories can't be reconciled with each other, and given that he repeated his initial story given in April 1912 in several interviews and didn't mention anything like that in the June letter, the story in the latter seems to be extremely suspect.

Just thought I would mention this since he at least once claimed to have been aboard the ship as it split in two, looking downward with a bird's eye view of things.

Take care,
Tad

 

[Samuel Halpern]

Hi Bill. Pelligrino has some imagination, like a few other people I know. Closed hatches over the boiler rooms? A bursting watertight bulkhead at 12:45? 3rd class men released from the stern at 2 o'clock an hour after the 1st class dogs?

Where does he get all this from, let alone assigning times to these? The problem is that people believe it.

Like every other chronology I've seen, there are no references cited to back any of this with?

 

[Bill Wormstedt]

Sam,

Which is precisely why we put lots of footnotes in our lifeboat launching article! So that anyone can check our references for themselves.

 

[Mark Chirnside]

Bill,

The footnotes are a most useful tool. Your references are extensive, while you have also sought to make the article navigation very user friendly. It is extremely good to be able to view the footnotes in the pane at the bottom, without having to leave the paragraph that you are reading and then scroll back up after consulting the reference.

Best wishes,

Mark.

 

[Jim Currie]

Scrolling back a bit lads:

I was reading Sam's low angle break again. There is another piece of very good evidence to support this as well as a graphic description of the final few minutes before the stern went under. It comes from ER Trimmer -T. Dillon who was actually standing on the poop deck when Titanic sank. This man was formerly an AB on deck.
He states that the ship took a plunge then righted herself. After this, the aft. funnel seemed to tilt over towards him i.e. falling over toward the stern. This can be read at Qs. 3831 - 3871 on Day 5 of the BOT Enquiry.
To me, this describes a break between funnels 3 and 4 and water rushing into the aft part of the ship.

There is an 'aside' to this man's evidence. Just before he went to the poop deck, he describes chasing two women onto the boat deck from the starboard side of the after well deck. This, just about the time the last life boat was launched - according to Dillon- on the port side.(Q.3924 on day 5 - 50 minutes before Titanic sank - 0130?)
Curiously, Lightholler describes one of his men having seen two motionless women around the same time. They however were standing at or near the bridge.

Jim.

 

[Samuel Halpern]

>>Which is precisely why we put lots of footnotes in our lifeboat launching article! <<

That's one of the reasons why this paper is so valuable. Others have applied their own sense of logic or beliefs to create what they call a timeline of events, including very selective use of subjective statements made by some eyewitnesses and ignoring those of others that are at variance with what they believe. We have seen this in more than a few articles and publications. At least in Bill's,Tad's and George's article, it was pointed out where there were differences in observed sequence or in time, and why they chose one over another. That is not to say that they present an air tight case. Nobody could do that. In fact, as more and more evidence came to light and analyzed, they have revised the article to reflect those. I believe the latest is their third version.

 

[Jeff Brebner]

It seems HIGHLY unlikely to me that someone was in a funnel during the sinking and survived to tell the tale.