Many of the theories common today dealing with the breakup of Titanic, have the ship breaking into two separate halves while the stern is still on the surface (just as we see in James Cameron’s movie Titanic). They rely on metallurgical analysis of the steel brought from the wreck scene of Titanic, to show Titanic was in two separate halves before the stern left the surface. The bottom up failure of Titanic’s hull is correct and is supported by analysis of the wreckage on the sea floor as well as by scientific evidence. However, they are wrong about the ship separating on the surface.
First, tests of the recovered Titanic steel were conducted by Tim Foecke of the Metallurgy Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE, Technology Administration, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory. These tests were exhaustive, and clearly demonstrate the steel of the keel at a temperature of -1 degrees celsius (31 degrees fahrenheit) would fail under the stress loads that would have been present as Titanic’s stern began to rise out of the water (somewhere between 11 and 17 degrees). These test also demonstrate that the steel would have snapped instead of stretching, bending, and elongating.
In addition to the N.I.S.T. tests and report, Roy Mengot and Richard Wytowich wrote The Breakup of Titanic, A Progress Report from the Marine Forensics Panel. Roy and Richard also made use of marine engineering computer models to recreate the breakup of Titanic along with the metallurgical data. As with Tim’s work, I commend these men for their exhaustive, time consuming, and accurate work. Both reports are well worth reading, not just by those in the engineering and metallurgical fields, but also by serious Titanic researchers.
There is only one point that is missed in both of these reports. While the hull of Titanic was in water that was at the freezing point, the decks inside Titanic were not. Down in boiler room number one (under the number 3 funnel where the keel failure took place), they were creating steam for the engines (and later for the lights), the temperature would have been about 38 degrees celsius (100 degrees fahrenheit). On the passenger decks the temperature would have been about 23 degrees celsius (74 degrees fahrenheit). As the above reports demonstrate the steel could have suffered fractures at these higher temperatures as well, but they would have been stronger than the keel. Also, when the keel broke that would have relieved some of the stresses felt by the decks above the keel. unfortunately, the tests that were conducted were primarily made at the -1 degree celsius temperature, with little attention on the higher temperatures .
One final point on Titanic’s steel. Many people point out that metallurgy was in its infancy. This is true, however as I point out in my book Titanic, A Search For Answers, when the ship Marquette & Bessimer Number 2 was built in 1905 in Ohio, USA (to carry railroad cars across Lake Erie to Canada) they were very specific about their ship’s steel. “… no more than 0.06% sulfur content in the ship’s steel. The tensile strength of the steel was to be between 54,000 and 62,000 pounds per square inch. They also specified what type of destructive tests were to be done, and the amount of deformation in the steel that was acceptable during these tests. (Titanic, A Search For Answers pages 55 and 56). The steel used for Titanic would have been rejected for the Marquette & Bessimer Number 2 five years earlier.
Red areas mark the two keel pieces that broke during sinking, while Titanic was on the surface. created by Joe C Combs 2nd.
Second, not one of the survivors on the boat deck of Titanic remembered the deck splitting in half while Titanic was still on the surface. This would have been very dramatic and well remembered by the survivors, not just a few days later during the American Inquiry but for the rest of their lives (remember the scene in Cameron’s movie).
Third, there were survivors that reported hearing 3 or 4 explosions just before Titanic sank. Those witnesses who’s background provided the best knowledge to determine the cause, described the sound as muffled and doubted it was the boilers. This sound was most likely the keel fracturing (also stated in the above mentioned reports). There were also witnesses close to Titanic at the sinking that heard a muffled explosion after Titanic left the surface. This would have been the implosion of the stern at a depth between 200 and 500 feet.
It is true that the expansion joints did fail, but they would not have caused the hull to fail. The expansion joints were in the superstructure, which sat on the hull, but was not part of the hull structurally.
Four, as stated earlier in Titanic: How The Ship Broke Apart & Sank, part 2, there was an implosion. The implosion could not have taken place on the surface, an implosion is caused by a difference of pressure. In this case the difference in pressure was air trapped inside the stern at near surface pressure, and water pressure building up on the outside of the hull. When the difference increases above the strength of the hull, the hull begins to collapse, water rushes inside the hull and air rushes out. This is why some hull plates are bent outward and others are bent inward. The implosion would begin in one area of the hull and rapidly spread as the stress would increase on the surrounding hull areas. This implosion would happen in a fraction of a second. The exact depth can not be determined (we would have to know exactly what the weakened threshold was) but a good estimate is between 200 and 500 feet.
For there to be enough air in the stern to cause an implosion, the stern needed to sink below the surface before most of the air inside the stern had time to escape. With that much air inside the stern it would have still been positively buoyant and would have need to be pulled under by the bow. With that much air inside, as the bow sank and the stern tried to float, the stern would have turned upwards at between 45 and 75 degrees.
Fifth, many survivors (those that witnessed the stern going under) stated the stern went up just before the final plunge somewhere between “almost 45 degrees” to “perpendicular”, depending upon the witness testifying.
The bedplate for the two engines was 195 tons each engine was about 400 to 450 tons total weight about 1,000 to 1,100 tons. The ship’s turbine (for the center propellor) weighed about 130 tons. The steel stern frame weighed 70 tons (the last perpendicular frame before the overhanging stern). The rudder weighed 100 tons, the wing propellors weighed 38 tons each, with the center propellor weighing 17 tons. We have not even begun to talk about the steam steering gear, the stern post for the rudder or any of the six cranes on the after end of the stern and already the weight is just short of 300 tons. The weight between the back of the stern section and the front of the stern section was almost equal, the engine side (including the turbine) would have approximately, a 200 ton advantage. Not much difference when you are talking about a section of ship that was about 250 feet long weighing between 12,000 and 15,000 tons. The front of the stern (where the engines and turbine are) just did not weigh enough to make the stern stand straight up. Even if the engines and the turbine combined did weigh enough, for the 250 foot long stern to stand on end with 250 feet pointing straight up defies the laws of physics. The pivot point for a detached stern would not be at the break.
The final conclusion to be gained from these three articles is thus. Many of the accepted theories (part 1) come very close to answering how Titanic broke apart and sank. However, in each case a minor oversight of all available evidence has led to an incorrect conclusion. After a careful examination of all the available evidence, this is how I believe Titanic broke up and sank:
As the bow sank and the stern rose, the keel began to bend down (this is called hogging). When the stern rose to about 11 to 17 degrees, the stress on the keel caused a catastrophic failure of the keel in two places under the number 3 funnel. This failure relieved some of the stresses on the upper decks. However, as the stern settled back the wood and light weight steel walls on the upper decks (directly over the failed keel) collapsed under the weight of the stern. As the walls (bulkheads) under the 3 funnel collapsed, the decks pancaked down. The bow sank lower in the water, attempting to drag the stern under. The collapsed decks acting like a hinge, the stern pivoted and rose to a vertical or near vertical position. Eventually the bow succeeded in dragging the stern under, and at a depth between 200 and 500 feet the stern imploded, separating the bow and stern sections of the ship.
Afrikaans: Skeepsmodel van die RMS Titanic. Nederlands: Scheepsmodel van de ‘Titanic’ (Glamour op de golven) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
figure 8 moment of initial failure.
Marine Forensic Panel Report
figure 9 moment of initial failure of the double bottom.
Marine Forensic Panel Report
figure 10 the bow section pulls downward on the stern section.
Marine Forensic Panel Report
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joeccombs2nd 
This article is incorrect, in the inquiry days later, multiple survivors claimed to have seen the break, one even said that it looked like a “knife” cut through it. Shew couldn’t have seen that if it was under water.
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For many years I would have been gracious & polite taking great pains to explain in detail, while bending over backwards in your favor, why your comment is stupid.
However, my patience with stupid people expired a long time ago.
1. Your assumption is that a break in the ship means that the ship is in two separate halves.
The upper portions of the ship did break and split. The the split did not go completely through the ship. It took longer for the lower parts of the ship to split into two separate halves.
2. The eyewitnesses you site also stated that just before the ship sank from sight the back one third of the ship settled back down then rose until the stern of the ship was vertical. It paused then quickly went straight down.
The point where the ship settled back down according to the eyewitnesses was the back third of the ship just forward of the 4th funnel.
So
If everything forward of the 4th funnel is gone, what caused the stern of ship to pivot to a vertical position?
Or are you saying that the stern of the ship defied buoyancy and the completely separate stern, against all known logic & science, moved almost 90° to a vertical position standing on top of the water?
Fact
The ship broke forward of the 4th funnel. The upper decks were parted but the keel and lowest deck were still connected, so that the ship was not in two separate halves yet.
The bow, already submerged began sinking lower. The keel & lowest deck acted like a hinge allowing the stern to settle back down. As the last of the air inside the bow escaped more water rushed adding weight to the bow. As the bow settled lower underwater the weight, with the lowest deck and keel still connected, forced the stern to pivot up until it was vertical.
If the ship was already in two separate halves, when the stern settled back it would have simply filled with water and sank either stern first or horizontally.
The next time you want to impress the world with how smart you are learn something first so you don’t look so stupid.
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The keel was strong and rigid. I could not act as a hinge in the way you are saying. It would either be intact and straight, or broken; no ligament could have remained that was strong enough to pull the stern up vertically.
Water going into the submerged bow does not make the bow heavier. For example, a 1-lb. steel bucket sitting on the bottom of a swimming pool weighs 1 lb; the water inside it does not add weight, because there is water outside of it.
The stern was indeed broken between the 3rd and 4th funnels; that is where the “aft tower” chunk came from. However, if you look at the pictures of the stern wreck, you’ll see that the keel runs all the way up to beneath the 2nd engine cylinders (the 1st cylinders having broken off and sunk separately). That puts the sterns length around 320 feet at the bottom. When the stern turned up vertically at the end, two witnesses estimated it to have been 150 feet out of the water, and another thought it was about 100 feet. (Jack Thayer was wrong when he said 400 feet was sticking up at the end; he was talking about the stern’s 2nd rising (the ‘big plunge’), not the 3rd rising; like Lightoller, he missed the part where the stern came down level after the bow half broke off and sank, and each man ran the two separate risings together.) The point here is that a 320-foot-long stern section could easily flood through its broken-open end, sink at that end, and leave 100-150 feet (about a third of its length) out of the water. Nobody is claiming that the stern was sticking 250 feet out of the water. Furthermore, there were many witnesses who saw the bow go down, followed by the free floating of the stern for a few minutes (the estimates varied), before it slowly tipped up; then it stayed tipped up for about half a minute (again, several witnesses) while it “corkscrewed around” by 180 degrees. It did not tip up and “quickly” go down, as you claim. All of these movements clearly show a stern completely detached from the bow half.
I believe that the keel failed first (via Euler bucking, but with the Johnson parabolic estimate applied due to the lack of slenderness of the keel structure). The split in the superstructure would have then happened as the stern sagged and broke the lower parts of the hull (below D deck). Then the “big plunge” occurred, where the bow pulled the stern down behind it (down to the 4th funnel), being still connected by the shear strakes (hull at decks C and D) and all internal decks. The buoyancy remaining in the back half of the ship would have stopped the plunge, and caused a “reverse plunge” where the ship went up backwards. As soon as the tension in the shear strakes got low enough, the stern’s weight would have shattered them, and the stern would bend down toward the ocean’s surface. This scenario matches at least 18 witnesses’ testimonies. The weight of the bow would then tear the remaining attached decks apart, and plunge into the sea–separate from the stern, as so many people saw.
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I didn’t say the keel hinged. I said the keel fractured. The sections of the doubled bottom found in the debris field by the Shadow Divers included parts of the keel as the keel is INSIDE the double bottom.
While the two sections of double bottom were headed to the bottom of the ocean the upper decks were fracturing and placing tremendous stress on the lower decks. As the stern began to right itself the lower decks would bend, keeping the bow and stern connected for a while.
One cubic foot of seawater weighs approximately 64 pounds. One cubic foot of steel weighs approximately 493 pounds (varying based on the metallurgical makeup of the steel). In other words steel alone does not have the buoyancy to float by itself. Internally, a ship contains many things of different weights and density. The largest single item inside a ship is air. It has no weight and is the largest influencer on the ship’s buoyancy. Take your steel bucket filled with pool water and an identical bucket filled with air and the bucket filled with pool water weighs more. Set those two buckets on the surface of the water in your pool. The bucket filled with water heads straight to the bottom. But the bucket filled with air sinks down until the weight of the bucket and the water it displaces is equal. Then the bucket will float at that level. Start pouring water into that bucket and it will sink lower in the water until the rim goes underwater then it will sink to the bottom of the pool as well.
When water is brught onto a ship for ballast it is measured in tons not gallons, it is weight. During a flooding casualty damage control wants to know how much water is coming into the hull in tons per minute. Weight. A flooding ship sinks lower in the water just like it does when cargo is being added. Weight. Replace the air inside a hull with water and it gains weight. It gains 64 pounds for every cubic foot of water entering the ship. Weight. Understand what I was saying now?
The length of the poop deck from Flagstaff two forward edge of the pool deck is 100 feet. The stern section of the ship is approximately 320 feet. I have heard people say the stern section above water when it was vertical was anywhere from 100 to 400 feet. Obviously the 400 feet is not possible. As no one said that only the poop deck was sticking up out of the water, 100 feet is unlikely as well.
From the flagstaff to the end of the boat deck was approximately 150 feet. There were survivors who said they were on the boat deck when the stern sank out from under them, so greater than 150 feet of the stern must have been sticking up out of the water. Most probably not more than 250 feet.
I did not say “the stern went vertical and quickly sank.”
The stern, according to the transcripts of eyewitness testimony, was at 45° or more when two loud reports were heard and then rapidly stern settled back into the water. It was floating although there is no evidence if it was “free floating.” It stayed like that for a period of time then slowly began to rise to a vertical position. Then it paused again. Then it rapidly sank straight down beneath the surface of the ocean.
There are no witness who reported seeing your “reverse plunge.” There are no witnesses who reported seeing your stern rising for the third time. I have the transcripts of the British and American inquiries. I’ve read the transcripts from several civil suits over Titanic.
Dr. Ballard said, in his memoir, that after consulting with the US Navy he believed the ship separated into two separate pieces at about 150 feet under the surface of the ocean. The US Navy stated that if the separation had taken place on the surface the bow and the stern would be farther apart.
When the men from the Discovery Channel’s Shadow Divers found the two pieces of double bottom the stern was in between the bow and where the double bottom pieces were found.
So it appears the double bottom pieces landed first. Then some time before that the ship broke into two separate halves.
There were some survivors who reported seeing the stern corkscrew, but more who did not.
There were several times you claimed I said something I didn’t or exaggerated what I actually said then disagreed with the exaggeration. I attribute this to an unintended mistake probably due to quickly reading the article.
I did not come to Titanic the way most people do. I had no interest in the ship. I found myself bored watching a documentary on a rainy Sunday afternoon. I saw a few things I knew couldn’t be correct, based on my time in ship construction, engineering, and time at sea as a mariner.
The more books I read the more problems I found and some of the problems were just a retelling of a problem I’d found earlier. That’s when I decided I had to go to the original source material. As my notes grew I began writing about it. I am still not a Titanic fan, I moved on years ago to other historical events I wanted to investigate.
Each point you made someone else has already made in another comment. And I answered that person just as I answered you.
I’m not a Titanic fan or fanatic. I’m not a Lordite or anti-Lordite.
I saw something that based on physics, the principles of naval engineering, and my decade at sea I knew was wrong and I just wanted to find out what really happened
Now you have a good night.
I’m going back to my research on the CSS Shenandoah.
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I can see that we’re more alike than different. I, too, had frustration with the other theories (things like, ‘The engines came loose and fell over and cracked the hull’). I also have experience on a submarine–both in operation, and in the shipyard–so I understand ship construction, too. I have a degree in mechanical engineering, where I studied stress, strain, strength of materials, and failure modes. And I’ve been to four different courses on failure analysis–which has been a big part of my career for the past 34 years.
I see similarities in what we’ve said. I, too, think that the first failure of the ship did not result in it being parted–only broken. I also agree that the two keel pieces separated from the ship and went down separately. (However, I think that they were the first point of failure.)
But you were saying things that other people have been incorrectly saying. When water comes into a ship that is submerged (like my submarine), it does not make the ship heavier; it makes it less buoyant. If the front half of the Titanic weighed 20,000 tons, and 60,000 tons of seawater were in it while it was below the surface, it weighed 20,000 tons, not 80,000. When there is water both on the outside and the inside of something, only the object has weight. A 1-lb bucket under water weighs 1 lb., regardless of whether it contains 15 pounds of water in it or has 200 pounds of water above it. I’m saying this because most people say that the Titanic’s bow “gained weight” and then did such-and-such to the stern because it now weighed 3 or 4 times as much; you seemed to be saying a similar thing. If you weren’t, I apologize.
Regarding the “250 feet” comment: you said, “for the 250-foot-long stern to stand on end with 250 feet pointing straight up defies the laws of physics”. You also said that “everything forward of the 4th funnel was gone”, and that the stern couldn’t possibly stand completely out of the water. I put two and two together, and got 250: the length of ship from stern to 4th funnel was about 250 feet, and you were complaining that it couldn’t have all been above water, as if someone else was asserting that. That Ari Feblowitz fellow made no such claim.
It would be ridiculous for anybody to make such a claim. I was trying to explain that there was more like 300 feet of stern, and only a third was above water. As I said, Thayer’s estimate of 400 feet was speaking about the stern rise before the stern had separated.
I’m sorry for misunderstanding your ideas about the keel, but you actually did say, “The keel & lowest deck acted like a hinge”. In your rebuttal to me yesterday, you said only the lower deck. So I guess that was your original meaning or intent. But you had come across as another James Cameron, with his “banana peel” theory of the keel. He wrongly thought that a broken keel could still manipulate the stern by some wimpy connection, like shell plating.
Regarding the three risings of the stern: actually, all three are recorded. Most people count only #2 and #3, though. The first was the low-angle rise to around 15 degrees. That caused the first “explosion” (loud noise of failure), and the stern moved downward, causing the bow to rise momentarily. People usually don’t count that rise and fall; they count only the high-angle rise (lighted, and then the lights going out, followed by the even bigger sound of failure), and the 3rd rising, which was the lone stern tipping up and then going down. And on that topic, you did indeed say, “It paused then quickly went straight down.” I was taking issue with your use of the word “quickly”, because people said that the stern floated quietly and on a nearly even keel for minutes.
Re-read Lady Duff Gordon’s summary of the sinking. She says that there was a curious tremble that went through the whole ship; then the stern rose, and there was a tremendous noise; and the stern went back down again. Then she said that it went way up the air, followed by a second extreme noise, and the bow disappeared, leaving the stern floating. She said it was 2 minutes before the stern tipped up like a huge black finger, and went down. There are many more witness accounts that follow parts of this sequence which, when pieced together, say the same thing (Richard Norris Williams, Charles Lightoller, Edward Brown). The evidence shows:
1. First plunge: low-angle rise of stern, first breaking, and momentary rise of bow.
2. Second plunge (the big one): entire ship plunging deeper and deeper with the stern, fully lighted, rising higher and higher. The lights go out.
3. Second major noise–the primary breaking up of the ship. Many, many people said that she broke in two (or three) at that point. The ship would have had to bob upward for people to see all of that, because it had gone down to where the 4th funnel was nearly on the water’s surface.
4. Stern settled and floated for so long that people thought that it would remain afloat.
5. Stern tips up 100-150 feet nearly perpendicularly, holds there for half a minute, then slowly plunges down (the third time that people used the word “plunge” to describe the ship’s actions).
This sequence is the 3-rise, 2-break theory. Like you, I went to the original sources (the Titanic Inquiry Project, and several books, like Colonel Gracie’s, and Jack Thayer’s), because people were ignoring key parts of the breakup, such as the speed of the first plunge, the funnels falling to starboard (not to port), the plunge causing the 4th funnel to be almost to the water, the sparks shooting up (not sideways, as so many theories illustrate), and more. Also, most people take an “either/or” view of the events: was it a low-angle break-up, or a high-angle one? The answer is actually “both”. Did it break at the top or the bottom? Again, both the top and the bottom, as you pointed out. The ship did not part at the first breaking.
I’d love to share more on this topic with you, but if you’ve moved on, that’s understandable.
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It would appear we are more alike than even you realized, not just in our evaluation of the sinking but…
…USS City of Corpus Christi SSN-705 plankowner.
USS John Marshall SSN-611 (former SSBN overhauled to make it a over glorified S.E.A.L. taxi).
In the early 1970s my grandmother came to Florida to visit us. She was a small mountain girl from the Appalachian mountains of Eastern Kentucky. This was the first time she had been to any state other than Kentucky or Ohio.
We took her to the beach on Anastasia Island just off St. Augustine.
She stood there and looked at the ocean for a long time. She didn’t say anything or move. We thought maybe we’d upset her.
When she spoke she said one sentence while still looking at the Atlantic Ocean.
“I never knew it was so big.”
That is the audience I write for.
I write an article in my own words. Then I remove as many nautical terms as I can and replace it with words and a description to try to give that mountain woman a mental picture of what I’m talking about.
That technique always doubles or triples the length of the article and if my old XO read he’d give me a tongue lashing for terminology.
But most people have never dipped a toe in saltwater, never been on a ship, and nautical terminology would sound like a foriegn language.
I’ll read your other two comments & give you my email with the last one.
I think you might like this series of articles on Titanic. You’ll understand watchstanding procedures better than most and the operability of a ship.
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if the titanic broke apart on the surface as most like to claim than the debris field on the bottom would be significantly larger, debris analysis has shown according to the size of the debris field and the damage from the speed of the impact the ship broke apart 3/4’s of the way down due to hydraulic pressure.
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And I’ve written many times the ship did not separate on the surface.
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did you consider the list to port
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Yes. But the list to port did not factor in heavily in the sinking by all the research we have done and the research of others that we have seen.
Very good point though. Thank you.
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did you consider the list to port?
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Sweet blog! I found it while browsing on Yahoo News. Do you have any suggestions on how to get listed in Yahoo News?
I’ve been trying for a while but I never seem to get there!
Many thanks
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Pick a subject that is important to you and give your readers something they might now know.
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Hey! Do you use Twitter? I’d like to follow you if that would be ok.
I’m absolutely enjoying your blog and look forward to new posts.
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Yes I am on Twitter.
@combs2jc
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Your analysis of the breakup is better than most. I find only one fatal flaw — you don’t take into account buoyancy. The stern in your drawings does not create enough buoyancy to support itself. No matter how you cut it, for any of the ship to have stayed on the surface it was necessary to create a “hole” of displaced water big enough to support the ship. This buoyancy problem is also what “sinks” the 1912 conclusions that Titanic sank intact. The upended hull could not have created enough buoyancy to stay afloat as described by survivors.
The only source of buoyancy great enough to allow the stern to swing upright was that which still resided in the awash bow section. Even though much of it was under water, there was still enough buoyancy to maintain the still-connected portions of the hull afloat. As the bow filled, it tried to drag the air-filled stern under. But the stern had enough buoyancy to fight the bow and this caused the hinging action. It also caused much of the weight of the stern (unsupported by its own buoyancy) to push down on the butt end of the bow section. That should have caused a teeter-totter effect and brought the prow to or above the surface for a brief time. And, this was captured in the drawing done by artist L.D. Skidmore aboard Carpathia at the direction of young Jack Thayer.
I participated in studies of the strength of Titanic’s hull girder for the History Channel. They showed the hull to have been stronger than Harland & Wolff intended. My belief is that the keel did not fail. Nor did the upper decks. It was neither a “top down” nor a “bottom up” breakup. Rather, in my opinion it was the port side which failed, probably as a vertical crack in way of the after expansion joint. Water entering through this crack caused Titanic to lose its starboard list and begin rolling to port. Most people overlook that at the end Titanic was in a death roll to port.
That same ingress of water flooded Boiler Room #1 and caused a rapid change in the hull from hogged (middle high) to sagged (middle low). The steel couldn’t take that sort of treatment and renewed cracking girdled the hull. From there on it was a catastrophic failure of the structure.
I must say again that while dramatic, Titanic’s breakup did not result from some sort of weakness in the steel or the rivets. The actual ship held together beyond what its builders intended — and well beyond what any hull girder needs to be able to withstand. After all, the ship was already beyond the point of no return when the hull cracked.
— David G. Brown
“Titanic Myths, Titanic Truths”
“The Last Log Of The Titanic”
“Titanic-Missing Pieces”
“Titanic-Achilles Heel”
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Thank you David. I would also like to remind everyone that David’s books are available on Amazon.com
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I think this article is awesome ! but when you talk about how the stern sank and the weight of each section (the engines and all that) did you consider the weight of the water entering the broken stern? ( lets assume the stern was already separated from the bow) I mean the water weight must have been quite a force pulling down , and the bulkheads that were still closed would have made the same effect as they did with entire ship ( sink the bow and rise the stern) but this time would be sink the engine room and rise the last section…I dont know a lot about physics but im really interested in what you state in this articles
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There is only one problem with your theory. The double-bottom. The water would have been rushing in through the double bottom and coming up through the covers in the deck. Also the water tight doors in the engine room were open to allow movement. The water would have settled through out the stern section. Some of the covers were off the decks as they changed line-ups with the pipes and brought pumps on-line from other compartments to help pump out the water.
Very good comment Ivan. Thank you.
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Its always good to find this kind of articles with strong evidence in them Ok I know I did not consider the double-bottom or the open bulkheads, my mistake. But, lets suposse that the water is running freely through all the stern, if you look at the blueprints, the space in the last section of the stern (specially the double-bottom) is significantly smaller due to the ships design, ¿do you believe that would make the stern rise at a high angle? and ¿Is it possible that if the stern reached an almost vertical position, the weight of the engines and everything you specify pulling downwards could drag the stern underwater regardless of the air trapped inside wich then caused the implosion?. Another thing is that even if I find all your evidence hardly refutable I still have trouble understanding how did the bow managed to pull down the stern with only the decks atacched to it . I mean the main structure could not stand the pressure of the stern rising , how could the atacched decks stand the pressure of the bow pulling down against the stern trying to stay afloat, and considering what you wrote about the temperature of those decks there is another question that I hope you can answer ¿Do you think that the water entering the ship from the break-up could make the temperature of those decks lower to the point where they could no longer resist some kind of pressure or puling from the bow? Thank you for answering my previous comment I hope you can clarify some of these doubts.
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Ivan, all very good points. Too much to answer in a reply to a comment, so I will write an article on your questions. Very good comments. If you would be interested in writing an article for our web site e-mail us at edjcc2author@mail.com
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Well Im certainly not an expert in the subject but if its possible I could write a small article with some of my thoughts, I will send you an e-mail as soon as I can!
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Thank you. I like the way you think and I believe our readers will also. The path to new discoveries is through always questioning why, and then looking for the answers.
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