# Another Titanic question **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 2, 2015, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-titanic-question/708811 "2015-01-02T22:43:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2015, 9:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-titanic-question/708811/41 "2015-01-06T09:52:04Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Indeed, the congressional testimony of one of the cooks (also portrayed in the movie Titanic hanging onto the rail beside the couple) was that he stood hanging on to the rear railing and as the stern sank into the water, it was he said very smooth, like stepping off a descending elevator - no suction, no turbulence, never went under. And thanks to a decent amount of alcohol (?), he somehow avoided hypothermia before he was picked up by a lifeboat quite a while later. I recall the “like stepping off an elevator” part of the quote but am not familiar with the man’s testimony. If he was liquored up, though, he survived in spite of the alcohol not because of it. Booze makes your surface arteries dilate – recall the flushed faces of your drunken friends – which is the opposite of what you want in a cold situation as they then radiate your body heat. A tot in the cold might make you feel warm inside (The whisky, it burns) but your chances of surviving a dire situation decrease. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2015, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-titanic-question/708811/42 "2015-01-06T13:42:44Z")
> [@Schnitte](#): > > Still, the decision of the architects as to the number of lifeboats on board is puzzling, even with the benefit of hindsight. In fact, there were _more_ lifeboats available than the legal minimum applicable at the time required. It’s hard to come up with a rational explanation for this. Either you believe that your ship is unsinkable, in which case you stick to the absolute minimum because you don’t believe that you’ll need the lifeboats anyway; or you believe that there’s a good reason beside legal requirements to have lifeboats, in which case it’s hard to explain why you stop with an outfit that provides a seat in a lifeboat for only a third of the people on board. > [@ruh-roh](#): > > One theory I once came across, which sounded good at the time, was that they were not required to have enough lifeboats for everyone on board because before radio the idea of abandoning everyone to the lifeboats to float around simply meant a slow death from exposure or starvation. Better to take a chance the ship didn’t fully sink, or go with it quickly. Many early sailing ships had only one or two. Lifeboats were only meant to ferry people in groups to an obvious safe landing. > > With the advent of … — … it was thought that help could always be summoned. The middle ground of having to abandon everyone to the lifeboats until help did arrive wasn’t very well considered. > > I’m not sure if having lifeboats for everyone would have helped much anyway. Panic and social class separation seems to have made for very inefficient use of what they had. The version I heard was that the lifeboat requirements were out of date: the number required was based on tonnage, and the _Titanic_ fell into the highest category of “X- tonnes and over”- only “and over” had grown dramatically since the last time the regulations had been updated. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2015, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-titanic-question/708811/43 "2015-01-06T14:43:01Z")
> [@Snnipe\_70E](#): > > …This was a 16,000 ton tanker with a 6,000 Hp main motor. And we were doing around 16 knots. Ships at full speed to not respond to course changes or speed changes very fast. > [@sich\_hinaufwinden](#): > > With such a small deceleration, I can imagine that it probably isn’t very (or at all) noticeable that you’re changing speed one way or the other. But **robbby** ’s post above got me wondering… > > In the situation you describe (a very different vessel I understand), is there any indication of what the ship is trying to do, as far as shaking, noise, or whatever? If you look over the back end is it stirring up a serious froth? > [@Snnipe\_70E](#): > > Merchant ship at stop bell no way on. A full ahead bell is given. you begin to feel movement and vibration. look over the fantail and the water will begin to churn. As the ship begins to move churning decreases and a wake begins to form. When the ship gets up to speed very little churning and just a propeller and ship wake with little air bubbles in the wake. > > A full astern bell is rung up. A lot of vibration and some bouncing and a change in the movement of the ship. The ships wake is there but greatly disturbed. As the ship slows the churning water will be pushed along the hull of the ship. As the ship slows the churning water will travel up the length of the hull. When the ship begins to move backwards futher up the hull. The difference is that my submarine (_Los Angeles_-class) had a submerged displacement of 6,900 tons, and main engines that delivered 35,000 shaft horsepower to the single screw. Our main engines were so powerful that we were sometimes limited by the maximum torque allowable to the propeller shaft. Also, with a nuclear reactor onboard, we could ramp up power very quickly. Indeed, reactor power simply (and automatically) followed steam demand. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2015, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-titanic-question/708811/44 "2015-01-06T17:06:50Z")
> [@ruh-roh](#): > > One theory I once came across, which sounded good at the time, was that they were not required to have enough lifeboats for everyone on board because before radio the idea of abandoning everyone to the lifeboats to float around simply meant a slow death from exposure or starvation. Better to take a chance the ship didn’t fully sink, or go with it quickly. Many early sailing ships had only one or two. Lifeboats were only meant to ferry people in groups to an obvious safe landing. You know, the more I think about it, the better this theory sounds. Even today, if you found yourself adrift in a raft in the middle of the ocean, the odds that anybody would ever find you would be rather slim. Before modern communication, it could be months before anybody even started to get concerned about why the ship was overdue. So no, getting into a lifeboat without a known destination (like a nearby ship or island) doesn’t sound like it would be likely to do you much good. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2015, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-titanic-question/708811/45 "2015-01-06T19:16:38Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Not as simple as all that… > > In big ships, the zone of uncertainty can be minutes long. You just can’t tell, based on what you can see, whether or not you’ve got the necessary time and space to maneuver successfully out of the collision. The only way to know is to try one alternative or the other and wait for the then-inevitable outcome… Indeed. Some historians and naval architects believe the _Titanic_’s rudder was too small for the job, and that the ship was thus more unresponsive at the helm. She was bigger than the ships her crew was used to handling, and their instincts, honed on smaller ships, were not necessarily correct. The suction effect from her screws, for instance, pulled another ship loose from her moorings in Southampton on April 10, nearly causing a collision: [SS City of New York (1888) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_City_of_New_York#Post-war) ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2015, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-titanic-question/708811/46 "2015-01-09T02:07:39Z")
Forgot to mention… the crew and passengers of the _Andrea Doria_ were evacuated to nearby ships by lifeboat after it was damaged in a 1956 nighttime collision. The lifeboats along one side of the ship were rendered unusable due to the list of the stricken ship, but eventually almost everyone was safely evacuated. (My favorite part of that story was the French liner _Ile de France_ coming in close and turning on all of its exterior lights, greatly lifting the spirits of the evacuees). ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2015, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-titanic-question/708811/47 "2015-01-09T07:13:26Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > The suction effect from her screws, for instance, pulled another ship loose from her moorings in Southampton on April 10, nearly causing a collision: The suction effect of her flank, or of her bow wave, or of her “close passage”, but not of her screws. A big ship going past will suck you in, and may turn you over. Conversely, a big ship going close to a steep shore may suck itself into a wall/reef. It’s one of those hard-to-understand fluid dynamics things like “how does an airplain fly?”, and will happen even if the screws are idleing: the pressure sideways on the open-water side is greater than the pressure on the narrow (between ships) side. ---
**Author:** ![Kenm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bc79bd/32.png) [@Kenm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kenm)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2015, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-titanic-question/708811/48 "2015-01-09T18:39:34Z")
> [@robby](#): > > [Flank speed](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flank_speed) is a ship’s maximum speed. Apparently it’s an exclusively American nautical term. Long forgotten so relatively unknown is waterskiing speed — much faster than flank — the first known use of which was at the order of the sadistic commander to the slave galley’s rowing-sync drummer in SCTV’s Ben-Hur. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2015, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-titanic-question/708811/49 "2015-01-09T20:07:02Z")
The explanation for the lifeboat count was that the number of lifeboats required was based on a formula the British government published. IIRC this was based on the length of a ship, but was established before that era’s behemoths were being built. Loosely speaking, a ship twice the length has eight times the volume and presumably about eight times the passengers; but the formula only called for twice the lifeboats. As others said, the engineers did not see a reason to exceed this since “a ship this big won’t sink anyway, the passengers are safer on board”. One suggestion about the cause of the extent of the disaster was that the rivets became very brittle in ice-cold water. If so, I wonder how much damage a head-on collision would have caused? ---
**Author:** ![Daylate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9dc877/32.png) [@Daylate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daylate)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2015, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-titanic-question/708811/50 "2015-01-10T00:41:21Z")
> [@](#): > > With the brittle rivets that were used in the hull, a massive failure might have occurred throughout the ship. For sure most of the passengers would have been plastered on the forward bulkheads of their cabins. From my post (#33). ---
**Author:** ![stevewaclo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/edb3f5/32.png) [@stevewaclo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stevewaclo)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2015, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-titanic-question/708811/51 "2015-01-10T10:19:17Z")
MD2000 observed: “…he somehow avoided hypothermia before he was picked up by a lifeboat quite a while later.” I live near Lake Tahoe where the water is particularly cold (except in the shallows) nearly year round, and the subject of hypothermia and death thereby has been, in light of a number of tragic deaths this past summer, a topic of discussion. It turns out that _vital signs_ in even the coldest water (as researched by Nazi’s on human subjects) can be detected for a considerable period of time; as I recall up to 30 minutes. As has been determined through autopsy of recovered bodies from Tahoe, the victims died not of hypothermia but drowning. Apparently immersion into extremely cold water often elicits a sharp intake of breath, which alone can initiate drowning. In addition, those who survive the frigid plunge quickly discover that within _minutes_ their extremities cease responding to brain commands and they sink and obviously, drown. A young man dove from his families boat in Emerald Bay last year to swim on ahead to the small island in the bay, about 150’ away. He went down once, in I believe about 50F water, and was recovered by divers hours later. He drowned. Wearing a PFD, the cook stayed afloat, but I would posit his mobility was severely compromised. And indeed all others similarly equipped would have endured long enough to eventually die of hypothermia. Those without PFDs would soon drown. Death in very cold water of individuals w/o “life jackets” is not by hypothermia… ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2015, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-titanic-question/708811/52 "2015-01-12T01:15:00Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > …It’s one of those hard-to-understand fluid dynamics things like “how does an airplain fly?”… Is it any different for an airfancy? And what if it’s on a treadmill? ---
**Author:** ![ExTank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2015, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-titanic-question/708811/53 "2015-01-13T22:16:52Z")
Since the OP has been asked, debated, and largely answered, I thought I’d toss [this into the mix for consideration.](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/did-the-titanic-sink-because-of-an-optical-illusion-102040309/?no-ist) Essentially, an atmospheric inversion caused by the warmer Gulf Stream meeting the colder Labrador current made visual scanning problematic, causing the iceberg to essentially “appear out of nowhere” at almost piont-blank range, and may have caused the Titanic/California estimated distance and visual mix-up. Now, I’m not a scientist, but if you hum a few bars, I can follow along, and I found it interesting and compelling. The documentary was on Netflix at one point, it might still be there, and it’s worth a watch. ---
**Author:** ![MacLir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@MacLir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacLir)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2015, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-titanic-question/708811/54 "2015-01-15T16:55:21Z")
> [@DesertDog](#): > > I recall the “like stepping off an elevator” part of the quote but am not familiar with the man’s testimony. If he was liquored up, though, he survived in spite of the alcohol not because of it. Booze makes your surface arteries dilate – recall the flushed faces of your drunken friends – which is the opposite of what you want in a cold situation as they then radiate your body heat. A tot in the cold might make you feel warm inside (The whisky, it burns) but your chances of surviving a dire situation decrease. But at that time, they thought the opposite; _e.g._ the stereotypical cask of brandy on a St. Bernard’s collar. He was wrong but sincere. ---
**Author:** ![MacLir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@MacLir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacLir)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2015, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-titanic-question/708811/55 "2015-01-15T17:16:05Z")
> [@Kenm](#): > > Long forgotten so relatively unknown is waterskiing speed — much faster than flank — the first known use of which was at the order of the sadistic commander to the slave galley’s rowing-sync drummer in SCTV’s Ben-Hur. This is a good place to bring up some of the physics behind “flank speed.” A displacement hull has an upper limit to speed determined by the length at the waterline. It is exactly equal to the speed at which the wavelength of the bow wave equals the length of the ship. Attempts to exceed this speed cause power consumption to rise asymptotically with little, if any, speed increase. You are essentially trying to push the ship uphill onto the wave. Submarines would have the same effect from the pressure wave “wake” they generate. Planing hulls, on the other hand, use a different set of rules. the hull lifts from the water and skims on the surface. Speed is limited only by effective power. Waterskis work from the same rules. An inexact analogy might be a starship on impulse power in Einsteinian space versus being on warp drive in hyperspace. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2015, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-titanic-question/708811/56 "2015-01-15T18:50:02Z")
> [@MacLir](#): > > This is a good place to bring up some of the physics behind “flank speed.” > > A displacement hull has an upper limit to speed determined by the length at the waterline. It is exactly equal to the speed at which the wavelength of the bow wave equals the length of the ship. Attempts to exceed this speed cause power consumption to rise asymptotically with little, if any, speed increase. You are essentially trying to push the ship uphill onto the wave. Indeed, it is for this reason that surfaced submarines are operationally limited to “Full” speed when surfaced. Increasing the ordered speed to “Flank” speed _on the surface_ results in a negligible increase in speed but vastly more reactor power. It’s basically a waste of fuel. (Submerged, the situation is different, as modern submarines with their “teardrop-shaped” hulls are primarily designed for submerged operation.) ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2015, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-titanic-question/708811/57 "2015-01-16T14:47:18Z")
> [@ExTank](#): > > Essentially, an atmospheric inversion caused by the warmer Gulf Stream meeting the colder Labrador current made visual scanning problematic, causing the iceberg to essentially “appear out of nowhere” at almost piont-blank range, and may have caused the Titanic/California estimated distance and visual mix-up. Deceptive visual conditions undoubtedly played a part, but the main reason the iceberg wasn’t spotted earlier was the calm sea—there were no breakers around its base, which would have provided at least some illumination. Also, one of the lookouts (Frederick Fleet, IIRC) testifed that had they been equipped with binoculars, they could probably have seen it a bit earlier. The \*Titanic \*officers’ failure to supply the lookouts in the crow’s nest with binoculars was never satisfactorily explained. It should also be noted that the _Californian_’s “warning” thirty minutes prior to the collision was never identifed as such, and WO Operator Jack Phillips probably took it it as ship-to-ship chit-chat. A proper warning would have required Phillips to acknowledge receipt and pass it on to the bridge at once. However, nothing can justify Captain Lord’s failure to rouse his own radioman after being informed that a ship was firing rockets in the night. It’s hard to believe, but Captain Smith actually ordered another boiler to be put on line Sunday evening, bringing the ship’s speed up to 24 knots for the first (and only) time. It’s been speculated that he wanted to get out of the ice zone as quickly as possible. He also ordered that they proceed at full speed for several minutes after striking the iceberg; no one has ever been able to explain why. The attempt to “port around” the iceberg by swinging the ship’s bow one way and its stern another failed in part because the central propeller shut down, depriving the rudder of its slipstream and making it harder to steer. In addition, _Titanic_’s sea trials had been completely inadequate—no one really knew how well a ship that big could maneuver. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2015, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-titanic-question/708811/58 "2015-01-16T15:28:12Z")
> [@MacLir](#): > > This is a good place to bring up some of the physics behind “flank speed.” > > A displacement hull has an upper limit to speed determined by the length at the waterline. It is exactly equal to the speed at which the wavelength of the bow wave equals the length of the ship. Attempts to exceed this speed cause power consumption to rise asymptotically with little, if any, speed increase. You are essentially trying to push the ship uphill onto the wave. > > Submarines would have the same effect from the pressure wave “wake” they generate. > > Planing hulls, on the other hand, use a different set of rules. the hull lifts from the water and skims on the surface. Speed is limited only by effective power. Waterskis work from the same rules. > > An inexact analogy might be a starship on impulse power in Einsteinian space versus being on warp drive in hyperspace. If memory serves, isn’t this part of the reason for the traditional long-and-narrow shape of cruiser hulls? They were built for speed, and that’s a good way to optimize for speed. Unless I’m badly mistaken. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2015, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-titanic-question/708811/59 "2015-01-16T16:05:35Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > It’s hard to believe, but Captain Smith actually ordered another boiler to be put on line Sunday evening, bringing the ship’s speed up to 24 knots for the first (and only) time. It’s been speculated that he wanted to get out of the ice zone as quickly as possible. He also ordered that they proceed at full speed for several minutes after striking the iceberg; no one has ever been able to explain why. He was a time traveler preserving the timeline by making sure the Titanic sunk. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Snnipe\_70E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5a626/32.png) [@Snnipe\_70E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snnipe_70E)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2015, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-titanic-question/708811/60 "2015-01-16T17:33:43Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > . > > It should also be noted that the _Californian_’s “warning” thirty minutes prior to the collision was never identifed as such, and WO Operator Jack Phillips probably took it it as ship-to-ship chit-chat. A proper warning would have required Phillips to acknowledge receipt and pass it on to the bridge at once. However, nothing can justify Captain Lord’s failure to rouse his own radioman after being informed that a ship was firing rockets in the night. > > It’s hard to believe, but Captain Smith actually ordered another boiler to be put on line Sunday evening, bringing the ship’s speed up to 24 knots for the first (and only) time. . > > . Nit Pick warning. Captain Smith would not have had the authority to “order another boiler to be put on line”. He would have had the authority to order enough turns to make 24 knots. The Chief Engineer would then make the decision if another boiler would be necessary. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-titanic-question/708811.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-titanic-question/708811.md?page=4)