So I remember hearing (long before the movie) that what sunk the Titanic wasn’t that the iceberg hit but rather how it hit. IIRC, the ship was built in such a way that the watertight compartments would have prevented a sinking due to a head on collision because only the lead compartment would have flooded. But because the impact slid along the side of the ship and several of the watertight compartments were flooded the ship was doomed.
OK. I get that.
But given that the impact WAS alongside…could action on the part of the crew have saved the ship? Suppose the crew attempted to save just ONE of the watertight compartments with quick placement of sheet metal to repair the ship, quick welding, and some seriously pumping out of that compartment?
Is there any action, given the actual impact of the iceberg, that the crew could have taken to prevent the sinking or was it a lost cause from the moment of contact?
Nope. The water came rushing in at huge pressure along an enormous tear along the ship—even if the crew could have gotten welding or riveting equipment and a “patch” to the spot, the pressure and volume of the water coming in would gave prevented them from working on it.
From everything I’ve read, the Titanic was completely, utterly doomed. They had bilge pumps, but they could not keep up with the water. They bought the Titanic SOME time, but that’s all.
As far as trying to patch the holes, I’m afraid that would have also been impossible. Water was jetting into the ship with far more force than a human could hold back in time to repair it. With ships of that size, they had to completely lift them out of the water on a drydock to make repairs.
I’ve read (forget where, of course) that if the engineers had OPENED all of the watertight doors instead of closing them, the ship would at least have sunk on an even keel, keeping afloat longer, and perhaps more people would have been alive by the time the Carpathia arrived.
But yes, it seems that the sinking was a done deal.
The ship was doomed. But, there have been interesting speculations on ways to have saved the passengers. These include things like unloading passengers to the iceberg itself, or creating a “raft” (basically just a floating pile of stuff) from anything that would float, etc. Nothing like 20-20 hindsight…
IIRC the “tear” along the side of the ship was above the level of the compartments, so the water simply lapped over the top of one compartment into the next. Rather like overfilling an ice tray.
I read one person’s opinion (sorry, I don’t recall where) that if the Titanic had hit the iceberg dead-on, instead of side-swiping it, they it could have been saved. Wish I could remember where, but I think that might be a minority opinion.
Along the same lines as the OP: I read somewhere that there was a fire in one of the coal bunkers onboard that they were unable to extinguish. Speculation was that this would have doomed the Titanic even if it had missed the iceberg. Can anyone back this up, or am I just dreaming I read it?
The damage wasn’t a long tear in the hull of the ship. No such tear has been found in the photographs of the wreck. The damage was the popping of rivets and cracking of plates because of steel that was brittle at low temperatures.
Even today, there are some steels that are brittle at surprisingly high, “low” temperatures. Temperatures in the vicinity33 or 34[sup]o[/sup]F.
The north Atlantic surface water temperatures are low in general and in iceberg areas they are even lower so the hull was cold. The shock popped rivet heads and cracked plates and water flooded in from so many places and so fast that there was no way to save the ship in the time available and with the equipment at hand.
I’ve heard a lot about the coal bunker fire as well, but I’ve never heard anything about it “dooming” the ship - in fact, everything I’ve read and seen about it said it was a fairly common annoyance on coal-powered ocean vessels at the time and the coal supply was known to be smoldering happily away when the ship left port.
I think it’s true that the ship was doomed – but more passengers could have been saved. In addition to BrotherCadfael’s ideas, I remember something from a public TV program: there was a ship fairly nearby that could have reached the Titanic in time to rescue as many passengers as it could hold, if it had heard about the accident promptly. They rec’d the Titanic’s SOS, but didn’t listen to the message, as they had no wireless operator on duty at night.
According to the program, the Titanic disaster resulted in a number of safety measures being enacted. One was “have enough lifeboats,” and another was “have wireless operators on duty 24/7”.
The ship was the freighter California and was in sight of Titanic during the whole affair. As I recall the watch even saw the distress rockets fired from Titanic and assumed that the passenger were having a bit of a gala.
They even made an extremely esoteric joke about this on MST3K: in the Horrors of Spider Island episode, some shipwrecked cuties were waving down a ship that sailed away. Mike snaps, “Damn California, never rescues anyone!”
Almost certainly the Titanic would have been better off. Only one compartment would have been punctured, and although in need of a drydock, it would have been able to imp into port. As it was, it struck PERFECTLY to damage the first three or four compartments, thus sending it to the bottom.
Actually, in SDSTAFF Una’s Staff Report on the front page today, it says: "the Titanic had a coal bunker on fire from spontaneous combustion from the day she left Southampton to the time she struck the iceberg.
Anyway, I have sometimes wondered if (assuming the damage was close-ish to the waterline) the Titanic’s captain could have bought some time by ordering full steam ahead, and turning hard into the direction of the damage (Port?). This might have caused her to roll away, lifting the ruptures out of the water - or at least slowing the flow. She could have described tight circles until rescue was closer at hand.
There’s provavly some obvious reason why this wouldn’t work, but it seems plausible to this landlubber.