# defective bolts **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [March 9, 2014, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defective-bolts/683262 "2014-03-09T12:57:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![old\_nicky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@old\_nicky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/old_nicky)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2014, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defective-bolts/683262/1 "2014-03-09T12:57:26Z")
The question about defective bolts in skyscrapers reminded me of the Titanic. Didn’t the Titanic sink due to defective bolts (apart from the triggering iceberg, of course)? ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2014, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defective-bolts/683262/2 "2014-03-09T16:57:33Z")
LINK TO COLUMN IN QUESTION: [Are some New York skyscrapers held together with fake bolts? - The Straight Dope](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3143/are-some-new-york-skyscrapers-held-together-with-fake-bolts) Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, **old nicky** , glad to have you with us. For future ref, it’s helpful to other readers to provide a link to the column under discussion. No biggie, you’ll know for next time. Anyhow, welcome! ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2014, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defective-bolts/683262/3 "2014-03-10T04:19:23Z")
The Titanic issue is with rivets, not bolts. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2014, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defective-bolts/683262/5 "2014-03-10T19:20:21Z")
> [@old\_nicky](#): > > The question about defective bolts in skyscrapers reminded me of the Titanic. Didn’t the Titanic sink due to defective bolts (apart from the triggering iceberg, of course)? They were rivets, not bolts, and I think that theory has been debunked (as has a similar theory about defective steel)…at least that’s my recollection from several shows on the Titanic in the last few years. From memory they brought up both steel plate and rivets and tested them out and neither were defective. I could have sworn Cecil did an article on this, but I can’t find it. I did find [this](http://www.usnews.com/news/national/articles/2008/09/25/the-secret-of-how-the-titanic-sunk) in a quick search though if you want to read through it. > [@](#): > > Low quality. More than 70 years passed before scientists were able to study the first physical evidence of the wreck. As luck would have it, the first piece of steel pulled up from the bottom seemed to put an end to the mystery. When the steel was placed in ice water and hit with a hammer, it shattered. For much of the 1990s, scientists thought this “brittle” steel was responsible for the massive flooding. Only recently has testing on other, bigger pieces of the ship disproved this theory. The original piece, scientists discovered, had been unusually weak, while the rest of Titanic’s steel passed the tests. “We know now there was nothing wrong with the steel,” says William Garzke, chairman of a forensics panel formed by the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers to investigate the wreck. > > Experts looking for explanations landed on another potentially weak link: The more than 3 million rivets holding the ship together. McCarty and Foecke began examining 48 rivets brought up from the wreck and found they contained high concentrations of “slag,” a residue of smelting that can make metal fracture prone. Researching in the Harland & Wolff archives, they discovered that the shipbuilder’s ambitious plans to build three large ships at the same time had put a huge strain on its shipyard. “Not because of cost, but because of time pressures, they started using lower-quality material to fill the gaps,” says Foecke. This substandard iron was pounded by hand into the ship’s bow and stern, where the large machines required to pound in steel rivets didn’t fit. Steel rivets, meanwhile, which are much stronger than iron, were put in the more-accessible middle of the ship. > > When the Titanic hit the iceberg, McCarty and Foecke say, the weaker iron rivets in the bow popped, opening seams in the hull—and hurrying the ship’s demise. It’s no accident, Foecke says, that the flooding stopped at the point in the hull where the steel rivets began. > > Harland & Wolff, now an engineering and design firm, flatly rejects the notion that its rivets were weak. Tom McCluskie, the company’s retired archivist, points out that Olympic, Titanic’s sister ship, was riveted with the same iron and served without incident for 25 years, surviving several major collisions, including being rammed by a British cruiser. “Olympic deliberately rammed a German submarine during the First World War and cut it in half,” says McCluskie. “She was plenty strong.” The Britannic sank after hitting a mine during World War I. Both ships were strengthened after the Titanic disaster with double hulls and taller bulkheads, but their rivets were never changed. > > Stronger rivets might have slowed the sinking process, but once water began flooding six of the Titanic’s compartments, it was only a matter of time before the ship went down. Questions remain, though, about exactly how and why the ship ultimately broke apart and sank. In 2005, an expedition organized by Kohler and Chatterton found a new clue. Wandering away from the main wreckage site, they stumbled upon two large pieces of the ship’s bottom on the ocean floor. Closer examination revealed the two hull sections had split exactly where the ship broke in two, making them a possible key to the mystery of the ship’s final moments. Simon Mills, an Olympic-class-ship historian who advised the divers, calls the find “very likely the most interesting piece of Titanic research to be carried out in the last 20 years.” ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2014, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defective-bolts/683262/6 "2014-03-12T12:45:58Z")
Heh, this is off-topic, but the phrase > [@](#): > > Simon Mills, an Olympic-class-ship historian brings up the question, is ship history a Summer or Winter Olympic sport? (I would have rewritten it into something like “a historian of the Olympic class of ships” to avoid possible confusion.) ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2014, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defective-bolts/683262/7 "2014-03-12T19:14:55Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > Heh, this is off-topic, but the phrase > > > [@](#): > > > > Simon Mills, an Olympic-class-ship historian > > brings up the question, is ship history a Summer or Winter Olympic sport? > > (I would have rewritten it into something like “a historian of the Olympic class of ships” to avoid possible confusion.) I think the phrasing is a bit clunky, but the hyphens make the meaning quite unambiguous. No “pretty little girls school” here. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defective-bolts/683262/8 "2014-03-16T14:53:16Z")
But little girls like attending a pretty school. Besides, who understands hyphens? ---
**Author:** ![Powers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Powers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Powers)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defective-bolts/683262/9 "2014-03-21T22:56:09Z")
Anyone who’s taken 5 minutes to read up on their proper use? Powers &8^] ---
**Author:** ![nevadaexile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb8c5e/32.png) [@nevadaexile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nevadaexile)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2014, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defective-bolts/683262/10 "2014-03-21T22:59:07Z")
Bolts were never used on the hulls of vessels, only rivets. It cut down the drag and it prevented most leaks. Now hulls are welded. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2014, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/defective-bolts/683262/11 "2014-03-25T20:05:58Z")
> [@Powers](#): > > Anyone who’s taken 5 minutes to read up on their proper use? So, like, nobody. I mean, who goes around reading how to use punctuation? “Read any good books lately?” “Sure, I just finished _Semicolons: the Fake Colon_.”