Question about "Titanic" and steering a ship

[Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker]

@Duke_of_Rat

I think the command given was “hard a starboard”, not “hard to starboard”.

That’s probably the literal command, but it looks as though they would mean the same thing. cf. aport, astern, abaft.

[Duke_of_Rat]

@Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker

@Duke_of_Rat

I think the command given was “hard a starboard”, not “hard to starboard”.

That’s probably the literal command, but it looks as though they would mean the same thing. cf. aport, astern, abaft.

I think somebody mentioned it upthread, but it was an archaic command meaning move the tiller towards the starboard side so the ship would go to port. It carried over into the era where wheels replaced tillers. A Google search of “hard a starboard” turned up some links.

[Shawn1767]

And then I see this article today: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100922/lf_nm_life/us_britain_titanic_book

[Tim_T-Bonham.net]

@Merijeek

Something I’d always wondered - what was the point of having the watertight bulkheads go only MOST of the way up? In hindsight it’s a terrible idea, of course, but I’m sure at the time there must have been a reason it seemed like a decent move.

It was cheaper. Building them full height would have taken more time, required more material, and added extra weight (which would slow the ship down for the rest of her lifetime). They already exceeded the requirements. Just like adding enough lifeboats for everyone on board – that would have cost more money (and messed up the promenades on the deck) and they already had more lifeboats than was required.

Actually, much of the building of the Titanic was done ‘on the cheap’. For example, the steel used and the rivets holding the steel plates together were of cheaper quality. The cheap, brittle quality of the steel plates & rivets is said by some to be a partial cause of the sinking.

[ExTank]

@t-bonham@scc.net

Actually, much of the building of the Titanic was done ‘on the cheap’. For example, the steel used and the rivets holding the steel plates together were of cheaper quality. The cheap, brittle quality of the steel plates & rivets is said by some to be a partial cause of the sinking.

Partially true. The steel tested by UM-Rolla, as well as the NIST study, both indicated that the steel was of substandard quality by today’s standards, but was quite acceptable for steel of its time.

There are conflicting reports/studies about the rivets, their quality, and the techniques used to rivet up towards the more cramped bow sections during construction. Undeniably, poor riveting (materials and/or technique) could have yielded fatally significant weakness in the bow section.

From Secrets of Titanic’s Steel:

Phil Leighly, professor emeritus of metallurgical engineering at the University of Missouri-Rolla (UMR), ranks as a key player in the quest to understand one of history’s most dramatic maritime tragedies, the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Last year he and his research team completed an analysis of steel taken from the wreck. The results of that study indicate that weaknesses in the steel contributed to the disaster, confirming a suspicion Leighly has held for more than a decade.

In August 1996, he received five pieces of steel salvaged from Titanic by RMS Titanic, Inc. Working with UMR metallurgical engineering senior Katie Felkins and Alex Jankovic, a materials test engineer, he analyzed the metal’s chemical composition and tensile strength.

In the early 1900s, manufacturers in the United Kingdom commonly produced steel in open-hearth, acid-lined furnaces. This process yields “semikilled” steel, which has relatively high concentrations of phosphorus, oxygen, and sulfur, and a low concentration of nitrogen and silicon. Titanic’s steel matches this chemical profile.

The relatively high amounts of phosphorus, oxygen, and sulfur in semi-killed steel tend to make it more brittle at low temperatures than modern steel. To determine the temperature at which Titanic’s steel would embrittle, Felkins conducted a series of Charpy impact tests on the metal over a range of temperatures from -55degC to 179degC. In the test, a swinging pendulum strikes a notched piece of steel held horizontally between two vertical bars. The results showed that Titanic’s steel was roughly 10 times more brittle than modern steel at -2degC, the temperature of the North Atlantic that fateful night in April 1912.

“It was bad steel; there’s no question,” Leighly says, “but probably the best plain carbon ship plate available at the time.” Leighly hesitates to speculate whether a ship constructed of modern steel would have suffered as much damage as Titanic in a similar collision. With today’s superior navigational aides, a modern crew could most likely avoid such an encounter altogether. Ultimately, Leighly believes the results of the analysis should be read as a cautionary tale about the inherent limits of design. “More than 1,500 people died that night,” he says, “because a combination of factors [many of them related to design] pushed Titanic beyond its limits.”

From Testing the Titanic’s Steel:

Of course, the science of metallurgy has advanced considerably since the Titanic’s day, and William Garzke of Gibbs and Cox and his collaborators emphasized in their report that “the steel used in the Titanic was the best available in 1909-1914” when the ship was built. In fact, they add that when 39,000 tons of water entered the bow, “no modern ship, not even a welded one, could have withstood the forces that the Titanic experienced during her breakup.”

[ExTank]

@Shawn1767

And then I see this article today: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100922/lf_nm_life/us_britain_titanic_book

This conspiracy theory is not supported by plain eyewitness testimony of either crew or passengers. Neither lookout Fleet or Lee testified that the ship first started to go right, then left around the berg. In fact, even if Hitchens had screwed up, and turned the ship right instead of left, I see no reason for 1st Officer William Murdoch to countermand the order in the middle of the turn, so close to the iceberg.

And no passenger or crew ever testified that the ship continued on after it had hit the iceberg; all testimony is unanimous that the ship halted after having struck the iceberg.

You can make a case for any alleged steering snafu being covered up; only Lookouts Flee and Lee, Quartermaster Hitchens, 1st Officer Murdoch and Sixth Officer Moody are reported to have actually seen the collision, and only Hitchens, Murdoch and Moody were on the bridge at the time.

But the whole “the ship continued on” is flatly contradicted by several hundred surviving witnesses, who would have little or no reason to lie about such a thing to protect the White Star Line.

[janeslogin]

This was in the news this morning new book claims that the Titanic had plenty of time to dodge out of the way of the fatal iceberg but the collision was down to a helmsman who turned the ship the wrong way.

[Tim_T-Bonham.net]

@janeslogin

This was in the news this morning new book claims that the Titanic had plenty of time to dodge out of the way of the fatal iceberg but the collision was down to a helmsman who turned the ship the wrong way.

I don’t understand this.
If the lookouts reported “iceberg dead ahead!” (as they did), why would it matter which way you turned to get around it? Going around on either side should have worked, since it was directly ahead. Why would either direction be “the wrong way”?

[bathsheba]

I saw an interview with James Cameron in which he said that he had had many letters claiming that he had made an error in the scene. His explanation was as per post # 2.