I have no doubt that people can be seen going under alongside the ship. The question is why? In order for someone to be pulled under the water on the surface has to have a velocity downwards and I’m having trouble seeing what would cause this. The ship has already capsized and the submerged compartments won’t fill completely. All that will happen is that water will flow in and compress the trapped air. And that water doesn’t necessarily come from right alongside the capsized ship or, I would think, at a velocity sufficient to overcome a reasonable swimmer at a considerable distance from the submerged compartment. I guess I wil continue to have strong doubts about general “suction” in the vicinity of ships that are just going under until someone comes up with a mechanism to produce such a “suction.”
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- The suction is real, but not technically “suction” as such: when a big ship sinks, it typically goes under with lots of air still trapped in it, and that air bubbles out above it. This effectively “lightens” the average density of the bubble-filled water, so lots of things that would normally float (like swimming people, rowboats and even smaller ships) will easily sink if they enter the area where the bubbles are rising up. If a big ship sinks, you are heavily advised to swim away from it and move life boats away from it far enough that they won’t drift into the bubble outflow, and sink.
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- The suction is real, but not technically “suction” as such: when a big ship sinks, it typically goes under with lots of air still trapped in it, and that air bubbles out above it. This effectively “lightens” the average density of the bubble-filled water, so lots of things that would normally float (like swimming people, rowboats and even smaller ships) will easily sink if they enter the area where the bubbles are rising up. If a big ship sinks, you are heavily advised to swim away from it and move life boats away from it far enough that they won’t drift into the bubble outflow, and sink.
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In The Devil’s Alternative, Frederick Forysth has a British Naval Special Forces diver pointing out that if his men are anywhere near the tanker that is the focus of the second half of the book when it sinks, they’ll be pulled under. (He says this in response to a civilian government official who points out that the divers can escape if there’s danger of the ship going under by simply diving off. The diver’s response is to blandly point out that This ain’t so).
Forsyth researches his stuff pretty well, so it seems a ;possibility. On the other hand, I’ve caught him in an error when he stepped into my specialty. So who knows?
But I’ve wondered if Forsyth i right after watching Titanic.
I’ll back up Guin, too.
I’m about halfway through a book of accounts of the sinking of the Titanic that was published a few months after the event and is largely composed of stories told by the people who were on board and went through the sinking and one of the items consistently brought up is how ‘little’ suction effect there was on the passengers in the water.
Can’t get better than primary source, eh?
The conclusion of Moby Dick references the vortex generated by the sinking Pequod, so the belief, whether true or not, dates back at least to the Nineteenth Century and probably much earlier.
Awesome link, thanks for posting it. I’m continually amazed by the links that members post.