Titanic error Revealed?

[Wayne Little]

The tale of the Titanic has fascinated me for decades. I have read so many books on the subject, I've forgotten about
most of them, and the details.

However, I have, hanging on my den wall, the front page of The New York Times which broke the news. My maternal
grand-mother saved the newspaper, and gave it to my mother. My mother gave it to me about 30 years ago and I had
the front page framed. I have turned down an offer of $1,000.00 for it from the Titanic Society.

The newspaper is dated "Tuesday - April 16, 1912". The paper sold, at that time, for one cent [US].

Note: The photo had to be retouched before it was printed, because it clearly shows smoke coming from
the fourth funnel. The fourth funnel was for show only, it did not connect to any of the fire-rooms.

The white spot under the ship is where the newspaper was folded, then folded again, causing the corner
to tear away.

Charles

Holy Sh!t Charles...that is just fantastic mate, like you it has fascinated me too, always stop to watch Titanic related stuff.

 

[Ferdinand Foch]

there was a short news piece on comcast about the titanic steering. they stated that confusion on how to stear caused the turn into the burg rather than away. they also stated that the movie, by coincidence, shows the incorrect turn as the helmsmen turns the wheel to the port (counterclockwise). this is supposed to make the ship turn to the right?????
does anyone understand this???
i have a 54ft crusier and it turns just like a car or using the twin engines i can steer just like a tractor without the rudder

Mike, I think I can explain this a little bit, let me see if this helps. When first aware of the burg, Murdoch ordered Hitchens "hard a starboard." At that time, nautical terms dictated that this would mean left, or in modern nautical terminology "hard to port." Though once Titanic hit the iceberg, Murdoch ordered Hitchens to "hard a port," to turn the wheel to the right, or modern day starboard. Murdoch did this in the hope that the stern section of Titanic could steer away from the iceberg in time. I don't think that was the case, though.

 

[mikewint]

ferdinand, while i understand your words the concept itself makes no sense. i did more research and the comparison was made to a small sail boat and its rudder. to go port the tiller is pushed to the right and vice versus. they also stated that the titanic sailed when a change between sail and steam was occurring which is nonsense. clipper ships had not sailed for 30 years or more and even sailing ship are turned via a wheel. the tiller mechanism is below decks and moved with a block and tackle so the helmsman still turns counterclockwise to go port and vice versus

 

[Marcel]

I think I will leave it alone, Mike. In two years it will be 100 years old [I will be 78]. What is strange is neither of my
kids want it !! My son told me he'd rather have my truck ['87 Mazda B2000] and my daughter's response was "What the
hell do I want with that ? I think I will donate it to the Mariner's Museum in Newport News, Va. when I
depart this earth.

Charles

I want it!

 

[mikewint]

ferdinand, ok i'm a landlubber, further research on my part confirms the reversed (seeming) orders. sailors gave steering orders in terms of the rudder's tiller. so the wheel was turned counterclockwise (left) so that the tiller would be moved to the right causing the ship to turn left. this tiller steering terminology remained in effect on british ships until 1933 and on US ship until 1935 well after the titanic.
so Murdock's order "hard to starboard" was a tiller order and the helmsman correctly turned the wheel to the left swinging the bow 22 degrees to the left almost missing the burg.
titanics sister the olympic collided with a british warship, flooded two compartment and returned to port

 

[Ferdinand Foch]

Hey mike, no worries. It takes a little while to get use to. I think that its one of those cases where the technology of man outpaced the mental process of man. If that makes sense.
I guess old habits die hard.

 

[mikewint]

The reason given, besides tradition, is that sailors steered so many different types of boats that a standard need to be set and they decided to keep the old tiller steering. as far as titanic is concerned the order was correctly given by murdock and correctly followed by the helmsman. the ship turned left and almost missed the burg. there was no error.
my earlier point was that if the engines had been reversed and the wheel not turned the head on collision might only have opened the front two compartment and the ship would have remained afloat.
titanics sister the olympic collided with a british warship, flooded two compartments and returned unaided to port

 

[imalko]

The thing with the head on collision isn't only the number of compartments that would be flooded, but also how entire ship would take the force of the impact. It might compromise structural integrity of the entire vessel. It comes to the speed of the ship at the time of the impact I suppose though.

 

[Colin1]

If I see any more articles on this, I'll post them up. This was the only one I could find. Hope this helped, Colin

Ferdie
an interesting read

Sinking

 

[mikewint]

the bow of a ship is it's strongest point (no pun) and the burg would have crumbled a bit and moved a bit all of which help absorb impact. initially the ship was running at a record 22.5 knots. with all engines in reverse that would have been reduced (the reciprocating were easily reversable, i'm not sure about the turbine) the bow section was mostly storage and crew quarters and the ship was designed to run with three flooded compartments and could even stay afloat if a fouth flooded. the burg opened 5 compartments in the side swipe something around 3 -4 square feet of total opening.
so what a head-on would have done is speculation, but the bow is made to take stress. i'm sure that there would have been lots of serious injuries and even deaths but look at what the sideswipe did

 

[tail end charlie]

the bow of a ship is it's strongest point (no pun) and the burg would have crumbled a bit and moved a bit all of which help absorb impact. initially the ship was running at a record 22.5 knots. with all engines in reverse that would have been reduced (the reciprocating were easily reversable, i'm not sure about the turbine) the bow section was mostly storage and crew quarters and the ship was designed to run with three flooded compartments and could even stay afloat if a fouth flooded. the burg opened 5 compartments in the side swipe something around 3 -4 square feet of total opening.
so what a head-on would have done is speculation, but the bow is made to take stress. i'm sure that there would have been lots of serious injuries and even deaths but look at what the sideswipe did

Mike

I remember speaking to a German metallurgist who said he had read some papers after the titanic was first discovered. Basically the Titanic was constructed before any knowledge of steels performance at low temperature was investigated and that cracks from any impact at 0 centigrade would rupture the vessel. Engineers make calculations on the strength of steel based on the yield and ultimate tensile strength but steel has other properties especially at low and high temperature. Steels at low temperature can crack under very low loads especially impact loads.

This was not properly investigated until the liberty ships started falling apart, part of the problem was
S.A.W. welding but also the quality of steel was important. From this the Charpy, Drop Weight Tear Test (Battelle) and later the Crack Tip Opening Displacement tests were developed. The charpy was long before but wasnt used to test for these properties.

Since nobody knows what the quality of steel used was people can only surmise what happened at the time of impact. If you look at the photo of the Olympique it has broken like glass compared to a WWII battleship.

 

[mikewint]

TailEnd, in 1996 steel plate from the titanic was recovered and sent to the U of Mo for analysis and testing. in addition steel from the Chittenden lock gate, built at the same time as titanic was also tested. these were plain carbon ship plate and standard during this era. titanics plates were 6ft wide by 30 to 36ft long held together by two to four rows of mild steel rivets. the Siemens-Martin steel used was madein open hearh acid lined furnaces which contributed to is high sulfur, oxygen, and phosphorus content. the presence of these three elements raises the malleable-brittle transition temperature to 33 degrees. the temp at the time of sinking was 28 degrees. yet it was the mild-steel rivets that popped opening seams rathar than cracking plates. titanics fatal flaw was its poor quality rivets
somewhat the same thing happened to olympia. look at that hole! and she survived to sail home unasisted. Titanics "hole" was 3 - 4 square feet but in the form of long gashes since the plates were 30 -36 feet long

 

[Ferdinand Foch]

Hey, thanks Colin. That was an interesting article. Where did you find it?

 

[tail end charlie]

TailEnd, in 1996 steel plate from the titanic was recovered and sent to the U of Mo for analysis and testing. in addition steel from the Chittenden lock gate, built at the same time as titanic was also tested. these were plain carbon ship plate and standard during this era. titanics plates were 6ft wide by 30 to 36ft long held together by two to four rows of mild steel rivets. the Siemens-Martin steel used was madein open hearh acid lined furnaces which contributed to is high sulfur, oxygen, and phosphorus content. the presence of these three elements raises the malleable-brittle transition temperature to 33 degrees. the temp at the time of sinking was 28 degrees. yet it was the mild-steel rivets that popped opening seams rathar than cracking plates. titanics fatal flaw was its poor quality rivets
somewhat the same thing happened to olympia. look at that hole! and she survived to sail home unasisted. Titanics "hole" was 3 - 4 square feet but in the form of long gashes since the plates were 30 -36 feet long

Mike sorry i missed this reply, it was 1998 I was working with Germany discussing this ( BTW I presume you are using farenheit).

If you look at the Olympic part of the fracture is along joints and part is at a diagonal, the diagonal fractures (across the plate) look like typical brittle fractures to me . Also with regard to these diagonal fractures they "cross" the riveted plate joints but the longitudinal riveted plates remain joined. Similarly with the picture of the Titanic fracture the rivets have ruptured for sure but also there is a diagonal fracture at the lower part of the picture. The riveted joint is naturally weaker than the surrounding steel. It may well be that the rivets were for a large part to blame but it is the same problem, people hadnt investigated temperature transition curves on steel plates or rivets at the time.
Even now the top guys I meet in steelmaking debate about the value of low temperature impact test results.

PS you can estimate the transition temperature of a steel from the chemical analysis but nothing more. While working in Russia identical steels (on chemical analysis) could produce values from 100% to 0% brittle fracture on a Drop Weight Tear Test (Battelle test). That was in 2006 steel making may be a bit dodgy in Russia but they have learned a lot since the times of the Titanic and still have basic QA/QC problems and that is when they know what the problem is.

Until the construction of the liberty ships hit problems this phenomena was not really investigated, indeed in the UK the problem of the Liberty ships gave rise to "The Welding Institute" (to investigate SAW welding etc) and similar developments in the U.S.A. I quoted DWTT (drop weight tear test) which is the modern name but as a trainee this was always referred to as a "Battelle" which is the the name of American institute that developed the test during WWII. I dont know what you call it nowadays in the USA. but in any case it is being superceded by CTOD (Crack Tip Opening Displacement) testing...which is another black art.

This is not to invalidate or argue with anything you have quoted, just another point of view, in metallurgy there is always another point of view lol.

 

[RabidAlien]

Great. I'm gonna have nightmares about BFPL curves tonight. Thanks, guys. <<sobs>>

One thing I remember from our endless semi-annual Brittle Fracture training, they always threw up photos of the USS Schenectady, which split in half while sitting at the pier in California (San Diego?). Pretty dramatic example, actually.

http://web.mse.uiuc.edu/courses/mse280/notes/09/ch09_fracture.pdf

 

[Colin1]

Hey, thanks Colin. That was an interesting article. Where did you find it?

lol I can't remember now
I'll see if I can recall where it came from

 

[tail end charlie]

Great. I'm gonna have nightmares about BFPL curves tonight. Thanks, guys. <<sobs>>

One thing I remember from our endless semi-annual Brittle Fracture training, they always threw up photos of the USS Schenectady, which split in half while sitting at the pier in California (San Diego?). Pretty dramatic example, actually.
http://web.mse.uiuc.edu/courses/mse280/notes/09/ch09_fracture.pdf

It says in the text that the investigation showed the welds to be faulty.....Welds and a few other things I would say.

 

[mikewint]

The steel composition from titanic showed the high levels of phosphorus, oxygen and sulfur plus low (by today's standards) levels of manganese all contributors to making the steel brittle at low temps. water temp was 28 F or -2 C.
yet the steel never actually cracked, plates opened along a discontinuous gash of about 100m. once boiler room 5 opened titanic was doomed.
Charpy tests showed the brittle transition temp for ASTN A36 steel to be -27 C while titanic steel (longitudinal) 32 C and (traverse) 56 C
titanic's steel was totally unsuited to the cold of the N Atlantic and by today's standards totally unsuited for any construction especially ship hulls