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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
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
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
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
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
lol I can't remember nowHey, thanks Colin. That was an interesting article. Where did you find it?
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