Michael Kestner
Member
All the WT doors except the ones between boiler rooms 4 & 5 and 5 & 6 were left open. They were opened by hand about 20 minutes or so after impact and never closed again. That's why Titanic sank so quickly after the water topped the wt bulkhead at the rear of boiler room 5. Then began the bodily sinkage and the rapid increase in draft.
Jim C.
Now that is an interesting question Arun.
Personally, I think, just off the top of my head, that she would have lasted quite a bit longer.
Wilder implied that the beginning of the end started with the water back-filling (or should I say forward filling) into the spaces above the forepeak tank once it had topped watertight bulkhead 'A'.
This caused the bow to sink deeper. Consequently the water level at the aft end of boiler room 5 rose enough for it to spill over into boiler room 4. and further along Scotland Road due to the port list.
It would then find it's way through the firemen's access doors which were probably left open and pour back down into the next compartment This cause and increase in bodily sinkage and a sudden increase in the port list. The latter because all the doors to the port side cabins were open.
Jim C.
Just making sure I understand correctly, but are you suggesting it's possible the stern may have broke off and floated for a while on its own if the doors aft of BR 4 were shut?Any comments?
Jim C
Just making sure I understand correctly, but are you suggesting it's possible the stern may have broke off and floated for a while on its own if the doors aft of BR 4 were shut?
I was sure I'd read somewhere around here that the doors in the engine rooms have been seen to be shut on the wreck, but I could be totally mistaken.
Leaving all the WT Doors open:
If all the WT doors were left open, the ship would become one entire compartment open to the sea and the sinking process would be one of continuous los of buoyancy.
The water would flow from its source.. the hull punctures.. and make its way right to the stern.
In this way, the loss of buoyancy would have been more evenly distributed along the entire length of the ship. There would be no more added weight and she would settle in the water until the entire bouyancy was lost.
However, more to the point, I do not think the hull would have fractured!
Leaving the WT doors open would have allowed the ship to settle evenly. The loss of buoyancy would have been at a steady rate. Consequently, this might just have prevented the hull from fracturing thus the moment of sinking might have been delayed for a very brief time
However, the rate of loss of buoyancy was relentless and when the amount of buoyancy needed to keep Titanic afloat was all used up then it was all over.
Here's another poser:
If the lights stayed on until the last moment; where did the power come from? The generators needed steam and steam came from boilers. This means there must have been a supply of steam to the main or emergency generators right up until a few moments before the end.
Sam Halpern wrote an article "Why a low Angle Break" In it, he showed a sketch of Titanic with a waterline right up to the masthead light and extending aft to meet the sea at the last WT Bulkhead.
Sam's water line shows the engine rooms and boiler rooms completely inudated. If this was the final waterline, where did the steam come from to light the masthead light and the rest of the ship?
If there was enough electric power to serve all the ships lights then the steam to generate it had to come from Boiler Rooms 2 or 3 because the 5 single end boilers in Boiler Room 1 had never been lit and the Boiler Rooms forward of No.3 were flooded
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