David Ornsby
Guest
Have you ever looked at the bow of the Titanic? Theres no way that the sprey from her bow-wave would reach anything like the fo'cstle ad well deck areas, haha. There would not have been any ice formation on the upperworks of the Titanic. It just doesnt happen there, thats why those shipping lanes were made there. Theyre not in an arctic fishing vessel! (my grandfather can tell you a thing or two about that ("cables were as thick as my arm!! ice!!" etc...) You need the moisture to get ice in air thats freezing. You get what they call 'black mist' or something, where if you run into fog in those temperatures, thats when you start to panic. That causes the ice. The night they hit the berg was clear as a bell, mid atlantic. The rudder obviously wouldnt have been effected by ice. What is interesting is how the rudder, on that special mild steel mounting, would react to the freezing temperatures of the sea in the lower half, and the air temperatures on the upper half. And when you take into consideration that the rudder was not all one piece, and was mounted onto the mild steel, could there be any binding in the hinges with the cold steel, contracting in the cold that could hinder the steering? I'm sure that this would have been taken into consideration when the ship was built though. Nah, its an interesting idea, but no ice, and the stearing was as good as it could have been in its design.
