The breakup of the hull

[Bruce A. Trinque]

I've been reading Titanic First Accounts and just wondering when did she break up?Most eyewitnesses saw Her go down in one piece.I'd always heard she broke before she sank.Forgive my ignorance on this subject but since reading those survivor stories I've gotten a new interest in Titanic.

When you look back at the testimony of the witnesses at the US and British Inquiries, only 4 testified that she went down intact while 13 or 14 said the ship broke in two. But the accounts that she went down in one piece came from surviving officers and seemed so convincing that both Inquiry boards accepted that version over the more numerous reports to the contrary (and there were early accounts outside the official inquiries that showed a similar division of opinion). In hindsight, it seems evident that many of the witnesses who testified to a breakup were actually in a better position to see than those who thought the ship sank intact. And of course now we have the evidence of the broken hull itself. Back in 1985 it came as a major shock to most people when Ballard discovered that the hull had broken in two (Ballard himself was surprised by that discovery); until then. most Titanic students envisioned the ship sitting intact in almost pristine condition on the ocean floor.

It seems quite clear that the ship broke apart just moments before actually sinking, but there are some who believe that the final separation of the bow from the stern did not occur until the whole ship had slipped beneath the surface. The exact sequence of events and whether the hull ruptured from the bottom up or from the top down has been a matter of debate for the past couple decades. As we gain a better understanding of the pattern presented by the debris on the ocean floor, the better we are able to understand what happened.

 

[ChetB]

How were the plates of the hull sealed against the sea?

 

[Jim Currie]

Hello Chet!

In 1912, they had not perfected the art of welding ship's steel plates together to form a water tight seal.

She hull plating of Titanic was joined in several ways by rivetting. This would either be by overlapping plate edges and through rivetting or bringing the plate edges (butts) together then joining them by locating an overlapping, narrower steel strap plate over the adjacent edges,then through rivetting the whole arrangement.
To make the joints water tight, they would use a caulking tool. This was a sharp hardened steel chisel-type tool. The cutting edge of the tool was located against the exposed plate edges about a quarter inch from it's edge nearest to the adjacent plate then hammered to form a deep 'v' notch. The edge material nearest the adjacent plate was thus forced over and hard against the adjacent plate surface and created a water tight joint. Originally this was done by hand but later they used hand-held pneumatic hammers to do the job!

Hope this helps.

Ard.

 

[ChetB]

Thank you so much, I have always been fascinated with anything about the Titanic.And I really feel fortunate to have found this forum.

 

[Bruce A. Trinque]

I have seen the NGS documentary "Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron", with my interest focused on what his panel of experts would conclude about the breakup sequence. And as much as I admire and respect the people involved, I think they missed (and dismissed) crucial evidence. There is some discussion of the significance of the large piece of deckhouse debris from the base of Funnel 3 being found in close proximity to the two large double-bottom pieces off to the east of the main stern wreckage. Yes, something of a plausible explanation is provided for the two bottom pieces being close together (they were still attached to one another when they broke off the stern after the great breakup, hydroplaned off in that direction, then broke apart from one another before hitting the ocean floor), but the presence of the deckhouse debris is left essentially unexplained. The panel admits that its geometry is wrong for hydroplaning and it should have dropped basically straight down (like the boilers); the best they could come up with was that it got spun off to one side as the stern was twirling down from the surface and then the deckhous pieces ended up near the double-bottom pieces by coincidence (although Cameron earlier on in the documentary had jokingly said that there is no such thing as coincidence). And moreover, the panel did not discuss the significance of the distribution of coal as it was pushed by currents south of the wreck. According to Bob Ballard's 2004 debris map in "Return to Titanic", the coal was primarily found in two separate fields. As I pointed out in the posting starting this thread, it certainly appears to me that these two separate coal debris fields are connected (same distance and direction) with two separate heavy debris fields: the area with the double-bottom and deckhouse pieces, and the area with the boilers. For me, this creates a clear picture of a hull rupture occuring in two stages: first, a partial rupture which detached the double-bottom pieces and the funnel 3 deckhouse structure (plus some coal) and -- after the still more-or-less intact hull had drifted on the surface for a few minutes more -- a second and complete hull rupture that ripped the Titanic into separate bow and stern sections and dumped massive amounts of debris, including the boilers, into the sea, with everything then sinking to the ocean floor.