The halting of Titanic's sinking

The main engines must have had raw water cooling. The sea suction side of the raw water cooling pump can be disconnected with the valve to sea shut, and the cooling pump then sucks water around it in the flooding engine room and pumps it overboard. Another action that if the main engines were running at higher RPMS while making sternway would have pumped more water overboard, than just sitting all stop with the mains idling. So another great reason to keep steaming as fast as safely possible to close the gap to safety. Why not is my question?
 
Robert fletcher said:
When a compartment is full of water with sternway on, the water would run over the top of the bulkhead towards the bow, and therefore not continue to flood over at least the fifth bulkhead, and maybe the other bulkheads forward of it depending on when they started making sternway. That is why they should have made sternway immediately after confirming the damage. When making sternway there would be lower water depth on the aft part of the flooded bulkhead than the forward part, which would keep the water from flooding into the compartments farther aft. The more sternway speed, the lower the depth of water on the aft end of the forward flooded compartments. Why didnt they try to close the gap to safety instead of sitting and waiting for the inevitable mass death due to not enough lifeboats and freezing water, of which they knew was was the case?
Click to expand...

My two cents. The forward compartments were flooding and weighed the bow down until the water was level with E-deck. The open portholes on E-deck would assist the flooding of the ship across her entire length especially as she began to list over to starboard and then over to port. The water was rising upwards as the ship settled lower, so the movement of the ship's engines would not affect how the water rose up and entered each accessible room and weighed the ship lower, and with each passing minute the crew would have less time to evacuate the Titanic.

If the ship had reversed engines full speed astern for a length of time it would create a drag on the bow which would continue to settle lower. Such a drag may have created stress on the hull as the ship would still be in motion and would possibly pull the ship apart as her forward half would settle lower as it flooded and would resist being pulled back by the stern and possibly tear the ship apart, especially if she made a hard left or right turn. e.g. When the warship Audacious was sinking the Olympic tried to tow her into shallow water. The Audacious refused to be pulled forward as it wanted to go down and the tow cables snapped. If the Titanic's bow wanted to go down and her stern wanted to continue moving astern then I believe there would have been a serious fracture that would break the ship in two.


coal eater said:
what about filling flooding compartment with wooden objects like tabels chairscorked empty bottles,i would get axe and chop the grand staircase and all wood pieces would be moved and stored in one of cargo holds. so water cannot fill it up...idea was to fill compartment with items to reduce weight of water,stuffed compartment not eoungh space for water means less water
Click to expand...


It is interesting that you mentioned that because one of the factors that is rarely discussed is how much material inside the ship was loose and floating upwards with the water, or breaking free and rising up, because this would create a very large concentrated surge or build-up of loose materials that possibly may have blocked up various doorways and corridors and bought the ship more time to remain afloat. This could explain why Thomas Andrews gave the ship much less time to survive because he could not factor in (nobody could) how much additional time would be saved by the amount of loose materials that would pile against doorways and partially block the water as it surged through various corridors and rooms and pushed all of the loose materials forward with it.

For instance when the mail room flooded 4th officer Boxhall saw one of the mail bags floating by him. Imagine what hundreds of mail bags would do once they floated up and reached the nearest doorway. It may have blocked 80 percent of the doorway and delayed the speed in which the next room would flood. e.g. Like blocking a kitchen sink with food and paper. The water still goes down the plug hole, but not as fast. The passengers were seen in the corridors holding their luggage but they were not allowed to go to the boat deck with their luggage and had to abandon it in the corridor. This would mean that the water would reach the corridor and sweep their luggage into an enormous pile at the end of the corridor or doorway and partially block it, or even gather together and rise up the stairway as the water and the debris moved upwards to the next level above where more loose materials would float up and congest and so forth.


.
 
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Aaron_2016 said:
My two cents. The forward compartments were flooding and weighed the bow down until the water was level with E-deck. The open portholes on E-deck would assist the flooding of the ship across her entire length especially as she began to list over to starboard and then over to port. The water was rising upwards as the ship settled lower, so the movement of the ship's engines would not affect how the water rose up and entered each accessible room and weighed the ship lower, and with each passing minute the crew would have less time to evacuate the Titanic.

If the ship had reversed engines full speed astern for a length of time it would create a drag on the bow which would continue to settle lower. Such a drag may have created stress on the hull as the ship would still be in motion and would possibly pull the ship apart as her forward half would settle lower as it flooded and would resist being pulled back by the stern and possibly tear the ship apart, especially if she made a hard left or right turn. e.g. When the warship Audacious was sinking the Olympic tried to tow her into shallow water. The Audacious refused to be pulled forward as it wanted to go down and the tow cables snapped. If the Titanic's bow wanted to go down and her stern wanted to continue moving astern then I believe there would have been a serious fracture that would break the ship in two.





It is interesting that you mentioned that because one of the factors that is rarely discussed is how much material inside the ship was loose and floating upwards with the water, or breaking free and rising up, because this would create a very large concentrated surge or build-up of loose materials that possibly may have blocked up various doorways and corridors and bought the ship more time to remain afloat. This could explain why Thomas Andrews gave the ship much less time to survive because he could not factor in (nobody could) how much additional time would be saved by the amount of loose materials that would pile against doorways and partially block the water as it surged through various corridors and rooms and pushed all of the loose materials forward with it.

For instance when the mail room flooded 4th officer Boxhall saw one of the mail bags floating by him. Imagine what hundreds of mail bags would do once they floated up and reached the nearest doorway. It may have blocked 80 percent of the doorway and delayed the speed in which the next room would flood. e.g. Like blocking a kitchen sink with food and paper. The water still goes down the plug hole, but not as fast. The passengers were seen in the corridors holding their luggage but they were not allowed to go to the boat deck with their luggage and had to abandon it in the corridor. This would mean that the water would reach the corridor and sweep their luggage into an enormous pile at the end of the corridor or doorway and partially block it, or even gather together and rise up the stairway as the water and the debris moved upwards to the next level above where more loose materials would float up and congest and so forth.


.
Click to expand...

If the bow had broken off it would be better for the ships sternway, less weight and drag. Crew could still get the lifeboats and passengers ready to abandon ship while making sternway. Continue making sternway until they noticed the ship was taking on more water aft of the hull breach. Also aft ballast water tanks could have been flooded if tehy were not already, to raise the bow and keep the stern in the water while making sternway back to the nearest port.
 
When a compartment is full of water with sternway on, the water would run over the top of the bulkhead towards the bow, and therefore not continue to flood over at least the fifth bulkhead, and maybe the other bulkheads forward of it depending on when they started making sternway. That is why they should have made sternway immediately after confirming the damage. When making sternway there would be lower water depth on the aft part of the flooded bulkhead than the forward part, which would keep the water from flooding into the compartments farther aft. The more sternway speed, the lower the depth of water on the aft end of the forward flooded compartments. Why didnt they try to close the gap to safety instead of sitting and waiting for the inevitable mass death due to not enough lifeboats and freezing water, of which they knew was was the case?
 
Robert fletcher said:
When a compartment is full of water with sternway on, the water would run over the top of the bulkhead towards the bow, and therefore not continue to flood over at least the fifth bulkhead, and maybe the other bulkheads forward of it depending on when they started making sternway. That is why they should have made sternway immediately after confirming the damage. When making sternway there would be lower water depth on the aft part of the flooded bulkhead than the forward part, which would keep the water from flooding into the compartments farther aft. The more sternway speed, the lower the depth of water on the aft end of the forward flooded compartments. Why didnt they try to close the gap to safety instead of sitting and waiting for the inevitable mass death due to not enough lifeboats and freezing water, of which they knew was was the case?
Click to expand...

The main engines must have had raw water cooling. The sea suction side of the raw water cooling pump can be disconnected with the valve to sea shut, and the cooling pump then sucks water around it in the flooding engine room and pumps it overboard. Another action that if the main engines were running at higher RPMS while making sternway would have pumped more water overboard, than just sitting all stop with the mains idling. So another great reason to keep steaming as fast as safely possible to close the gap to safety. Why not is my question?
 
Being alive is deadly. Walk in the woods and a tree branch might have your name on it. Fly in an airplane, and if the altitude goes into minus numbers you're dead. Take a ship and, well, it can sink. Any maritime casualty (technically meaning an "accident" involving the vessel) is going to result in death or injury. Wishing and hoping for an alternative is human nature, but we're all gonna die and some in worse ways than others.

Forensic models and especially computer models are fraught with danger when it comes to predicting real life. You might want to watch the movie "Sully" to get an understanding of that. He was the pilot who landed safely in the Hudson River after losing all power as the result of bird strikes. His situation was dramatized for effect, but in truth the NTSB did at first put more faith in computer models and simulations based on faulty data than it did on the straightforward testimony of the pilots involved. Had all the "out thinkers" with "better ideas" been flying the airplane, they would have turned it into a ball of flame rolling through New York City. This is why you never second-guess the man (or women these days) on the scene, at the controls, or in command of the situation.

Titanic was not an Italian sports car. It maneuvered at best like a hog on ice and at worst like an ugly hog. The ship was designed to go forward in a more-or-less straight line and be docked by tugs. Maneuverability was not necessary. Under sternway keeping the ship going in one direction would have worn out a bo's'un's lexicon of foul language. Even at a measly four knots it would have been attempting manslaughter to launch a lifeboat full of people. I would expect overturned lifeboats as the result of jammed release hooks. Ugly scene. So stopping would have been necessary even if the reverse gambit were played. However, instead of just over an hour to get boats down, they would have had 35 or 45 minutes. That would most likely have reduced the survival number to under 500 souls. "Sorry, Mrs. Jones, we didn't have time to launch your boat. Have a nice swim."

Keep in mind that all of the hard lifeboats were properly launched. Of the passengers and crew who did get into those lifeboats, none were killed or even seriously injured. The lifesaving effort in that respect was 100% successful, even if inadequate. No matter how you look at it, however, Smith cannot be second guessed for attempting to get Titanic's boats on the water safely with as many people as possible. Had he not stayed focused on his primary task -- saving as many lives as possible, we might be talking about "the man who survived Titanic when all others drowned."

None of this means we shouldn't learn from our past errors. As pilots say, "Safety is written in blood." Titanic's dead would have died in vain if nothing changed to make ocean travel safer. Titanic's memorial is the International Ice Patrol keeping track on icebergs and issuing regular and timely updates on their positions. Adding lifeboats is not any sort of a memorial to Titanic's victims. Sure to make things more successful in future Titanic-like incidents -- or at least give the appearance of doing so -- public laws were passed requiring 1 seat in a lifeboat for everyone on board. Well, not really because the crew sometimes gets left out of that equation. But, did it make things safer? Not necessarily so. On today's passenger vessels crews are taught not to say anything if the ship is listing to the point of making boats unusable. It's only when all the low side boats are gone that the truth dawns. Half the people have a seat in a boat, but that boat is fundamentally useless.

Remember Andrea Doria? It took hours to sink, but that was scant help to half the people on board. Sure, they had seats in all those lifeboars up there on the high side where they couldn't be launched. Having a seat and being saved aren't the shame thing. So, the rulemakers forced locating boats lower on the hull to make launching possible at higher angles of heel. Good idea, but we still don't have a real-life example of its effectiveness.

-- David G. Brown
 
Mister Fletcher: You better learn something about shipboard damage control and how it REALLY works. Everything you've said thus far tells me that you have no idea what your talking about.

And you do NOT argue with the cold equations.

The cold equations say you are mistaken.

Period.

The ship's stability data and the floodable length curves were established and known. From the day the design was first cast to the day the inclining experiment was accomplished. If there had been a way to save the ship, Thomas Andrews...who was a part of the team which designed the ship would have known.

That he had no such solution to offer speaks volumes.
 
David G. Brown said:
Being alive is deadly. Walk in the woods and a tree branch might have your name on it. Fly in an airplane, and if the altitude goes into minus numbers you're dead. Take a ship and, well, it can sink. Any maritime casualty (technically meaning an "accident" involving the vessel) is going to result in death or injury. Wishing and hoping for an alternative is human nature, but we're all gonna die and some in worse ways than others.

Forensic models and especially computer models are fraught with danger when it comes to predicting real life. You might want to watch the movie "Sully" to get an understanding of that. He was the pilot who landed safely in the Hudson River after losing all power as the result of bird strikes. His situation was dramatized for effect, but in truth the NTSB did at first put more faith in computer models and simulations based on faulty data than it did on the straightforward testimony of the pilots involved. Had all the "out thinkers" with "better ideas" been flying the airplane, they would have turned it into a ball of flame rolling through New York City. This is why you never second-guess the man (or women these days) on the scene, at the controls, or in command of the situation.

Titanic was not an Italian sports car. It maneuvered at best like a hog on ice and at worst like an ugly hog. The ship was designed to go forward in a more-or-less straight line and be docked by tugs. Maneuverability was not necessary. Under sternway keeping the ship going in one direction would have worn out a bo's'un's lexicon of foul language. Even at a measly four knots it would have been attempting manslaughter to launch a lifeboat full of people. I would expect overturned lifeboats as the result of jammed release hooks. Ugly scene. So stopping would have been necessary even if the reverse gambit were played. However, instead of just over an hour to get boats down, they would have had 35 or 45 minutes. That would most likely have reduced the survival number to under 500 souls. "Sorry, Mrs. Jones, we didn't have time to launch your boat. Have a nice swim."

Keep in mind that all of the hard lifeboats were properly launched. Of the passengers and crew who did get into those lifeboats, none were killed or even seriously injured. The lifesaving effort in that respect was 100% successful, even if inadequate. No matter how you look at it, however, Smith cannot be second guessed for attempting to get Titanic's boats on the water safely with as many people as possible. Had he not stayed focused on his primary task -- saving as many lives as possible, we might be talking about "the man who survived Titanic when all others drowned."

None of this means we shouldn't learn from our past errors. As pilots say, "Safety is written in blood." Titanic's dead would have died in vain if nothing changed to make ocean travel safer. Titanic's memorial is the International Ice Patrol keeping track on icebergs and issuing regular and timely updates on their positions. Adding lifeboats is not any sort of a memorial to Titanic's victims. Sure to make things more successful in future Titanic-like incidents -- or at least give the appearance of doing so -- public laws were passed requiring 1 seat in a lifeboat for everyone on board. Well, not really because the crew sometimes gets left out of that equation. But, did it make things safer? Not necessarily so. On today's passenger vessels crews are taught not to say anything if the ship is listing to the point of making boats unusable. It's only when all the low side boats are gone that the truth dawns. Half the people have a seat in a boat, but that boat is fundamentally useless.

Remember Andrea Doria? It took hours to sink, but that was scant help to half the people on board. Sure, they had seats in all those lifeboars up there on the high side where they couldn't be launched. Having a seat and being saved aren't the shame thing. So, the rulemakers forced locating boats lower on the hull to make launching possible at higher angles of heel. Good idea, but we still don't have a real-life example of its effectiveness.

-- David G. Brown
Click to expand...
Understand all. One thing i dont understand is when Bob Ballard i believe did the simulations with a model in a tank, why he did not test all possiblities, which should have included making sternway as long as the ship could safely do so without too much list, or taking on too much water, and close the gap to safety.
 
Of course you would have to stop the ship to launch the lifeboats. It was never my idea to try to launch them underway. Watch the reactions and act accordingly. Negligence is not acceptible. That is, neglecting an option to save people. If you stil have propulsion, you should use it. In the moments after ship was not listing, the bow was not down, the stern was in the water enough to make sternway with no issue except keeping a course, which would take some effort. This should have been done immediately after the collision, knowing that the bulkheads were not watertight to the farther aft compartments behind the compromised hull. Sternway would have kept a lot of water from filling into the aft compartments for a good while at least.
 
{{{blinks}}}} Huh?

Robert Ballard didn't do any tank testing. There were tests done with engineers models done by several parties. Gibbs and Cox did some computer modeling and if memory serves, the David Taylor facility was used as well, but Dr. Ballard has nothing to do with any of it.
 
ship going in reverse would not pull water out of hull,tested on my motorboat i holed it and tried go reverse,water was coming even at full reverse so this is not case,.

what they would do? stuff the compartment to give water less space,this could reduce amount of water.
 
Robert fletcher said:
The main engines must have had raw water cooling. The sea suction side of the raw water cooling pump can be disconnected with the valve to sea shut, and the cooling pump then sucks water around it in the flooding engine room and pumps it overboard. Another action that if the main engines were running at higher RPMS while making sternway would have pumped more water overboard, than just sitting all stop with the mains idling. So another great reason to keep steaming as fast as safely possible to close the gap to safety. Why not is my question?
Click to expand...

Hey Robert, and welcome to the ET forum!

We are incredibly fortunate to have a large number of members here who have extensive experience in all matters nautical, from masters, chief engineers, radio technicians and damage control experts amongst others. Other members have spent considerable time and effort researching the Titanic and have published books and articles for the interested land-lubber such as myself to read to further our understanding.

As such if you wish to convince these experts of a new theory or possibility, you will have to do an equal amount of work to what they themselves have put in, and present a very compelling argument backed by good evidence from reliable sources. This could be your own experience of course but you will get more traction if you consult other historians and Titanic experts and in the case of the steaming astern theory perhaps someone well versed in fluid dynamics so they could advise on the nature of water flow in damaged compartments.

Do all this and present it well in a paper or article and you may well convince people to accept your propositions.


Regarding your questions about the engine, I am no expert but have been fortunate enough to be able to take on information when knowledgeable people have published it, and I repeat some of it here:

Main engines had no water cooling but the main condensers used seawater to condense exhaust steam. These were very powerful pumps and I understand had a connection to allow them to intake water from the bilge. These pumps could be run regardless of the status of the main engines. However given the flooding was initially limited to the forward 5 compartments and given the angle that developed the bilge intakes for these pumps would have been well out of the water until the breakup occured.

Thanks for reading, and best of luck with your research!

Rancor.
 
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