Erik,
I am not talking about saving the ship, I have no doubt that she was doomed, but it MIGHT have been possible to keep here afloat long enough for
Carpathia to arrive.
Indeed, no one can speak to how long a particular bulkhead may hold, there are too many variables.
I realize that removing weight is a completely unorthodox method of dealing with a sinking ship and in most cases is mute due to the extent of damage, weather conditions, the inability to remove a significant amount of weight quickly, etc. However, the manner in which Titanic sank is also completely unorthodox due to her being so close to not sinking, as well as the Atlantic being so calm that night that there was no wave motion induced stresses being inflicted on the ship.
I have no information regarding the normal water capacity of one of Titanic’s boilers, so I’ll pull a number out of thin air and say one boiler held 15,000 gallons. If they blew twenty boilers dry, that would have lightened the ship by 1250 tons, not an insignificant amount. You have a point about stability, and it’s a good question as to what that would have done to the metacentric height.
Michael,
I have considerable experience with coal fired boilers, specifically on steam locomotives, although I did fire a two furnace scotch boiler once (what a miserable job!). It is entirely normal for a boiler that was working at full capacity to lift the safeties for upwards of an hour when suddenly stopped, until that heavy, hot fire burns itself down, or is pulled. I also know for a fact that a boiler filled with 2000 gallons of water at 200 PSI can be blown dry in ten to fifteen minutes through a 1-1/2” blowdown valve. Its all a matter of proportion, what was the capacity of Titanic’s boilers versus the size of here blowdown plumbing?
I personally doubt the seriousness of the structural damage to the basic fabric of the ship. Riveted joints are quite easy to spring to the extent required to cause the leakage that resulted. Through the majority of its length, one would have been hard pressed to stick ones fingers through the gap between the plates. Hardly the equivalent of focused damage experienced by the USS Samuel B Roberts as the result of the mine explosion.
As I said in my initial post, this is Monday morning quarterbacking at its finest with 96 years to consider alternatives, where the people on the scene would have had about 10 minutes. The idea of blowing the boilers dry is so far outside the box that it isn’t even in sight, but it is a tool that they possibly could have used, had they been able to implement it, and IF it would have raised the fifth bulkhead one inch above sea level, it MIGHT have bought the ship some more time.