Incony
Member
i add my thoughts from knowledge as a lifting engineer , regarding the human body and moving weight. At the moment of breakup, anyone above or below decks at that area, is likely to have encountered moving parts of the ship, as it broke up, and as far the breakup itself has been discussed, on these forum's, those parts could have been several tons in weight, or maybe just broken parts weighing less than a ton. The unknown is how close to those moving weights anyone was, when they started to move, and how able the person in such circumstance was able to avoid being trapped by such encounter. An object made of steel and wood, even wood alone, weighing a ton, moving at only 1 mile an hour, will not stop moving when presented by a human pushing against it with hands... the body will be crushed.. many railway workers for example, have been crushed by wagons moving at such slow speeds, when caught between a moving wagon and a stationary one... So.. for anyone caught between two points where one is moving toward one and the other offers no means of escape, the result will be severe injury... It s very likely therefore there were those, who were at the point of breakup, who suffered such consequence.. Not everyone, as far as i know, was safely beyond the area of breakup when it happened, and sections of the ship that moved , and fractured into parts, had large mass, and were heavy = they had the momentum and action of the breakup, and the consequence of gravity, to trap and crush people. How many folks were hit by moving parts of the ship is questionable, as is the injury they received, but i think it happened. and so in consequence if they did not die at that moment, their injuries hastened death if they were still alive after the breakup, even if they had managed to reach the still floating part of the stern, or were in the water as consequence. One can displace water, but not compress it.. a fall from 80 feet onto water in an uncontrolled way, is like to result in injury, fractured limbs , broken neck,,, if not ribs - given that the life belt might absorb some of the initial impact. and offer some protection to the body core, the sudden slowing down of the fall from height could cause fatal organ damage, so if one wasn't crushed by something, but was ejected from the ship on breakup, fatality by sudden change of motion, in falling was just as likely. There are topics on how high one can jump from, onto a solid surface before injury is likely. Deceleration injury can be as little as 30 feet or less, depending on the circumstance. ?
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