Water tight doors damaged

[Charles Andrews]

An interesting theory I have heard is this: If all the watertight doors had been left open the ship would of sank evenly and thus would have taken longer to go down, perhaps even still being afloat when Carpathia arrived. Also, the most powerful pumps on the Titanic were in the engine room at the rear of the ship. They were never used that night.

 

[Mark Chirnside]

HI!

The open door theory's been thoroughly debunked.

Best,

Mark.

 

[Erik Wood]

As Mark said this theory has been debunked by a couple of people on this board, and theory it self. This theory has a larger error rate then the one started by Wilding in the claim hearings.

There are several problems with this theory to include the fact that power would have been lost much earlier in the evening, meaning fewer lifeboats could have been launched safely and adding chaos much earlier in the night, this also means that marconi contact with the outside world would have been lost much earlier.

This theory hinges on the assumption that each compartment would fill evenly front to back and side to side, and does not take into account the volume of coal or boilers in each compartment and that the placement of the boilers would have some impact on how the compartment flooded. If I recall rightly the Discovery channel show that featured this had the ship rolling over onto her beam fairly early in the event.

 

[Charles Andrews]

> I guess they didn't have stand by power for the marconi so yes they might have lost thier radio sooner. As far as launching the boats, I think it would have been much easier and would have permitted more time if they were launched on a ship sinking evenly as opposed to standing on her nose. If I had to choose which ship to be on, it would be the one sinking evenly as opposed to the other.

 

[Parks Stephenson]

Erik,

The popular assumption that a loss of ship's power would have cut out the wireless is not entirely correct. Phillips could have switched to the emergency set and continued talking with nearby ships, including Carpathia, for a few hours. He would have (theoretically, at least) lost comms with distant ships, like Olympic. According to Bride, the wireless operators were prepared to switch to the accumulators, but by the time ship's power started to become unstable, the ship itself was too far gone. So, for all practical purposes, wireless communication with nearby rescue ships could have continued after a premature loss of ship-supplied 100v DC.

This, of course, does not answer the question about opening all the WT doors...the wireless operators could not have continued their job if the ship had rolled on her side.

Parks

 

[Michael H. Standart]

Charles, this has been covered in an earlier thread called Watertight Doors. I made the following post when this exact same question came up:

quote:

You can find some really good information about this at and other alternative theories at Roy Mengot's outstanding website at http://www.flash.net/~rfm/index.html Notably in the "Why/What If" section. I highly reccomend it.

I watched the Discovery Channel presentation in which the tank tests that Roy mentions were presented and the results were sobering to say the least.

-Power would have been lost at around 12:40 to 12:50 am when water would have reached the dynamo room and plunging the ship into darkness. (Good bye calm, hello Panic!)
-The ship takes on a severe list which makes it impossible to launch the remaining lifeboats.(That would have been soothing on the nerves of the people trapped on the ship!)
-The ship rolls over on her side and sinks about half an hour to 45 minutes befor it actually happened in the real world. (oops.)

Not that you should take my word as gospel, but you might want to check out that link that's included as it explains a lot.​

 

[Tom Bates]

The power would have bin lost when the water hit the #1 boiler room.

 

[Charles Andrews]

>Also, they would have thought the Captain was absolutely crazy if he had decided to leave the doors open. Everyone who knew anything about the ship had great faith in the water tightness of these doors.

 

[Mark Chirnside]

Hi Charles!

Surely that's the opposite of what you've been saying?

Best,

Mark.

 

[Erik Wood]

Parks is right about the Marconi set, I know little to nothing about it's set up and operation and Parks is our resident Marconi expert. If I knew as much about investing as he does about the Marconi I would be a very rich man.

 

[Parks Stephenson]

Erik,

Investments are a good thing to know, because being a Marconi expert will never make one rich. In fact, it actually makes one poorer and irritates the wife.

Parks