Would the stern section sink if port windows were closed?

[Scott Mills]

What was said was that they carried hoses from the aft sections to the forward section by carrying them through the opened WTDs. That does not mean they left hose across the doors. If they did, it would have been in the forward part of the ship.

Sam, the arrangement of the pumps on Titanic has always confounded me a bit. I think one spot what you are describing that might have been necessary was between BR4 and BR5; however, I am no expert!

 

[Samuel Halpern]

Sam, the arrangement of the pumps on Titanic has always confounded me a bit. I think one spot what you are describing that might have been necessary was between BR4 and BR5; however, I am no expert!

You may be right. I once knew more about the pumping arrangement and had written a few notes down. I'd have to dig to find them. Not sure its worth doing.

 

[Scott Mills]

You may be right. I once knew more about the pumping arrangement and had written a few notes down. I'd have to dig to find them. Not sure its worth doing.

Here is one place I always thought it might have mattered regarding BR4 and BR5.

In many ways, the battle to keep BR5 dry was the battle to keep Titanic afloat for as long as possible. If BR5 required a hose running from the pumps in BR4 to pump effectively, when BR5 suddenly rapidly starts flooding (whatever the cause) and the WTD between BR4 and BR5 is either shut manually, or closes via the automated float system, the ability to effectively pump water out of BR5 would have suddenly ceased.

Meaning only that pumping out of the least damaged of the compartments with damage, and the one compartment whose relative level of flooding is going to have the biggest effect on how quickly Titanic sank, would have been suddenly been brought to an end.

The other weird thought I have had in the past is that in the sections aft of BR5 flooding was occurring only by overflow of the bulkheads. So the water would have to have come over the bulkhead, and then flow all the way down into the boiler room before it could be pumped out. On the surface this does not seem to be very economical, and I must confess I am curious if water falling on top of the equipment had an effect on the pumps.

 

[Samuel Halpern]

You may be interested in this: http://www.titanicology.com/Titanica/FloodingBR4.pdf

 

[Kyle Naber]

I think it’s also worth noting that Britannic could not fully close her WTD because of warping from the explosion. On Titanic, why do we think the stern section is completely unharmed aside from the break area? There would have been a great amount of bending around a large area of the ship, not just at the break. Something to think about!

 

[Scott Mills]

I think it’s also worth noting that Britannic could not fully close her WTD because of warping from the explosion. On Titanic, why do we think the stern section is completely unharmed aside from the break area? There would have been a great amount of bending around a large area of the ship, not just at the break. Something to think about!

From all of the witness testimony, aside from one possible location where watertight doors had be manually closed by stewards/crew, all of the watertight doors were able to close prior to the breakup. This includes all of the watertight doors on the tanktop (engineering spaces and boiler rooms) that were closed via the electric switch on Titanic's bridge. Many of those doors--at a minimum running from the turbine room and engineering room forward to boiler room 4--were then re-opened manually with no issues. This was to allow the moving of flexible hosing forward and to allow engineering crew to freely move forward without having to go up to Scotland Road first.

 

[Kyle Naber]

From all of the witness testimony, aside from one possible location where watertight doors had be manually closed by stewards/crew, all of the watertight doors were able to close prior to the breakup. This includes all of the watertight doors on the tanktop (engineering spaces and boiler rooms) that were closed via the electric switch on Titanic's bridge. Many of those doors--at a minimum running from the turbine room and engineering room forward to boiler room 4--were then re-opened manually with no issues. This was to allow the moving of flexible hosing forward and to allow engineering crew to freely move forward without having to go up to Scotland Road first.

I was more referring to the bending that took place between 2:15-break. I’m not so sure the doors and their tracks were still in good condition after that abuse.

 

[marina_irc]

Those are cases that are a bit different than Titanic. As you point out, in the case of Lusitania both the damage caused to the ship from being torpedoed and the rapidity at which Lusitania foundered really prevented engine orders from being implementable. The case of Britannic is a bit more straight forward than that of Titanic. This is because Britannic was serving in a war zone, and while it was unclear what caused the damage to Britannic Commodore Bartlett immediately knew that Britannic's damage was serious and catastrophic; however, he also knew that Britannic might be saved if he could beach her on the island of Kea, which visible to Britannic's starboard. On Titanic in the immediate aftermath of the collision there was no reason for her crew to suspect Titanic had been as seriously damaged as she was, and the true nature of Titanic's damage was not ascertained for some time post collision.



This is not actually the case. Without going into great detail about the physics and the engineering, moving a ship forward with damage to her bows forces water to enter the hull at a much quicker rate than were the ship to simply stop--backing the ship up in this circumstance would actually have the opposite effect, but that is neither here nor there.

This would have been known to the crew of Titanic and the engineering profession in 1912. Thanks to information from the late community member David G. Brown, I can say with relative certainty that 34 years before the loss of Titanic, naval architect Robert Froude published his experiments that showed concretely that a ship with damage to the bows, when steamed ahead, would hasten its sinking when compared to a ship with similar damage that were left dead in the water.

Everything has a cause, though. Froude is, of course, correct. Steaming ahead increases the effective water pressure, which with damage on the bows will increase the rate of ingress of water to the hull .... But where does it go? That's the key thing which you have to account for your theory to hold water. If the water can't go anywhere, that increased pressure merely increases the loading on the first internal transverse holding bulkhead. And, in fact, even if there is flooding aft of that bulkhead, the pressure will still be imposed on it by the ingress of the water from the hole forward of it. Then flooding between Bulkheads 1 and 2 increases loading on Bulkhead 2, and so on and so on until you reach the end of the damaged sector of the hull.

(depending on the exact nature of the damage there may or may not be communication between the watertight compartments which causes cumulative pressure, but the cumulative pressure will be a fraction of the total pressure in any case).

Strained bulkheads were the loss of many a warship that was ordered to maintain speed, like Lutzow at Jutland, for the needs of military necessity. I believe Captain Smith was cognisant of the risk; even before Froude's calculations it was somewhat known as nautical empirically derived information, just not systemized. But they were lost by the bulkhead failing.

In this case the evidence for a bulkhead failure is not supported by the modelling of the sinking. That has been covered adequately elsewhere on this forum. Therefore, the only way that running ahead would contribute to her sinking is by forcing the water higher in the watertight compartments subjected to flooding, since the pressure must go somewhere and if the bulkhead doesn't fail then the kinetic energy must be converted into potential energy by forcing the water column higher into the ship.

Therefore, to prove that Titanic was underway after the sinking, you must do the following:

1. Prove that she sank faster than the condition of static equilibrium through the opened area of the hull would otherwise allow.

Since the existing models track reasonably well with her sinking time assuming a static condition (no pressure spike induced by kinetic energy), you have a problem -- something else must be wrong.

What is it?

The obvious one is that the damaged area is less, and certainly, I would be very interested if you have evidence for that.

 

[Zirnitra]

the stern after breakup could not stay afloat even with closed portholes,why? weight of engines was pulling it under and so flooded those spaces where they were opened to sea so if cabin lost one wall water could fill it instantly,and if there was more cabins without wall they could be flooded quickly,dont forget corridors. we could discuss bout this matter if whole engines would get torn off their foundation and once they would leave the titanic stern we could debate if stern could lstay on water longer.

making any forward movement of ship with opened bow compartments to sea could not cause super faster flooding. tested on both simulation and model,if titanic travelled after impact with speed between 7 and 12 knots flood rate would not increase at all,yes there could be slight flood increase but not fatal and slow ahead would be something between 6 and 9 knots. titanic did not resume going forward at full or half speed becuse captain was aware of situation and going faster would put too much strain on damaged area. titanic engines were not rewersed either because on wreck the engine rods are in ahead configuration not astern,there was no reason to reverse engines,stopping all at once would be better than going in reverse.

lets get back to flooding, there was only seams between hull plates, hull plates itself did not tear apart due to rivets popping or iceberg smashing,. the hull plates would tear apart if object hit with right force then it would bend the hull plates inward,hull plates in impact area are not deformed not ripped apart, there are only seams so forward motion could not make fatal flooding unless there was large hole in compartment but the increased flooding would be limited only to that compartment with hole in hull not seams. other sections where was only seams would be barely affected by forward motion... it could only matter if titanic did head on collision that would cause giant hole in bow section and forward movement of ship would rapidly increase the flood rate in that damaged area..

would going full astern suck out any water from bow area? answer is no because titanic in reverse would not reach eoungh speed to make it happen,could titanic go 20-25 knots astern? i dont think so.

 

[Samuel Halpern]

titanic engines were not rewersed either because on wreck the engine rods are in ahead configuration not astern, there was no reason to reverse engines, stopping all at once would be better than going in reverse.

The engine maneuvers when iceberg was sighted was:
stop
astern slow
stop
ahead slow
stop

The astern movement was to take the way off the ship, not to actually go astern.
The ahead movement after that was for a very short time, and there is much speculation as to why that was done. As an aside, QM Olliver said that he saw the bridge telegraph put ahead half by Capt. Smith. On a darkened bridge it would be somewhat difficult to actually confirm that the telegraph was set at ahead half or ahead slow unless you are right next to it. Olliver had an errand to run and didn't see when it set to stop again and for the last time.

 

[marina_irc]

The engine maneuvers when iceberg was sighted was:
stop
astern slow
stop
ahead slow
stop

The astern movement was to take the way off the ship, not to actually go astern.
The ahead movement after that was for a very short time, and there is much speculation as to why that was done. As an aside, QM Olliver said that he saw the bridge telegraph put ahead half by Capt. Smith. On a darkened bridge it would be somewhat difficult to actually confirm that the telegraph was set at ahead half or ahead slow unless you are right next to it. Olliver had an errand to run and didn't see when it set to stop again and for the last time.

One interesting thing about the supposed half ahead order is that if Titanic really had been run half ahead for 30-40 minutes on a least distance course toward Halifax she would have approached within circa 6 nautical miles of Californian based on your work on the ships' relative positions, and we know that generally is not true.

 

[Zirnitra]

because titanic said "shut up" to californian and they would ignore titanic until too late. californian also could not go anywhere because it was stuck in icefield and they did not want end like titanic.

@marina_irc problem with titanic that they extremely postponed launching the lifeboats. if your ship would hit iceberg or reef after initial report about flooding and size of damage you would wait about hour to launch first lifeboat? they would go ahead slow before final decision was made,and they had plenty of time to decide to stop and launch boats or keep going until they have to finally decide what to do,

if i did hit iceberg i would launch the boats as soon as fatal damage report comes in without wasting much longer. ,once there would be no lifeboats to launch i would assign crew to build some basic rafts so extra passengers could be saved..... on titanic they could use some wooden tables, and ropes to tie them together to make raft,problem was they did not have time and manpower to do so because once last boat was launched it was already final plunge. in theory if they launched first lifeboat 20minutes after collision they could have eoungh time to start making basic rafts to save extra people.

 

[marina_irc]

because titanic said "shut up" to californian and they would ignore titanic until too late. californian also could not go anywhere because it was stuck in icefield and they did not want end like titanic.

@marina_irc problem with titanic that they extremely postponed launching the lifeboats. if your ship would hit iceberg or reef after initial report about flooding and size of damage you would wait about hour to launch first lifeboat? they would go ahead slow before final decision was made,and they had plenty of time to decide to stop and launch boats or keep going until they have to finally decide what to do,

if i did hit iceberg i would launch the boats as soon as fatal damage report comes in without wasting much longer. ,once there would be no lifeboats to launch i would assign crew to build some basic rafts so extra passengers could be saved..... on titanic they could use some wooden tables, and ropes to tie them together to make raft,problem was they did not have time and manpower to do so because once last boat was launched it was already final plunge. in theory if they launched first lifeboat 20minutes after collision they could have eoungh time to start making basic rafts to save extra people.

Why do you think it's so easy to do things? Just because we have self contained automatic launching systems in the modern day doesn't mean they existed in 1912, and indeed the first attempt at such a system resulted from the Titanic disaster.

I am a trained Emergency Operations Team Lead dealing with consequence management for large incidents. Response is governed by a "Planning P", which is meant to be inherently flexible to any disaster situation. Captain Smith was in the tail, the initial response. Incident happens, notifications go out, that's his cue to come to the bridge; now he needs to conduct initial response and assessment. Who is doing damage control on the ship? Mostly the same people who will be handling the evacuation later. He has his officers and petty officers involved in damage assessment. They are the leaders of his boat crews. He does not have enough personnel to begin an evacuation and he presently lacks evidence that this is required.

In a modern ship he could have looked at cameras and seen high water alarm sensors for the lower compartments going off. He had none of these. Go to a ten storey building, start at the top, walk to the bottom, check the basement for flooding, come back to the top. Time yourself. Don't trust me. Start to understand this disaster by simulating it.

Confounding factor one: There is a small list on the inclinometer. If it worsens we can only launch half of our boats, Sir.

First incident objective is now: Stabilize list to maintain ship stability as assessment and damage control continue and to preserve options for an evacuation.

This is almost certainly what Smith's message to Bell was about and it succeeded because almost all of the boats got off.

Go through the drill of looking at an inclinometer and checking stability curves for how fast she carried the list and what might happen if it kept getting worse -- and then hand writing ballast orders to the C Eng and sending it off.

Next you have a report on flooding. Damage is serious but it's not clear how serious. You need experts involved. You have an advantage, the designer is onboard. He can remove uncertainty from the decision. Now time your conversation with Mr. Andrews.

Now you know how bad it is but you can't start lowering away instantly, you must get the cabin crew ready to guide the passengers in the evacuation and muster your sailors. Suddenly you may find you've eaten up most of your time.

Mistakes were made in this process. But they were understandable ones, if you have the experience. Don't trust me, game it out.