Plausible PODs for averting Titanic sinking?

I quite like the idea of the ship missing the iceberg completely. Then we could have the story of its adventure during the Great War, under the title Sink the Titanic!
 
The helmsman steers a fraction of a degree more to the north or south on April 12th and Titanic misses the iceberg she hit IOTL by several miles. Which of course doesn't preclude the possibility that she might have the misfortune to encounter a different one on her new course.
 

DougM

Donor
A couple of observations
1). The primary way icebergs are spotted at night in Titanics day was the water foaming up as it hit the burg. The foaming water kind of glows. But it was a calm night. So binoculars are not going to be much of a help.
2). Binoculars generally work poorly at night. The way they work tends to make seeing in the dark harder.
3). If the experienced crew and officers were thinking the binoculars would be of use then I am sure someone would have A) picked the lock, B) removed the lock of C) broke the lock or box. This is not a bank vault it can be entered without a key. Can you realy picture the crew and officers standing around going “man we REALLY need those binoculars but that $2 lock is in our way. I guess we will just have to risk the lives of everyone onboard this multi million dollar ship because we can’t cause $5 of damage....”
Having been around a few steam engines (trains) powered by coal as well as a few steel mills/ blast furnaces/ and black smithsI gave a few points about the “bunker fire”
4). If the coal was burning hot enough to damage or weaken the hull thier is no way on earth that the gang was going to be shoveling the coal out of that hell fire.
5). The hull would have to have been weakened below the water line for it to matter. Above the waterline would not have let water in (by definition). So the hull that was supposed to be effected by the fire was in constant contact with this fridged water.
6) No mater how hot the coal bunker fire it would NEVER be able to damage or weaken steel in contact with water. The water would act as a heat sink. This is why steam locomotives (or Titanics own boilers for that matter) don’t blow up. The coal heats the metal on one side while the huge amounts of very cold water suck the heat away on the other side. The same things work on a coal fired boiler. Steam locomotives heat the steal to boil the water but the steal doesn’t lose its strength. Steam locomotives usually have pressure of about 220-240 pounds per sq INCH on them when operating. If the small amount of very hot water can absorb the heat from the coal fire the the limitless cold ocean water is going to.

So can. We stop with the padlock stopped them from getting the binoculars and the fire weakened the hull bull? The former is just stupid and makes the crew and officers (all experienced professional) sound like idiot amateurs. And that later is just plain impossible.
 
The simplest answer is just one little thing makes the lookout slightly more aware so they see the berg earlier, or the wireless operators get less distracted by all the messages they have to send so the extra iceberg warning gets to the bridge.

* If the radio was operated 24/7.
You mean the California's radio right?

Though that might not have help.

Titanic's radio was operating.

If there were enough lifeboats for everyone, I can't see the death count actually being significantly lower than OTL.

Titanic's last fully-launched lifeboat (Collapsible D) was launched at 2:05, less than 20 minutes before the ship went under.
Two of Titanic's lifeboats (Collapsible A and Collapsible B) floated off the ship as the boat deck went under, one capsized and the other partly flooded, between 2:10 and 2:15.

Any additional lifeboats would have likely gone down with the ship.
May in addition to more lifeboat maybe an actual lifeboat drill. I've read that the speed they actually got to lower lifeboats was pretty slow due to the crew having to remind themselves how to do it.

Also better organization, one officer didn't know about the evacuation and actually asked why he saw a lifeboat go by.

Also it should be noted that when they hit the berg it wasn't immediately "to the lifeboats." Titanic actually went back up to half speed during the damage assessment to avoid over-pressuring the boilers. They only stopped and started venting when they determined the they were truly sunk.
 
I quite like the idea of the ship missing the iceberg completely. Then we could have the story of its adventure during the Great War, under the title Sink the Titanic!

Cant happen. She is unsinkable.

No mater how hot the coal bunker fire it would NEVER be able to damage or weaken steel in contact with water. The water would act as a heat sink.

Even with my limited knowledge ( and my knowledge is very limited to steam locomotive boilers!) of this sort of thing I cant grasp how this is overlooked! Surely, to damage steel immersed in water the temperature of the fire would be such that the steel would melt!
 
A couple of observations
Having been around a few steam engines (trains) powered by coal as well as a few steel mills/ blast furnaces/ and black smithsI gave a few points about the “bunker fire”
4). If the coal was burning hot enough to damage or weaken the hull thier is no way on earth that the gang was going to be shoveling the coal out of that hell fire.
5). The hull would have to have been weakened below the water line for it to matter. Above the waterline would not have let water in (by definition). So the hull that was supposed to be effected by the fire was in constant contact with this fridged water.
6) No mater how hot the coal bunker fire it would NEVER be able to damage or weaken steel in contact with water. The water would act as a heat sink. This is why steam locomotives (or Titanics own boilers for that matter) don’t blow up. The coal heats the metal on one side while the huge amounts of very cold water suck the heat away on the other side. The same things work on a coal fired boiler. Steam locomotives heat the steal to boil the water but the steal doesn’t lose its strength. Steam locomotives usually have pressure of about 220-240 pounds per sq INCH on them when operating. If the small amount of very hot water can absorb the heat from the coal fire the the limitless cold ocean water is going to.
I remember from a documentary the claim that the fire weakened the internal wall between the compartments, not the external wall in contact with the water. So when the water poured in, it flooded in one compartment more than the ship could have beared without sinking.
 
I think even if the Titanic avoided ramming the iceburg, there still would have been a Titanic-like event sometime later. The laws of the time made it inevitable, with too few boats for too many people. Combined with the fact that, when the Titanic went down, radio operators were trained by Marconi wireless and gave idle gossip priority over important weather reports, you have a ticking time bomb.
Oh very much so, but if the POD for an alternate time line is a Titanic passenger surviving, it has to be "But not this ship. But not today."
 

SsgtC

Banned
I remember from a documentary the claim that the fire weakened the internal wall between the compartments, not the external wall in contact with the water. So when the water poured in, it flooded in one compartment more than the ship could have beared without sinking.
Not true at all. That "documentary" has been debunked multiple times as nothing more than wild thinking. Think about this. To have weakened a steel bulkhead, the fire would have had to been blazing. Certainly too hot for the trimmers to be actively working in the coal bunker removing coal from it. Why? Because steel needs to be heated to almost 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit to lose between 40 and 50% of it's strength. Which is what would be required to do what that documentary suggests. The entire side of the ship would have been glowing. Somehow, I don't think that was the case...
 

Geon

Donor
Here's a thought...

The radio officer doesn't blithely ignore the many ice warnings that he is receiving from other vessels but actually forwards them to the Captain.

Captain Smith decides to slow down despite the protests of J. Bruce Ismay.

Captain Smith does not retire to his cabin at 11 p.m. but decides to stay on the bridge for an hour or two longer just as a precaution until they are clear of the ice field.

When the iceberg is spotted the Captain orders a full reverse to stop the ship. A collision is avoided.

Bruce Ismay's complaints are silenced when he realizes how close Titanic came to a total disaster. The ship is late in arriving in New York, but arrive it does.
 

SsgtC

Banned
The radio officer doesn't blithely ignore the many ice warnings that he is receiving from other vessels but actually forwards them to the Captain.
This would help. If only to show the extent of the ice field ahead. The biggest differences though would be the final few ice warnings that were sent. One reported large bergs directly in Titanic's path only a few miles away. And of course the warning from Californian that they were stopped in field ice.

Captain Smith decides to slow down despite the protests of J. Bruce Ismay.
Ignore what the movie showed about Ismay. He wasn't constantly pushing for Titanic to go faster. And if Captain Smith had decided to slow down, Ismay would have backed him. However, as had been previously established, it was a perfectly clear, flat calm night. Slowing down is probably not the decision Captain Smith would make. He'd be more likely to alter his course to the South a bit more to try and avoid the ice.

Captain Smith does not retire to his cabin at 11 p.m. but decides to stay on the bridge for an hour or two longer just as a precaution until they are clear of the ice field.
Maybe, maybe not. The fact that he was in the bridge again only minutes after his ship hit the berg strongly implies he wasn't asleep. Still, I don't think anyone would argue with you if you wrote a TL where he did stay on the bridge.

When the iceberg is spotted the Captain orders a full reverse to stop the ship. A collision is avoided.
Not happening. Titanic needed at least a half mile to execute a crash stop (over 800 meters). The iceberg was only 900' away (274 meters). The needed stopping room was almost 4 times what was available. Trying to crash stop would only have slammed the ship into the berg head on. As is, Murdoch made the what was, at the time, considered the right decision. Back full on the engines with a hard right ruder. There is an argument to be made that had he left the engines at full ahead the ship may have turned fast enough to avoid the berg. But without knowing what it looked like under water, we'll probably never know for sure.

Bruce Ismay's complaints are silenced when he realizes how close Titanic came to a total disaster. The ship is late in arriving in New York, but arrive it does.
See my above reply. Titanic was actually following White Star protocol not to run at full speed. The ship was brand new. They still had to break in the engines. In his testimony at the Court of Inquiry, Ismay stated that they had planned to push the ship to get maximum speed the next day. But had not yet done so. In any case, Ismay was not a ship's officer. He had no say in how Titanic was sailed. And Smith was retiring. He could literally have told Ismay to jump off the stern and what could Ismay do too him? Fire him in mid ocean? Keep in mind, this was still an era where a ship's Captain was second only to God at Sea. And even then, that was only because of seniority. This idea that Ismay had somehow cowed Smith into operating recklessly is honestly absurd.
 
The radio officer doesn't blithely ignore the many ice warnings that he is receiving from other vessels but actually forwards them to the Captain..

The point is, there was no "radio officer". The radio guy was an employee of the Marconi company and could decide for himself when to work and how to work. - When he got the warning from the "Californian" guy he told him to shut up, he was busy working off messages (the day before, the radio was broken). And when Titanic sunk, the radio guy from "Californian" had gone to bed.
 

Geon

Donor
Not happening. Titanic needed at least a half mile to execute a crash stop (over 800 meters). The iceberg was only 900' away (274 meters). The needed stopping room was almost 4 times what was available. Trying to crash stop would only have slammed the ship into the berg head on. As is, Murdoch made the what was, at the time, considered the right decision. Back full on the engines with a hard right ruder. There is an argument to be made that had he left the engines at full ahead the ship may have turned fast enough to avoid the berg. But without knowing what it looked like under water, we'll probably never know for sure.

This is why I suggested slowing down in my earlier post. If Titanic is not going as fast as she was that night she might have been able to come to if not a full stop at least not going so fast as to cause major damage when the iceberg did hit. And in this situation I would recommend not turning but taking the hit full on forward. At least once computer scenario indicated that if the Titanic had taken a forward hit damage and casualties would have been minimal.
 

SsgtC

Banned
This is why I suggested slowing down in my earlier post. If Titanic is not going as fast as she was that night she might have been able to come to if not a full stop at least not going so fast as to cause major damage when the iceberg did hit. And in this situation I would recommend not turning but taking the hit full on forward. At least once computer scenario indicated that if the Titanic had taken a forward hit damage and casualties would have been minimal.
Than whoever programmed that simulation was on crack. Let me put it another way. By the time the iceberg was spotted, it was less than one ship length away. Titanic would have had to been moving at 5 knots or less to stop in time. Hitting the berg head on, even at a reduced speed of 10-12 knots, would have crushed at least two or three compartments and killed hundreds. Guess where most of the ships crew was berthed? In the first couple compartments. So the very people you need to keep Titanic operational, are now dead.

Finally, we tend to use phrases like half speed or full speed. Speed is not what is being referenced in the engine telegraph. It's actually referring to RPM of the engines/propellers. On Titanic, Full Ahead was between 78 and 80 revolutions. Which would give you a top speed of just over 23 knots. If you decided to slow down to say, half ahead, care to guess how fast you'll be going? About 15 knots. Which means you still need almost half a mile to crash stop. So again, not a viable option here.
 
Ignore what the movie showed about Ismay. He wasn't constantly pushing for Titanic to go faster. And if Captain Smith had decided to slow down, Ismay would have backed him. However, as had been previously established, it was a perfectly clear, flat calm night. Slowing down is probably not the decision Captain Smith would make. He'd be more likely to alter his course to the South a bit more to try and avoid the ice.

See my above reply. Titanic was actually following White Star protocol not to run at full speed. The ship was brand new. They still had to break in the engines. In his testimony at the Court of Inquiry, Ismay stated that they had planned to push the ship to get maximum speed the next day. But had not yet done so. In any case, Ismay was not a ship's officer. He had no say in how Titanic was sailed. And Smith was retiring. He could literally have told Ismay to jump off the stern and what could Ismay do too him? Fire him in mid ocean? Keep in mind, this was still an era where a ship's Captain was second only to God at Sea. And even then, that was only because of seniority. This idea that Ismay had somehow cowed Smith into operating recklessly is honestly absurd.

There's a scene in the extras on the Special Edition of the Film, that got cut from the theatrical release, with Smith and Ismay discussing just this.
And they seem to be in complete agreement about not pushing the engines on the ship's Maiden voyage.
 

SsgtC

Banned
There's a scene in the extras on the Special Edition of the Film, that got cut from the theatrical release, with Smith and Ismay discussing just this.
And they seem to be in complete agreement about not pushing the engines on the ship's Maiden voyage.
Yeah, the movie really went out of their way to make Ismay look bad. While it's true he got in a life boat, he only did so after helping the crew load multiple other boats and lower them into the water. And when he did finally get in one himself, it was only when there were no other women or children in the area of that boat.
 
Yeah, the movie really went out of their way to make Ismay look bad. While it's true he got in a life boat, he only did so after helping the crew load multiple other boats and lower them into the water. And when he did finally get in one himself, it was only when there were no other women or children in the area of that boat.
Society in GENERAL went out of their way to make Ismay look bad. He was pilloried by the media, by high society and by Hearst as a craven coward who shoved women and children out of his way to secure a space in the lifeboats. Poor guy spent the entire trip aboard the Carpathia locked in his room, having a nervous breakdon/heroic bsod.
 
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