WI: The Titanic doesn't sink

[Carl Schwamberger]

The only cause of the sinking I've even come across is aerated coal-dust touched off by a broken electrical cable. Since the engine room was pretty much surrounded by coal bunkers (they ran down the sides of the ship, between the hull and the engine room, ironically to protect it from impacts flooding the lower spaces very much), this is actually pretty plausible.

Compression & heat from the torpedo detonation could have ignited the coal dust. Folks examining the hole which likely sank the ship claim it has characteristics of a detonation from inside one of the coal bunkers, or two detonations, inside and outside. Roughly 200 kg of coal dust & small chips would have had the energy to bend the hull plates outwards & shatter or damage the internal bulkheads.

Surviving bridge crew reported the Captain gave two orders after the detonation. The first was to turn Port towards shore, the second amounted to continuing at same speed. This would have had the effect of forcing water into the hole in the coal bunker placing pressure on the weakned or damaged internal bulkheads and flooding the adjacent compartments faster.

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

Apparantly, if Titanic had hit nose first, the number of water tight compartments would not have exceeded 3 according to what i read somewhere. Can't find it of course.

Anybody to confirm this?

I've seen this discussed in assoted magazine articles, TV bits, and the usual internet suspects for a long time.

If that is so who would willingly steer the ship smack into an iceberg? knowing that this will cost loss of life? That woulod be a good theme for a movie: "Titanic the killer ship" with the sub title: "Crew set on ramming icebergs"

Ivan

It seems to have originated in Lightrollers experience as a junior officer aboard another ship off Australia. Bad navigation took the ship out of the channel as it approached a port. When the captain realized collision was unavoidable he ordered full astern & same course, the ship ran up onto the rocks or reef & grounded. The theory is if the captain had tried to turn the ship it likely would have had a long hole in the side & then been in deeper water.

In the case of the Titantic it depends on how fast deacceleration would occur. If it hot the berg at under five knots one or two compartments could have flooded, passengers injured & maybe some unlucky soul killed. Over ten knots at impact & things like severe distortion of the frame along the full length, shattering of hull plates, or boilers coming unseated are occuring.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

The world would have to do without a mediocre James Cameron Chick flick and Celine Dion would still be a second rate lounge singer in Canada.

But on the other hand we wouldn't have A Night To Remember either, which is in my opinion, is a much better film. It wouldn't have stopped Ms Dion however as she had already won the Eurovision Song Contest.

A narration of Walter Lord's book read by Martin Jarvis is often repeated on Radio Four Extra. Lord says that it was as if the Titanic's sinking had been pre-ordained. He said that if it had collided head on with the iceberg it would have remained afloat and if the iceberg had been spotted a few seconds earlier it would have missed it altogether (though for all we know it might have hit another in the process). He also said that if the watertight doors had gone one deck highter she would have remained afloat, but when she was designed nobody thought that so many compartments might flood.

 

[ghappy1000]

Wouldn't the butterflies produce alternate results? Maybe not before American entry in World War 1 but afterwards, there're plenty of butterflies. Even an extra division carried by the Titanic could get Hitler killed. And not to mention different political decisions in America, extra young men in the trenches and several more in the Royal Navy.

 

[Alcsentre Calanice]

Wouldn't the butterflies produce alternate results? Maybe not before American entry in World War 1 but afterwards, there're plenty of butterflies. Even an extra division carried by the Titanic could get Hitler killed. And not to mention different political decisions in America, extra young men in the trenches and several more in the Royal Navy.

Wouldn't the implications butterfly the events of the two following years away`The bunch of surviving celibrities could even butterfly away Sarajevo. It's an alternate WW1 we would see, maybe with a earlier German defeat, maybe even with a German victory.

 

[Bureaucromancer]

On the note of something else happening, that does seem entirely accurate. The thought that makes me shudder is that OTL there was never a truly catastrophic fire on a major Atlantic liner... I can't think of many more nightmarish scenarios than an early 20th century liner with an out of control fire mid Atlantic.

As far as getting the kind of reaction that Titanic did in terms of regulation and practice at sea I'd say the key point isn't so much getting the public attention that Titanic did in terms of being a maiden voyage and the prominence of it's passengers, but that it needs an accident where the shortage of boats is actually a significant issue. It simply wasn't a factor in most of the other incidents in the same era, notably Lusitania and Empress of Ireland simply sunk far too fast to launch even all the boats that were required in 1912, and this wasn't really atypical (actually, but understanding is that if Titanic HAD had a full complement of boats a significant loss of life is still probable given the amount of time it took to launch the boats they had).

 

[redlightning]

If Titanic is like most ships of her era, she will be at the bottom of the Atlantic within five years after launch anyway after being sunk by German U-boats.

 

[Admiral Halsey]

If Titanic is like most ships of her era, she will be at the bottom of the Atlantic within five years after launch anyway after being sunk by German U-boats.

Among the major liners only two were sunk. The Lusitania and the Britannic and only the Lucy was sunk by a torpedo. Hell the Titanic's sister the Olympic sunk a U-Boat herself. In fact during both world wars only a total of three major allied liners were sunk due to enemy action. The two mentioned already and the Empress of Britain.

 

[Emperor Norton I]

The last post before the necro, we were still wondering if Obama would win reelection. Naughty. Leave the dead be.

 

[corditeman]

Yorel...

...British ships are referred to as 'she' or 'her'. You cannot refer to a 'sister ship' then refer to 'he' and 'him'. However, in Germany ships are referred to in the masculine. Best to stick to the feminine with liners, the most feminine of ships...