Relatively Recent Theory - Titanic Running Aground

[Titanic_Malaysia]

But nobody saw what the what Titanics berg looks like underneath. So it is just a theories like all other stories out there.

Fair enough, looks like we'll never know what actually happened, since this was a long time ago, and can only base our assumptions on the theories that we know thus far...

[Aly Jones]

And noone had ever raised the bow to check the damage Titanic bottom hull received.

[David G. Brown]

Parks and I spent weeks preparing the white paper contained on his Marconigraph site: http://www.marconigraph.com

My "aha" moment with regard to how Titanic took the ice came while doing two years of birdwatching cruises on a local estuary. As part of those trips we would send our guests ashore to a blue heron nesting area to get "up close and personal" with the birds. The area was 100% wild, with no piers or quays. Instead, we deliberately ran the boat onto the mud and lowered a gangway. One morning as I did this I noted how similar the sensation was to what Titanic's passengers and crew described as that ship went on the ice. This was the start of a couple of years of research that culminated in what I wrote in "Last Log." Then, I learned Parks had been doing similar research for longer than me and was even deeper into the event. We did not just throw out an idea for the helluvit. Hundreds of hours of research preceeded the publication of our "White Paper."

I wold love to have a serious discussion of the merits of the grounding concept and its flaws. Not to be atagonistic, but this thread has degenerated into a bunch of opinions based on nothing more than idle gossip.

Instead of speculation like has started to fill this thread, I suggest something called "research." Opinions are useless unless backed up by hard data. We don't have to agree on what happened, but the conversation has to begin on a solid basis of fact. I suggest looking up the white paper and reading the evidence we present. Then, study the relative fragility of ship hulls to damage from unfair lifting and "rolling shear." Look up why putting a ship in a drydock must be done with extreme care. Then, study what lookout Lee and Fleet said about how the ship reacted while on the ice. You might also do some etymology on the use of "strike" by sailors in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Oh, yes, then compare the descriptions by passengers of the accident to what people in other grounding incidents have experienced. Something else you might do is examine how other ships have been damaged by ice. Then, you might want to know the yield data for steel (circa 1909) as compared to rotting iceberg ice. And, you might want to study how furnacing plate steel to make the curve of the bilge...and double plating it...would influence where damage from a grounding would appear. Finally, look up the changes in the shapes of icebergs over time, especially older bergs in the latitude of Titanic's accident. Spend the time, do the research, then voice an opinion. I love a cogent argument. Helps me learn something I would not otherwise have thought about on my own.

-- David G. Brown

[wruth03@aol.com]

As Michael pointed out this grounding theory is not new. I watched a documentary about this about two or three years ago. Possibly the bottom did scrape on an ice shelf but nothing has ever been proved. I do not believe this made any difference at all because as Aly has pointed out Titanic had a double bottom anyway. Plus she took two hours and forty minutes to sink which is slightly more than Thomas Andrews estimated she could stay afloat. This to me certainly does not suggest that the damage that Titanic recieved was any more severe than has been thought.

Personally I think there will always be different theories on how and why she sank. We have all seen and heard these ideas over the years weak or brittle rivets and so on. However as with this theory most are never proved and some are just rubbish such as the conspiracy theory that Titanic and Olympic were switched. I think we must be guarded against jumping to conclusions that some of these ideas are any more valid than previous ones. The truth is that because there is so much interest in the Titanic disaster there are some people who dream up these ideas purely to get themselves in the news. This unfortunately can get in the way of genuine research.
Denise

[Aly Jones]

David, I've PM you In why I questioned your book. It don't belong on here. Sorry I offended you and your book.

You may had brought a step or two closer to the Titanic mystery,I am grateful. Seems plausible with the research / explanations and hours and sweet you put In and Parks too. Agrounding which you had research successfully, can bring us closer In how badly Titanic had suffered, so myself as an outsider will not rule It out. I agree with Denise,there always will be myths, and conspiracy theories surrounding the Titanic but your book Is cut above those, real hard core research.

Oh, yes, then compare the descriptions by passengers of the accident to what people in other grounding incidents have experienced. Something else you might do is examine how other ships have been damaged by ice. And, you might want to study how furnacing plate steel to make the curve of the bilge...and double plating it...would influence where damage from a grounding would appear. Finally, look up the changes in the shapes of icebergs over time, especially older bergs in the latitude of Titanic's accident.

Sorry to bring this up, This is playing on my mind---there is still one key missing for evidence and that lies underneath the Titanic wreck herself. No-one will ever know 100% sure because no-one can get underneath her keel to examine what kind of Impact she received, maybe agrounding or even not. So myself as an outsider will not rule It out agrounding.

I don't need to look up old Icebergs, Icebergs melt that makes encloves edges. It's Kind of like train tracks. So I can Imagine a ship bow slicing through those tracks. Like TM's photo on previous page

I thought another book of myths,by looking things up and reading what you wrote, change my mind. And I totally understand why you need to talk to professionals to have a real discussion at times.

[ShamelessAngels]

I guess we shall never know what those "long strips of metal" were unless someone were to go back down there and try to find them and get them on film, but it is my personal belief that people should stop diving the wreck altogether. I am of the mentality that Titanic is indeed a grave site and that she should be left to rest. I feel like we have enough. It's been 27 years since she was discovered and that has been filled with non-stop expeditions. I remember seeing an interview with the descendants of survivors by Dr. Ballard, and they each said Titanic was their family member's grave and that she should not be tampered with. Dr. Ballard said that before all the survivors passed away, they told him the same. Some people may disagree, but I'm inclined to support the wishes of the survivors and their families and am looking for a way to donate to Dr. Ballard's cause to keep people out.

[wruth03@aol.com]

Shameless Angels I fully support your view as regards keeping people away from Titanic's wreck. I have always felt she is a grave site and should be treated as such. I know Dr Ballard feels very strongly about this and he has been campaigning for many years now. Actually I was wondering if anyone had tried a petition calling for the wreck to be accepted as a grave site and to be left alone. I would certainly sign such a petition. The petition would then be handed in to the American and all the European governments. I also would question whether all these expeditions are actually accellerating the Titanic's rate of decay. This does seem likely to me and do we need all this interference. Surely there has been more than enough exploration of the wreck and when I see photographs of shoes side by side or of a dolls head this reminds me of all the 1500 men, women and children who lost their lives there a hundred years ago. Personally I feel we are disrespecting the dead with all this exploration and also the decendants wishes for their grave to be left as it is.
Denise

[Shuimulung]

David: I read your article and I think you make an excellent case. I still think that the 'metal strips' if they exist are part of breakup damage rather than grounding/collision damage because i have a hard time seeing how ice could cause hull plating to peel away. Grounding or collision would be in compression and I still think that the ice would give before it was able to actually peel away the hull plates. I'm not an engineer though. One question I have is that it seems like a grounding such as you describe would have lifted the hull more significantly than was reported-the bow would have risen at least a few feet out of the water. This might not be noticed-as you point out, a soft grounding is often not noticed at first-but then as Titanic passed and slid off the shelf the bow would have dropped again in a way that would have been noticeable to those aboard. On small boats I've ridden up on an object and then had the bow slide off and there's a definite drop.

I would be very grateful to you if you would read my article "Saving Titanic" on the Steamship Historical Society of America's website (http://www.sshsa.org) and give me your opinion on it.

Thanks,

Joe )

[ShamelessAngels]

Actually I was wondering if anyone had tried a petition calling for the wreck to be accepted as a grave site and to be left alone. I would certainly sign such a petition. The petition would then be handed in to the American and all the European governments.

Change.org does different important petitions that are all started by ordinary people. Perhaps you could start one?

[David G. Brown]

I know where the "ribbons of steel" story originated, but I've never talked directly with the author. So, I'll say nothing about it.

However, if the ship grounded in the way I believe it did...there would be NO RIBBONS OF STEEL torn off the bottom in way of the bow. Other than deformation of the exterior plates and some displaced rivets, I doubt the actual bottom would have appeared heavily damaged because it would not have been the "bottom" that suffered from the rolling shear created by lifting a small section of hull onto the berg, then dropping it back down as the ship worked its way across. The area where I would expect to find the fatal damage is along the seam above the turn of the bilge where the flat bottom jointed the flat vertical sides. It's along this seam where the stress would concentrate and I would expect rivets to fail and seams to start. ("Start" is the correct seaman's term for a seam that is still mechanically in place but has started to leak.)

The problem faced by Titanic's hull was of developable surfaces. A flat panel (think of a sheet of plywood) can be curved either across its width or along its length, but not both at the same time. You can't make a round shape -- say a soccer ball -- out of plywood. Steel plates in a ship behave in the same manner. The bottom of Titanic was stout, to be sure, but still able to flex enough to get across the ice relatively intact. The sides of the ship, however could not flex up and down to accommdate the movement of the bottom as it crossed the ice. Something had to give and that would have been the seam where the bottom and the sides met. The blueprints I have (not of the best quality and very limited in scope) show that the seam above the rounded curve of the bilge was in about the right place to meet stoker Barrett's description of the ingress.

Whenever something strains a ship beyond its designer intention, that "something" is described as "unfair." In this case, the flexing of the ship as described by lookouts Fleet and Lee would have been "unfair" to the ship's design and would have produced failures. Logicially, these failures would have been in the seams where movement of as little as 1/8th the diameter of a rivet can shear it in two. The plates act like scissors as they move cutting through the rivet. Good or bad steel in the rivets, there a lot would have been cut this way. Once the rivets are gone, the strength of the structure is reduced and the sea finds every way it can to sink your ship.

My guess is that a sizeable portion of the members of this board were not around when QE2 went aground on Sow and Pigs off Nantucket. The grounding went unnoticed by many people aboard and newspapers reported the gambling never stopped in the casino. The simularity between QE2 and Titanic in this regard is eerie. But, when the got QE2 into a graving dock what was thought to be superficial damage turned out to be best described as near-fatal. So much of the fabric of the bottom was damaged that it has been said they fixed QE2 by building a new hull around the existing machinery and accommodations. My suspicion is that if Titanic had made it back to H&W for repairs the same sort of thing would have been discovered -- the twisting and bending of impact probably did a lot of nasty things to the frames, floors, and longitudinals. Perhaps the damage might have been "fatal" to the ship even if it did not sink. Who knows?

Again, let me say again -- grounding on the iceberg as I envision would not have torn any metal off the ship. If those ribbons of steel exist, they must have come out during the breakup and not during impact on the berg.

-- David G. Brown

[Shuimulung]

Apologies David, re-reading my last post on this thread I see that I implied that the "ribbons of steel" were something you came up with-not my intention at all. I do remember the QE2 grounding, but never saw or heard how bad the damage was.

[pat toms]

David g ,Brown, I have never heard about the ribbons of steel before,is it a theory or a fact. pat

[David G. Brown]

The "ribbons of steel" had quite a bit of discussion seven or eight years ago. I've never seen proof that they exist. But, I've not had access to every frame of footage from every dive or talked personally with everyone who has looked around down there. I'm skeptical, but open minded on the subject.

-- David G. Brown

[ShamelessAngels]

The "ribbons of steel" had quite a bit of discussion seven or eight years ago. I've never seen proof that they exist. But, I've not had access to every frame of footage from every dive or talked personally with everyone who has looked around down there. I'm skeptical, but open minded on the subject.

-- David G. Brown

Yes, I think it's entirely possible, but since we have no footage of them according to the reports that the camera malfunctioned, I will have to go with what Aly said in that we can't see Titanic's bottom, so we will never know for sure.

[Aly Jones]

Thats what i think shamelessangels.

David could be 100% right, but without evidence from the bow we can only presume. He's evidence and research we can safely think that this Is what happened to titanic. Davids theory Is more logical than the swap theory!