Titanic Breaking In Two

[Mark Chirnside]

As the stern was up in the air, and the ship was about to split, wouldnt the expansion joint have opened?

Of course, Rsiskar. And an opening expansion joint indicates it was doing its job. The structural hull itself was designed to take enormous stresses as the ship moved through a seaway. The superstructure (essentially the deckhouses atop B, A and the boat decks) sat on top of the structural hull and was not designed to take those stresses. As the hull flexed beneath it, the superstructure inevitably 'worked' and the expansion joints gave it that flexibility: without the expansion joints, the superstructure would have ripped apart.

Best wishes,

Mark.

[Mark Chirnside]

I had found this while I was searching for expansion joints' What do you think? It was written by your people Titanic historians. I beg to differ why so many Titanic historians have so many different point of views and facts? I would had thought most Titanic historians would on par see eye to eye.

The 2007 article you've found in the UK's Daily Telegraph was written by a reporter and included a considerable number of false statements. Among people who do have an expertise in the subject, there really isn't much in the way of disagreement. In fact, I quoted part of the article to rebut it when I revised my 'Olympic' class ships book as an expanded edition in 2011, because it was an article that was widely seen and believed by the public.

I did say the expansion joints couldn't handle the pressure but I was rightly so corrected by a well respected Titanic historians on here that know their Titanic stuff. This link is saying yes and experts on here are saying not so. So is there any truth to this link? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... -sail.html

Most of the article is untrue. It says 'structural weaknesses made it vulnerable to any stormy sea', which is entirely false; that 'the builders had altered the design [of Britannic] and fitted an extra expansion joint, prompting suspicions that the yard was aware of the faults with the Titanic', which is simply speculation and takes no account that H&W were already aware that they wanted to improve further their expansion joint configurations based on experience with Olympic until March 1912; and there's a quote that 'The Titanic would have continued to float for a finite period of time if it had not experienced this structural failure. So if the ship's sinking was hastened by the early breaking, then there are almost certainly people who died because it broke'. Now, it may be that the break-up hastened the ship's demise by a very short period, but the reality is that she was on her way to foundering in a matter of minutes anyway because of the sheer weight of water onboard and increasing loss of buoyancy.

Best wishes,

Mark.

[rsiskar]

Ok, that makes sense. I guess what I meant to say is the aft expansion joint was probably where the break began, with the ship begining to rip at the bottom of the joint (A or B deck?) Is that right, or would Titanic have broken up just aft of third funnel no matter what? If the expansion joint wasn't there, would the ship still have split just aft of the third funnel, or could it have ripped later, or farther aft?

[Mark Chirnside]

Evening Rsiskar,

I guess what I meant to say is the aft expansion joint was probably where the break began, with the ship begining to rip at the bottom of the joint (A or B deck?) Is that right, or would Titanic have broken up just aft of third funnel no matter what? If the expansion joint wasn't there, would the ship still have split just aft of the third funnel, or could it have ripped later, or farther aft?

I think that Titanic's hull would have failed even if the superstructure and expansion joints had not existed. The aft expansion joint did not cause the break-up, however I can understand why people might think that it did. I don't think that Titanic's break-up began at the aft expansion joint but, again, I can understand why people might believe otherwise.

You might find the following discussion from 2009 of interest. There's quite a bit of background material, though, which can get a bit technical:
http://www.titanichistoricalsociety.net ... oint#p1628

Best wishes,

Mark.

[rsiskar]

I didn't mean to imply that I thought the expansion joint was the only reason for the break up. I also believe that she would have split regardless. I was talking about location. My question was if there was no expansion joint, wouls she still have split where she did, or could it have occured farther aft, say, aft of the fourth funnel or even at the second class stairway? Although if you all are right, and the aft expansion joint had pretty much nothing to do with the break up, then she would have split between funnels 3 and 4 regardless.

Thanks for the link Mark! I read through it, it's very interesting! I'm new to this site, but I like what I see so far and hope to be talking with all of you in the future.

Thanks for all the info everybody!
Ryan

[Sigvard1912]

the joint is not the only factor there was lots of open space for the four story tall engines a ventilation shaft that ran all the way up from the engine room. and the second class stair case was also in the break up area. although the hull was strong like it was suppose to be, the slow sinking by the head stressed out this naturally opened up part of the ship. If the TITANIC had been going backwards and opened up 5 of the stern compartments I don't believe she would have broke up at all.

Sigvard

[Ruark]

Since so many breakup theories seem suspect, I would also suggest that it could have been a chain reaction event, originating in a relatively small incident. For example, look at the blowup of the space shuttle Challenger. It started as one, single, small tile (or maybe a couple of tiles) failing and allowing heat into the structure, which caused further tile and structural failure until finally the entire aircraft disintegrated.

Perhaps the breakup of the Titanic was similar. While taken as a whole the ship's structural integrity may have been sound, perhaps there was a small failure incident... a couple of rivets failing, a strut bending, a plate buckling, anything... as each component failed, the stress on the next component increased until it failed, and so on, until there was a chain of failures which culminated in the Titanic breaking in two. This makes more sense to me than the idea of a single event "causing" the breakup to occur.

[Sigvard1912]

It was the Columbia that was lost do to the missing tiles not the Challenger.. The Challenger was lost do to a O-ring failure in the solid rocket Booster on take off . I tend to agree, when one hull plate failed or a rivet seem the stress was put on anther and another separating the hull all the way down to the keel which held the TITANIC together for a few moments just before the end.

[Aaron2010]

James Cameron and his research team said the Titanic broke apart in the middle of the ship, between the 2nd and 3rd funnels. He made a 3D animation and showed it on TV recently.





This actually what survivors saw. Maybe Cameron is right?


Jack Thayer - "She broke in two just in front of the third funnel"

Emily Ryserson - "The two forward funnels seemed to lean and then she seemed to break in half"

Arthur Bright - "It was as near the middle as anything"

August Weikman - "I think the boilers blew up about in the middle of the ship."

Ruth Becker - She showed people with her hands how the ship broke apart. With two funnels going one way and two funnels going the other way.








It's very similar to Cameron's version




.

[ShamelessAngels]

As much as I honestly despise James Cameron, I do not doubt under any circumstances that it is as the survivors say. If that many can collectively come together and say the same thing, then I don't see why anyone should doubt it.

[Michael H. Standart]

Love him or lump him, James Cameron has a very good understanding of the engineering of ships, how they're constructed, and the physics of how ships behave when they founder. The fact that he went to so much trouble to correct what he thought to be wrong with what was presented in the movie (Which in fact represented the state of our understanding of what happened at the time) shows that he's well aware of the possibility that he can be wrong in the first place.

[Aly Jones]

If James Cameron actually listen to the eye witnesses accounts, he would had the right answer the first time. He may had figured It out but that Is no genius when you have 5 (or more) witness statements that the ship broke just in front of the 3 funnel.

[David G. Brown]

I've had the good fortune to both be able to look at forensic photography of the wreck and spend time going through the testimonies of the people who survived. Of the two, I'll believe the tale of the iron over the tale of the tongue any day.

The evidence from the pieces of double bottom...forensic renderings in front of me...shows that the break was inside boiler room #1 just forward of the engine room bulkhead. The split between the two pieces is in direct vertical way of the after expansion joint and just where the floors beneath the tank top begin to rise for extra support to the engines. It is a natural "hard spot" in the design which would have been a stress riser to focus the unfair strains of lifting the stern out of the water. (No, the expansion joint was NOT the cause of the breakup, just a design feature that gave it a place to happen.)

The slightly deformed edges of the two pieces of double bottom indicate they were in compression at failure, which means the ship was still hogged. But, the sections of bottom are other wise pristine. There is no sign they failed from compression. (Note that "in compression" and "from compression" are quite different.)

Titanic was in no way unique in breaking up from unfair strain. I have researched several ships of the era that suffered similar fates. The usual mechanism was a "girdling crack" that ran across the decks and outer bottom and up/down the sides. The most recent ship of the period to suffer this fate was the Great Lakes freighter Daniel J. Morrell which foundered in 1966 after being cleaved in two by a girdling failure.

Based on ships built of similar steel, similar rivets, and to similar or better scantlings, it is most likely, Titanic's port side failed in way of boiler room #1. This failure allowed rapid ingress into that space and changed the ship's starboard loll into a "death roll" to port which continued until the end. As water entered the boiler room the hull went from a hogged (center high) to a sagged condition. It was this change that initiated two more failures. The sides pulled off the tank top of the two pieces of double bottom. This explains why they are clean of any topside debris. As the sagging continued, the pieces were pulled out and the boilers from #1 dropped to the sea bed.

Looking at the damage to the broken end of the bow, I envision the hull began to fold into a V-shape which expanded outward and upward. Think of the hull as a door hing with the hinge pin at the F Deck level. As this hinge swung closed everything above F deck was crushed while everything below was pulled apart. This explains things like the crushed and twisted piece of deckhouse from beneath the third funnel.

When the did the bow and stern sections separate completely? The only possible answer is "I dunno" except to say sometime later as the debris of what had been a magnificent ocean liner plunged into abyss. But, it appears to me that the stern did not sink from ordinary flooding. It was pulled under by the bow. This explains the implosion damage indicated by the iron on the bottom.

-- David G. Brown

[ShamelessAngels]

If James Cameron actually listen to the eye witnesses accounts, he would had the right answer the first time. He may had figured It out but that Is no genius when you have 5 (or more) witness statements that the ship broke just in front of the 3 funnel.

There were a lot of things Cameron could have gotten right if he'd actually taken the time to do so, as well as things that could have been right that he outright refused to change, such as the scene where the officer shoots himself in the head. I have read that no bodies were recovered with gunshot wounds.

[jerauf]

Shameless, only 300 bodies were recovered. Basing your evidence on the condition of recovered bodies means nothing.

There are eyewitness accounts of an officer committing suicide. Cameron didn't just pull it out of his butt. It's entirely possible that it happened. The question is who did it...if it happened.