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Trip05401

TITANIC

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TITANIC: Ultimate Discussion

 

Well I thought I would make a thread about my favorite ocean liner.. Titanic. Did anyone see the special on TV that confirmed that Titanic not only side swiped the ice berg but actually ran over the ice berg to? They know this because the team found a huge chunk of Titanic's double bottom. Another interesting fact is that even if the Titanic had enough life boats it really wouldn't have mattered because not all of the 20 life boats Titanic had were launched from the ship. It's well known that the Titanic couldn't have broken the way it did in the 1997 movie because the way the back of the front stection of the ship is twisted, it couldn't have broke apart like it did in the movie.

 

So I look forward to what you all have to say abou the world's most famous ocean liner!

 

Trip

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Despite a history degree, I never found myself that interested in the Titanic. However, what new evidence has been presented to prove that the ship was destroyed in a different manner?

 

They found a huge chunk of Titanic's double dottom and that proves that Titanic not only swiped the ice berg but also ran over it.

 

Also Titanic actually broke apart in a different manner then in the 97 movie. It started to crack at the top of the ship but stopped at the double bottom and then broke apart from the bottom up at a much lower angel then in the movie.

 

IMO divers need to leave the ship alone.

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Despite a history degree, I never found myself that interested in the Titanic. However, what new evidence has been presented to prove that the ship was destroyed in a different manner?

 

They found a huge chunk of Titanic's double dottom and that proves that Titanic not only swiped the ice berg but also ran over it.

 

Also Titanic actually broke apart in a different manner then in the 97 movie. It started to crack at the top of the ship but stopped at the double bottom and then broke apart from the bottom up at a much lower angel then in the movie.

 

IMO divers need to leave the ship alone.

 

 

 

That is interesting. You know that Hollywood always does things unrealistically :lol: I would think that from the damage you described, that most divers would steer clear of it anyway. I hope they are getting paid good to take a risk like that.

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Despite a history degree, I never found myself that interested in the Titanic. However, what new evidence has been presented to prove that the ship was destroyed in a different manner?

 

They found a huge chunk of Titanic's double dottom and that proves that Titanic not only swiped the ice berg but also ran over it.

 

Also Titanic actually broke apart in a different manner then in the 97 movie. It started to crack at the top of the ship but stopped at the double bottom and then broke apart from the bottom up at a much lower angel then in the movie.

 

IMO divers need to leave the ship alone.

 

 

 

That is interesting. You know that Hollywood always does things unrealistically :lol: I would think that from the damage you described, that most divers would steer clear of it anyway. I hope they are getting paid good to take a risk like that.

 

 

Divers tend to only explore the front section of the ship because the back section imploded when it hit the bottom of the ocean because it was full of air and pressure and I don't think they get paid at all.

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I can tell you do your homework on historical events of personal interest, Trip. Very good! I am impressed. :lol:

 

Thanks. Before all my other interests first there was Titanic and yes I have done my homework.

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Great! A Titanic thread! I happen to be a member of the Titanic Historical Society and have studied the Titanic for many years.

 

First, the damage. The Titanic did indeed fun along the side of the iceberg as well as over a part of it. The iceberg did not cause a huge gash in the side of the ship as depicted in numerous movies. When the ship was found, no large gash was seen. The iceberg thumped against the side of the ship causing rivets that hold the iron plating in place to pop out. This of course led to the water coming in. The Titanic did indeed have watertight compartments but they were ridiculously designed. The walls between the compartments did not go all the way to the ceiling so when the water reached the top of 1 compartment, it merely went through the gap between the wall and the ceiling and started filling up the 2nd compartment.

 

2nd, the sinking. When the bow started taking on water, it caused tremendous stress on the expansion joint located about midship. The expansion joint is a small gap in the hull designed to compensate for metal increasing and decreasing in size due to temperature. With all that weight at the bow, the hull became a huge lever, being forced down at the bow, and lifted up at the stern, with a fulcrum point somewhere near amidships. As the strain became too much, the ship broke apart at the expansion joint. The bow section was now dangling underwater connected only to the stern by the double bottom. As the strain increased further, the double bottom gave way separating from the ship and sinking. With the double bottom gone, the bow section then sank as well. With all of the weight from the submerged bow now gone, the stern section settled back in the water. Of course now the exposed end of the stern section starting taking on water at an incredible rate and the stern began to rise again. It rose straight up and then went straight down.

The "Titanic" movie by James Cameron had a lot of things wrong but they did depict the sinking correctly. While finding the double bottom on the ocean floor was interesting, it was not a tremendous find. It didn't change the facts much. It merely confirmed that it did indeed break off from the ship as many had speculated it did.

 

3rd - The lifeboats. The only lifeboat that did not get officially launched was one of the collapsable boats located around the wireless room. This boat did indeed get washed off during the sinking and ended up floating upside down in the ocean. Several people, including Commander Lightoller, managed to climb on top of the boat and survive. If the Titanic had enough life boats , everyone could have been saved. It took over 2 hours for the ship to sink. Plenty of time to get everyone off. The problem was that many of the lifeboats were launched only half full. Many of the crew never really thought that the ship would actually sink. They figured they would row out aways and then eventually come back to the ship. The Captain of the ship, Captain Smith, demonstrated very little leadership during this crises. Poor communication all around. In fact, many of the surviving crew said that they saw little of the Captain and that he was just wandering around not doing much of anything. The fact is that if all of the lifeboats had been launched and filled to capacity, many more people would have been saved but many more still would have died because there just wasn't enough of them.

Edited by Kor Kringle

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I must concur with this morbid fascination of the sinking of a ship. However...ghost ships are far more to my liking.

 

Remember the one that crossed the North Atlantic (I think) a couple of centuries-ish back and arrived with a solidly frozen crew?

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I must concur with this morbid fascination of the sinking of a ship. However...ghost ships are far more to my liking.

 

Remember the one that crossed the North Atlantic (I think) a couple of centuries-ish back and arrived with a solidly frozen crew?

 

Ghost ships.. isn't there a movie about that?

 

I don't remember hearing about a solidly frozen crew.. but I'm sure it's happened more then once.

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Its great that a Titanic thread has been started. We can discuss a lot in here. But may I suggest that we stick to the topic? Ghost ships is a facinating subject that deserves a thread of its own.

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Its great that a Titanic thread has been started. We can discuss a lot in here. But may I suggest that we stick to the topic? Ghost ships is a facinating subject that deserves a thread of its own.

 

Thanks Kor. I thought it would be nice to start one and we should try to stay on topic but maybe SeeingEyeBorg could start a thread about Ghost Ships.. I would post in it.

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Its great that a Titanic thread has been started. We can discuss a lot in here. But may I suggest that we stick to the topic? Ghost ships is a facinating subject that deserves a thread of its own.

 

LOL - I should've known better. Especially when you expressed such a strong interest. Sorry, luv. :lol:

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Hooray! An official Titanic thread! :lol: This should be fun. There are many fascinating aspects to the Titanic story. I have always been interested in the Titanic and have seen a couple exhibitions, including the one at Cobn, Ireland (it had a different name then) the final port call of the Titanic on it's maiden voyage. I just posted an article about the company, (RMS Titanic, Inc. I believe), that is asking for money for having salvaged items from the Titanic.

 

A question to Kor: What web sites and sources do you most recommend dealing with the Titanic?

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Hooray! An official Titanic thread! :lol: This should be fun. There are many fascinating aspects to the Titanic story. I have always been interested in the Titanic and have seen a couple exhibitions, including the one at Cobn, Ireland (it had a different name then) the final port call of the Titanic on it's maiden voyage. I just posted an article about the company, (RMS Titanic, Inc. I believe), that is asking for money for having salvaged items from the Titanic.

 

A question to Kor: What web sites and sources do you most recommend dealing with the Titanic?

The best place to start would be www.titanic1.org

That is the official website of The Titanic Historical Society. If you become a member, you get a subscription to their magazine called "The Titanic Commutator". It comes out every few months and its a great read. Old issues go for big bucks on EBAY. I have been a member for years. The Society is based in Massachussets. Every year they have a convention with a Titanic theme. For years, Titanic survivors attended these cons. Sadly, the last survivor died last year. They also have two Titanic weekends every year culminating in a lavish dinner where you come dressed in Edwardian clothes and eat food based on the Titanic's menu. In addition to the Titanic, they have many articles dealing with the steamship era as a whole. The whole society is run by Ed Kamuda and his wife. They started it in the early 1960s and called it the Titanic Enthusiasists Association. Soon after, one of the survivors objected to the word "enthusiast" when discussing such a tragedy and the name was changed to the Titanic Historical Society.

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Titanic Fact:

 

First Officer William Murdoch's decision to order Quartermaster Hichens to turn the ship "hard-a-starboard", was probably the wrong one. Had Titanic rammed the iceberg head-on, the first four compartments probably would have been crushed and some of the people in the bow may have died, but the ship would have remained afloat long enough for rescue ships to come to the aid of the surviving passengers and crew.

 

Thoughts?

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Well.....I WAS excited about this thread but it appears that I am the only one so I guess it will be destined for obscurity....... :lol:

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Titanic Fact:

 

First Officer William Murdoch's decision to order Quartermaster Hichens to turn the ship "hard-a-starboard", was probably the wrong one. Had Titanic rammed the iceberg head-on, the first four compartments probably would have been crushed and some of the people in the bow may have died, but the ship would have remained afloat long enough for rescue ships to come to the aid of the surviving passengers and crew.

 

Thoughts?

I would think that the first thought of most people including pilots would be to try to avoid the object, rather than reason out that hitting it straight on would cause "less" damage. Probably, since the ship was considered unsinkable by some because of compartmentilization (even though it was faulty - with compartments with openings at the top) the idea of sinking was probably not high on some crewman's worries, even if it should have been.

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I thought the same way. Officer Murdoch had only seconds to make a decision. No sane person would order the helmsman to ram the iceberg even if in hindsight, it would have had a better outcome.

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Kor Kringle Posted Yesterday, 07:41 AM

Titanic Fact:

 

First Officer William Murdoch's decision to order Quartermaster Hichens to turn the ship "hard-a-starboard", was probably the wrong one. Had Titanic rammed the iceberg head-on, the first four compartments probably would have been crushed and some of the people in the bow may have died, but the ship would have remained afloat long enough for rescue ships to come to the aid of the surviving passengers and crew.

 

Thoughts?

 

 

Well, it's hard to second guess a choice someone made. Was his choice in line with standard practices of the day. Is the knowledge that the ship may have stayed afloat based on the new design of the Titanic or would it have been true of any ship of that era. Is this conclusion based on post catastrophe analysis or would it have been evident to anyone at that time.

 

I think if he responded as he was trained to do under those circumstances - it's unfortunate the facts were different but that is kind of the story of the history of the human race.

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Titanic Fun Fact:

Some of the surviving British crewmen who were awaiting transportation back to England were invited to work behind the counter of the Woolworth store in New York, and they were allowed to keep all the money they collected from sales.

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This is an interesting topic. I am looking forward to reading your posts here and learning more about the Titanic. I have a degree in History and I never really got into this topic that much before(damn Middle Ages emphasis on my B.A.) :lol: Anyways, cool topic and neat trivia. Keep posting and i'll keep reading. :lol:

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Titanic Strange But True Fact:

Reported as lost on Titanic was a fireman named Thomas Hart. His mother was officially notified of his death. On May 8, Hart walked into his mother's house. He had lost his identification papers in a bar and was too embarrassed to return home. Whoever took Hart's papers used them to secure a job on Titanic and was lost. The imposter has never been identified.

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Titanic Fun Fact:

One of the survivors in lifeboat 7 was actress Dorothy Gibson. Exactly one month after Titanic sank, Gibson co-wrote and starred in a silent movie called "Saved From The Titanic". In the movie, she wore the same dress that she wore the night the real Titanic sank.

Edited by Kor Kringle

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Interesting. I wonder if it was difficult for her to perform considering she was only a month removed from surviving the Titanic tragedy? Either way, it sounds like she was a remarkable lady to endure the incident and go forward with her life.

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Strange But True Titanic Fact:

 

In 1898, 14 years before the Titanic sank and nine years before the ship's design was even conceived, author Morgan Robertson published a book called "Futility". It was a story about a huge passenger liner that met disaster after a collision with an iceberg on its maiden voyage. The name of the fictitious ship in "Futility" was "Titan". All the dimensions of the "Titan" were spelled out in the book. Notice the similarities:

 

.....................................Titan.............................Titanic

Length..........................800 feet.........................882.5 feet

Top Speed....................25 knots.........................25 knots

No. of passengers..........2000..............................2200

Registered....................British............................British

Displacement................70,000 tons....................66,000 tons

Propellers........................3....................................3

Lifeboats.........................24..................................20

Watertight bulkheads........19..................................15

Time of voyage...............April.............................April

Side striking the iceberg..Starboard......................Starboard

 

Robertson died in 1915, having lived long enough to see his fictitious story come frightenly true.

 

:look:

So, was Robertson a time traveller or was this just some incredible coincidence?

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Famous passengers on the Titanic

 

Col. John Jacob Astor IV

 

With a net worth well over 87 million dollars, John Astor the fourth was without a doubt the richest man aboard the Titanic. Backed by a powerful family fortune made from fur trading, Astor had made millions of his own investing in real estate. He also held patents on a number of items of his own invention, including an improved bicycle brake, and a turbine engine.

Astor led a fairly remarkable life. During the Spanish American war, Astor financed his own battalion. Before the war, he wrote a science fiction novel about life on other planets. He also invented a "vibratory disintegrator", which supposedly produced some sort of gas from peat moss. (peat moss produces trace gasses on its own, but they didn't know that in 1912)

 

He boarded the ship with his wife, ( 19 and pregnant at the time, and her age was quite a point of conversation with other first class passengers) , a maid, a manservant, a personal nurse, and a dog, and his staterooms were without equal. With working fireplaces, and adjoining quarters for servants, the suites cost $4,000.00, an amount that equals $50,000.00 in today's dollars.

 

As his wife boarded a lifeboat, Astor asked if he could accompany her, due to her "delicate condition", but an officer refused. Taking the refusal in stride, Astor then threw his gloves to his wife, and lit a cigarette. He and his dog were last seen on deck. A few days later, Astor's body was found floating in the open sea. It was covered in soot, and partially crushed, leading experts to believe he had been smashed by a falling smokestack. He had $2,500 cash in his pocket.

 

Madeleine survived to inherit 1.7 million from John, and on August 14th that same year gave birth to John Jacob Astor the fifth, who would grow up to become a millionaire playboy much like his father.

 

-----------------------------------------------------

 

Do you think the rich of today would show such bravery today in a similar situation?

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