The Titanic

[Bill, KD0HG]

This month's edition of National Geographic commemorates the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.

Submersibles have been photographing the wreckage  some 400 miles east of New York at a depth of 12,415 feet. The pictures in the Geographic of the ship's boilers and etc are amazing.

Part of the printed story says this:

"In the soundproofed Marconi room, the wireless apparatus survives, the copper knife switches still left in the positions left by the young operators, Harold Bride and Jonathan Phillips, revealing that they cut the power when they abandoned their post as the water rushed up to the deck outside.  We imaged the transformer that they had repaired just the night before the sinking. Acting against guidelines, the two young wireless geeks managed to restore the set to full power_ an act that may have saved 712 lives, since without this transmission they might not have reached the rescue ship Carpathia with their historic SOS. Capturing these precious robot images was like touching history itself".

I wonder if those early radio ops survived..

The wreckage is covered with "rusticles", left by iron loving bacteria.

Bill

[W2JRO]

phillips made it to a lifeboat,but died of exposure. Bride made it and lived until the mid 1950's

[KX5JT]

The April 2012 QST has an article about radio's role in the Titanic.  I haven't read it yet but my brief scan of it showed some info about the operators.

[WA1GFZ]

Titanic another fine example of what happens when bean counters take over.

[Sam KS2AM]

The April 2012 QST has an article about radio's role in the Titanic.  I haven't read it yet but my brief scan of it showed some info about the operators.

There are a couple of great articles in the April QST about the involvement of radio in the disaster including one by K2TQN the vintage radio columnist.  What I found very interesting was that one of the Titanic radio operators, Harold Bride, was rescued by the Carpathia.  The Carpathia radio operator, Harold Cottam, continued to handle message traffic non-stop for three days until he eventually collapsed.  Harold Bride, the Titanic operator who could not walk because his feet had frozen was carried from the sickbay to the radio room to relieve the Carpathia operator.

The two Harolds at the Titanic enquiry:





  

[W7TFO]

The Titanic shared it's build with two sisters, the Olympic and the Britannic.

I'm not totally sure, but I heard part of the Olympic lives on in a bar as furnishings today.  It sailed on into the 30's

The Britannic hit a mine and sank in the Aegean late in WW1.

If memory serves, the Titanic had a 1.4mW electrical system onboard.

RIP.

73DG

[flintstone mop]

It was a fascinating ship and I'm amazed at the power plant. They shipped 100 volts DC around the ship and generated 16,000 AMPS.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071219150714AAWxs5K

A picture of the boilers
http://www.titanic-titanic.com/titanic_boilers.shtml

[K6JEK]

Titanic another fine example of what happens when bean counters take over.

I thought hubris was the villain not double entry accounting.  I though it was a spare-no-expense undertaking. Did cost concerns play a big role in the calamity?

[Sam KS2AM]

The Titanic shared it's build with two sisters, the Olympic and the Britannic.

I'm not totally sure, but I heard part of the Olympic lives on in a bar as furnishings today.  It sailed on into the 30's

The first class lounge and some other parts of Olympic are part of the White Swan Hotel in Alnwick England.

[W7TFO]

History says the fault was in the metallurgical testing of the hull plate steel, as it got very brittle in the cold temperatures of the arctic waters.

Weather or not is was a cost limited or just a 'never thought of that' deal I don't know.

Decisions made after hitting the iceberg were that of the officers and Mr. Ismay from the company.

73DG

[Sam KS2AM]

The Titanic shared it's build with two sisters, the Olympic and the Britannic.

The three ships had something else in common - Violet Jessop.

Violet survived the collision of the Olympic with a British warship as well as the sinking of both the Titanic and the Britannic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violet_Jessop

[flintstone mop]

I'm not the greatest historian on the Titanic. Just fascinated by the technology of that time. I don't think any ship would have been able to hit a berg and not get sliced.
I think a bean counter made the decision not to listen to radio warnings about icebergs in the area they were traveling. And they wanted to break a record for speed by going full ahead.
Here's a link. Do not know how true it is.
http://historyonthenet.com/Titanic/blame.htm

Fred

[KC4ALF]

The Battle Cruiser Hood was built in the same yard and was already doomed before her encounter with Bismarck as recent testing of her hull showed the same brittleness of her rivets and plates. She was built around the same time.

[Ed/KB1HYS]

The Titanic may have suffered brittle steel, but the design lacked a Top for the water tight compartments. The water simply filled the compartment, then overflowed the bulkhead through doors and hallways into the next one.  The gash was so big that the pumps on board simply could not keep up.

The Hood was truely doomed by bean counters.  No deck armor when built, added later, in sections.  The aft deck hadn't yet received it's armor when the war started.  The first hits from the Bismark ignited some 5 inch? ready ammo on the aft deck, killing numerous crew.  The next hit penetrated the aft deck into the after magazine, chain-firing the aft and then the forward magazine.  It wouldn't have mattered if it was high-sulfur steel or not at that point.  It does kinda make one wonder about putting things off though...   Amazing that even 3 of the sailors on the Hood survived.  The Conning tower, which was a massive armored steel structure, was blown away from the ship for some distance.  Her forward turret fired a gun just before it went under water, I  wonder if it was some last act of defiance of a doomed crewman or some electrical or fire caused malfunction.

[KC4ALF]

It's funny the Brits never seemed to have learned, especially after the catastrophic losses at Jutland in 1916. Just abt every British ship that went down blew themselves apart. The ships just weren't armoured enough. German ships fared better as they were built on the 'Tirpitz" Principal, that no matter how badly damaged, if got back to port they could be rebuilt. SMS Seydlitz is a good example, she took an awful beating. All of her main guns were out of action, one boiler gone, down by the Bow, hits below the water line flooded her with 1200 tons of water and her bridge a fiery wreck. She still made it back to port under her own power.
Another factor that doomed Hood. German gunners were renowned for first shot aquisition. If you didn't shoot first you were in trouble. Not radio related but interesting.

[WA1GFZ]

lucas electric featuring warm beer and disco lights.

[Bill, KD0HG]

Lucas Electric..The Prince of Darkness.

Bill (Former MG owner)

[K5UJ]

A bunch of things happened to combine in a cascade of failures:  A bunch of the iron rivets were made with a lot of slag and were actually not the required metal grade for riveting the hull so the iron came right off on impact.  The ship was going too fast.  The watch in the crows nest didn't have binoculars.   There was an unusually high number of bergs in an unusually small area of sea in the path of the ship.  The reason had to do with wx patterns that year and currents.   A ship out in front of Titantic sent a warning message about the bergs but it wasn't prefixed with the right code to get it to the skipper so he didn't know about it.   

I have a copy of the NYC Inter-Ocean from a few days after.  It is old and yellowed and very fragile.  Belonged to my dad's mom--many in my family were (are) with newspapers.  We save them.  I have WW2 papers.  Of course I saved a lot of 9-11 newspapers.   

[WA1GFZ]

Violet should stay on dry land after that.

[k4kyv]

History says the fault was in the metallurgical testing of the hull plate steel, as it got very brittle in the cold temperatures of the arctic waters.

I have a near-catastrophic first-hand experience of steel becoming brittle in frigid temperatures. While I was putting up my tower in 1980, one cold misty afternoon I was wrapping strands on the EHS guy wire after installing the clamps at the insulator junctions, and a piece broke off and hit me in the eye.  It hit hard enough to make a small dimple on the cornea; it was very painful, but no permanent damage was done.  But when I examined the rest of the strand where the 2" piece broke off, I realised how closely I had come to possibly being blinded in that eye.  The strand broke off at a very steep angle, and the end was as sharp as a needle.  Luckily (as in Russian Roulette), it hit broadside and not end-on.

Needless to say, I wore my safety goggles after that.  Like the Titanic disaster, and many other catastrophes, it is very easy to say what should have been done after the mishap has already occurred.

[WA1GFZ]

only a bean counter would be stupid enough to put the peddle to the metal in an ice field.

[Steve - K4HX]

The Captain was a bean counter?

[Knightt150]

I am very interested in the radio they were using on the TITANIC, if they can bring up thousands of items why can't they bring up the radio equipment.

I would drive a long way just to see it, and I am sure a lot of radio operators would do the same. To me the radio equipment is the most important item on the TITANIC. It was the one thing that saved hundreds of lives, I am sure it is not in good shape but the longer it is on the the sea floor the worse it gets.

Dose anyone know who to contact or is such a thing possible, I am sure it can be done with a few million dollars spent.

John W9BFO

[W1RKW]

Enough life boats? Bean Counter, engineer or both?

Sky and Telescope magazine had an interesting article last month on the Titanic and whether the alignment of the planets, moon, earth and sun to cause a significant shift in tidal currents and cause icebergs to move in a more southerly direction into shipping and navigation lanes.  At that time most celestial objects were lined up quite well to cause tidal actions to be above average.

[Sam KS2AM]

I am very interested in the radio they were using on the TITANIC, if they can bring up thousands of items why can't they bring up the radio equipment.

I would drive a long way just to see it, and I am sure a lot of radio operators would do the same. To me the radio equipment is the most important item on the TITANIC. It was the one thing that saved hundreds of lives, I am sure it is not in good shape but the longer it is on the the sea floor the worse it gets.

Dose anyone know who to contact or is such a thing possible, I am sure it can be done with a few million dollars spent.

John W9BFO

There is not much left of the radio gear and what is left looks very fragile. I expect that you'd destroy it by moving it.

Check out what they saw during the expedition that was in the 2005 Discovery network special:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Kgfjw-PeGR8#t=1840s