Titanic sunk by steering mistake, author says

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100922/lf_nm_life/us_britain_titanic_book


-----------

Don't know if they actually did continue to "sail" but obviously having stayed still

if at all possible, would have seemed to have been right thing to do --

I've been a student of the Titanic since I was 6. I remember watching a PBS special on it, and then it began: Books, memorabilia, a fascinating with sailing and ships, and everything I could eat up on Titanic.

BTW - It makes a lot of sense. The two key points Lightollers(sp?) descendent makes? One pulling the ship in the wrong direction and two - continuing to move the boat. It won't bring back the people who died but it shows that 'brilliant technology' in the face of human error is not so brilliant.

Even a lay person would question the wisdom of that -- wouldn't we?

Has them cutting the engines. . . when I get home tonight I can give you the title of a book that has survivor accounts of what went down. The engines weren’t cut toute suite as depicted in the Cameron flick. They heard them running and the ship was moving at a good clip. Then after that it continued to 'go'.

When I was a little girl I remember thinking - Well then why didn't people swim to the iceberg? Or why didn't the boats drop people off and go back for more?

The ship kept moving - it was too far away.

Of course, depending on the structure of the ice berg -- it may have been possible --

had they not moved on ... ???

There was a full STOP command given to the engine room immediately after the impact. 10 minutes later the engine room was given the SLOW AHEAD order to start the ship underway again. 10 minutes after that another STOP command was sent to the engine room. 5 minutes later the engine room was sent a SLOW ASTERN order to spin up the engines on one side of the ship. After another 5 minutes, the final STOP command was sent to the engine room. In total, the engines were run and the ship was moving for about 15 minutes after the collision.

Many of the details, including the reasoning behind the repeated stopping and restarting of the engines, aren't known, but it's probably safe to presume that they are related to the known debate among the bridge crew as to the severity of the impact. The fact that the final STOP order wasn't given until 30 minutes after the collision says a lot about the amount of time it took them to realize how screwed they really were.

ON EDIT

Sorry, I was off on one detail. It wasn't that the logs survived, but that workers in the engine room survived. When they were interviewed during the investigations after the sinking, they gave the timeline above.

First you say that the ship was moving for about 15 minutes after the collision, and then you say that the last stop order was given 30 minutes after the collision. Which is it?

In any case, none of this would have prevented the ship from sinking or sinking as fast as it did. Andrews believed that after the collision that the ship would sink within an hour or two and his estimated sinking time turned out to be nearly twice that. All of the survivors said that the ship was at a dead stop when the life boats were starting to be loaded and never moved again.

This woman doesn't know what she's talking about and is just trying to sell a book. She wasn't even born yet at the time Lightoller died, so she certainly didn't get any info directly from him, and he himself wasn't on duty at the time of the collision nor involved in what happened in the immediate aftermath. Only a few men volunteered to remain in the engine room which was flooding and were hard-pressed keeping enough power going to keep the lights on, and they knew that by staying on working at that they were going to die on that ship.

There were a lot of blunders that led to the collision and sinking from the design to the construction to the watchers having no binoculars to the decision the captain made to continue at 21 knots through the icefield to the lackadaisical way the ice warnings from the other ships were handled to the lack of sufficient lifeboats and on and on. If there was a blunder in the orders given to attempt to avoid the burg, it was orders to both reverse engines AND turn hard astarboard as the ship would turn much more slowly with the engines in reverse. Even still, this in no guarantee they wouldn't have struck the burg anyway, and with the inferior rivets used to secure the metal plating the seams still would have split.

There was likely no reverse order, only one of the three eye witnesses mentions it. Besides even if there had been it would have taken longer to throw the ship's engines into reverse than it took the reach the berg.

the final STOP was 30 minutes after ---

but with STOPS and starts ... the ship had been RUNNING about 15 minutes after -- IN TOTO.

Never heard that they started the ship up again after the impact, other than the astern order to stop the ship.
Running the ship forward, even slowly would have increased the leakage, not that it would have mattered since there was plenty of time to get all the boats into the water.

and interesting to see how many people here have studied it!

Thank you for the info!

was there any part ot the story that involved a steering error? Now that we know more about the Titanic, perhaps there was something in the fiction that kind of matches?

For background - 14 years before the Titanic, Morgan Robertson wrote sea novels - one was about a ship named Titan that struck an iceberg and sank - in the Atlantic, but not on a native voyage. 1898 - the novel. 1912 - the Titanic.

Robertson also wrote a book that involved the periscope and is supposed to have filed a patent for one (that he says was denied). His fiction that involved a periscope preceded the official manufacture of one.

He also wrote a story of two children who are shipwrecked on an island, grew up there, and fell in love. Decades later - we saw Blue Lagoon.

Did anyone read his Titan story? Was steering mentioned?

It all makes you wonder how many other secrets are going to be revealed that will change the facts and the stories we have believed.

And scan it this weekend to let you know. I haven't read that book in probably 10 years.

Oh - I also have a Titanic computer game (the sinking simulation was used in Cameron's Titanic). I can fire that up. Regardless of what path you take – the ship keeps running past the hit. And in each path you take – you have to go past the engine room post hit and the long shot computer graphic shows the rudders going. Fascinating stuff.

They were too big to fail both at sea, The "Unsinkable" Titanic and from a financial standpoint.



If they had steered to the left instead of the right, disaster could have been avoided.



This is called "staying the course."



Thanks for the thread, defendandprotect.

back then - nobody needed to die, but the chairman of the White Star Line company insisted they keep on sailing...

I was later familiar with the Franklin family who were at least part owners of

The White Star Line. They later owned US Lines -- the SS UNITED STATES and SS AMERICA.

Though the passenger side was dropped as airplane travel took over.

And, I'm sure you know that the US Steamship Lines were heavily subsidized and carried

a great deal of military cargo.

In those days, they didn't make the profits that have been introduced in these last

decades, of course, but substantial.

And -- you also caused me to think that we could perhaps see a parallel with the WTC towers

which survived to become "White Elephants" and to enter the history books a little differently

but also in catastrophe. Some of the planning for the WTC complex was done at US Lines --

among many other businesses in the area, I'm sure.



PS: I'm sure you'll note that many are making clear that J. P. Morgan was owner of

Titanic -- and presumably White Star Line -- and I'm sure that's true. However, Franklin

is mentioned in newspaper reports I've seen, though it's hard to track because "Franklin

Roosevelt" keeps coming up -- and think that actually, one of the sons -- Kermit --

had some interest in US Lines.

White Star had lost ships before this one, as well --

Titanic Hoax researchers and scholars.

The Van Allen Belts would immediately destroy any ship that size that tried to sail the North Atlantic. Science says so.

The whole thing was done on a soundstage in Area 51. See? It's obviously been faked.

:rofl:
:kick: & R

This is an excelent document on the Titanic collision with some real science in it.

http://titanic-model.com/articles/Two_Points_in_Thirty_Seven_Seconds/Two%20Points%20in%20Thirty-Seven%20Seconds.pdf

The real time scale...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TAX0bgWIps

The Hollywood timescale for comparisson...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8CadIi00U4&feature=related

37 seconds is hardly enough for cineastic drama.

Lightoller himself speaks on the sinking.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWb5Uhyn_2A&feature=related

...the liner, while being dramatically damaged, would've stayed afloat. Only one or two watertight compartments would've been opened to the sea instead of six (which doomed the liner).

Who could order the cold blooded murder of hundreds of people you are honor bound to protect while there is a very real chance to save them, a few more seconds the ship would have cleared the berg. Murdoch would have been crucified for such a decission!

There are countless things that would be different, some for the better, like 1513 lives spared, and some for the worse, like rules concerning adequate lifeboats... And then there's that movie... x( ;)

The comparisson between Great Eastern and Titanic is intresting. A ship built half a century earlier would likely have survived with ease.

http://www.cuug.ab.ca/~branderr/risk_essay/Kline_lecture.html

Thanks so much for the link... I'll have to find the book. I've read "A Night to Remember" many times, and seen the movie by the same name, but I haven't read this one... :hi:

JP Morgan owned the ship.

A good book is Walter Lord's sequel to A Night To Remember called The Night Lives On.

He points out that they received numerous messages regarding bergs via wireless and their officers didn't put them together
to show that they were going full steam into a dangerous ice field. Also it was a moonless night with a flat sea, which made
spotting ice that more difficult.

When the 1st officer got the iceberg alert, he turned and reversed engines. A book of that time called Knight's Modern Seamanship stated clearly
that turning the ship and reversing is the worst course of action and guaranteed to cause a collision. Also the main propeller was disengaged when being reversed
and only the 2 smaller props on either side were engaged, hence the slow turn rate in trying to avoid the berg. They recommended going full speed to
get out of the path of the berg. When the ship was first taken out for sea trials,the test lasted EIGHT HOURS and was then proclaimed as seaworthy.
No way to check rate of turn or other navigation essentials. Imagine an 8 hour test on something like the Space Shuttle?