The sinking

[Paul Daley]

I have just had a thought or two

After Titanic hit the iceberg and the watertight doors were closed, this caused the compartments to flood in sequence, pulling her down by the head. The downforce of this resulted in the ship breaking in two.

How would the sinking have been affected if the doors had been left open?,
Would she have sunk on an even keel and stayed afloat longer?

Another point of interest is the angle at which she hit the berg. If the berg was not seen at all and Titanic hit head on, lives would have been lost at the bow of the ship, but it may have stayed afloat as the flooding (if any) could have been contained in the foremost compartment.
Titanic could then have been towed into port, thus saving the lives of around 95% of the passengers on board.......just a thought

What do you think??

[Brittanic]

I think that the Breaking into two pieces was something that would of happened.I think that it probably wouldn't
of sank as fast.

[furbaby]

Was it not proven at one point, that had she hit the iceberg head on, she would not have sank? I do think that was actually proven..

as they say though, hindsight is 20/20

[mellonfish]

going back to the point of closing the conpartments ! at the time they did not know how badley dameged she was , so it is pratice if you have a leek in one conpartment you close it off all together to stop it from spreading . but if they new how bad the damege was they would not of closed the conpartments cos it would of given them a coupel more hours !!

[LadyAstor]

compartments ventilated to the sea is never a good thing.

I think it would have gone down faster. just sunk, versus tip thing.

i think some lives were saved by this, albeit marginally.

[Brittanic]

Yes Furbaby it was proven that it wouldn't of sunk if hit head on.But about 100 out of 2228 people would of died becuase that's where the third class mens rooms were if I'm not mistaken.

[Paul Daley]

Yes, I have just looked up these theories, this is what I found

As for a head-on collision, let's examine the actual event before moving on to hypothetical situations.

Titanic sank because the collision with the iceberg tore a series of holes in the starboard bow, and the first five watertight compartments became flooded. The ship was designed to remain afloat with up to four of those compartments flooded, but not five.

Now, if Titanic had instead collided with the iceberg head-on, the entire bow would have been crushed, but it's believed that only the first two or three watertight compartments would have been compromised. If so, she would have been able to remain afloat. It had happened before: the Arizona had survived a head-on collision with an iceberg in 1879, and the Olympic had survived a crash with HMS Hawke in 1911.

But we don't know if Titanic would have been so lucky. Arizona and Olympic were both less massive than Titanic, they had been traveling more slowly than Titanic's twenty-four knots at the time of impact, and they had both hit smaller, "softer" objects than the large iceberg that Titanic encountered. In fact, it's possible that a head-on collision could have been more catastrophic for Titanic than the actual disaster was.

Consider this: nobody knows the exact shape or composition of the iceberg that Titanic hit. There may have been an underwater ledge or outcropping of ice which would have lifted or turned the ship and made a direct impact impossible. Attempting such a maneuver might still have torn Titanic's hull, or driven her onto the iceberg, or even capsized her. Aside from hull damage and sinking, she could also have faced other hazards ranging from falling ice to boiler fires. The ship could have remained afloat but still killed many or all of its occupants.

The bottom line is, there's no conclusive answer. A head-on collision with the iceberg would certainly have had a different effect, and in the best case would have saved hundreds of lives, but there's no way to know for sure.

What if they left the watertight doors open?

This was a conjecture at the 1912 hearings and it has persisted as a question today. Would not Titanic have settled evenly over it's great length for a longer period of time, thus increasing the chances of help arriving in time?

NO! Ships don't sink that way. If the flooding started on the forward starboard side, then the water entering there will upset the 'trim' of the ship slightly in that direction. As more water pours in, it pools at the low spot, the forward starboard area, increasing the tip at the nose and the list to starboard. It's not like flooding a gymnasium supported by the ground.

As the water works it way back, it flow to the low sides, increasing the forward tip and the list, until launching lifeboats on the high side is impossible. As the water flows through the boiler rooms, power for the generators is lost.

Titanic had a number of bulkheads that did not have doors in the lower spaces. In fact, half of the bulkheads (mostly from the engine room aft) went up to D-deck and many doors were left out. This facilitated separating the classes by placing them in separate compartments with no physical access in the decks below D-deck. It also reduced maintenance and construction costs, particularly if routine access between compartments served no purpose.

If all watertight doors had been left open, the simulation model showed that the lights would be lost sometime between 12:40 or 12:50 (more than an hour earlier than actual), but the ship would still sink after capsizing some 30 minutes sooner than the actual. In short, you have a severe list that would hamper the launch of the boats and darkness for 45 minutes before the end.

Note that this scenario requires the crew to get the doors open in flooded areas, and also requires that they disable the float switches to the water tight doors. They also have to sit and watch as critical areas of the ship flood.

Note also, that when a ship capsizes, all the water in the ship has to shift to a new location, and this will happen VERY VIOLENTLY.

[Xtapolapocet]

Paul said:

I have just had a thought or two

After Titanic hit the iceberg and the watertight doors were closed, this caused the compartments to flood in sequence, pulling her down by the head. The downforce of this resulted in the ship breaking in two.

How would the sinking have been affected if the doors had been left open?,
Would she have sunk on an even keel and stayed afloat longer?

Another point of interest is the angle at which she hit the berg. If the berg was not seen at all and Titanic hit head on, lives would have been lost at the bow of the ship, but it may have stayed afloat as the flooding (if any) could have been contained in the foremost compartment.
Titanic could then have been towed into port, thus saving the lives of around 95% of the passengers on board.......just a thought

What do you think??

Thank you for the topic. There was actually an experiment conducted with a scaled model of the Titanic.

In the experiment, the hypothesis was she would have sunk level and possibly slower causing more lives to be saved at the arrival of the Carpathia. This was not the case. The experiment shown that she would have lost power much sooner, thus causing pandemonium on board, and she would have turned turtle in the water (rolled over). Her listing would have been on the starboard side (where she struck the berg). She would have lasted, roughly, a little over an hour as opposed to the over 2 hours it took for her to succumb to her wounds.

Very likely, more lives would have been lost in the melodrama that would have been played out in the event the doors were left open. With the knowledge of the time, the best decisions were made in regard to her injury. She lasted longer and more lives were saved, due to more time to load the lifeboats and call for assistance.

GREAT TOPIC!

-- X

[Brittanic]

Now this is sad.Doomed if they do anything.

[tomdyer]

In theory it is almost certain that Titanic would have stayed afloat if she hit the iceberg head on as she was designed to survive such accidents.