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Titanic Conspiracy

Titanic would have sunk- without the iceberg

Research carried out on the keel of the Titanic show that the liner was doomed to sink even if it had not hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage. Experts studied previously undiscovered portions of the keel and uncovered structural flaws that they believe would have made it vulnerable to rough seas. They also believe that these flaws were responsible for speeding up the rate at which the ship sank. This reduced the time available for rescue ships to get to the fated liner and subsequently reduced the number of passengers and crew who could have been saved.

This research, carried out by a team working on a new Titanic documentary, throws into question the generally accepted account of the events of April 14th 1912, the night the Titanic sank. It has previously been thought that the stern of the ship snapped when water flooding into the bow forced it to rise to a 45 degree angle. However, according to the documentary’s experts, the stern snapped after it reached an angle of just 10 degrees, a situation it could have found itself in during a strong storm meaning that even if it had not encountered the iceberg, the Titanic was ill-built for transatlantic crossing. (June 12th)

Charlie Cottrell

http://www.historytoday.com/MainArticle ... &amid=5332
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Titanic would have sunk- without the iceberg

Research carried out on the keel of the Titanic show that the liner was doomed to sink even if it had not hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage. Experts studied previously undiscovered portions of the keel and uncovered structural flaws that they believe would have made it vulnerable to rough seas. They also believe that these flaws were responsible for speeding up the rate at which the ship sank. This reduced the time available for rescue ships to get to the fated liner and subsequently reduced the number of passengers and crew who could have been saved.

This research, carried out by a team working on a new Titanic documentary, throws into question the generally accepted account of the events of April 14th 1912, the night the Titanic sank. It has previously been thought that the stern of the ship snapped when water flooding into the bow forced it to rise to a 45 degree angle. However, according to the documentary’s experts, the stern snapped after it reached an angle of just 10 degrees, a situation it could have found itself in during a strong storm meaning that even if it had not encountered the iceberg, the Titanic was ill-built for transatlantic crossing. (June 12th)

Charlie Cottrell

http://www.historytoday.com/MainArticle ... &amid=5332
Click to expand...
 
Lets wait and see what the documentary is about: that piece was written by a journalist hack.

Case in point: the Titanic's sister, the Olympic, built to essentially the same design as the Titanic, once encountered a storm so strong that a hatch cover was ripped from her forecastle and flung into the forward part of the ship. She DIDN'T suffer catastrophic damage as the article says. The two ships were built side by side, with the same materials. Why should one be weak and not the other?
 
DrPLee said:
The Titanic's sister, the Olympic, built to essentially the same design as the Titanic, once encountered a storm so strong that a hatch cover was ripped from her forecastle and flung into the forward part of the ship. She DIDN'T suffer catastrophic damage as the article says. The two ships were built side by side, with the same materials. Why should one be weak and not the other?
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The version of that article that I read (in the Daily Telegraph, IIRC), went on to say that the wreck of the third ship in that class, the Britannic, had also been examined, and the expansion joint which failed on the Titanic had been substantially beefed up on the (later-built) Britannic.

This finding was used to suggest that the engineers at White Star were aware of a major contributing factor to the Titanic's sinking, and had taken steps to rectify it on the later ship. Not conclusive, mind you, but an interesting observation nonetheless.
 
If that was the case, why wasn't the Olympic retrofitted with another expansion joint? Olympic only ever had two and sailed very successfully for two decades after the Titanic disaster, even through the 1929 undersea earthquake off the Grand Banks.

This whole story looks to me to be a non-story: create a controversy where none exists just for ratings or newspaper sales. It has certainly created a hell of a storm on Encyclopedia Titanica and the Titanic Research and Modelling Association website. Many of the contributors on that board were interviewed for the programmes, but due to Non Disclosure Agreements, they can't say a word about it.....until after the show airs that is.
 
Heres another point: in December 1912, 8 months after the Titanic disaster, the Olympic retrurned to its shipyard for massive structural improvements, including raising the watertight bulkheads, and raising the double bottom so that it formed a double skin above the waterline. The Britannic had already been building for 13 months at this point. Why wasn't the Olympic fitted with an extra expansion joint when all that extra - very major - work was being done?
 
Sorry if there is a thread on this elsewhere I couldnt see one.

What is the deal with that letter in this months issue about the people trapped in the Titanic who are still alive :shock:

The bloke, Patrick Smash, is clearly insane but the comment that there are fully documented accounts of SOS transmissions being heard to this day at the site of the sinking - is this the case?

Is there even one instance of someone reporting an SOS being heard. Im sure that would have been reported somewhere, or did the captains all choose just to tell Mr Smash of their amazing discovery?
 
Missing key that sank Titanic for sale
Simon de Bruxelles

SOUTHAMPTON A small iron key that could have saved the Titanic from disaster is expected to fetch up to £70,000 when it is sold at auction in Devizes next month.

The key, which opened the locker containing the lookout’s binoculars, was left behind when the liner set off on her maiden voyage on April 10, 1912. The lives of 1,522 passengers and crew were lost when the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank in the Atlantic. When asked what difference the binoculars might have made, Fred Fleet, a lookout who survived the disaster, said: “Enough to get out of the way.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/u ... 343776.ece
 
A fuller version from the Telegraph:

Key that could have saved the Titanic
By Graham Tibbetts
Last Updated: 6:29am BST 29/08/2007

It looks for all the world like an ordinary key but this unremarkable piece of metal could have saved the Titanic from disaster.

It is thought to have fitted the locker that contained the crow's nest binoculars, vital in detecting threats to the liner lurking in the sea in the pre-sonar days of 1912.

Catastrophically for the Titanic and the 1,522 lives lost with her, the key's owner, Second Officer David Blair, was removed from the crew at the last minute and in his haste forgot to hand it to his replacement.

Without access to the glasses, the lookouts in the crow's nest were forced to rely on their eyes and only saw the iceberg when it was too late to take action.

One, Fred Fleet, who survived the disaster, later told the official inquiry into the tragedy that if they had had binoculars they would have seen the obstacle sooner.

When asked by a US senator chairing the inquiry how much sooner, Mr Fleet replied: "Enough to get out of the way."

The key and its importance has only properly come to light 95 years later after it was put up for auction.

Alan Aldridge, of auctioneers Henry Aldridge and Sons in Devizes, Wilts, said: "We think this key is one of the most important artefacts from the Titanic to have come to light.

"A few days before the Titanic sailed, Mr Blair was bumped off the ship, a decision which probably saved his life.

"But in Blair's rush to leave the Titanic he carried this key off with him in his pocket and forgot to hand it to his replacement, Charles Lightoller.

"Obviously he only realised this after the Titanic had left Southampton and kept the key as a memento. But had Lightoller had the key then there probably would have been a pair of binoculars in the crow's nest.

"It is the key that had the potential to save the Titanic."

Mr Blair, 37, from Broughty Ferry, Forfarshire, sailed on the Titanic from Belfast to Southampton on April 3, 1912.

He had been due to be the second officer for the Titanic's voyage to New York on April 10. But the White Star Line, the ship's owners, removed Mr Blair and drafted in Henry Wilde, a senior officer from sister ship, the Olympic, because of his experience of such large liners.

He wrote of his disappointment in a postcard he sent to his sister-in-law days before the Titanic left Southampton. In the card, which is also up for auction, he wrote: "Am afraid I shall have to step out to make room for chief officer of the Olympic.

This is a magnificent ship, I feel very disappointed I am not to make her first voyage." The 46,000-ton Titanic struck the iceberg in the north Atlantic at 11.45pm on April 14 and sank at 2.20am on April 15. Mr Wilde was among those who perished.

According to the US inquiry into the sinking, Mr Fleet recalled seeing Mr Blair with binoculars during the trip from Belfast to Southampton. Asked where Mr Blair's glasses went, Mr Fleet replied: "We do not know. We only know we never got a pair." Senator Smith, the chairman of the inquiry, said: "Suppose you had glasses… could you have seen this black object [at] a greater distance?"

Fleet: "We could have seen it a bit sooner."

Smith: "How much sooner?"

Fleet: "Well, enough to get out of the way."

Smith: "Were you disappointed that you had no glasses?"

Fleet: "Yes, sir."

Mr Blair, who was later awarded the King's Gallantry medal for jumping into the Atlantic to rescue a crewman, eventually passed the key on to his daughter Nancy. She gave it to the British and International Seamans Society in the 1980s.

Intriguingly, the key may not entirely unlock the Titanic mystery. According to an alternative account, it may have unlocked the crow's nest telephone.

It is expected to fetch up to £70,000 on September 22.

http://tinyurl.com/2ueetl
 
Somehow this sounds a bit dodgy. There was only one set of glasses on board? He couldn't borrow someone else's? No-one thought to force the lock?
 
The greater conspiracy here is that Blair's hometown (Broughty Ferry) has moved from being in the City of Dundee to being in the ancient county of Forfarshire...
 
Broughty Ferry was incorporated into the City of Dundee in 1913 - previously it was in Forfarshire. So the location is correct for the time of the sinking.

I agree with Anome - surely they weren't the only set of glasses on the entire ship?
 
Fizz32 said:
I agree with Anome - surely they weren't the only set of glasses on the entire ship?
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Probably not. However,
[The key] is thought to have fitted the locker that contained the crow's nest binoculars, vital in detecting threats to the liner lurking in the sea in the pre-sonar days of 1912.
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If this locker was actually in the crow's nest, the lookout would have had to abandon his post (a long climb on a cold night, too) to find another pair.

And he might well have considered that leaving his post for an unspecified time would be a greater danger to the ship than not having a pair of 'bins'.


But the watch must have changed many times before the collision, so the lack of bins should have been reported much earlier, and acted upon by someone. Maybe some officer said "We'll get another pair in New York" (or something), and the horrible significance of the lack was not realised until after the sinking...?

Intriguingly, the key may not entirely unlock the Titanic mystery. According to an alternative account, it may have unlocked the crow's nest telephone.
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This seems less likely - a look-out who can't communicate with the bridge is almost useless, so such a fault would probably have been acted upon almost immediately, although the lack of bins would have seemed less serious.

Anyway, why would the crow's nest phone need to locked? Did they expect drunken passengers to scramble up the mast and start ringing the bridge?! :shock:

No doubt this has all been discussed many times before by the sort of enthusiast who can tell you how many rivets there were in the hull, and how many bottles of champagne were carried on that fateful voyage.... ;)
 
I suppose I might as well rekindle this thread and advertise my forthcoming e-book on the Titanic disaster, on the Californian saga; this is a ship that was supposedly close to the Titanic and did nothing to help despite rockets being seen. Wireless wasn't mandatory in those days, and the operator wasn't awakened. The Titanic sank with the loss of 1500 people.

Conspiracy related? Not much, unless you count possible manipulation of evidence by the witnesses to hide what they had seen and done...or not done. More details here: http://www.paullee.com/book_details.php
 
Cheers for the heads-up, P. I recently read The Maiden Voyage by Geoffrey Marcus which was fairly good. Although he complains about being delayed and stymied by various official organisations when he was trying to recount complete details surrounding the tragedy, there is no massive conspiracy theory expounded apart from, as you say, several organisations trying to cover their own asses in the individual cock-ups that occurred.
He also points out the Californian's inactivity, the masters subsequent stonewalling and the possibility that more lives could've been saved if they'd responded not only to radio signals but to clearly seen distress flares.
 
Thanks mate (long time no hear btw).
"The Maiden Voyage" despite a few errors, is still a good comprehensive read. It didn't go down well with those who support Captain Lord of the Californian, and there was an attempt to supress the book. Fortunately, Geoffrey Marcus ignored their rantings!
 
DrPLee said:
....and my ebook is now available! :D
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I'd love to read it, but £20 for an e-book seems a bit steep.

For that money, I'd expect a hard-back coffee table book, full of glossy illustrations!

(Or am I, yet again, behind the times? If so, my early retirement could prove to be a bad financial decision... :( )
 
For a 326 page book, with research trips covering half of the country, I think its good value. Plus the fact that I am unemployed, had to give up my last job because of ill health, get no dole, and this is my only source of income makes me think its good value for money.
 
I heard a very brief mention on American television last evening that what really sank the Titanic was "faulty rivets."

Any truth to this one?
 
It's been in the news here too:

Cheap rivets blamed for massive loss of life as 'Titanic' sank
By David Usborne in New York
Wednesday, 16 April 2008

The Titanic might have gone down more slowly and more of its passengers could have been rescued if the shipyard that built it, Harland & Wolff in Northern Ireland, had not skimped on the quality of the rivets holding its hull sections together, say US researchers.

The authors of a book, What Really Sank the Titanic, claim the shipyard over-reached in attempting to build three new liners at once for the White Star Line: the famously opulent Titanic, which sank with the loss of 1,500 lives 96 years ago this week, the Olympic and the Britannic. Unable to find all the good quality iron rivets it needed, it eventually resorted to buying batches of lower-quality iron.

Theories about shoddy rivets popping prematurely after the ship struck an iceberg have been around for years; officials at Harland & Wolff have consistently dismissed them.

But this time the authors, both metallurgists, say they have found fresh evidence from archives in London and from the shipyard as well as from analysing rivets from the wreck.

By the first part of the last century, other shipyards had mostly already switched to all-steel rivets. Although steel was used for the central sections of hull of the Titanic, the design called for iron rivets for bow and aft sections. Most of the cracks that opened after its collision with the iceberg were in the iron-riveted forward part of the hull.

It appears that the yard, unable to find all the best-quality rivets needed, made of so-called No 4 bar, eventually settled on some rivets of No 3 bar, which is considered inferior because of greater levels of impurities, notably of slag.

In their book, Timothy Foecke and co-author Jennifer Hooper McCarty, say many of 48 rivets taken from the seabed show they contained slag. They commissioned a blacksmith to make rivets according to the 1912 specifications, of 4- and 3-bar quality. The former withstood 9,000kg of pressure under laboratory conditions, but the rivets with slag popped at 4,000kg.

The pace of research into the sinking of the Titanic, which stands as one of the world's worst maritime disasters, picked up after the first of multiple expeditions to the wreck site in 1985. Factors cited that may have contributed to the tragedy have ranged from the frigidity of the water, the small size of the ship's rudder, which may have made evading the iceberg more difficult, and the fact that another ship in the area did not pick up distress signals because its radio had been shut down for the night.

But this latest book is likely to disturb both the shipyard and bereaved relatives because of the implication that without the alleged construction short-cuts the ship might at least have sunk more slowly, allowing for a much-diminished death toll.

A spokesman for Harland & Wolff declined to comment. He referred inquiries to David Livingstone, a retired naval architect who worked at the company for more than 40 years.

In a telephone interview, Mr Livingstone was sceptical about the findings: "All sorts of conspiracy theories come up and unfortunately the people who hold them will never change their minds. All we can ask is that the people proposing these theories show us the evidence and present it to be examined by their peers. If it is verified, so be it. But that is not the case here."

Mr Livingstone questioned in particular whether the researchers could say where exactly on the ship the 48 rivets they tested had come from. They could, he noted, have been not in the hull sections but from "secondary structures" on the vessel not designed to withstand high pressures.

But the authors say their archival research backs their contention that the shipyard was overwhelmed by the demands of building three ships at once and therefore directors were forced into compromising on quality, not only using sub-par iron but also hiring extra riveters of less certain talent.

Ms Hooper McCarty saw minutes of Harland & Wolff board meetings. "The board was in crisis mode," she said. "It was constant stress. Every meeting it was, 'There's problems with the rivets and we need to hire more people'."

Tim Trower of the US-based Titanic Historical Society, said: "This is fascinating. This puts the final nail in the arguments and explains why the incident was so dramatically bad."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 09622.html
 
Thanks, Rynner. You always come through.

If the rivets actually were that shoddy they likely popped like strings of firecrackers after the collision.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
If the rivets actually were that shoddy they likely popped like strings of firecrackers after the collision.
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If they were shoddy, yes..
Mr Livingstone questioned in particular whether the researchers could say where exactly on the ship the 48 rivets they tested had come from. They could, he noted, have been not in the hull sections but from "secondary structures" on the vessel not designed to withstand high pressures.
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As usual, for every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert!
 
They could, he noted, have been not in the hull sections but from "secondary structures" on the vessel not designed to withstand high pressures.
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This reminds me a little bit of the people who are forever calling the local authorities and excitedly reporting "broken cables" dangling from Cincinnati's splendid old Suspension Bridge (the prototype of the Brooklyn Bridge).

But what those cables actually are are wind cables, designed to break in extremely high winds, at least in limited numbers. They are replaced during regular routine maintenance or when the bridge superstructure is re-painted.
 
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