Talk:Sinking of the RMS Titanic

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Shouldn't "America" in the first paragraph title be changed to "Amerika"? The ship's name was spelled with a "K" in 1912. The ship's article says it was only changed to "C" after World War I, which, in case you didn't know, as it appears so, started in 1914. VolatileChemical 04:49, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Isn't that also the spelling of it in German, just like "Atlantik"? 65.255.130.104 05:11, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Lightoller's testimony

Noting that this passage has been needing a citation for a long while (I don't know who originally put in the part about Lightoller here), I hunted around. Never found this exact reference, nor anything similar in the American inquiry. (Could have missed it.) But I did find a similar quote in the British inquiry: Lightoller's testimony on Day 12 of British Board of Trade Inquiry. Lightoller says this near the bottom of that page. So I've changed the wiki text to reflect a quote that at least can be verified somewhere. Scholastica547 20:08, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New Information from the Wreck

I would like to take a hard look at the description of the sinking given here, as some important questions now surround the traditional story. This will take a while. Rumiton 09:47, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Inconsistent survival ratios

The sections "Titanic founders" and "Investigation, safety rules and the Californian" give different accounts of the survival ratios of genders and classes. In the latter case this may be referring to incorrect information stated at the time, but this is unclear from the text.

83.250.197.97 19:12, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Survivors from water?

Only 10 survivors were pulled from the water into lifeboats.

I don't quite understand this. If one lifeboat recovered 8 people from the water and another 4, where did the 10 come from? At first I thought this was referring to people survived the disaster completely i.e. those who later died were discounted. But this adds up to 9 not 10 Nil Einne 15:04, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The effect of reversing the engines

I would like to make the point in the article that whatever jingle-jangling noises the officer of the watch made with the telegraphs, in the 37 seconds before collision they would have had no effect at all (or negligible) on the rotational speed of the propellers, and therefore none on the speed of the ship through the water. The turbines that drove them would have needed at least a minute after the valve was shut before astern steam could have been safely applied. So his action didn't "make turning more difficult," it didn't do anything. The astern movement would have just been taking effect when the captain reached the bridge. Rumiton 06:24, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Please note: The Titanic did not have steam turbine engines, it had two four-cylinder triple-expansion reciprocating engines, starboard and port. The excess steam from those engines ran a low-pressure steam turbine powering the center propeller, and that could only operate in forward motion. It may be useful to the article to cite how long it takes to reverse a reciprocating engine. The "fact" that Murdoch "doomed the ship" by reversing the engines has problems since it is not clear that Murdoch gave such an order and it may just be a popular cultural notion put forward in books and movies. Fountains of Bryn Mawr 15:05, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
I corrected my mistake later in this page. Whether they were turbines or steam-recip (which you are right, they were) they wouldn't have had time to even slow the propellers appreciably before the collison, let alone reduce the headway of the ship. It seems that someone on the bridge rang full astern, but the testimony of one of the firemen was that the main engines did not completely stop until about half a minute after the collison. Rumiton 14:44, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Whether or not what Murdoch did with the propellers of the ship had any kind of effect is debatable because we have very little direct evidence as to what the facts are or even what Murdoch's intentions were (since he went down with the ship). We don't even know if there was only 37 seconds, that number was an estimate made by Harland & Wolff, based on tests with the Olympic[1]. Murdoch's intentions may not have been to turn or slow the ship as much as they were to avoid server damage to the ship. From Murdoch's personal experience and expertise with this series of ships, the worst that could happen would be to drive full ahead or full reverse on the propellers and turn hard left. This would a) - cause the ship to turn sideways to the berg (46,328 tons of ship at full speed tends to keeps going in a straight line no mater how hard you turn it), and b) - cause server damage to the starboard propeller/shat/engine if it hit the berg at full RPMs forward or reverse. The results of this maneuver would be damage starting at the center of the ship back and damage to the starboard propeller and probably the engine. This is not what we have. We have a ship with damage to the bow, and the remainder of the ship, including the propellers, clearing the berg with aparently no damage. So on the face of it, Murdoch's jingle-jangling with the telegraph may have done something since we don’t have the damage you would expect with the propellers running at near full RPM with a port turn only. And if that jingle-jangling was an order of STOP on the starboard telegraph and FULL-ASTERN on the port telegraph with a greater distance to the berg it did make all the difference in the world (except for the fact that the ship sank due to minor damage to the bow :^( ). But like I said--- its all speculation, we don't have the guy and we don't have the ship. It would be useful to the article to cite the various testimony (like the one Rumiton cite above), and various theories and current thinking on the subject, as long as they fall with WP:Undue weight. Fountains of Bryn Mawr 15:07, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I believe the testimony of the fireman who stated that the engines did not fully stop until some time after the collision means a great deal and rings true to me. It was the rudder that created the glancing angle of impact. I know it does not make me a source for Wiki and I fully accept that, but I served for ten years as Chief Officer on all of the world's last four coal-burning steamships of Titanic's size. There are a number of things about this article that grate badly, but it is too time-consuming to look for sources to back up what I know to be the most likely truth. Rumiton (talk) 14:09, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The turning point of the disaster came at 1:15 a.m., when the openings at the bow for the anchors went under the water

What "openings at the bow"? Were they the hawsepipes? Surely not, they pierce the focsle and come out on the upper deck at the windlass. No ingress is possible. Were they the spurling pipes on the focsle deck leading to the chain lockers? Unlikely. They are barely wide enough to accept the chain, and are blocked with concrete plugs at sea. And for them to be under water the entire fore part of the vessel would have to be submerged, allowing water to enter through vents and doors far in excess of the small amount that might get in through spurlings. And what is the source for all that lurid garbage? Gosh, this article is irritating. Rumiton (talk) 13:03, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed text on alternative theories

A number of alternative theories diverging from the standard explanation for the Titanic's demise have been brought forth since shortly after the sinking. These include a coal fire;[1] pack ice rather than an iceberg;[2][3] the notion that White Star sailed the nearly identical Olympic and not Titanic as part of an insurance scam;[4] and even a mummy's curse.[5] Biruitorul (talk) 19:57, 2 May 2008 (UTC)