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I got a question try to answer this one which I don't think you can and this is to go back and look at the blueprints of the Olympic and Titanic and you might learn something about where all the water type doors were here we go since it got hit on the right side and it was filling up why did not this mother f***** lean to the right
If all the water type doors were shut and how did the boat go down evenly Square it would have been leaning to the right in the front why went down just straight down to the front and needed to lean and it didn't do it
My grandfather witnessed the tragedy of the Titanic with his own eyes, but sadly never made it through. When the ship struck the iceberg, he repeatedly yelled out warnings to those around him that the ship was going to sink, but everyone just ignored him. After his final warning, they finally kicked him out of the movie theater!
I’m just here to say in a time when it’s common to call the internet a mistake and social media a disease, it’s content like this that makes the internet a net good. I’m so glad I found this channel. So well done.
Internet is not a mistake. If there was no internet you wouldn't see the truth. Social media is a different animal. It's making our children stupid. Social media makes the truth a lie, and a lie the truth.
@@livetotell100 the "truth" that the internet spreads causes major problems too. Not everything on the internet is true social media or not. If the internet was properly managed and taken care of it could be a net good. As of right now and for the rest of our specific human lives the internet stays a neutral, just as much good as bad
One thing I always loved was that during the Inquiry, Wilding postulated the total damage to be no more than 12 square feet, or about the size of a refrigerator. When they used sonar to scan the hull, the total of the damage the sonar revealed was indeed 12 square feet. Wilding knew exactly what he was talking about. Another great video, Mike.
If I recall correctly, the side scan sonar team tried to avoid being too definitive about the size of the iceberg damage, as they also found a lot of damage caused by the simple fact she was bent as she hit the bottom
@@KiwiSentinel Are you talking about any specific depiction in particular? Firstly, at the investigation, Wilding correctly speculated that the total damage was small as mentioned. However, he was overruled as it seemed unbelievable that a ship the size of Titanic would be laid low by damage that covered just around a square of pavement. That lead to the popular "300 ft gash" theory that has been oft quoted. Secondly, the damage is extremely small in comparison to the ship. So in any normal depiction where you can see the entire hull, the damage will just be very thin lines along the hull that look like scratches. In fact, the breaks are estimated to be roughly the width of an adult hand. Keep in mind, this is a hull that is 104 feet from the bottom of the keel to the top of the bridge. Any modern depiction of the damage is actually very oversized compared to the actual damage, just to illustrate what happened. Here is one such depiction, but again, in reality, the openings would've been really small if we were to see the ship from the side at a distance far enough to include the entire body. http :// writing. engr. psu. edu/ uer/ bassett/ fig3.gif
@@KiwiSentinel - Whaleguy has most of the factors correct. There are several aspects at play here - while Wilding (representing Harland & Wolff) did provide evidence to both the US and UK inquiries, the fact of the matter is that those inquiries were run by the US Senate and Justice Lord Mersey respectively - their expertise was legal rather than technical, and Wilding's submissions constituted a single piece of evidence which, while based on solid engineering knowledge and calculations, was still effectively theoretical. On top of that, it's worth remembering that the illustrators were employed by the press, and the press will always go for the most sensational take on any given story - the inquiries couldn't officially determine what the actual damage was, and the claims presented a sliding scale from Wilding's evidence to the theory of the 300-foot "gash". On that basis it's logical that the press would go with the latter as most likely. More generally speaking, in the minds of the public at the time, the notion that a liner of that size could be sunk as a result of anything less than massive and catastrophic damage simply defied belief.
Interesting fact, Robert Hichens (1882-1940) who was one of six quartermasters aboard the HMS Titanic is buried in my city, in Aberdeen, Scotland. He became infamously known as “the man who sunk the Titanic” because he was at the helm at the time of the collision, this stayed with him throughout his life and he was treated as unlucky on ships he worked on after Titanic. When he died he died as a pauper and was put into an unmarked grave, and only recently (past few years) has he been given a headstone as his descendants were able to find where he was actually buried. So even tho he survived it came as a cost, where folk judged him his entire life and was buried in an unmarked grave.
The fact is the quartermaster merely obeyed the orders of the officer of the watch. He would never have seen the iceberg from his position at the wheel. He would never have made an arbitrary movement of the wheel. The sheer size of the Titanic meant she took time to answer to the wheel. People who blamed him were no more than ignorant bullies.
I remember this like it was yesterday, Robert was one of my best friends when I boarded the ship. One of my fatal memories was when Robert sunk the titanic and I was in shock to see my friend make this decision. Overall even though he didnt make it, I decided to watch him die because of the choices he made #SinkTheShipRobert
It's interesting how the damage was just 6 thin slits totalling 12 square feet of damage, and yet that's all that was needed to send the Titanic sinking to the ocean bottom in 2 hours and 40 minutes. When I first read about the Titanic, even I had imagined the iceberg having ripped a huge gash measuring 300 feet long by about 15 to 25 feet wide.
@@db7610 No, because when Titanic sank and went down to the ocean floor, it was already full of water, so the water pressure equally acted on both the inside and outside of the hull, so there was no pressure difference. E.g. the submersible Titan recently imploded because it was not filled with water beforehand, and the water pressure came from outside only, so there was a huge pressure difference between inside and outside.
There's a story from WWII, I think, about a ship that was hit by a torpedo. To save her and stop/slow the flooding, the crew used mattresses and blankets tied together and lowered over the side of the ship where the hole was. The mash of material was pressed into the hole like too much toilet paper in a drain and significantly reduced the flooding enough for the ship to limp back to a drydock.
It's weird how such an experienced captain didn't even attempt basic damage control like that. Have the crew smashing up deck chairs and stuffing the front of the ship with the broken wood - it displaces water and increases buoyancy. Grab the canvas hatch covers, weight one end and lower them over the side with ropes - instant hull patch.
@@saucyduckglobalomnihyperme7510 It's tens of thousands of t of water a few broken chairs won't give her back her buoyancy. Why canvas wasn't used I don't know that's been done for centuries. Maybe didn't have anything large enough or no good way of getting it there. Diving to a hole on an age of sail sloop and stuffing some rope in and covering the hole with canvas is a bit easier than doing it in the frigid Atlantic on such big ship. Someone usually had to dive down and make sure the canvas is positioned well. In theory if they could have patched boiler rooms 5 and 6 it might have worked but 6 was already full pretty quick and that was enough to take her down. She may have had the margin to stay afloat with Nr 6 flooded maybe not. I think the pumps could do 250 t an hour so if the inflow could have been stabilized in Nr. 5 and 6 rooms maybe. Could certainly have given her some more time, maybe enough for Carpathia to arrive before she sank, maybe even hook up her own pumps until a pump ship could arrive and take over while they tow her to port. I know that using canvas was less common then than it had been 50 years earlier don't know why. Maybe it was deemed innefective or ships simply didn't carry a lot of it anymore. But mainly I think the job of diving around the hull and figuring out where to put canvas was too much to ask in -2C water.
@@221b-l3t The cargo hatch covers were big thick sheets of canvas. No need to dive because they knew where the water was coming in, especially in Nr. 5. The ship was at a stop, all you had to do is weight the canvas and lower it over the side by the correct amount, which anyone could've calculated in about 3 seconds. And the practice had been around since the 1770s. Also they only needed to displace a few percent of the water in the bow to have a big effect on down angle, which means limiting spillover. Especially if you can get Nr. 5 watertight and cover another square foot or so of opening, they really might have floated until morning. It just seems like Smith got told too much of the ship is open to the sea and help was hours away and sort of gave up
@@saucyduckglobalomnihyperme7510 Im just going to PRETEND that you believe the Captain, with some 30+yrs with White Star... isnt smart enough to cobble together a makeshift patch... to get that ship back to drydock.... Let that doozy sink in... Shit, Next time I go Time Travelling, Im going to let YOU explain that piece of (has no words to describe it) to the Captain. Maybe by some twist of fate, I can even go back in time with you.. and make YOU the Captain of the Boat... Lets see you pull that miracle pece of thought out of your head then...
That is a technique called "fothering" and it has been known for centuries to be effective. One of the genuine mysteries about the Titanic was the near complete lack of damage control ordered by Capt. Smith. Given the nature of the damage suffered by the Titanic even fothering with carpets would likely have been effective enough to keep her afloat for a significantly longer period of time. As it was, her hatch covers were heavy canvas, and would probably have worked very well.
Those visuals were so helpful; over time reading various accounts of the damage and flooding progression provide an approximate image of what actually happened, but seeing it step by step here makes everything so much more clear. It's so interesting how much information can be extracted about ships in general from Titanic.
Yay thanks! It can be tricky to keep track of accounts when they throw around ‘forepeak tank’, ‘holds 2 and 3’, the ‘mail sorting room’ etc. I never used to be able to visualise it too clearly!
Fun fact: If you were to lay all of Titanic's rivets end to end, they'd stretch roughly from NYC to Boston, or for my non-American friends, that'd be roughly the distance from Melbourne to Tasmania, London to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Berlin to Copenhagen, Cairo to Jerusalem, or Tokyo to Osaka. Or for an even more clear frame of reference, if you stacked them one on top of another, they'd nearly reach the average altitude of the International Space Station.
Outstanding, as with all your meticulously made documentary vignettes. The intermittent damage described was extremely fascinating, particularly the 45-foot long incision between Boiler Rooms 5 and 6. More remarkable is how Robert Ballard corroborated this from his early exploration of the wreck site. Thank you so much for creating this and sharing - top notch.
The separation in the plates between boiler room five and six was the one that doomed the ship. It extended just two feet into boiler room five inside the forward coal bunker. The hatches and the bunker were designed only to contain coal, not for watertightness. Eventually the aft bulkhead of the bunker collapsed, and the moment that happened Titanic's sinking accelerated.
I'm glad that you acknowledged Dr. Ballard's original 1986 discovery of the only part of the iceberg damage that remains visible past the mud line. But there is actually two far superior images of it in his "The Discovery of the Titanic" book on pages 196 and 197 that clearly shows the unmistakable separated hull plating.
What's more is that section of iceberg damage happens be the line that extends nearly all through Boiler 6 and just into 5 and where it's situated about three feet above the keel is almost exactly how Chief Fireman Fredrick Barrett described it his hearing testimonies.
I seen alot of pictures seen alot of documentaries and read a book or two on Titanic and never once have I seen a picture of iceberg damage. I'm sure they had to use some kind of sonar to see what they suspect was the damage the iceberg did as its well and truly below what can be seen with any traditional camera. Any damage that is seen on the actual ship with traditional cameras is the effect of the ship hitting the sea floor not iceberg damage.
@@edbeasant9494 I cited the book and pages, please go do some research. The iceberg damage hidden by the mud was imaged using ultrasound on a later expedition.
@@nowhereman1046 yes I know but how would there be iceberg damage above the mudline when the iceberg only damaged the hull below the water line? The mudline almost reaches the anchor which is well above sealine. Doesn't add up mate.
@@edbeasant9494 Um no. The keel, especially around the bow section's bilge keel is intact all the way back to the break point. The damage I'm referring to is almost to the tee a perfect match for what Fireman Barrett saw and where he said he saw it in Boiler Room 6 and it terminates aft just into Boiler room 5, again as surviving boiler room crew described.
Very well explained. My Dad was a junior ship's engineer and I remember being surprised hen he explained how water tight bulkheads did not go "all the way up" even in ships built in the 40s and 50s.
I mean, it does kinda make sense for passenger ships. If you do a whole bunch of compartmentalizing like on, say, a battleship, your ship will be able to withstand lots more damage - except that you’re not building a battleship, you’re building a passenger ship that ideally won’t end up in a war zone. Too much compartmentalization and movement around the ship becomes difficult and inconvenient, which would annoy a great many passengers (iirc Great Eastern had this problem). So although it obviously tended to have bad results at times, I can see the reasoning
Also Warships, especially the bigger ones like BBs, CVs and so one have Triple Hulls to even further protection. Alot more Bulkheads and generally, especially for US Warships of WW2, Damage Control was really good. Especially later on in the war. As it became evident that, no matter how many bulkheads, hull-layers and armour you have: A excellent Damage Control Party will cope with most battle damage. So much so that Japanese pilots sometimes thought they sunk more ships, even tho they just engaged the same ships multiple times and still wouldnt sink. All in all Passenger ships adhered to much different standards than even contemporary military ships, like Dreadnoughts and "modern" cruisers (as in modern for these times) and we can see that in design. However many maritime disasters showed that, maybe, putting more safety, redundancy and saveable fail-states and positions was the key even for civilian ships.
could you please try to explain why this iconic ship is so indelibly stamped on peoples psyche..movies, literature..YT channels flourish to this day..and here we are watching another enjoyable video on this tragic ship..thanks for your passion, it is contagious...
Because life on board the ship was a miniature version of society, and when civilization hits an ice berg we hope everyone in society will act with the honour and grace those passengers did. Ultimately the well off will always have a better chance of survival than the lower classes, but we hope everyone would get a fair chance.
It was the first disaster of the mass media...with the hype preceeding the ship and just sheer negligence of laws of the time for passenger ships combined with the A list wealty and celebrities aboard and the ability to tell the modern world quickly just added up to be monumental in the impact it had with changes put forth over most the world because of it. It was not nearly as well known before the mid80s when it was actually found with its popularity reaching its zenith in 1998-1999...it is rusting away quickly now, but with all the historical fiction surrounding it I think it will be popular for some time to come
I've always thought it was relatively simple. It was a massive loss of life acident with over 1400 dead, she was a brand new extremely publicized super liner on her maiden voyage- a perfect media storm and thus already receiving great media attention. She then immediately sinks in incredible and hard to believe circumstances yet there are still survivors able to tell the tale and it was a horrific sinking of exactly the right length to spark terror and for fear to set in- not an instant mad panic sinking, but a steadily encroaching unstoppable sinking slowly sliding closer and closer to oblivion. It's an inherently good story and the other factors combined lead to it being a media sensation. As a result she also sparked long lasting and defining changes in the industry thus there was a permanent link forged to remember ber by as one of the many 'lessons by blood' we've improved from and a very major one at that given how fundamental future design changes were
Love this video. As someone who has served at sea with the Coast Guard, I'm always looking for materials to help illustrate different aspects of damage control and I've always found that it's easier to engage a lot of the younger folks if I can make connections to our training to notable events such at the Titanic or the Andrea Doria. Titanic has always been a great way to illustrated the concepts of equilibrium to new boat crew members.
I really love how clearly you lay out these diagrams and explain all these concepts. It really makes it easier to understand what happened that night and how exactly the ship sank.
Wow, that was fantastic! I have watched a ton of "specials" and things about the Titanic since the 1980s and none of them have ever really focused so well on the pure engineering behind the ship as you did. Very well done. This wonderfully illustrates how the disaster was not a case of bad design so much as just the circumstances of the damage being enough to overwhelm all the safety measures of the day (which were very impressive up to that point). Even the additional safety features that were added to her sister ships (like any engineering solutions) could only mitigate so much before being overwhelmed, like on the Britannic when it hit the mine (or torpedo), which did more damage than could have possibly been designed around. Anyway, great job again - I'll certainly share this with some friends who love engineering details!
Brittanic ISTR the major cause for the sinking was all the portholes being open, because the designers had figured out they would all be normally closed in the cold Atlantic runs, but instead she was now in the sweltering Mediterranean sea, and the ventilation was in no way designed to cool the ship, more being designed around heating up the areas that would be losing heat really rapidly to the surrounding cold water, instead of the other way round.
And aside from the double skin (which was a legitimately good idea,) most of the added safety features were more for show than reasonable. Like sure, they could now survive an incident like the _Titanic's_ where 6 compartments were breached, but it didn't really add anything in other, far more likely scenarios, and by reaching B deck started to cut into actual passenger accommodations like the first class dining hall.
@@flametitan100 Yeah agreed - some were useful, others were more for public image. The higher bulkheads only delay the inevitable at that point, and not by much if there's that much water in the ship. As a network admin, it reminds me in a way of security; you need it, but put in too much or do it too elaborately, and you make things so hard for the user they'll avoid it. Finding the right balance is the trick.
@@SeanBZA Also as the explosion lifted her bow out of the water the hull was bent enough for several bulkheads failing to close. She would have remained afloat if all doors closed. It was just too much. These mines where meant to sink a Dreadnought. In fact Olympic rescued survivors from a post Dreadnought that hit a mine and sank. And they had a lot of compartments that could be sealed to really isolate a leak.
This was a really good explanation. Having watched many titanic documentaries, there were details that i wasn't clear on and this clears those up. Nice work.
"if we have to die, then we will die like gentlemen" that guy was a hero! had no intentions whatsoever of getting in a lifeboat that could be for a woman or child. That's respect, and the most remarkable statement I've ever heard of? Totally different people back then than what we have today.
Mr Brady sir, I am 60 years old and the Titanic has had a profound impact on me since I opened a book of the Titanic in the 2nd grade in the schools library. I want to thank you so very much, I rarely subscribe to anyone's channel but you are so intriguing and amazing. I've seen many of other people's videos but you win the prize, I don't know how you do it but I have learned so much from you and you are so very credible. I absolutely love all your videos, all of them , please keep them coming sir. Again Mike, you are amazing and I share so much of your material with other family enthusiasts. God bless.
I've never heard of this channel prior to the Titan disaster but as sad as it is I'm kind of happy I found you because your videos are very well made and I've learned so much the past few days because I've watched almost all of you videos by now.
Yes I didn't realise that Titanic would have gone down a lot sooner if it hadn't have been for the crew below, hidden away heroes that managed to save more lives.
It wasn't in vain they knew it would sink they were keeping it afloat as long as they could. Watch "saving the titanic"a story about the engineering crew.
@@larchman4327 Yeah, I just meant that they did all they could to stop the inevitable flood. They were certainly heroes, and their actions saved many lives without a doubt.
I think the goal of forestalling the sinking is just as much about saving people around you as it is about saving yourself. If it takes three hours for the ship to sink, the likelier it is a nearby ship will come to your aid.
As always, your videos are extremely comprehensive and well edited. I can tell you put an immense amount of work into your productions along with a lot of pride. I have learned so much about ships and the open seas from your channel. The story of the Titanic is an amazing one and something I think we all will be captivated by. There was just so much rich history involved in the Titanic and her sinking. Thanks again for all that you do!
Great video, Mike! I'm sure there will be some whiners who will make comments about "another Titanic video" but who cares? You always do a great job explaining and illustrating what happened. Keep up the great work, my friend!
Without doubt, this is probably the finest video I have ever seen concerning why the Titanic sunk. I learned more about the structure of the Titanic from this video than any other I have seen. I would rate this as "outstanding."
Fantastic video. The visuals you made really helped explain just how much side swiping the iceberg damaged the Titanic. Never quite understood how such a massive object could sink due to frozen water. Great video mate
One of the best walls cut away and step by step's so far to date on the sinking, good job on this. Other models and cutaways go so fast and before you can really take it all in they return to solid view. I've watched many documentary's on Titanic so I wasn't expecting much different but I am glad to see my assumption was wrong on this video, this really painted a very clear picture. Really well done presentation.
One of my absolute favorite channels on youtube. Im here almost daily. Thank you for the continued high quality and well-informed content - a pure gem!
If she had horizontal watertight decks, like warships have, I think she might have been saved. I'm not suggesting every deck , but at least one up high to avoid the spillover. Also, hitting the berg head on instead of the glancing blow she took still would have lost lives but not like the number that died from the sinking. Its amazing that her story still hits us in our imaginations after so many decades.
WW-1 and WW-2 both demonstrated even with hundreds of watertight compartments, a ship can be damaged enough so even that would not save her. The death of the Japanese battleship Yamato was case in point. She was repeatedly torpedoed in her port side and bombed dozens of times. The flooding and structural damage was too much for her superbly designed and built hull to withstand, and she capsized then exploded. Both halves of the hull sank immediately to the sea bed 1,200 feet below taking 2,700 men down with it. The blast was so massive it also destroyed American aircraft circling above the stricken ship killing their crews.
Hi , i cant get the point , how it would have survived with 3 compartments fully flooded , as top of compartments were not watertight , water would have spilled over and over each other. As any compartment takes water up until “E deck” then water could find a way through the staircases or corridors with only one compartment flooded. How would water have stopped after reaching to top part of any compartment? If it was supposed to stay afloat , water level inside the vessel should not have reached until to top of compartments.
Others and myself have often wondered how the titanic would have faired in a head on iceberg collision, but we’ll never know. The odds were against her no matter what. A head on collision in a ship her size, at the speed she was going would have been similarly devastating. The bow would’ve been demolished and the upper decks as well by the sheer force of so much mass suddenly stopping. It might’ve pushed and warped hull plates and bulkheads half way back the ship, and perhaps burst rivets equally far and sunk anyways. We’ll never know for sure
@@allahverdiyunusov6908 The idea is that the compartments are tall enough that spillover won't happen until the fifth compartment floods. The ship remains floaty enough that the situation stabilizes itself. If you imagine the ship down by the bow with four compartments flooded, the waterline won't go past the top of the back of the fourth compartment, so the flooding stops there. When the fifth floods, then the bow will be low enough that the sixth will flood, and so on.
@@ryanhodin5014 How can water stand in top of first compartment if already reached until there , what can condemn water just stand there . With this logic water should not have reached till top , instead could have stopped anywhere in middle part of compartment..
I freaking love this guy's voice Not in the sense that it sounds proper (I'm not trying to offend his voice, or the way he speaks), but his voice sounds like he actually knows what he's talking about This guy sounds like someone I would want to teach a history class, and I would love to be a part of that class Plus, he also sounds like a narrator for a history story
This whole explanation is dead wrong. The Titanic was not sunk by an iceberg. It was harpooned by an irate Eskimo. The berg story was dreamed up to protect indigenous natives from harassment.
Thank you! I've been curious about exactly this, and your presentation helped me understand the damage itself, and the geometry of the water-tight compartments. She was well engineered, but she met with a worst case scenario.
@@crazy4gta1 Indeed. Had they been sealable, the Titanic might've not sank, since the water can't spill over from the flooded compartments into the other compartments.
Love a video that highlights the Olympic class were big, not novel. Also love another Titanic video. Like another commenter said, some people may whine, but who cares. We're all here and all ship nerds because we love this ship.
One bit of pedantic correction: Technically, she wasn't designed to survive four compartments flooding anywhere. She was instead built to the specification of "Three of her four forward most compartments." It just so happened during the Inquiry Wilding calculated she could actually float with all four of her forwardmost compartments flooded, not just any three. Additionally, later computer analysis suggests that with a couple exceptions around her engine room and (somewhat ironically) Boiler room 5, the ship could float with any three adjacent compartments flooded, though she was only built to have any two adjacent compartments flooded. She was a tough cookie; the iceberg merely found an Achilles' Heel.
It was less of an Achilles' heel and more that the ship hit circumstances beyond its limits. The fact is the Titanic collision could have quite possibly sunk even a modern ship. However, the difference is that modern ships don't sail into icy waters at full steam, don't solely depend on lookouts, take every ice warning seriously, don't use wireless as a fancy toy, and a whole load of other stuff. Titanic was sunk as much by hubris as anything else.
@@whaleguy it was common then that ships wouldn't reduce speed until they came into an ice field and then slow down. Just turns out the first indication of this ice field was the one directly infront. But yeah modern ships have radar and sonar and can detect icebergs long before they could see them.
@@MrT------5743 It wasn't common to slow down for ice, but it was a dangerous practice nonetheless. A real, "They can't be negiligent if _everyone_ is negligent" kind of situation.
Your channel is really helping me right now. Something about how you write your scripts and your voice really calms me down, and on top of that, I’ve always loved maritime history so it’s completely fascinating and relaxing at the same time! You’re currently helping give me a good distraction from some anxiety and some ramping-up wisdom tooth pain😵💫 Long story short you’re one of my very favorites and I owe you a big thank you!!❤
This is the best explanation and visual I’ve ever seen of how the compartments work and why they failed that night. I’ve always had so many questions on this topic. Thank you for putting this together and sharing!
I know it's completely unrelated, but Harland & Wolff itself has a pretty fascinating history. They are still around today, although they do mostly offshore wind farm designs and less actual shipbuilding. A video about their long history could be interesting, as they continued to build ships all through the 20th century.
You could say the ship went down due to the weight of the water it had taken on, or you could say the water displaced the air that had provided the ship with buoyancy. The ship ultimately sank because it lost all the buoyancy it needed to stay afloat.
This is a subject that has captured my imagination since I stumbled across the VHS of Titanic as a toddler. I had books, I watched every documentary, and I almost obsessed for a long time. I lost interest as I thought I had learned all I could. Now at the age of 25 I found this video and this incredible UA-camr managed to explain in a way that I finally truly grasped what went wrong. Fantastic job. Full circle at last. Thank you 💪
What makes this Channel so special is that it gives names, dates, places, and other specifics that can be cross checked. It gives confidence in the information.
Well done. There's a, well I call it a DocuDrama called 'Saving the Titanic', which takes a somewhat dramatic take on the intense struggle the ship's engineers, carpenters, electricians and so forth waged to try to buy every last minute they could for the ship. Its on YT, absolutely worth the time watching.
This was an extremely helpful and instructional video with visual aids which perfectly illustrate what happened. I had always wondered what crew meant when (in Wyn Craig Wade’s Titanic:End of a Dream) they said “there is air escaping from the fore peak tank” and “I opened the #1 hatchway and saw the tarpaulin belly out”. Now I know.
Imagine how different history would have been if Titanic hadn't sunk, or all of the changes that were made after the disaster, who knows what the cruise/ocean liner industry would be like today!
@@quillmaurer6563 Oh, yeah I know, but I meant like on a much larger scale than just Titanic, like after the disaster, many chnages were made, so if Titanic hadn't sunk, would those changes have been made etc. But yes, that video is very well done.
@@Jamesszy94 He did address some of that in that video, though he focused on Titanic's career he mentioned several other major maritime disasters happening along the way, in his alternate timeline far worse than their real historic counterparts (if they happened at all) due to the lack of safety implementations from Titanic's sinking. But he didn't discuss them directly or what the differences were, as that would have disrupted the narrative style. He presented it as if living in an alternate timeline where she never sank, thus never directly acknowledging "our" reality and the differences between that one and this one, though clearly was still thinking of such. It would be interesting if he made another video on the same subject that presented the same ideas - perhaps some of the outcomes mentioned in that video - but with a more scholarly from-our-reality perspective rather than the narrative style, discussing directly these different events and how Titanic's not sinking would have altered them versus our reality where she did sink. Not just mentioning the events, but explaining the differences in more detail. Clearly he's thought it through in depth, he just needs to tell us his thinking behind what was mentioned in that video.
I fell in love with the Titanic when i was 4 or 5. Im from Ireland and been to every part connected to her...(ish). You are a credit. Your production, arrangement and presentation is a boon to perfection. I truly appreciate your work . Keep it up my dear fellow. Good man.
Im loving the new art direction for your videos! The combination of 3D models with your illustrations as textures looks stunning. It really makes those sweeping pan shots pop!
I've always thought it was so tragic that the damage that actually doomed the ship was the small amount of damage to boiler room 5. If they could have somehow repaired that small amount of damage the ship could have been saved.
@Dennis Wilson DO understand... you are using a specificity for steel strength that didnt exist for another 10yrs. ALSO... when you have earned at least 2 Engineering Degrees, then you can go on about how her steel wasnt made correctly. P.S You should walk right up to Thomas Andrews and or the People on the Board at H & W.. and in your 5yr old mentality.. explain to them how flawed their materials are. Next Time I go Time Travelling, you can go with me and tell them that. Id love to see the look on your face..
The ship had six compartments damaged. As it was built, it was meant to be able to remain afloat with any two of the 16 opened, or any three of the first five. Six was just way too many ☹
Thank you, Mike! A (perhaps odd) video suggestion: Passenger liners converted to aircraft carriers: HMS Argus was one. The Japanese converted 2-3. In the early 30s, I think there were plans to convert SS Leviathan if the need arose.
Such vessels were created from the hulls of merchant ships by the US Navy in WWII and known as light or fleet carriers. They were only marginally useful, because they lacked sufficient or any hull or deck armor, making them far too fragile for combat effectiveness. The same would have been true about passenger ships..
@@frankmiller95 wrong. Those ships are classified as Escort Carriers. Light carriers were conversations of Cleveland class light cruisers and fleet carriers were designed as fleet carriers.
9:00 that proves just HOW safety-aware they were: Multiple passive, automatic and manual activation mechanisms ("dissimilar redundancy") of safety measures - you can't get any closer to failsafe. The only problem - as always - are scenarios beyond your imagination. In every such project there should be a devil's advocate asking "But what if THAT fails?" I'm impressed they actually had the forward bulkheads so rise high enough to account for the bow dropping as the compartments filled up - that system was not just for show! In hindsight of course, they should have considered longitudinal bulkheads as well as a watertight top to account for all three dimensions...
Because these water tight compartments were open on the top, i never understood the drama in the movie with firemen moving through these closing doors... They could just run op the stairs to scotland yard and go down at the next boiler... Also they werent trapped when the door closed, like the movie suggests
There's this idea floating around that the sinking of the Titanic could have been prolonged significantly by lowering ropes next to the hull and cloging up the cracks. I would love to see a video about it.
It’s not an idea, it’s an actual technique of damage control called “fothering” that was around way before Titanic. Basically would take anything that would slow the flow of water and stuff them into the damaged parts. Or something like a sail and place them on the outside. In titanic’s case, the hatch covers were a heavy canvas that would of worked. Nothing would of saved the ship enough to make it to a dry dock but possibly long enough to save more people. It was always a mystery why there was little to no damage control on the Titanic
It's incredibly difficult to determine the damage to the Titanic with observation of it on the ocean floor because the ship landed on the ocean floor travelling approximately 25mph and it's massive weight crashing onto the bottom of the ocean would have caused substantial damage to the Hull.
My Great-Great-Great Uncle was a member of the kitchen staff who survived the sinking. When all hope seemed lost he went up top an drank himself into a stupor. He went into the water once it went under and somehow he was one of the very few people pulled out of the water that survived.
Hey Mike you out did yourself on this one. I've been following Titanic for over 50 years and thought I knew everything but you proved me wrong! How was your first trip to Harland and Wolff? It must have been amazing for you. I'm hoping to one day make it there. Still hoping that one day H & W builds a replica Titanic so we can board her and really experience her.
I think the pictures of damage to the Olympic were from a head-on collision with the light cruiser HMS Hawke. It's a great example of what the safety measures installed on the Olympic class could do when they were in situations they were meant for; Hawke had a ram prow and was designed to make actual armored warships regret crashing into her; meanwhile, civilian-designed Olympic gave as good as she got and was repaired and quickly back in service. She also sunk a U-boat once, by running it over.
Head-on collision with Hawke? Both ships were travelling in the same direction. My information is that keel was bent, although people like Brady would deny it.
@@theawickward2255 We know how where and when this happened, there are a couple of reconstruction videos. Have seen the pictures of both Hawke and Olympic after the event.
The Lusitania's double hull contributed to its rapid sinking. When the torpedo exploded, water filled the longitudinal watertight compartments on the starboard side but not the port side, causing an immediate and severe list which sank the ship in 18 minutes. Might something similar have happened in the case of Titanic's collision, or was the resulting volume of water (compared to a torpedo breaching both hulls) too low to cause a severe list?
I have read that when the iceberg was sighted, the officer of the watch ordered hard over rudder and signaled to put the starboard engine full ahead and the port engine full reverse. Doing so automatically cut off power to the ships center propeller and created a great deal of turbulence in the vicinity of the rudder, drastically reducing its effectiveness. Had he just ordered hard over rudder it is possible Titanic would have turned far enough to miss the iceberg or possibly suffered considerably less damage.
Except that they didn't reversed the engines, they stopped them, fourth officer Boxhall was the only one who claimed that the crew put the engines in reverse, but he wasn't in bridge at the time of the collision.
The visuals & imagery are incredible. Well done all involved. There are so many, what ifs? And one for me has always played out. In both of the most Iconic films, A Night To Remember & Titanic, Murdoch orders full astern which we now know didn't happen. He followed what was protocol at the time. However, what if there was some outside the box thinking. Full astern ordered to slow a head on impact? Remain full ahead and order a turn? Or order the the turn to port, kill the port propeller only and keep starboard full ahead to increase the rate of turn? Like I said, so many what ifs.
5:06 Things had developed quite "'a bit" in the 19th century when the SS Great Eastern was given not only a double bottom but a whole double hull. This coupled with strong transverse braces helped her survive an accident when she scraped an uncharted rock needle off Montauk Point.
Hello Mike,another very well explained video.always a pleasure to watch. I've been fascinated with ships especially Titanic since I was a young kid and never tire of hearing about her or her sisters. Keep up the good work ship mate😁👍
Very good video. My only critique is I would've preferred if you mentioned *The Great Eastern, with her double-hull and her complex bulkhead design...over half-a-century prior* perhaps you may compare and contrast the two ships in a later video.
You touched very briefly on one key item that always irritates me a bit when shown in movies about shipwrecks, to include Titanic's - the gratuitous scenes of stokers rushing to get through the doors as they close, with the clear implication being that if they weren't successful, they'd be entombed and drowned. You mentioned the vertical ladder access that existed in all compartments. It's obviously more dramatic, but if you think about it - if missing the doors meant a death trap, then the water would have been trapped as well and probably it wouldn't have sunk. However, even for the Gilded Age, a 'safety' system which would have trapped and drowned men would have probably been a bit too much.
13:50 fun fact, it's not the 'weight' of the water dragging the bow down. water in water has no weight. it's the weight of the ship itself, and the lack of buyoncy - that's a difference.
People often say or ask “why the Titanic sank so fast” … but is that really a fair question? We have record of multiple, more modern, ship sinkings that have taken place whereby those ships foundered FAR FAR more quickly than Titanic. The MS Estonia, the RMS Empress of Ireland, & the Costa Concordia all sank more quickly than the Titanic; with the Concordia being an example of a modern day vessel. IMO the 2.5+ hours it took Titanic to sink is a testament to its durability. I think we’d be hard pressed to find any non-military ship, even one of the most advanced; and apply the same damage to it as Titanic had to contend with and my money is on Titanic will have lasted longer.
The Costa Concordia was ripped open the way the public thought Titanic was, though Edward Wilding and other Harland and Wolff engineers knew that was not the case. The gash was large enough for divers to get through it.
this is THE BEST explanation of the sinking I have seen anywhere, ever! your superb graphics and excellent narration make all the different factors very clear and easy to understand. thank you for this and all of your informative and entertaining videos
13:38 This reminds me of an old video made by Carlos Rangel called Titanic sinking in real time. Sadly it was blocked by SME 😞. However I saved the video before they blocked it so on my Sunny Meadows channel I remade it 3X, it’s a little in accurate, but it gets everything else, right, including the break up. It’s called (TITANIC SINKING IN REAL TIME THE MOVIE 3) which is actually the best one out of all three.
One other save possibility I'd be curious about - she was sinking by the bow deep enough that the water spilled over the bulkheads. What would have happened had a couple compartments at the stern been flooded as well, could that have kept the ship more level and avoid the bow going low enough to spill over the bulkheads, basically counter-balance the ship? Or would it have floated too low overall that way and still had the same problem? Or perhaps the buoyancy amidship with both ends pulling down would have placed too much bending load on the ship and broken her in half, as happened later in the sinking sequence?
Would have snapped the back soon, as the sharp edges of the plates would have acted as tear points. The keel was strong with lifting from the bow or stern, but very weak in humping, as the plates that hold it together are not as strong in tension. That is seen as it tore in half with the stress just before sinking, when the empty stern was being lifted from the water. Making it strong enough would have cut greatly into the carry capacity, taking up a lot of the displacement.
It would have hastened the sinking, and it might have resulted in the keel and double bottom failing sooner, but probably not the way it had that lead to Titanic breaking apart from the bottom up.
@@rubenvega4618 What would the anchor have done? The ocean is about 12,500 feet deep at that location. Not to mention that the anchors are very close to the bow, and would have been in the section of the ship completely demolished, so the anchors probably would have fallen away, or if compacted into the wreckage would have been unusable.
@@rubenvega4618 Um no, dropping anchor in 12,600 feet of water will result in merely losing the anchors, and possibly killing someone too. Anchor chains are not attached to the ship, they merely are piled up in the chain lockers. Drop anchors in water too deep, the chains will come out entirely and when the ends come out look out!
What if Titanic sailed / hit the iceberg head on? Would she have stayed a float? Seeing how you explained it & letting us know the water spilled over the bulk heads got that question going around in my head.
Jeppers. Either him or someone else made a video about that. Probably bow pancaked up to the second or third compartment and about 100 unlucky souls crushed but she'd have staid afloat no problem. Just not an easy split second decision to make. By the time it was obvious she wouldn't clear, it was too late to steer back into it and just letting her crash head on at 21 knots would definitely have ended in Murdoch being cast a villain and incompetent, since no one could imagine what would have happened in our timeline.
@@221b-l3t The other thing to remember is that icebergs are wider underwater than they are on top - so the helmsman may have thought he had more room to clear the iceberg than he really had.
@@RJSRdg There are those who say (with some circumstantial evidence) that there was damage to the bottom even very substantial damage as some water seemed to come through the floor. She had a double bottom, heavily compartmentalised and reinforced so it would have needed damage through the bottom and the tank top, which is kind of unlikely but possible of course. Hard to see that area. But the damage we see is under water a fair bit up from the bottom, she did clear it over water. Some overhang was smashed off by the superstructure and landed on the deck (3-4t). But it looked like they cleared it for a moment then they felt it. It was about 30 m tall so a few hundred m deep likely, about 5 million tons. Big sucker...
I think she would've survived a head-on impact yes and that I've based on what happened to the Guion liner Arizona in 1879 on an eastbound voyage. The largest liner of her day (like the Titanic), she smashed her bow against a giant iceberg and, fearing the end, everyone clung together in tears. As it turned out, it was not the end, the forward bulkhead held. In thankfulness everyone sang the hymn "Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow" as she started on her limp towards St. John's. In quite the twist of logic, though, the accident was portrayed as an example of the safety of ships rather than the dangers of ice. I am sure many other vessels made it to port if with a limp with dented bows, pitted hulls, twisted rudders and so on
Great video as always Mike, thanks! Question: If Titanic's hull had been welded, rather than riveted, would it have made any difference in the way the hull opened up? I've read articles that state that the rivets used were of a different grade steel than the plating, and that the grade used was more prone to shearing than the hull plate steel. I have seen first hand that this can happen; I worked in a shipyard where they used Grade A steel to make the padeyes used to lift the huge modules that made up the ship. One of the guys I worked with ended up making a bunch of said padeyes out of HY80 (armor) steel rather than the Grade A steel that the design specs called for. The resulting padeyes were more brittle and snapped under load, rather than flexing as they were designed to do. This resulted in a module dropping ~20 feet when the padeyes failed. Luckily, nobody was injured in the accident, but there was some significant damage done to the unit. These modules are about the size of a small house, and understandably quite heavy.
Yes the steel did have quality poorer than modern steel, but it all did pass the shipyard testing for tensile strength, as they did test all batches that way for all materials. That only came in in WW1 and WWII, when they used sub par steel that had high sulphur content, which made it become brittle in the cold weather of the Atlantic. However the steel did still work to absorb the energy and deform, and the rivets that failed were operated well past design spec. Yes the modern testing did show they were not as capable as the best of the day, but none of them actually were defective by the standard testing of the day, even if they would have failed when cold. But test at room temperature, around 15 to 20C ,and they passed, even if they would fail at -15C.
No. The damaged area where the iceberg did the fatal damage to the shell plating on the starboard bow as as much as three inches thick due to three strakes overlapping. Welding would have eliminated the popping rivets, but welded steel is more brittle along the welds than the base metal. I would say instead of plates separating from rivets popping, there would have been instead cracks or tears in the steel plating that would have sunk Titanic anyway.
There has been so many ships almost the same size as the Titanic and smaller didn't matter what year they were built if they would have hit the iceberg head on 90% of the ships make it all the way back to Port with front end damage after hitting icebergs and nobody was ever killed or injured the motors were still able to run and the water never reached a crisis level..They would turn around back to where they originally started..Truth..💪👈
Funny story I remembered talking to my buddy in 1910 when we where building it and I asked him, Everette, why are we building the hull like this and he said that I should go worry on my own problems and till this day I live in awe from his decisions and have never forgive me #EveretteCauseTheSinking
I watched the movie in the late 90s it was good but I moved on, as an adult, now I find it so interesting, I’ve even been looking into what life was like in the early 1900s. Learned a lot from this channel
I’m afraid to look through this comments section and find all of the “BuT ThE CoAl FiRe WeKaNeD ThE RiVetS oN The StArBoArEd SiDe!!1” so I’m just gonna look through them lol
It’s amazing what man has made. There are so many details on those ships it almost doesn’t seem possible in such a short time frame, why just the electrification of the ship alone a mind boggling task at yet a small fraction of the total.
Sadly it was the recent Titan tragedy that brought me to your channel but the high quality, fascinating content made me stay (and binge watch too many of your videos whilst I should be getting work done lol)
It's funny how a a modern aircraft hull(fuselage) is constructed very similarly to a ships hull from the 19th century accept it's aluminum alloy and much thinner and lighter.
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SPOLIER ALERT - Big hole let the water in where it shouldnt be and it sank OH Also it was a big Iceberg
I got a question try to answer this one which I don't think you can and this is to go back and look at the blueprints of the Olympic and Titanic and you might learn something about where all the water type doors were here we go since it got hit on the right side and it was filling up why did not this mother f***** lean to the right
If all the water type doors were shut and how did the boat go down evenly Square it would have been leaning to the right in the front why went down just straight down to the front and needed to lean and it didn't do it
A coal bunker fire left burning for days before the maiden voyage is what made the steel brittle. it was sunk on purpose
@@paulwoodford1984 WOW thats amazing crazy even for a conspiracy nut case!
My grandfather witnessed the tragedy of the Titanic with his own eyes, but sadly never made it through. When the ship struck the iceberg, he repeatedly yelled out warnings to those around him that the ship was going to sink, but everyone just ignored him. After his final warning, they finally kicked him out of the movie theater!
“Ha! Never heard THAT one before”! :I
Hacky and unfunny. Try writing your OWN material
Had me going for a moment there 😏😄 Thanks for the moment of levity.. much needed these days!
😂😂😂
Good one😂
I’m just here to say in a time when it’s common to call the internet a mistake and social media a disease, it’s content like this that makes the internet a net good. I’m so glad I found this channel. So well done.
Internet is not a mistake. If there was no internet you wouldn't see the truth. Social media is a different animal. It's making our children stupid. Social media makes the truth a lie, and a lie the truth.
@@livetotell100 the "truth" that the internet spreads causes major problems too. Not everything on the internet is true social media or not. If the internet was properly managed and taken care of it could be a net good. As of right now and for the rest of our specific human lives the internet stays a neutral, just as much good as bad
One thing I always loved was that during the Inquiry, Wilding postulated the total damage to be no more than 12 square feet, or about the size of a refrigerator. When they used sonar to scan the hull, the total of the damage the sonar revealed was indeed 12 square feet. Wilding knew exactly what he was talking about. Another great video, Mike.
the question I have is why wasn't Wilde considered when the graphic artists got to work representing what happened?
@@KiwiSentinel perhaps because Wilding sometimes gets forgotten in the story of The Titanic. But do not quote me on that one.
If I recall correctly, the side scan sonar team tried to avoid being too definitive about the size of the iceberg damage, as they also found a lot of damage caused by the simple fact she was bent as she hit the bottom
@@KiwiSentinel Are you talking about any specific depiction in particular? Firstly, at the investigation, Wilding correctly speculated that the total damage was small as mentioned. However, he was overruled as it seemed unbelievable that a ship the size of Titanic would be laid low by damage that covered just around a square of pavement. That lead to the popular "300 ft gash" theory that has been oft quoted. Secondly, the damage is extremely small in comparison to the ship. So in any normal depiction where you can see the entire hull, the damage will just be very thin lines along the hull that look like scratches. In fact, the breaks are estimated to be roughly the width of an adult hand. Keep in mind, this is a hull that is 104 feet from the bottom of the keel to the top of the bridge. Any modern depiction of the damage is actually very oversized compared to the actual damage, just to illustrate what happened. Here is one such depiction, but again, in reality, the openings would've been really small if we were to see the ship from the side at a distance far enough to include the entire body.
http :// writing. engr. psu. edu/ uer/ bassett/ fig3.gif
@@KiwiSentinel - Whaleguy has most of the factors correct. There are several aspects at play here - while Wilding (representing Harland & Wolff) did provide evidence to both the US and UK inquiries, the fact of the matter is that those inquiries were run by the US Senate and Justice Lord Mersey respectively - their expertise was legal rather than technical, and Wilding's submissions constituted a single piece of evidence which, while based on solid engineering knowledge and calculations, was still effectively theoretical.
On top of that, it's worth remembering that the illustrators were employed by the press, and the press will always go for the most sensational take on any given story - the inquiries couldn't officially determine what the actual damage was, and the claims presented a sliding scale from Wilding's evidence to the theory of the 300-foot "gash". On that basis it's logical that the press would go with the latter as most likely. More generally speaking, in the minds of the public at the time, the notion that a liner of that size could be sunk as a result of anything less than massive and catastrophic damage simply defied belief.
Interesting fact, Robert Hichens (1882-1940) who was one of six quartermasters aboard the HMS Titanic is buried in my city, in Aberdeen, Scotland. He became infamously known as “the man who sunk the Titanic” because he was at the helm at the time of the collision, this stayed with him throughout his life and he was treated as unlucky on ships he worked on after Titanic. When he died he died as a pauper and was put into an unmarked grave, and only recently (past few years) has he been given a headstone as his descendants were able to find where he was actually buried. So even tho he survived it came as a cost, where folk judged him his entire life and was buried in an unmarked grave.
He deserved better.
The fact is the quartermaster merely obeyed the orders of the officer of the watch. He would never have seen the iceberg from his position at the wheel. He would never have made an arbitrary movement of the wheel. The sheer size of the Titanic meant she took time to answer to the wheel.
People who blamed him were no more than ignorant bullies.
Poor man
I remember this like it was yesterday, Robert was one of my best friends when I boarded the ship. One of my fatal memories was when Robert sunk the titanic and I was in shock to see my friend make this decision. Overall even though he didnt make it, I decided to watch him die because of the choices he made #SinkTheShipRobert
Sad, if anyone is to blame….Captain Smith. She was steaming way too fast.
It's interesting how the damage was just 6 thin slits totalling 12 square feet of damage, and yet that's all that was needed to send the Titanic sinking to the ocean bottom in 2 hours and 40 minutes. When I first read about the Titanic, even I had imagined the iceberg having ripped a huge gash measuring 300 feet long by about 15 to 25 feet wide.
Wouldn't the water pressure from the ocean start to rip open the slits which were structural damage so weak ?
@@db7610 No, because when Titanic sank and went down to the ocean floor, it was already full of water, so the water pressure equally acted on both the inside and outside of the hull, so there was no pressure difference. E.g. the submersible Titan recently imploded because it was not filled with water beforehand, and the water pressure came from outside only, so there was a huge pressure difference between inside and outside.
@@db7610 it was flooded with water
@@goldfing5898you explained that so well
@@goldfing5898 The Titanic did implode. The floating survivors could hear it from the water.
There's a story from WWII, I think, about a ship that was hit by a torpedo. To save her and stop/slow the flooding, the crew used mattresses and blankets tied together and lowered over the side of the ship where the hole was. The mash of material was pressed into the hole like too much toilet paper in a drain and significantly reduced the flooding enough for the ship to limp back to a drydock.
It's weird how such an experienced captain didn't even attempt basic damage control like that. Have the crew smashing up deck chairs and stuffing the front of the ship with the broken wood - it displaces water and increases buoyancy. Grab the canvas hatch covers, weight one end and lower them over the side with ropes - instant hull patch.
@@saucyduckglobalomnihyperme7510 It's tens of thousands of t of water a few broken chairs won't give her back her buoyancy.
Why canvas wasn't used I don't know that's been done for centuries. Maybe didn't have anything large enough or no good way of getting it there. Diving to a hole on an age of sail sloop and stuffing some rope in and covering the hole with canvas is a bit easier than doing it in the frigid Atlantic on such big ship. Someone usually had to dive down and make sure the canvas is positioned well.
In theory if they could have patched boiler rooms 5 and 6 it might have worked but 6 was already full pretty quick and that was enough to take her down. She may have had the margin to stay afloat with Nr 6 flooded maybe not.
I think the pumps could do 250 t an hour so if the inflow could have been stabilized in Nr. 5 and 6 rooms maybe. Could certainly have given her some more time, maybe enough for Carpathia to arrive before she sank, maybe even hook up her own pumps until a pump ship could arrive and take over while they tow her to port.
I know that using canvas was less common then than it had been 50 years earlier don't know why. Maybe it was deemed innefective or ships simply didn't carry a lot of it anymore.
But mainly I think the job of diving around the hull and figuring out where to put canvas was too much to ask in -2C water.
@@221b-l3t The cargo hatch covers were big thick sheets of canvas. No need to dive because they knew where the water was coming in, especially in Nr. 5. The ship was at a stop, all you had to do is weight the canvas and lower it over the side by the correct amount, which anyone could've calculated in about 3 seconds. And the practice had been around since the 1770s.
Also they only needed to displace a few percent of the water in the bow to have a big effect on down angle, which means limiting spillover. Especially if you can get Nr. 5 watertight and cover another square foot or so of opening, they really might have floated until morning.
It just seems like Smith got told too much of the ship is open to the sea and help was hours away and sort of gave up
@@saucyduckglobalomnihyperme7510
Im just going to PRETEND that you believe the Captain, with some 30+yrs with White Star... isnt smart enough to cobble together a makeshift patch... to get that ship back to drydock....
Let that doozy sink in...
Shit,
Next time I go Time Travelling, Im going to let YOU explain that piece of (has no words to describe it) to the Captain. Maybe by some twist of fate, I can even go back in time with you.. and make YOU the Captain of the Boat...
Lets see you pull that miracle pece of thought out of your head then...
That is a technique called "fothering" and it has been known for centuries to be effective. One of the genuine mysteries about the Titanic was the near complete lack of damage control ordered by Capt. Smith. Given the nature of the damage suffered by the Titanic even fothering with carpets would likely have been effective enough to keep her afloat for a significantly longer period of time. As it was, her hatch covers were heavy canvas, and would probably have worked very well.
Those visuals were so helpful; over time reading various accounts of the damage and flooding progression provide an approximate image of what actually happened, but seeing it step by step here makes everything so much more clear.
It's so interesting how much information can be extracted about ships in general from Titanic.
Yay thanks! It can be tricky to keep track of accounts when they throw around ‘forepeak tank’, ‘holds 2 and 3’, the ‘mail sorting room’ etc. I never used to be able to visualise it too clearly!
It really is such a well done and informative video. You don't need a background in naval architecture to follow along.
@@OceanlinerDesigns kkkomtotso..
..j
Please respect ✊🏼 9/11 victims, families and
witnesses.
@@matt.stevick What the hell does that have to do with anything here?
Fun fact:
If you were to lay all of Titanic's rivets end to end, they'd stretch roughly from NYC to Boston, or for my non-American friends, that'd be roughly the distance from Melbourne to Tasmania, London to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Berlin to Copenhagen, Cairo to Jerusalem, or Tokyo to Osaka. Or for an even more clear frame of reference, if you stacked them one on top of another, they'd nearly reach the average altitude of the International Space Station.
Thanks for giving all those different city distances
What about just giving me an exact number and leave the distance measurement to my own imagination?
@@Morpheus-pt3wq What about just Googling it and leaving the distance measurement to "your own imagination"?
@@Morpheus-pt3wq roughly 235 miles
@@cleverusername9369 thank you.
Outstanding, as with all your meticulously made documentary vignettes. The intermittent damage described was extremely fascinating, particularly the 45-foot long incision between Boiler Rooms 5 and 6. More remarkable is how Robert Ballard corroborated this from his early exploration of the wreck site. Thank you so much for creating this and sharing - top notch.
The separation in the plates between boiler room five and six was the one that doomed the ship. It extended just two feet into boiler room five inside the forward coal bunker. The hatches and the bunker were designed only to contain coal, not for watertightness. Eventually the aft bulkhead of the bunker collapsed, and the moment that happened Titanic's sinking accelerated.
I'm glad that you acknowledged Dr. Ballard's original 1986 discovery of the only part of the iceberg damage that remains visible past the mud line. But there is actually two far superior images of it in his "The Discovery of the Titanic" book on pages 196 and 197 that clearly shows the unmistakable separated hull plating.
What's more is that section of iceberg damage happens be the line that extends nearly all through Boiler 6 and just into 5 and where it's situated about three feet above the keel is almost exactly how Chief Fireman Fredrick Barrett described it his hearing testimonies.
I seen alot of pictures seen alot of documentaries and read a book or two on Titanic and never once have I seen a picture of iceberg damage. I'm sure they had to use some kind of sonar to see what they suspect was the damage the iceberg did as its well and truly below what can be seen with any traditional camera. Any damage that is seen on the actual ship with traditional cameras is the effect of the ship hitting the sea floor not iceberg damage.
@@edbeasant9494 I cited the book and pages, please go do some research.
The iceberg damage hidden by the mud was imaged using ultrasound on a later expedition.
@@nowhereman1046 yes I know but how would there be iceberg damage above the mudline when the iceberg only damaged the hull below the water line? The mudline almost reaches the anchor which is well above sealine. Doesn't add up mate.
@@edbeasant9494 Um no. The keel, especially around the bow section's bilge keel is intact all the way back to the break point. The damage I'm referring to is almost to the tee a perfect match for what Fireman Barrett saw and where he said he saw it in Boiler Room 6 and it terminates aft just into Boiler room 5, again as surviving boiler room crew described.
Very well explained. My Dad was a junior ship's engineer and I remember being surprised hen he explained how water tight bulkheads did not go "all the way up" even in ships built in the 40s and 50s.
I mean, it does kinda make sense for passenger ships. If you do a whole bunch of compartmentalizing like on, say, a battleship, your ship will be able to withstand lots more damage - except that you’re not building a battleship, you’re building a passenger ship that ideally won’t end up in a war zone. Too much compartmentalization and movement around the ship becomes difficult and inconvenient, which would annoy a great many passengers (iirc Great Eastern had this problem). So although it obviously tended to have bad results at times, I can see the reasoning
Olympic was so hot, bulkheads went all the way up baby.
Also Warships, especially the bigger ones like BBs, CVs and so one have Triple Hulls to even further protection. Alot more Bulkheads and generally, especially for US Warships of WW2, Damage Control was really good. Especially later on in the war. As it became evident that, no matter how many bulkheads, hull-layers and armour you have: A excellent Damage Control Party will cope with most battle damage. So much so that Japanese pilots sometimes thought they sunk more ships, even tho they just engaged the same ships multiple times and still wouldnt sink.
All in all Passenger ships adhered to much different standards than even contemporary military ships, like Dreadnoughts and "modern" cruisers (as in modern for these times) and we can see that in design. However many maritime disasters showed that, maybe, putting more safety, redundancy and saveable fail-states and positions was the key even for civilian ships.
could you please try to explain why this iconic ship is so indelibly stamped on peoples psyche..movies, literature..YT channels flourish to this day..and here we are watching another enjoyable video on this tragic ship..thanks for your passion, it is contagious...
Because life on board the ship was a miniature version of society, and when civilization hits an ice berg we hope everyone in society will act with the honour and grace those passengers did. Ultimately the well off will always have a better chance of survival than the lower classes, but we hope everyone would get a fair chance.
It was the first disaster of the mass media...with the hype preceeding the ship and just sheer negligence of laws of the time for passenger ships combined with the A list wealty and celebrities aboard and the ability to tell the modern world quickly just added up to be monumental in the impact it had with changes put forth over most the world because of it. It was not nearly as well known before the mid80s when it was actually found with its popularity reaching its zenith in 1998-1999...it is rusting away quickly now, but with all the historical fiction surrounding it I think it will be popular for some time to come
I've always thought it was relatively simple. It was a massive loss of life acident with over 1400 dead, she was a brand new extremely publicized super liner on her maiden voyage- a perfect media storm and thus already receiving great media attention. She then immediately sinks in incredible and hard to believe circumstances yet there are still survivors able to tell the tale and it was a horrific sinking of exactly the right length to spark terror and for fear to set in- not an instant mad panic sinking, but a steadily encroaching unstoppable sinking slowly sliding closer and closer to oblivion. It's an inherently good story and the other factors combined lead to it being a media sensation. As a result she also sparked long lasting and defining changes in the industry thus there was a permanent link forged to remember ber by as one of the many 'lessons by blood' we've improved from and a very major one at that given how fundamental future design changes were
In terms of tragedy, the MV Wilhelm Gustloff was WAY worse, but nobody wants to talk about it because reeee eViL Germans.
I did a whole couple vids about that actually.
Love this video. As someone who has served at sea with the Coast Guard, I'm always looking for materials to help illustrate different aspects of damage control and I've always found that it's easier to engage a lot of the younger folks if I can make connections to our training to notable events such at the Titanic or the Andrea Doria. Titanic has always been a great way to illustrated the concepts of equilibrium to new boat crew members.
I really love how clearly you lay out these diagrams and explain all these concepts. It really makes it easier to understand what happened that night and how exactly the ship sank.
Wow, that was fantastic! I have watched a ton of "specials" and things about the Titanic since the 1980s and none of them have ever really focused so well on the pure engineering behind the ship as you did. Very well done. This wonderfully illustrates how the disaster was not a case of bad design so much as just the circumstances of the damage being enough to overwhelm all the safety measures of the day (which were very impressive up to that point). Even the additional safety features that were added to her sister ships (like any engineering solutions) could only mitigate so much before being overwhelmed, like on the Britannic when it hit the mine (or torpedo), which did more damage than could have possibly been designed around. Anyway, great job again - I'll certainly share this with some friends who love engineering details!
Brittanic ISTR the major cause for the sinking was all the portholes being open, because the designers had figured out they would all be normally closed in the cold Atlantic runs, but instead she was now in the sweltering Mediterranean sea, and the ventilation was in no way designed to cool the ship, more being designed around heating up the areas that would be losing heat really rapidly to the surrounding cold water, instead of the other way round.
@@SeanBZA Yiiiiikes... ya, that'll certainly overcome all the other systems.
And aside from the double skin (which was a legitimately good idea,) most of the added safety features were more for show than reasonable. Like sure, they could now survive an incident like the _Titanic's_ where 6 compartments were breached, but it didn't really add anything in other, far more likely scenarios, and by reaching B deck started to cut into actual passenger accommodations like the first class dining hall.
@@flametitan100 Yeah agreed - some were useful, others were more for public image. The higher bulkheads only delay the inevitable at that point, and not by much if there's that much water in the ship. As a network admin, it reminds me in a way of security; you need it, but put in too much or do it too elaborately, and you make things so hard for the user they'll avoid it. Finding the right balance is the trick.
@@SeanBZA Also as the explosion lifted her bow out of the water the hull was bent enough for several bulkheads failing to close. She would have remained afloat if all doors closed. It was just too much. These mines where meant to sink a Dreadnought. In fact Olympic rescued survivors from a post Dreadnought that hit a mine and sank. And they had a lot of compartments that could be sealed to really isolate a leak.
This was a really good explanation. Having watched many titanic documentaries, there were details that i wasn't clear on and this clears those up. Nice work.
"if we have to die, then we will die like gentlemen" that guy was a hero! had no intentions whatsoever of getting in a lifeboat that could be for a woman or child. That's respect, and the most remarkable statement I've ever heard of? Totally different people back then than what we have today.
Ben Guggenheim
Mr Brady sir, I am 60 years old and the Titanic has had a profound impact on me since I opened a book of the Titanic in the 2nd grade in the schools library. I want to thank you so very much, I rarely subscribe to anyone's channel but you are so intriguing and amazing. I've seen many of other people's videos but you win the prize, I don't know how you do it but I have learned so much from you and you are so very credible. I absolutely love all your videos, all of them , please keep them coming sir. Again Mike, you are amazing and I share so much of your material with other family enthusiasts. God bless.
Thanks for the lovely words, Jim! :)
I've never heard of this channel prior to the Titan disaster but as sad as it is I'm kind of happy I found you because your videos are very well made and I've learned so much the past few days because I've watched almost all of you videos by now.
😢😢😢😢😢😢😢 2:00
A fascinating look into the tragedy. It's so interesting to see how the ship and it's crew tried in vain to fight the flooding until the very end.
Yes I didn't realise that Titanic would have gone down a lot sooner if it hadn't have been for the crew below, hidden away heroes that managed to save more lives.
It wasn't in vain they knew it would sink they were keeping it afloat as long as they could. Watch "saving the titanic"a story about the engineering crew.
@@larchman4327 Yeah, I just meant that they did all they could to stop the inevitable flood. They were certainly heroes, and their actions saved many lives without a doubt.
The Titanic will serve in ww1 like her sister ships anyway, perhaps would get sunk by a uboat to >_>
I think the goal of forestalling the sinking is just as much about saving people around you as it is about saving yourself. If it takes three hours for the ship to sink, the likelier it is a nearby ship will come to your aid.
As always, your videos are extremely comprehensive and well edited. I can tell you put an immense amount of work into your productions along with a lot of pride. I have learned so much about ships and the open seas from your channel.
The story of the Titanic is an amazing one and something I think we all will be captivated by. There was just so much rich history involved in the Titanic and her sinking.
Thanks again for all that you do!
Titanic
Great video, Mike! I'm sure there will be some whiners who will make comments about "another Titanic video" but who cares? You always do a great job explaining and illustrating what happened. Keep up the great work, my friend!
One reason why I make them is because Titanic is a great ‘gateway drug’ in to understanding how all other ships are built and operated :)
@@OceanlinerDesigns what a great way of describing it.
This channel has seriously some of the best content I've ever seen. Very, very well done!
Without doubt, this is probably the finest video I have ever seen concerning why the Titanic sunk. I learned more about the structure of the Titanic from this video than any other I have seen. I would rate this as "outstanding."
LOVE IT! best best best description of the damage i have seen and i have been in love with the titanic since like 1998 in grade 6. haha Well done man!
Fantastic video. The visuals you made really helped explain just how much side swiping the iceberg damaged the Titanic. Never quite understood how such a massive object could sink due to frozen water. Great video mate
The water wasn't frozen. It was below freezing but moving so it wouldn't freeze
@@Truecrimeresearcher224they were referring to the iceberg
One of the best walls cut away and step by step's so far to date on the sinking, good job on this. Other models and cutaways go so fast and before you can really take it all in they return to solid view. I've watched many documentary's on Titanic so I wasn't expecting much different but I am glad to see my assumption was wrong on this video, this really painted a very clear picture.
Really well done presentation.
One of my absolute favorite channels on youtube. Im here almost daily. Thank you for the continued high quality and well-informed content - a pure gem!
If she had horizontal watertight decks, like warships have, I think she might have been saved. I'm not suggesting every deck , but at least one up high to avoid the spillover. Also, hitting the berg head on instead of the glancing blow she took still would have lost lives but not like the number that died from the sinking. Its amazing that her story still hits us in our imaginations after so many decades.
WW-1 and WW-2 both demonstrated even with hundreds of watertight compartments, a ship can be damaged enough so even that would not save her. The death of the Japanese battleship Yamato was case in point. She was repeatedly torpedoed in her port side and bombed dozens of times. The flooding and structural damage was too much for her superbly designed and built hull to withstand, and she capsized then exploded. Both halves of the hull sank immediately to the sea bed 1,200 feet below taking 2,700 men down with it. The blast was so massive it also destroyed American aircraft circling above the stricken ship killing their crews.
Hi , i cant get the point , how it would have survived with 3 compartments fully flooded , as top of compartments were not watertight , water would have spilled over and over each other. As any compartment takes water up until “E deck” then water could find a way through the staircases or corridors with only one compartment flooded. How would water have stopped after reaching to top part of any compartment? If it was supposed to stay afloat , water level inside the vessel should not have reached until to top of compartments.
Others and myself have often wondered how the titanic would have faired in a head on iceberg collision, but we’ll never know. The odds were against her no matter what. A head on collision in a ship her size, at the speed she was going would have been similarly devastating. The bow would’ve been demolished and the upper decks as well by the sheer force of so much mass suddenly stopping. It might’ve pushed and warped hull plates and bulkheads half way back the ship, and perhaps burst rivets equally far and sunk anyways. We’ll never know for sure
@@allahverdiyunusov6908 The idea is that the compartments are tall enough that spillover won't happen until the fifth compartment floods. The ship remains floaty enough that the situation stabilizes itself.
If you imagine the ship down by the bow with four compartments flooded, the waterline won't go past the top of the back of the fourth compartment, so the flooding stops there. When the fifth floods, then the bow will be low enough that the sixth will flood, and so on.
@@ryanhodin5014 How can water stand in top of first compartment if already reached until there , what can condemn water just stand there . With this logic water should not have reached till top , instead could have stopped anywhere in middle part of compartment..
You do such a great job, Smithsonian level research and production 👏 never stop the Titanic videos!
3 million rivets that's just a few rivets to say the least🤣
Your work deserves countless awards!!! Great work Mr. Brady!! ❤❤❤
I freaking love this guy's voice
Not in the sense that it sounds proper (I'm not trying to offend his voice, or the way he speaks), but his voice sounds like he actually knows what he's talking about
This guy sounds like someone I would want to teach a history class, and I would love to be a part of that class
Plus, he also sounds like a narrator for a history story
Good old Aussie accent
This whole explanation is dead wrong. The Titanic was not sunk by an iceberg. It was harpooned by an irate Eskimo. The berg story was dreamed up to protect indigenous natives from harassment.
Thank you! I've been curious about exactly this, and your presentation helped me understand the damage itself, and the geometry of the water-tight compartments. She was well engineered, but she met with a worst case scenario.
The thought of being in a compartment that's flooding and trying to get through the door before it drops is pure nightmare fuel
It’s not a death sentence. There’s stairs that lead upwards through the decks
@@crazy4gta1
Not in a watertight compartment there isn’t
@@dysmissme7343 The compartments weren't sealed at the top. In the boiler rooms for example, there are stairs that go all the way to E deck
@@crazy4gta1In modern passenger ships, indeed that's very true. I can confirm from first hand experience.
Not sure about the Titanic days though...
@@crazy4gta1 Indeed. Had they been sealable, the Titanic might've not sank, since the water can't spill over from the flooded compartments into the other compartments.
Love a video that highlights the Olympic class were big, not novel. Also love another Titanic video. Like another commenter said, some people may whine, but who cares. We're all here and all ship nerds because we love this ship.
One bit of pedantic correction: Technically, she wasn't designed to survive four compartments flooding anywhere. She was instead built to the specification of "Three of her four forward most compartments." It just so happened during the Inquiry Wilding calculated she could actually float with all four of her forwardmost compartments flooded, not just any three.
Additionally, later computer analysis suggests that with a couple exceptions around her engine room and (somewhat ironically) Boiler room 5, the ship could float with any three adjacent compartments flooded, though she was only built to have any two adjacent compartments flooded. She was a tough cookie; the iceberg merely found an Achilles' Heel.
It was less of an Achilles' heel and more that the ship hit circumstances beyond its limits. The fact is the Titanic collision could have quite possibly sunk even a modern ship. However, the difference is that modern ships don't sail into icy waters at full steam, don't solely depend on lookouts, take every ice warning seriously, don't use wireless as a fancy toy, and a whole load of other stuff. Titanic was sunk as much by hubris as anything else.
@@whaleguy it was common then that ships wouldn't reduce speed until they came into an ice field and then slow down. Just turns out the first indication of this ice field was the one directly infront.
But yeah modern ships have radar and sonar and can detect icebergs long before they could see them.
@@MrT------5743 It wasn't common to slow down for ice, but it was a dangerous practice nonetheless. A real, "They can't be negiligent if _everyone_ is negligent" kind of situation.
You're a real tough cookie with a long history, of leaving lots of gashes likes the ones in me. Hit me with your best shot, lifeboats away.
Absolutely well done. Bringing in the sonar scans of the damage was brilliant. Carry on.
Your channel is really helping me right now. Something about how you write your scripts and your voice really calms me down, and on top of that, I’ve always loved maritime history so it’s completely fascinating and relaxing at the same time! You’re currently helping give me a good distraction from some anxiety and some ramping-up wisdom tooth pain😵💫 Long story short you’re one of my very favorites and I owe you a big thank you!!❤
This is the best explanation and visual I’ve ever seen of how the compartments work and why they failed that night. I’ve always had so many questions on this topic. Thank you for putting this together and sharing!
This is one of the best videos about Titanic on UA-cam.
Thanks GBM! Love your work 😎
I know it's completely unrelated, but Harland & Wolff itself has a pretty fascinating history. They are still around today, although they do mostly offshore wind farm designs and less actual shipbuilding. A video about their long history could be interesting, as they continued to build ships all through the 20th century.
I reccomend the book Ships by Tom Mccluskie its got every Harland & Wolff ship that isnt Titanic Olympic or Britannic
Dry,, my grandfather worked their in the 60s,,he enjoyed it, he said it was hard work, but there was a lot of them and us going on there.
You could say the ship went down due to the weight of the water it had taken on, or you could say the water displaced the air that had provided the ship with buoyancy. The ship ultimately sank because it lost all the buoyancy it needed to stay afloat.
This is a subject that has captured my imagination since I stumbled across the VHS of Titanic as a toddler. I had books, I watched every documentary, and I almost obsessed for a long time. I lost interest as I thought I had learned all I could. Now at the age of 25 I found this video and this incredible UA-camr managed to explain in a way that I finally truly grasped what went wrong. Fantastic job. Full circle at last. Thank you 💪
What makes this Channel so special is that it gives names, dates, places, and other specifics that can be cross checked. It gives confidence in the information.
In your opinion.
Well done. There's a, well I call it a DocuDrama called 'Saving the Titanic', which takes a somewhat dramatic take on the intense struggle the ship's engineers, carpenters, electricians and so forth waged to try to buy every last minute they could for the ship. Its on YT, absolutely worth the time watching.
titanic was unsinkable but but she sank she sank🤣🤣
Yes! It's so good I've watched it several times. The narrator was perfect
Thanks for this. I will check it out!
This was an extremely helpful and instructional video with visual aids which perfectly illustrate what happened. I had always wondered what crew meant when (in Wyn Craig Wade’s Titanic:End of a Dream) they said “there is air escaping from the fore peak tank” and “I opened the #1 hatchway and saw the tarpaulin belly out”. Now I know.
Imagine how different history would have been if Titanic hadn't sunk, or all of the changes that were made after the disaster, who knows what the cruise/ocean liner industry would be like today!
He made another video exploring that, what would have happened had Titanic not sunk. All speculative and imaginative, but very well done.
@@quillmaurer6563 Oh, yeah I know, but I meant like on a much larger scale than just Titanic, like after the disaster, many chnages were made, so if Titanic hadn't sunk, would those changes have been made etc. But yes, that video is very well done.
@@Jamesszy94 He did address some of that in that video, though he focused on Titanic's career he mentioned several other major maritime disasters happening along the way, in his alternate timeline far worse than their real historic counterparts (if they happened at all) due to the lack of safety implementations from Titanic's sinking. But he didn't discuss them directly or what the differences were, as that would have disrupted the narrative style. He presented it as if living in an alternate timeline where she never sank, thus never directly acknowledging "our" reality and the differences between that one and this one, though clearly was still thinking of such. It would be interesting if he made another video on the same subject that presented the same ideas - perhaps some of the outcomes mentioned in that video - but with a more scholarly from-our-reality perspective rather than the narrative style, discussing directly these different events and how Titanic's not sinking would have altered them versus our reality where she did sink. Not just mentioning the events, but explaining the differences in more detail. Clearly he's thought it through in depth, he just needs to tell us his thinking behind what was mentioned in that video.
@@quillmaurer6563 Yeah, I would like to see a more real life perspective video like you said, I'm sure he'll do it at some point 👌
I fell in love with the Titanic when i was 4 or 5.
Im from Ireland and been to every part connected to her...(ish).
You are a credit.
Your production, arrangement and presentation is a boon to perfection.
I truly appreciate your work .
Keep it up my dear fellow.
Good man.
I'm still blown away by the technology and manufacturing acumen available over a hundred years ago.
Im loving the new art direction for your videos! The combination of 3D models with your illustrations as textures looks stunning. It really makes those sweeping pan shots pop!
Worthy of a History or Discovery channel special, I'd say.
I've always thought it was so tragic that the damage that actually doomed the ship was the small amount of damage to boiler room 5. If they could have somehow repaired that small amount of damage the ship could have been saved.
@Dennis Wilson Go away.
@Dennis Wilson what rubbish. You should stop the silly conspiracies.
@Dennis Wilson complete BS
@Dennis Wilson
DO understand... you are using a specificity for steel strength that didnt exist for another 10yrs.
ALSO... when you have earned at least 2 Engineering Degrees, then you can go on about how her steel wasnt made correctly.
P.S
You should walk right up to Thomas Andrews and or the People on the Board at H & W.. and in your 5yr old mentality.. explain to them how flawed their materials are.
Next Time I go Time Travelling, you can go with me and tell them that. Id love to see the look on your face..
The ship had six compartments damaged. As it was built, it was meant to be able to remain afloat with any two of the 16 opened, or any three of the first five. Six was just way too many ☹
Thank you, Mike! A (perhaps odd) video suggestion: Passenger liners converted to aircraft carriers: HMS Argus was one. The Japanese converted 2-3. In the early 30s, I think there were plans to convert SS Leviathan if the need arose.
Such vessels were created from the hulls of merchant ships by the US Navy in WWII and known as light or fleet carriers. They were only marginally useful, because they lacked sufficient or any hull or deck armor, making them far too fragile for combat effectiveness. The same would have been true about passenger ships..
@@frankmiller95 wrong. Those ships are classified as Escort Carriers. Light carriers were conversations of Cleveland class light cruisers and fleet carriers were designed as fleet carriers.
Olympic, Titanic's big sister, was converted into a wartime vessel in this same vein. I believe she was a hospital ship.
this channel deserves WAYYYYY more subs. he puts so much work into his videos to make them look good and deserves more likes too
I didn't have much invested interest in oceanliners until I stumbled across this channel- a few hours ago- you've got me hooked!
9:00 that proves just HOW safety-aware they were: Multiple passive, automatic and manual activation mechanisms ("dissimilar redundancy") of safety measures - you can't get any closer to failsafe. The only problem - as always - are scenarios beyond your imagination. In every such project there should be a devil's advocate asking "But what if THAT fails?"
I'm impressed they actually had the forward bulkheads so rise high enough to account for the bow dropping as the compartments filled up - that system was not just for show! In hindsight of course, they should have considered longitudinal bulkheads as well as a watertight top to account for all three dimensions...
This tradegy always captures the imagination. Something about going down like that is just chilling.
Because these water tight compartments were open on the top, i never understood the drama in the movie with firemen moving through these closing doors... They could just run op the stairs to scotland yard and go down at the next boiler... Also they werent trapped when the door closed, like the movie suggests
Describing the Titanic's hull as a giant box girder actually helped me picture it in my head a lot better!
This story is like the gift that keeps on giving: 283 episodes in "and this was the rivet that" while I smash like and binge watch.
Haha you summarised it perfectly
There's this idea floating around that the sinking of the Titanic could have been prolonged significantly by lowering ropes next to the hull and cloging up the cracks. I would love to see a video about it.
It’s not an idea, it’s an actual technique of damage control called “fothering” that was around way before Titanic. Basically would take anything that would slow the flow of water and stuff them into the damaged parts. Or something like a sail and place them on the outside. In titanic’s case, the hatch covers were a heavy canvas that would of worked. Nothing would of saved the ship enough to make it to a dry dock but possibly long enough to save more people. It was always a mystery why there was little to no damage control on the Titanic
It's incredibly difficult to determine the damage to the Titanic with observation of it on the ocean floor because the ship landed on the ocean floor travelling approximately 25mph and it's massive weight crashing onto the bottom of the ocean would have caused substantial damage to the Hull.
Yeah well the amount of time its been sitting under saltwater sure hasnt helped
My Great-Great-Great Uncle was a member of the kitchen staff who survived the sinking. When all hope seemed lost he went up top an drank himself into a stupor. He went into the water once it went under and somehow he was one of the very few people pulled out of the water that survived.
You should go tell the Titanic Historical Society. .
Best analysis of the subject I've ever seen. Great work!
Thanks!
Hey Mike you out did yourself on this one. I've been following Titanic for over 50 years and thought I knew everything but you proved me wrong! How was your first trip to Harland and Wolff? It must have been amazing for you. I'm hoping to one day make it there. Still hoping that one day H & W builds a replica Titanic so we can board her and really experience her.
I think the pictures of damage to the Olympic were from a head-on collision with the light cruiser HMS Hawke. It's a great example of what the safety measures installed on the Olympic class could do when they were in situations they were meant for; Hawke had a ram prow and was designed to make actual armored warships regret crashing into her; meanwhile, civilian-designed Olympic gave as good as she got and was repaired and quickly back in service.
She also sunk a U-boat once, by running it over.
Though her keel was bent from the collision if I recall correctly, which was an extremely serious bit of damage
Head-on collision with Hawke? Both ships were travelling in the same direction. My information is that keel was bent, although people like Brady would deny it.
@@aj6954 Hawke's bow was pulled into Olympic's side. There are pictures of Hawke with its bow squished to the side.
@@theawickward2255 We know how where and when this happened, there are a couple of reconstruction videos. Have seen the pictures of both Hawke and Olympic after the event.
The Lusitania's double hull contributed to its rapid sinking. When the torpedo exploded, water filled the longitudinal watertight compartments on the starboard side but not the port side, causing an immediate and severe list which sank the ship in 18 minutes.
Might something similar have happened in the case of Titanic's collision, or was the resulting volume of water (compared to a torpedo breaching both hulls) too low to cause a severe list?
tyvm for another excellent doc
I have read that when the iceberg was sighted, the officer of the watch ordered hard over rudder and signaled to put the starboard engine full ahead and the port engine full reverse. Doing so automatically cut off power to the ships center propeller and created a great deal of turbulence in the vicinity of the rudder, drastically reducing its effectiveness. Had he just ordered hard over rudder it is possible Titanic would have turned far enough to miss the iceberg or possibly suffered considerably less damage.
Except that they didn't reversed the engines, they stopped them, fourth officer Boxhall was the only one who claimed that the crew put the engines in reverse, but he wasn't in bridge at the time of the collision.
The visuals & imagery are incredible. Well done all involved. There are so many, what ifs? And one for me has always played out. In both of the most Iconic films, A Night To Remember & Titanic, Murdoch orders full astern which we now know didn't happen. He followed what was protocol at the time. However, what if there was some outside the box thinking. Full astern ordered to slow a head on impact? Remain full ahead and order a turn? Or order the the turn to port, kill the port propeller only and keep starboard full ahead to increase the rate of turn? Like I said, so many what ifs.
Recent researcher are now suggesting the rip is further under the ship than thought.
Ice burgs have shelves.
Maybe and I also hear that even the double bottom was punctured if only at Boiler Room 4. So it seems the Titanic also rode on the berg .
Anyone else watching this at 2am when they REALLY should be asleep?
5:06 Things had developed quite "'a bit" in the 19th century when the SS Great Eastern was given not only a double bottom but a whole double hull. This coupled with strong transverse braces helped her survive an accident when she scraped an uncharted rock needle off Montauk Point.
I can never get enough WW2 and Titanic history. Thanks for making this and keeping it interesting.
Hello Mike,another very well explained video.always a pleasure to watch.
I've been fascinated with ships especially Titanic since I was a young kid and never tire of hearing about her or her sisters.
Keep up the good work ship mate😁👍
Good stuff, thanks Paul! :)
Very good video. My only critique is I would've preferred if you mentioned *The Great Eastern, with her double-hull and her complex bulkhead design...over half-a-century prior* perhaps you may compare and contrast the two ships in a later video.
It’s sad that I was brought to this channel because of the Titan tragedy but I’m glad I did find this channel. Great videos and very very informative!
Best Historical ship channel laterally ever. Always get excited to get home from school and watch your new videos!
Yay! Are you an actual B-17 pilot? :o
You touched very briefly on one key item that always irritates me a bit when shown in movies about shipwrecks, to include Titanic's - the gratuitous scenes of stokers rushing to get through the doors as they close, with the clear implication being that if they weren't successful, they'd be entombed and drowned. You mentioned the vertical ladder access that existed in all compartments. It's obviously more dramatic, but if you think about it - if missing the doors meant a death trap, then the water would have been trapped as well and probably it wouldn't have sunk. However, even for the Gilded Age, a 'safety' system which would have trapped and drowned men would have probably been a bit too much.
13:50
fun fact, it's not the 'weight' of the water dragging the bow down.
water in water has no weight.
it's the weight of the ship itself, and the lack of buyoncy - that's a difference.
I can't float without music. That's a lack of Beyonce. I'm crazy right now.
People often say or ask “why the Titanic sank so fast” … but is that really a fair question?
We have record of multiple, more modern, ship sinkings that have taken place whereby those ships foundered FAR FAR more quickly than Titanic.
The MS Estonia, the RMS Empress of Ireland, & the Costa Concordia all sank more quickly than the Titanic; with the Concordia being an example of a modern day vessel.
IMO the 2.5+ hours it took Titanic to sink is a testament to its durability. I think we’d be hard pressed to find any non-military ship, even one of the most advanced; and apply the same damage to it as Titanic had to contend with and my money is on Titanic will have lasted longer.
The Costa Concordia was ripped open the way the public thought Titanic was, though Edward Wilding and other Harland and Wolff engineers knew that was not the case. The gash was large enough for divers to get through it.
this is THE BEST explanation of the sinking I have seen anywhere, ever! your superb graphics and excellent narration make all the different factors very clear and easy to understand. thank you for this and all of your informative and entertaining videos
Hey that's great! So glad you enjoyed it!
13:38 This reminds me of an old video made by Carlos Rangel called Titanic sinking in real time. Sadly it was blocked by SME 😞. However I saved the video before they blocked it so on my Sunny Meadows channel I remade it 3X, it’s a little in accurate, but it gets everything else, right, including the break up. It’s called (TITANIC SINKING IN REAL TIME THE MOVIE 3) which is actually the best one out of all three.
One other save possibility I'd be curious about - she was sinking by the bow deep enough that the water spilled over the bulkheads. What would have happened had a couple compartments at the stern been flooded as well, could that have kept the ship more level and avoid the bow going low enough to spill over the bulkheads, basically counter-balance the ship? Or would it have floated too low overall that way and still had the same problem? Or perhaps the buoyancy amidship with both ends pulling down would have placed too much bending load on the ship and broken her in half, as happened later in the sinking sequence?
Would have snapped the back soon, as the sharp edges of the plates would have acted as tear points. The keel was strong with lifting from the bow or stern, but very weak in humping, as the plates that hold it together are not as strong in tension. That is seen as it tore in half with the stress just before sinking, when the empty stern was being lifted from the water. Making it strong enough would have cut greatly into the carry capacity, taking up a lot of the displacement.
It would have hastened the sinking, and it might have resulted in the keel and double bottom failing sooner, but probably not the way it had that lead to Titanic breaking apart from the bottom up.
I think they should've did full stop and steer head on to the iceberg 🧊 than drop anchor ⚓ after collision 💥 people would've died but not 1,500+
@@rubenvega4618 What would the anchor have done? The ocean is about 12,500 feet deep at that location. Not to mention that the anchors are very close to the bow, and would have been in the section of the ship completely demolished, so the anchors probably would have fallen away, or if compacted into the wreckage would have been unusable.
@@rubenvega4618 Um no, dropping anchor in 12,600 feet of water will result in merely losing the anchors, and possibly killing someone too. Anchor chains are not attached to the ship, they merely are piled up in the chain lockers. Drop anchors in water too deep, the chains will come out entirely and when the ends come out look out!
What if Titanic sailed / hit the iceberg head on?
Would she have stayed a float?
Seeing how you explained it & letting us know the water spilled over the bulk heads got that question going around in my head.
Jeppers. Either him or someone else made a video about that. Probably bow pancaked up to the second or third compartment and about 100 unlucky souls crushed but she'd have staid afloat no problem. Just not an easy split second decision to make. By the time it was obvious she wouldn't clear, it was too late to steer back into it and just letting her crash head on at 21 knots would definitely have ended in Murdoch being cast a villain and incompetent, since no one could imagine what would have happened in our timeline.
@@221b-l3t The other thing to remember is that icebergs are wider underwater than they are on top - so the helmsman may have thought he had more room to clear the iceberg than he really had.
@@RJSRdg There are those who say (with some circumstantial evidence) that there was damage to the bottom even very substantial damage as some water seemed to come through the floor. She had a double bottom, heavily compartmentalised and reinforced so it would have needed damage through the bottom and the tank top, which is kind of unlikely but possible of course. Hard to see that area. But the damage we see is under water a fair bit up from the bottom, she did clear it over water. Some overhang was smashed off by the superstructure and landed on the deck (3-4t). But it looked like they cleared it for a moment then they felt it. It was about 30 m tall so a few hundred m deep likely, about 5 million tons. Big sucker...
I think she would've survived a head-on impact yes and that I've based on what happened to the Guion liner Arizona in 1879 on an eastbound voyage. The largest liner of her day (like the Titanic), she smashed her bow against a giant iceberg and, fearing the end, everyone clung together in tears. As it turned out, it was not the end, the forward bulkhead held. In thankfulness everyone sang the hymn "Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow" as she started on her limp towards St. John's. In quite the twist of logic, though, the accident was portrayed as an example of the safety of ships rather than the dangers of ice. I am sure many other vessels made it to port if with a limp with dented bows, pitted hulls, twisted rudders and so on
Great video as always Mike, thanks! Question: If Titanic's hull had been welded, rather than riveted, would it have made any difference in the way the hull opened up? I've read articles that state that the rivets used were of a different grade steel than the plating, and that the grade used was more prone to shearing than the hull plate steel. I have seen first hand that this can happen; I worked in a shipyard where they used Grade A steel to make the padeyes used to lift the huge modules that made up the ship. One of the guys I worked with ended up making a bunch of said padeyes out of HY80 (armor) steel rather than the Grade A steel that the design specs called for. The resulting padeyes were more brittle and snapped under load, rather than flexing as they were designed to do. This resulted in a module dropping ~20 feet when the padeyes failed. Luckily, nobody was injured in the accident, but there was some significant damage done to the unit. These modules are about the size of a small house, and understandably quite heavy.
Yes the steel did have quality poorer than modern steel, but it all did pass the shipyard testing for tensile strength, as they did test all batches that way for all materials. That only came in in WW1 and WWII, when they used sub par steel that had high sulphur content, which made it become brittle in the cold weather of the Atlantic. However the steel did still work to absorb the energy and deform, and the rivets that failed were operated well past design spec. Yes the modern testing did show they were not as capable as the best of the day, but none of them actually were defective by the standard testing of the day, even if they would have failed when cold. But test at room temperature, around 15 to 20C ,and they passed, even if they would fail at -15C.
No. The damaged area where the iceberg did the fatal damage to the shell plating on the starboard bow as as much as three inches thick due to three strakes overlapping. Welding would have eliminated the popping rivets, but welded steel is more brittle along the welds than the base metal. I would say instead of plates separating from rivets popping, there would have been instead cracks or tears in the steel plating that would have sunk Titanic anyway.
There has been so many ships almost the same size as the Titanic and smaller didn't matter what year they were built if they would have hit the iceberg head on 90% of the ships make it all the way back to Port with front end damage after hitting icebergs and nobody was ever killed or injured the motors were still able to run and the water never reached a crisis level..They would turn around back to where they originally started..Truth..💪👈
Funny story I remembered talking to my buddy in 1910 when we where building it and I asked him, Everette, why are we building the hull like this and he said that I should go worry on my own problems and till this day I live in awe from his decisions and have never forgive me #EveretteCauseTheSinking
Great video, mate. Skillfully done
I watched the movie in the late 90s it was good but I moved on, as an adult, now I find it so interesting, I’ve even been looking into what life was like in the early 1900s. Learned a lot from this channel
I’m afraid to look through this comments section and find all of the “BuT ThE CoAl FiRe WeKaNeD ThE RiVetS oN The StArBoArEd SiDe!!1” so I’m just gonna look through them lol
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Quite ominous, indeed.
This was a great video to watch from beginning to end. I love history, so thank you for making this.
It’s amazing what man has made. There are so many details on those ships it almost doesn’t seem possible in such a short time frame, why just the electrification of the ship alone a mind boggling task at yet a small fraction of the total.
Oh man, the Concordia, probably the dumbest, most preventable disaster to ever take place at sea.
Well let's face it the Titanic was "most preventable" too
what accent is this?
Best Titanic videos I have ever seen. Nice job!
Great video! Thanks. I was an extra in the 1997 movie and it brought back some fond memories of filming. Thanks again.
So cool Andrew! Were you an extra in the sinking scenes? I always thought that would have been a fun gig.
This video is one of the simplest yet one of the best explanation so far unless we want to dig into pure physics and math area.... Great job.
Sadly it was the recent Titan tragedy that brought me to your channel but the high quality, fascinating content made me stay (and binge watch too many of your videos whilst I should be getting work done lol)
It's funny how a a modern aircraft hull(fuselage) is constructed very similarly to a ships hull from the 19th century accept it's aluminum alloy and much thinner and lighter.