They showed this documentary on Channel Five just now, in which the world's leading authority in ship-iceberg-related-incidents Dr Robert Gagnon (not to be confused with the fundamentalist Christian nutter), who actually crashes ships into icebergs for 'research purposes', confirmed what I had always suspected, i.e. if the Titanic hadn't tried to steer past the iceberg and instead just hit the damn' thing head-on, it wouldn't have torn a 300 ft gash down the side of the ship, causing five compartments to fill with water and hence causing the ship to sink.
He said there were plenty of examples of ships hitting icebergs head-on, for sure, the front compartment or two were split wide open and filled with water, but the rest of the compartments stayed water tight, he showed pictures of one or two such ships which had limped back into harbour.
Glad we've got that one cleared up, although it's still a tricky problem: do you try and steer round the iceberg; in which case you might miss it completely (best outcome) but risk hitting it sideways and sinking (worst outcome); OR do you just go full steam astern, accept the fact that you will hit the iceberg head-on and hope for the best (embarrassing and expensive to repair, but few fatalities)? Hmmmm.
Thursday, 13 October 2011
Titanic: The True Story
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
Sounds like you've come up with your next poll!
Have to try to go round. Captain Smith didn't know he'd gash out the sides. Did the Doc what happens if a ship hits not head on, but not scraping down the sides?
UWM, it's not really pollable.
BQ, do you mean hit it sort of three quarters on? No, he didn't, he just compared "head on" with "scraping down the side".
I know it shouldn't but the list of choices offer made me giggle. You can just imagine the conversation on the bridge as disaster appraoches:
No2 "I say No 1, what's that ruddy great white thing up ahead"
No1 "Great scot! Left hand down a bit Cox'n"
"Aye aye Sir"
FX Sounds of extended splintering crash.
Whistle (in Welsh accent) "Look out 'ere sir. Able Seamen Goldstein chattin'. Are you aware, sir, that we seem to have collided with a ruddy great iceberg?"
and so on...
Left hand down a bit, gingerly...
Given that Titanic was one of the first ships with internal watertight compartments (hence the "unsinkable" claim), the crew on the bridge (which did not include Smith) probably didn't realise that hitting the iceberg was the right thing to do.
They certainly couldn't have thought it through in the time available (37 seconds per wikipedia).
Post a Comment