Article

Article

Article

An article just published Tuesday, December 6, 2005 says, 'New evidence presented yesterday at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution suggests the luxury ocean liner may have broken into three pieces — not two — when it sank in 1912, meaning it would have gone down much, much faster after colliding with an iceberg in the North Atlantic. ''It was likely much more complex and much more terrifying and faster than we previously thought," said Lynn Gardner, a spokeswoman for The History Channel, whose divers discovered extra pieces of the famous ship's hull in August. ''There wasn't any time."' A new History Channel documentary is set to air on February 26, 2006.

How was the ship constructed? The ships (The Titanic had two sister ships. The RMS Titanic and the RMS Olympic were built at the same time; the third ship, the RMS Britannic, was built later.) were built at the modified (to handle ships of this size) Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland. Design speed for these ships was 21-22 knots. Each outboard propeller was driven by a separate, four-cylinder reciprocating steam engine. The center prop was driven by a low-pressure steam turbine that used the exhaust steam from the two reciprocating engines. As a whole, the power package was rated at 51,000 indicated horsepower. As an interesting aside, what with contemporary discussions of fuel efficiency, the Titanic burned up to 650 tons of coal per day while underway — coal was moved from bunkers into furnaces by hand.

According to one of the sources listed below, "The Olympic was launched on October 20, 1910, and the Titanic on May 31, 1911. In the early 20th century, ships were constructed using wrought-iron rivets to attach steel plates to each other or to a steel frame. The frame itself was held together by similar rivets. Holes were punched at appropriate sites in the steel-frame members and plates for the insertion of the rivets. Each rivet was heated well into the austenite temperature region, inserted in the mated holes of the respective plates or frame members, and hydraulically squeezed to fill the holes and form a head. Three million rivets were used in the construction of the ship."

According to another article referenced below, "On the moonless night of April 14, the ocean was very calm and still. At 11:40 p.m., Greenland time, the lookouts in the crow's nest sighted an iceberg immediately ahead of the ship; the bridge was alerted. The duty officer ordered the ship hard to port and the engines reversed. In about 40 seconds, as the Titanic was beginning to respond to the change in course, it collided with an iceberg estimated to have a gross weight of 150,000-300,000 tons. The iceberg struck the Titanic near the bow on the starboard (right) side about 4 m above the keel. During the next 10 seconds, the iceberg raked the starboard side of the ship's hull for about 100 m, damaging the hull plates and popping rivets, thus opening the ...