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Titanic - New Evidence C4. |
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#1 |
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Inactive Member
Join Date: Dec 2016
Posts: 159
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Titanic - New Evidence C4.
Oh dear god, New evidence of what ?
The bunker fire was no secret, most big liners of that age had bunker fires rumbling away for weeks, nor was it of any import to what eventually happened to the ship. In the 20 year history of piss-poor History Channel type Titanic docs this one takes the prize for the one with the most feeble premise to base a theory on. |
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#2 |
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Join Date: Nov 2002
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I was only half watching but I thought it was quite interesting
I don't know if fires in the coal stores were common but there appeared to be some evidence that it was hushed up in the subsequent enquiries was the contention that the fire caused some visible damage to the hull at the precise point where it hit the iceberg ? |
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#3 |
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Join Date: May 2010
Posts: 141
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There was far more to this programme than your dismissive post would have us believe.
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#4 |
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Join Date: Sep 2010
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Wow, i,m not interested in this type of thing normally but was riveted, start to finish, especially about the massive cover up. Had no idea about the fire prior to this, thought it was just speed and an iceberg.
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#5 |
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Quote:
I was only half watching but I thought it was quite interesting
I don't know if fires in the coal stores were common but there appeared to be some evidence that it was hushed up in the subsequent enquiries was the contention that the fire caused some visible damage to the hull at the precise point where it hit the iceberg ? After the ship had hit the iceberg, the build up of water pressure caused the bulkhead to collapse leading to the flooding of the next bunker which had also suffered from coal fire. |
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#6 |
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Join Date: Oct 2010
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Quote:
Oh dear god, New evidence of what ?
The bunker fire was no secret, most big liners of that age had bunker fires rumbling away for weeks, nor was it of any import to what eventually happened to the ship. In the 20 year history of piss-poor History Channel type Titanic docs this one takes the prize for the one with the most feeble premise to base a theory on. Actually the fire in the bulk head looks to have played a much more significant role in the sinking of the ship than previously thought. It raged longer than anyone realised and caused more damage to a crucial area of the compartment holding the flood water. The damage caused by the fire is much more likely to be the cause of the ship sinking so fast when it otherwise would've stayed afloat long enough to see all the people on board saved and taken on board other nearby ships. This is a part of the Titanic story that's been kind of lost until now so it's really not a feeble theory at all. The fire meant the burning coal was shovelled into the furnaces quicker than intended, which meant the ship was travelling at top whack rather than at a steady speed. There's always been a bit of confusion as to why the ship was going so fast and this solves that. It should never have left Southampton while on fire but pressures on White Star's finances meant they couldn't delay the maiden voyage, which was already at least a month late. After the disaster the fire onboard was played down during the enquiry and it was deemed an unavoidable accident. While the fire was no secret, putting together its significance to the sinking of Titanic is actually quite important if we're to understand what really happened. |
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#7 |
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Excellent documentary . I had no idea there was a fire on the Titanic when it sailed and that it had spread to more then one bunker which weakened Titanic's defenses .
As was also stated White Star used a lesser grade steel in it's construction and in the construction of it's sister ship which also lessened it's defenses . The launch of Titanic had already been delayed several times and the management decided they just could not afford any further delays . So there was a massive hush up by the management about the fire . Who would board a ship with a fire on board ? |
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#8 |
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So in this CT, a smouldering coal fire can weaken a steel structure, but in the 9/11 one, fiercely burning jet fuel can't.
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#9 |
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Amazing that a "smudge" on a photo could lead to the investigation and conclusions.
I found the documentary very interesting. |
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#10 |
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Join Date: Dec 2016
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I thought the smudge looked like a printing fault, but it's on another photo as well, but I can't see any such mark on any subsequent snaps at Southampton or Cobh.
The weakened bulkhead theory is interesting but flawed, damaged or not, sadly, all the bulkheads [ dividing walls ] only came up to E or D decks, meaning they didn't create watertight compartments, and the seawater flowed over into the next compartment as the ship sank by the head [ it's all explained in A Night To Remember film ] . She was doomed no matter how strong her structure was , she was designed and built as a liner , not a dreadnought, collier or a icebreaker. While the steel or the rivets may be inferior, thin or brittle, the same steel and rivets gave all the other Harland and Wolff ships a long and reliable life. In fact when the Olympic was being broken up at Inverkeithing in the 30s, the breakers remarked that the sheet steel and girders were was as sturdy and strong as the day she was launched. |
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#11 |
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Quote:
I thought the smudge looked like a printing fault, but it's on another photo as well, but I can't see any such mark on any subsequent snaps at Southampton or Cobh.
The weakened bulkhead theory is interesting but flawed, damaged or not, sadly, all the bulkheads [ dividing walls ] only came up to E or D decks, meaning they didn't create watertight compartments, and the seawater flowed over into the next compartment as the ship sank by the head [ it's all explained in A Night To Remember film ] . She was doomed no matter how strong her structure was , she was designed and built as a liner , not a dreadnought, collier or a icebreaker. While the steel or the rivets may be inferior, thin or brittle, the same steel and rivets gave all the other Harland and Wolff ships a long and reliable life. In fact when the Olympic was being broken up at Inverkeithing in the 30s, the breakers remarked that the sheet steel and girders were was as sturdy and strong as the day she was launched. The point is the rediscovered evidence says the damage was in the lower part of the bulk head and the water rushed through a split at the bottom of the compartment wall into an area that was not supposed to take in flood water. This tipped the ship downward, causing more water to be taken on board. This meant the ship sank quicker than thought possible and why so many more people died that night. That damage was caused by the fire. |
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#12 |
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Quote:
So in this CT, a smouldering coal fire can weaken a steel structure, but in the 9/11 one, fiercely burning jet fuel can't.
Steel does distort and bend even in relatively low temperatures of a house fire. That is why the building code makes you fireproof structural steel I-Beams in your house extension. So a raging coal fire for days and jet fuel can certainly do it. |
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#13 |
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Quote:
Excellent documentary . I had no idea there was a fire on the Titanic when it sailed and that it had spread to more then one bunker which weakened Titanic's defenses .
As was also stated White Star used a lesser grade steel in it's construction and in the construction of it's sister ship which also lessened it's defenses . The launch of Titanic had already been delayed several times and the management decided they just could not afford any further delays . So there was a massive hush up by the management about the fire . Who would board a ship with a fire on board ? The ship should never even have been saiing through an iceberg belt on its maiden voyage but it seems there were a lot of other problems too. |
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#14 |
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Quote:
Amazing that a "smudge" on a photo could lead to the investigation and conclusions.
I found the documentary very interesting. |
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#15 |
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ISIS are claiming responsibility.
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#16 |
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Some significant points were made.
The weakening of the strength of the bulkheads due to the fire, seems a reasonable assumption. The excessive speed because of the coal shortage made no sense. It's like driving fast because you're running out of petrol. You use more petrol per mile at higher speeds, it's likely to be the same for a ship with coal. They never used all the boilers at the same time. Using the dampers would have slowed the rate at which they burned. Saving burning excessive amounts of fuel. There's been other documentaries offering a number of theories, one was that it was proved that they made economies, including using poorer quality rivets than usual. They found the invoices for them. This was a possible reason why the plates ripped so badly after hitting the iceberg. Still it made a change from cookery programmes. |
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#17 |
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Nah, don't get drawn in by these Channel New Evidence bolloxmentaries. There was one before Christmas about Pearl Harbour which was trailed as revealing the Allied war leaders and commanders knew an attack by Japan was imminent. No such "evidence" was then provided.
All of the "new evidence" was in a 1970 feature film called Tora, Tora, Tora. Channel 4 should stick with Naked Attraction and The Jump, history bolloxdocs are quite offensive as they impugn falsely the character of people no longer alive to defend themselves. |
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#18 |
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Quote:
Wow, i,m not interested in this type of thing normally but was riveted, start to finish, especially about the massive cover up. Had no idea about the fire prior to this, thought it was just speed and an iceberg.
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#19 |
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Join Date: Mar 2014
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The programme did not provide new evidence, it provided new speculation, based on a smudge on a photograph (not evident on any of the many other photographs of the ship) and some "experts" speculating on what might happen to certain types of steel under certain circumstances. The level of the thing is marked by the reaction of the Titanic investigator to one of the experts when he said that the temperature in a bunker fire could reach from 500 degrees to 1000 degrees. "1000" our investigator excitedly replies.
We had the usual Titanic hyperbole at the beginning; largest ship in the world, biggest moving man made object; sounds so much more impressive than saying she was the second ship in a class of three and was almost exactly the same as the Olympic, which entered service the previous year. The only significant difference was that on Titanic the forward part of the promenade was enclosed. This was done to ensure that her Gross Tonnage exceeded Olympic's. Gross Tonnage is a measure of volume, not weight. At the time of Titanic's construction (and until the 1980's) 100cu ft of permanently enclosed space equalled one Gross Register Ton (today a complicated metric based formula is used which gives much the same results, it is still nothing to do with weight). By this artifice, White Star were able to claim that Titanic was the "largest ship in the world", when in fact she was in no way physically larger than Olympic. The big news had been Olympic's debut the previous year, nobody was interested in the second banana and so White star was desperate to whip up some interest with the hyperbole which has been regurgitated by almost everybody ever since. The bunker fire has been known about ever since it was discovered in April 1912. It has never been "covered up", it simply was not a significant factor. Even if the bulkhead was damaged, it's failure did not result in the ship sinking that much quicker than it would if it had held, the ship could not have stayed afloat long enough for the Carpathia to reach the scene. The nonsense about running at full speed because, either, they were short of coal or they had to shovel coal into the boilers (they couldn't make up their minds which) fails to stand up to scrutiny. If they were short of coal they would not save it by putting on steam in spite of the mind boggling "expert" who seemed to think that you saved coal by going faster. That is rather akin, if you are running out of petrol, to put your foot down as you will get to the filling station quicker. As for shovelling coal into the boilers to help extinguish the fire, the ship had other boiler rooms which could have been shut down to regulate her speed. Titanic was running at her full service speed simply because she had to in order to maintain her schedule. Unlike Cunard's Lusitania and Mauretania, the Olympic class ships had no reserve speed and could not afford to slow down. It would have been unacceptable to arrive late on her maiden voyage. The programme also gave information which is simply untrue, such as that she had over 2,000 passengers "below decks". Titanic's passenger capacity was 905 1st class, 564 2nd class and 1,134 3rd class, a total of 2,603. However, on her maiden voyage she was barely half full, carrying a mere 322 1st class (only 35% of capacity), 277 2nd class (49%) and 709 3rd class (62%), a total of 1,308, almost exactly 50% of capacity. The crew of 898 took the total on board to 2,206. If fully booked there would have been 3,500 on board and another 1,300 people would have died. These are facts that the media likes to cover up as they don't fit in with the hyperbole that this was a wonder ship which everyone was clamouring to travel on. The truth about the whole saga is that the Olympic class ships were badly designed, badly built and badly sailed and that is what has been covered up as the truth would be considered a stain on the good name of the British mercantile marine. |
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#20 |
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Good post Gary (not going to copy it in)
In addition to what you have said, when they lifted what is referred to as "the big piece" of Titanic from the ocean floor some years back, when they examined it they found that the steel and rivets were actually of a good quality and perfectly acceptable for those times. The simple fact is, The Titanic was going too fast into an ice field the lookouts had no binoculars and there wen't enough lifeboats to save everyone on board. |
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#21 |
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Quote:
The programme did not provide new evidence.....These are facts that the media likes to cover up as they don't fit in with the hyperbole that this was a wonder ship which everyone was clamouring to travel on.
The truth about the whole saga is that the Olympic class ships were badly designed, badly built and badly sailed and that is what has been covered up as the truth would be considered a stain on the good name of the British mercantile marine. |
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#22 |
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Well in the twin towers, that's exactly what it did do and that's why they collapsed.
Steel does distort and bend even in relatively low temperatures of a house fire. That is why the building code makes you fireproof structural steel I-Beams in your house extension. So a raging coal fire for days and jet fuel can certainly do it. |
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#23 |
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I saw a documentary fronted by Gary Wallace a few years back that mooted a theory that Titanic was actually "Olympic" which had been badly damaged in a collision with a Royal Navy vessel
https://theunredacted.com/titanic-co...at-never-sank/ If the Titanic sinking was indeed an "insurance job", then setting sail with coal bunkers on fire would be an obvious thing to do to assist in the "accident" |
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#24 |
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was really fascinating, hope its not just another 'theory', the evidence does look good. It all makes sense, why the ship was travelling full speed, because all the coal was almost used up emptying the bunkers to stop the fire.
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#25 |
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I havent seen the documentary yet but can remember an investigation a few years ago
stated it was several factors that caused it to sink One of them not mentioned before was the weather conditions at the time were unusual for that time of year It was rare to have such a cold northern vortex to travel so far south in a very short space of time-This was mentioned by survivors who said the temp dropped like a stone |
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