Bouler added these comments in the current discussion du jour ...
[snip]
Here you can read what I wrote.
http://www.abajournal.com/news/titan..._rivets_book_s
ay s/
A little logic here, you have to know not every link is complete and
sometimes broken.
Because the link was to large the last symbol is on the next rule.
Try again with on the end "says/".
You could have known Jerry grin
I'll try again but I thought my URL was OK. But, as to your writing it
vs. reading it, let me respectfully refer you to your exact words, in
English, of course, right under your [snip] - "here you can read what I
WROTE". Did I misunderstand/misconstrue your intent here?
OK, I tried it again, I THINK the way you suggested, to wit:
http://www.abajournal.com/news/titan...vets_book_says
/
I have Xnews line width set right now so that the only character that
wrapped is the slash. If I still have it wrong, please hold my hand,
you know what an Internet newbie I am!
Bouler, I looked here but cannot find a reference to you
specifically. Could you please provide a closer link into the
American Bar Association web site where you wrote an article on the
rivets of the Titanic?
I did not write it, I read it;-)
Please see my comment on this above and help me understand where I went
wrong.
I commented on the rivets briefly, I shall expand from my somewhat
meager knowledge of this particular aspect of the disaster.
To my knowledge, the rivet issue is one of faulty metalurgy based
on common practice of ship builders of the day. The problem is
believed to be two-fold: steel with an inconsistent amount of
carbon content making ductility variable from quite soft to
extremely brittle based on original pouring of the rivets and the
already present ductility variability further aggravated by some
amount of annealing due to the temperature the rivets were heated
to, presumeably red-hot, from some annealing down to very little.
If an already brittle steel were incompletely annealed by the
heating process, it is much more likely to fracture and fail under
much less than it's design stresses and strains, thus in the case
of the Titanic, it is believed that many rivets simply popped as
the hull scraped along a submerged part of the iceberg, allowing
water to seep in at an unanticipated rate through partially buckled
steel hull plates.
Expanding on some other engineering aspects believed relevant in
the Titanic sinking, the steel of the hull plates themselves were
also suspected with modern technology and investigation techniques
to be substandard from both a normal yield strength and from a
tendency to be too brittle, again leading to buckled and sheared
off hull plates which would cause vast amounts of water to
overwhelm the watertight bulkhead doors and sink the ships.
Unfortunatly, this cannot be confirmed or dismissed as the hull is
lying (laying?) on its starboard side.
Its your first language, my thirdgrin but we both know what you
mean. You have much more knowledge of iron and steel then I have, at
least the used rivets in cars to if I'm not mistaken.
I said used because I think its no longer allowed, correct me if I'm
wrong.
Yes, Bouler, I'm aware that you're gifted with two more languages than
I am, save a dozen words I might be able to cobble together in Polish
or German.
And, yes, rivets were used in cars, as recently as in the 2002 Chrysler
Prowler I owned a few years ago. The BIG difference was that car rivets
are relatively small and generally are simple attachment devices with
similar strength to a sheet metal screw. They're typically inserted
with a ribbon of rivets along a tape in something like an ammo belt for
a machine gun, with the rivet gun itself being either a manual tool one
squeezes to get the force or an air tool, as used in early car
applications.
But, NOT red-hot rather large rivets as were used until even the post-
WWII years in sky-scaper steel girder construction and are still used
in bridges, much as ships used them. It is the brittle metalurgy of the
hot rivets as used on ships like Titanic which are alleged to have
failed causing the sinking. I say "alleged" because it CAN be shown
with some difficulty that SOME rivets are defective. It is difficult
because they are severely corroded/rusted after some 80+ years in salt
water. I also use the term "alleged" because I don't personally know of
any nautical structural engineers or marine archeologists working with
engineers that can positiviely point to the rivets, again unfortunately
because that part of the hull is laying on its starboard side covering
up the "problem."
One last comment on rivets in cars. I think you're correct that no one
uses them for structural purposes anymore, probably not for a long
time. But, I THINK they can still be found in non-structural
applications such as attaching plastic trim on the interior or exterior
of the car where there's little stress and loading except to keep the
thing in place.
Speaking of starboard, British merchant (and possibly naval) ships
of the day used a peculiar form of port and starboard steering
conventions so the officer on duty when the lookout reported the
iceberg looming ahead is believed to have order "hard a starboard",
meaning really "turn hard left". This may or may not have been
correct in the first place, but worse, could have actually been
counter-productive as the forward motion of the ship and the fact
that the rudder is at the stern would cause the stern to move to
starboard if the order were given correctly as it should which
should have moved the bow and first few hundred feet of the hull
away from the berg. However, inertia from a speed of around 23-24
mph (I believe it was going around 21 knots but I'm not certain of
this) would cause the ship to lurch on for some distance before a
turn in either direction could be affected. That, combined with
unexpected effects of a full astern propulsion, again, supposedly
ordered, might cause the bow 1/4 or so of the ship to actually move
into the berg for quite some time. Again, AFAIK, nothing definitive
can be said for these theories because of lack of physical evidence
of where the rudder was positioned and what the engines were
actually doing at the time of the collision but prior to the
sinking.
Indeed Jerry a lot of theories.
Normally the rudder goes left if the ship must go to starboard.
I do'nt know how this is on big ships, because with a steering wheel
its technically simply to change the direction.
Huh? If the rudder turn to port, i.e., left when looking down on it
from above, would the water not force the stern to starboard and thus
the bow to port, the intended direction? What I was talking about was
the British convention which literally meant turn the RUDDER to the
opposite direction from the turn command from the bridge. My somewhat
limited understanding is that the idea was thought to be simpler to
understand for officers and helmsmen to say where they wanted the stern
to go. Moreover, there's some debate over whether the officer on the
bridge thought that also using the engine telegraph to signal full
astern might pull the bow to port faster. This is the stuff that I
think is fraught with speculation and errors since I don't think any
eyewitnesses can say with confidence what actually happened, are there?
another link:
http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org...64/501.html?10
97630857
Maybe the link is in two parts again so take care.
Now, using modern computer CAE and simulation computer technology,
it is strongly believed that the hull could not possibly have
withstood the bending stresses of a sinking by the bow at an angle
in excess of, I believe, some 11 degrees, thus the hull can be
shown to have broken i half BEFORE the ship slipped under the sea,
and is confirmed by the relative positions of the bow and stern
halves.
So, it is my understanding that the tragedy COULD have been
prevented entirely if Capt. Smith had heeded warnings of icebergs
along the main shipping lanes and ignored his own instincts as well
as members of White Star Lines officials on board. However, once
the sequence of events sealed the Titanic's fate hours before the
actual collision with the iceberg, it may STILL have been possible
for Titanic to have sustained enough LESS damage to have at least
stayed afloat long enough for the Carpathia [sp?] to arrive some 4
hours later, perhaps by delaying or simply not issuing the hard a
starboard order combined with what my limited research suggests WAS
an order for full astern power which likely exacerbated the entire
scenario.
Whew! Having said all of that, I must include my usual disclaimer:
I am an AMATEUR historian, and a rather poor one at that, and my
nautical knowledge is quite limited beyond simple strenght of
materials engineering as I have outlined above. I have not
personally done a deep dive (no pun intended!) research job on
this, but simply evaluated available facts from old Encylopedia
Brittannica and similar publications, a minor bit of Googling, but
mainly public TV, Discovery Channel, and The History Channel
episodes that more or less have fully explored the subject. The
trouble with my kind of ersatz "research" is that I must try to
separate truth from drama on made-for-television shows where the
true intent is to sell air time, however, what I see on TV
especially comparing traditional views with those of the several
successful dives on the wreak seem to indicate the causes of the
sinking to be multiple.
In the end, though, does it really matter? I mean, the ship DID
sink, albeit NOT the way it is ludicrously portrayed in the movie
"Raise the Titanic!" which relies on the incorrect notion (of the
time) that the hull was intact, but simply filled with water.
Again, Bouler, I bow to your superior "knowledge of the sea" on all
of this and would still love to read your full account, so please
get me closer if you can. Thank you, and I know return control of
your TV set to you! Lol I never heard that sayïng;-)
Wow, my English is not that bad, but when it comes to technical
terms I have to use my dictionnary.
That was a long reply Jerry and I understand just like you there
were a lot of reasons to question if there were made mistakes.
Most experts think there was a lot wrong from the time the ship was
build.
Please excuse me if I (again) insulted you, your intelligence, or your
English, Bouler, that was hardly my intent. My reply was rather lengthy
because I wanted to possibly stimulate some discussion by commenting
(from memory) pretty much the extent of what I know about the technical
side of the construction of Titanic and its sinking, and NOT to
obliquely lecture you or make fun of your English.
Again, since I am obviously missing some things here in your comments,
please guide me to correcting my reading or perception errors. Thank
you.
--
HP, aka Jerry
"You've obviously mistaken me for someone who gives a ****!"