The sinking of the Titanic has become one of the most well-known disasters in history, because of the terrible loss of life and the demise of what everyone believed was an "unsinkable" ship. As is evident from reading this report the use of substandard rivets was the main cause of the failure of the Titanic. By substandard we mean that the type of rivets used was incorrect as well as the location of these rivets. In the day rivets were the main means of putting ships together, three million rivets were used on the Titanic and we can speculate that had the Titanic never hit the iceberg, she may have never sank. The builder of the Titanic struggled for years to obtain enough good rivets and riveters, and ultimately settled on faulty materials that doomed the ship. The steel rivets were of a good enough quality for the ship …show more content…
This would have strengthened the bow stern and although we are uncertain whether this may have stopped the ship from sinking, it would have at least stopped the ship from sinking as fast as it did. However we learnt a lot from the failure of the Titanic and because of this failure the maritime industry has changed the testing criteria of things such as metal plates and rivets. Materials must now pass a series of tests such as the Charpy test and other rigorous tensile tests. Tensile tests conducted in different conditions to show whether the material can cope with a series of different environments. Improvements in design of ships have also come about as a result of the Titanic; double-sided hulls were added to ships to prevent minor hull punctures such as the tears on the Titanic from causing major damage. Furthermore with the development of the metal welding industry, the need for rivets in applications such
But in 1912 the Titanic sunk and it was a disaster at that time a lot of people died and the cause was preventable. So the failure was because of a fracture in the Hull steel and the wrought iron rivets. The fracture happened because of the amount of sulphur of the steel and the high speed of the ship as it travel over below freezing water. All these could have been prevented if the captain of the ship listened to the warring about the ice. They could have used a better quality of the riveting and the steel plates.
Imagine having to balance your weight on a pack of pencils, and that’s how brittle the steel used on the Titanic’s hull was. There was a piece of the hull that had been recovered and scientists had gone forward to examine that piece of steel. They concluded that the steel was of very poor quality. “Jagged and sharp, the edges of the piece of steel appeared almost shattered, like broken china.” (Bassett 44). The Titanic had a sister ship, Olympic, which collided while leaving the harbor on September 20, 1911. A similar outcome had occurred when another cruise ship had collided into Olympic. “A 36-foot high opening was torn into the starboard side of the Olympics’ hull when a British cruiser broadsided her. Failure of the riveted joints and ripping of the hull plates were apparent in the area of impact.” (45). The build of the Titanic was more cheap and bad built than quality made and
The Titanic’s maiden voyage was disastrous because the beautiful ship sank and many people died. One of the largest flaws of the Titanic’s design is that it was too big and not nimble enough to avoid the iceberg. In addition to the nimbility of the ship, some of the rivets were improperly manufactured and contained a lot of slag in the steel, which makes it more fracture prone.
On April 2,1912 the RMS Titanic set sail on its maiden voyage from Belfast, Ireland to Southampton. The Titanic was 4 days into its exploration when the collision of the iceberg occurred. As the Titanic set sail on it’s maiden voyage, some interior work still needed to be completed. Some areas of the ship had no heating while the others areas where to hot. A team of about 9 harland & wolff employees, including the ship's designer, Thomas Andrews, sailed as members of a guarantee group, to make sure any problems with the ship were attended to. They as well perished in the sinking of the
Building the Titanic took around 26 months to finish. The building began March 11, 1909 and by May 11, 1911 the Titanic was launched in the Victoria Channel. A total of 246 injuries and two deaths resulted from the building of the Titanic. The amount of injuries and deaths were low around that time. The massive ship was built to beat their rival Cunard. Harland and Wollf were the shipbuilders, where they chose Thomas Andrews as the architect of the Titanic. He decided to design the ship to be unsinkable by having sixteen different water compartments separated by watertight bulkheads, twenty-nine boilers to power the ship, and had two steam engines. The ship was thought to stay afloat even if four compartments were ruptured. April 10, 1912 the forty-five story high ship set sail. Luxury was the main feature of the Titanic
The Titanic was a passenger ship, not a battleship, so it was not built to take on huge icebergs. It states in the article that nothing was wrong in the building of the Titanic, but anything is possible. Man’s error could have been a big factor with the sinking. The ship was built among time pressures, not because of cost, which put a huge strain on the shipyard. If the builders were given more time, then mayne the ship would have been stronger and could have withstanded more. Higher quality rivets and thicker hulls might have kept the Titanic afloat for much longer.
During the time of her construction, Titanic was designed to be the largest, grandest, safest, and most technologically advanced ship during her time. Her designers and engineers set out to build a class of ocean liners that could compete against White Star Line’s rival company, Cunard. However, when Titanic, the second of her sister ships sunk on her maiden voyage, it shook the world and it had a major impact on the world and its people. One of the main effects was the effect on safety regulations. Titanic only carried enough lifeboats to sustain roughly half of the passengers and crew on board. At the time, Titanic actually exceeded the amount of the lifeboats required by the British Board of Trade regulations by 10 percent.
On April 14th, 1912 at around 11:40pm the Titanic smashed into the iceberg. The iceberg stuck the starboard side of the ship causing the plates of the hull to buckle. When the plates buckled it opened a seam from the iron plates pulling away from the seams causing the watertight compartments to start flooding. The Titanic was designed to be made to be able to stay afloat with up to the first four watertight compartments flooded (Greeley 3). The collision caused at least
The high percentage made them weak and fracture-prone so when they collided with the iceberg hit they popped and allowed the plates to separate and let in water. In a 2008 article, also by New York Times, Jennifer McCarty, co-author of What Really Sank the Titanic (along with Timothy Foecke), stated “The company knowingly purchased weaker rivets…” In an analysis later made by Dr. Timothy Foecke, a scientist at the National Institute of Standard and Technology, he proved the rivets to be faulty and may be accountable for the six tears that were discovered in the ship’s lower bow. With a such a ‘top notch’ ship, it became questionable on why the rivets were so easy to break and the answer laid within the construction of the
The sinking of the Titanic is one most well-known shipwreck in modern day history and it's still being written and told about even a century later. The causation of the sinking has been debated heavily since the crash in 1912 and many so-called experts of the titanic disagree with another on this issue. There has been new development when the ship was discovered in 1985 and examined by experts. Leading people that the sinking was caused by three major turning points. The first being the failures of White Star Line who manufacture the ship starting in 1909. The second being the crew of the ship that had some very serve flaws in the plan of action leading up to the disaster. Lastly the passengers who had enough time to prepare before the
During the time of her construction, Titanic was the largest, grandest, safest, and most technologically advanced ship during her time. Her designers and engineers set out to build a class of ocean liners that could compete against White Star Line’s rival company, Cunard. However, when Titanic, the second of her sister ships sunk on her maiden voyage, it shook the world and it had a major impact on the world and its people. One of the main effects was the effect on safety regulations. Titanic only carried enough lifeboats to sustain roughly half of the passengers and crew on board. At the time, Titanic actually exceeded the amount of the lifeboats required by the British Board of Trade regulations by 10 percent.
It is proved that not taking other ships warnings seriously caused the Titanic’s voyage to be a disaster because, the Titanic ended up completely spacing the fact that there were icebergs, and it ended up hitting one. Had the Titanic taken these warnings seriously, it could have changed its route to New York and gone through a different path to get there. It also could have known to be on the lookout for icebergs and know when to move out of the way of them. It is also proved that the Titanic was built out of cheap materials that break easily. This is proved when the Titanic is called the “unsinkable” but then floods, sinks, and splits in half. The Titanic also did not use all of its lifeboats, which proved to be the cause of more deaths, as some people do not know how to swim and the cold water caused others to freeze to death. Had all the lifeboats been used, more lives would have possibly been saved.
Along with putting pressure on capin Smith Ismay also rushed through the building and testing of the ship. Let’s put this in perspective titanic was biggest most luxurious ship of its time and it only took two years to build. On such short notice iron was all they could get to build the ship. If a little bit of longer testing was done on titanic the ship could of been safe from this disaster.
When analyzing this disaster the first thing to consider is the engineer’s design of the Titanic. The Titanic was employing many new and innovative designs that were believed to make the Titanic the safest ship ever built at that time. The engineer’s of the vessel made claims that the Titanic was “unsinkable” and that “even in the worst possible accident at sea, the ship should have stayed afloat for two to three days.” One of the features that lead them to this claim was the 16 watertight compartments in the hull of the ship. The way they were designed allowed for up to four compartments to be breached and they ship would still carry
In the early 1900s ocean liners were a lucrative business. Carrying passengers across the vast ocean was the most efficient way to travel. White Star Lines had to find a way to lure passengers away from their competitor, Cunard Lines (Encyclopedia Britannica). They decided to build bigger ocean liners, which focused on comfort, as opposed to speed. The Titanic’s hull was designed to withstand a breech in four of its watertight compartments; this made many believe that the ship was unsinkable. Sadly, for those on the ship, this couldn’t be further