When the Titanic hit the iceberg, the hull plates split open and continued

cracking as the water flooded the ship. Low water temperatures and high impact loading

also caused the brittle failure of the rivets used to fasten the hull plates to the ship's main

structure. Climate caused more icebergs, Weather conditions in the North Atlantic were

particularly conducive for corralling icebergs at the intersection of the Labrador Current

and the Gulf Stream, due to warmer-than-usual waters in the Gulf Stream, Richard Norris

of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography told Physics World. "Oceanographically, the

upshot of that was that icebergs, sea ice and growlers were concentrated in the very

position where the collision happened," Norris said. Tides sent icebergs southward Last

month, astronomers at Texas State University at San Marcos noted that the sun, the

moon and Earth were aligned in such a way that could have led to unusually high tides in

January 1912. They speculated that the tides could have dislodged icebergs that were

stuck in the Labrador Sea, sending more of them toward the waters traversed by the

Titanic a couple of months later, The ship was going too fast: Many Titanicologists have

said that the ship's captain, Edward J. Smith, was aiming to better the crossing time of

the Olympic, the Titanic's older sibling in the White Star fleet. For some, the fact that the

Titanic was sailing full speed ahead despite concerns about icebergs was Smith's biggest

misstep. "Simply put, Titanic was traveling way too fast in an area known to contain ice;

that's the bottom line," says Mark Nichol, webmaster for the Titanic and Other White Star

Ships website. Iceberg warnings went unheeded: The Titanic received multiple warnings

about ice fields in the North Atlantic over the wireless, but Corfield notes that the last and

most specific warning was not passed along by senior radio operator Jack Phillips to

Captain Smith, apparently because it didn't carry the prefix "MSG" (Masters' Service
Gram). That would have required a personal acknowledgment from the captain. "Phillips

interpreted it as non-urgent and returned to sending passenger messages to the receiver

on shore at Cape Race, Newfoundland, before it went out of range," Corfield writes. The

binoculars were locked up: Corfield also says binoculars that could have been used by

lookouts on the night of the collision were locked up aboard the ship — and the key was

held by David Blair, an officer who was bumped from the crew before the ship's departure

from Southampton. Some historians have speculated that the fatal iceberg might have

been spotted earlier if the binoculars were in use, but others say it wouldn't have made a

difference. The steersman took a wrong turn: Did the Titanic's steersman turn the ship

toward the iceberg, dooming the ship? That's the claim made in 2010 by Louise Patten,

who said the story was passed down from her grandfather, the most senior ship officer to

survive the disaster. After the iceberg was spotted, the command was issued to turn "hard

a starboard," but as the command was passed down the line, it was misinterpreted as

meaning "make the ship turn right" rather than "push the tiller right to make the ship head

left," Patten said. She said the error was quickly discovered, but not quickly enough to

avert the collision. She also speculated that if the ship had stopped where it was hit,

seawater would not have pushed into one interior compartment after another as it did,

and the ship might not have sunk as quickly. Reverse thrust reduced the ship's

maneuverability: Just before impact, first officer William McMaster Murdoch is said to

have telegraphed the engine room to put the ship's engines into reverse. That would

cause the left and right propeller to turn backward, but because of the configuration of the

stern, the central propeller could only be halted, not reversed. Corfield said "the fact that

the steering propeller was not rotating severely diminished the turning ability of the ship.
It is one of the many bitter ironies of the Titanic tragedy that the ship might well have

avoided the iceberg if Murdoch had not told the engine room to reduce and then reverse

thrust." The iron rivets were too weak: Metallurgists Tim Foecke and Jennifer Hooper

McCarty looked into the materials used for the building of the Titanic at its Belfast shipyard

and found that the steel plates toward the bow and the stern were held together with low-

grade iron rivets. Those rivets may have been used because higher-grade rivets were in

short supply, or because the better rivets couldn't be inserted in those areas using the

shipyard's crane-mounted hydraulic equipment. The metallurgists said those low-grade

rivets would have ripped apart more easily during the collision, causing the ship to sink

more quickly that it would have if stronger rivets had been used. Other researchers have

contested that claim, however.

Whatever circumstances that will came to us is only a trial that you can solve and in any

circumstances there are always a lesson and wisdom that you can get, just like in titanic

we will die but the history of it is engrave to all of the generations in our world.
Citation:

ALAN BOYLE, SCIENCE EDITOR, NBC NEWS

TOPICS , SCIENCE NEWS

FIRST PUBLISHED APR 1 2012, 8:29 PM ET

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by

"liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's

Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about

the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
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