Why Did The Titanic Sink Essay

On April 15, 1912 at 11:40 P.M. the Titanic collided with an iceberg and by 2:20 A.M. it was at the bottom of the ocean; over 1,500 people died. The massive loss of life was a shock to the world. The “unsinkable” ship had sunk. Despite the Titanic’s claims about being “unsinkable” and completely safe, many avoidable things led to the immense number of fatalities, such as the shortage of lifeboats, lowered bulkheads, and the lack of binoculars. Bruce Ismay, the designer of the Titanic and director of Whitestar line, often chose the comfort of his passengers over their safety. While Ismay was designing the Titanic he thought that the deck was too cluttered so he decided to keep only a third of the lifeboats needed to save all of the passengers

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.

The Titanic‘s construction began on March 31, 1909. On May 31, 1911, the ginormous ship has sailed. As on the night of April 14, 11:40 PM, lookouts spotted a large iceberg dead ahead. As the ship and the iceberg move towards each other, BOOM! The Titanic and the iceberg crashed like two middle schoolers in a hallway bumping into each other. A big total of 1,517 men, women, and children died along with the Titanic. Most killed themselves after the Titanic’s sinkage, and a total of 328 bodies were found. But who was to blame of the sinkage?

April 15, 1912 the “unsinkable” Titanic had almost three hours before it was no longer afloat, but plunged to the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean. Blueprints, journal & logs, and tons of witnesses were thoroughly inspected over the past 100 years to help solve the question agonizing question, why. For the 100-year remembrance of the tragic event, Smithsonian Channel released a documentary, Titanic’s Final Mystery. Dedicated Titanic detective and historian, Tim Maltin releases his theory on how the “unsinkable” sank.

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

All the information I find about the weaknesses of the hull will be reported using information from a number of sources. They will be referenced using the Harvard referencing system in the document. They will be used and referenced from in chronological order in the typical report style format. The references will be listed in alphabetical order at the end of this report document. This document will be laid out using headers to divide up the different sections that I will explore and report on. All the sections will be explored and described to cover the information required to report upon the topic of this account. The main sections I will explore will be an Introduction and about the RMS Titanic’s maiden voyage, an analysis of the materials used in the construction of the RMS Titanic, the effects that temperature has on the materials especially metals, the different compositions of the steels and how that effects the material’s properties and I will also be comparing the steels used in the construction of the RMS Titanic’s hull with the steel used to construct lock gates and the modern equivalent structural steel

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

Many other things aside from Captain Smith also helped in the demise of the Titanic on April 15, 1912. The pie graph indicates that Design & Construction and Environmental Factors had the least effect on the Titanic's sinking.

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.

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.

“Out on the decks, most passengers now began to move toward the stern area, which was slowly lifting out of the water.” confirms author Robert D. Ballard in Exploring the Titanic. But, why were these conditions crucial, and why did people have to take charge during the dreadful night of the Titanic's sinking. Who was to blame for the sinking. It could’ve perhaps been the messenger, the ship's builder, or maybe the captain. It could've just been one of them or it could’ve all three of them. The designer was experienced but maybe just not enough.

When the Titanic hit the iceberg, the iron rivets and steel failed because of fractures. Failure in structural materials caused brittle fracture due to low temperature and extreme impact loading. The night of the collision, water temperature was below freezing, the ship travelled normal speed it was these fast speed that made the watertight compartment to bust open, the hull steel had high levels of sulphur. Too much sulphur in steel mixed with cold it becomes brittle.instead of the steel deforming or denting the steel it cracks and splits.

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

The Titanic sunk because of one person and that person is Captain Smith. Smith basically killed 1,503 people when there was enough life jackets for all 2,208 people. In the morning 300 more people were pulled out of the sea.Captain smith is the one that is responsible for the sinking of the Titanic because he ignored calls for help, ignored the ice warnings, and he was sleeping on the job.

The construction of the RMS Titanic started on March 31, 1909 in Belfast, North Ireland and cost $7.5 million. The man who designed it was a naval architect named Thomas Andrews. The ship was built to be the world’s largest passenger steamship, along with two other ships, the Olympic and Britanic. Although the ship has always been known to many as unsinkable, it was actually never supposed to be advertised like that. Extra measures were put into the ship to insure safety, for example, if four watertight compartments out of the 16 were flooded, the ship would still stay afloat. Even though all these precautions were made, who would have ever thought that a single iceberg could cause such a huge devastation.