Revealed: Titanic was doomed before it set sail

Revealed: Titanic was doomed before it set sail
By Jasper Copping, Sunday Telegraph
10/06/2007

The Titanic faced disaster from the moment it set sail, experts now believe.

Photo:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/10/nwreck110.xml

Research suggests that, even if the ocean liner had not struck an iceberg during its maiden voyage, structural weaknesses made it vulnerable to any stormy sea.

The flaws, uncovered by researchers who found, filmed and analysed previously undiscovered portions of the Titanic's keel, also reduced the length of time the vessel remained afloat after hitting the iceberg on April 14, 1912 - scuppering the chances of rescue boats sent to the scene arriving in time and thus condemning hundreds of passengers and crew stranded on board to death.

To date, the received wisdom has been that after striking the iceberg, water flooded into the ship. The weight of the water in the bow forced the vessel's stern to rise until, when it reached an angle of 45 degrees, the ship snapped in half and sank.

It is that version of events that was depicted in the 1997 Oscar-winning film Titanic, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

advertisementHowever, the findings of the new research project, a collaboration between the History Channel and Lone Wolf Documentary Group, an American film company, suggest that the Titanic broke in half when its stern had reached an angle of just 10 degrees - a scenario that could have occurred in heavy seas during any severe storm, never mind in the aftermath of hitting an iceberg.

Rushmore DeNooyer, who led the project, said: "Titanic broke at a very shallow angle, yet ships experience shallow angles like this in storms, when they are tilted up by large waves. So perhaps Titanic wasn't designed strongly enough. If the force that broke it was no greater than the force it would have faced in a hurricane, ergo, it could have been broken in a hurricane."

Clues to the fundamental weakness in the Titanic's design emerged after a submersible, sent to dive the wreck two years ago, discovered and filmed previously unlocated parts of the ship. Analysis of the footage allowed researchers to calculate the angle at which the Titanic was tilting when it broke up.

The team also found parts of the rearmost of the vessel's two "expansion joints" - fitted near the bow and the stern - which were supposed to allow the hull to flex in heavy seas. Analysis, however, suggests that they were poorly designed and may have contributed to the ship breaking up at the shallow 10 degree angle.

Roger Long, a naval architect who worked on the project, said: "The design of the expansion joints in the ship was so unimaginably crude."

To test their theory, the team also dived on the Britannic, the Titanic's sister ship, which was also built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast and sank in 1916 in the Mediterranean after hitting a mine.

They found that the builders had altered the design and fitted an extra expansion joint, prompting suspicions that the yard was aware of the faults with the Titanic.

The shallow angle at which the Titanic buckled is also believed to have contributed towards the 1,500 death toll.

The researchers believe that many, assuming the vessel would stay afloat for hours, remained on board in the warmth. However, the ship sank just two hours and 40 minutes after the collision. Less than two hours later, the Carpathia arrived on the scene and pulled 705 people in lifeboats to safety.

Mr Long said: "The Titanic would have continued to float for a finite period of time if it had not experienced this structural failure. So if the ship's sinking was hastened by the early breaking, then there are almost certainly people who died because it broke.

"It only needed to float for a few more hours before the Carpathia arrived and one more hour could have given the lifeboats time to go back and get more people, as they were half full."

The findings will form part of a documentary, Titanic's Achilles Heel, to be broadcast in America next weekend.