Inside Titanic's Catastrophic Breakup - An Analysis

the final moments of the Titanic have been the source of debates imagination and horror for decades since the ship sank in fact for over a century now we've all wondered at one point or another what happened out there that dark night we all know the stories of brave men and women who gave up space in the boats for others or about crew members and staff working to the last minutes to keep other people safe or at the very least comforted but probably the defining moment of the sinking the thing that grips the imagination and signaled the violent end of the beautiful ship's short life was when Titanic was torn apart the very fact the ship broke wasn't even officially accepted for decades after the sinking with many survivors testimonies discredited it would have cast a shadow over the proud traditions of British ship building but dozens of other ships have sunk since Titanic and very very few have suffered the same kind of Fate Titanic was always going to sink to the bottom of the ocean but that final horrifying moment of violence was a surprise to many and continues to cause fiery debates to this day today we'll look at five key areas of evidence to try and get an idea of what might have happened first we'll examine survivors testimonies and the official record secondly we'll review evidence from the rec side itself thirdly we'll look inside the ship at plans of the breakup Zone and the mechanics of the ship's destruction then we'll look at some other examples of ships from history that broke apart and finally we'll assemble all of this together to paint a clearer picture of what might have happened ladies and gentlemen I'm your friend Mike Brady from ocean line of designs and today we'll look at why and how the Titanic broke [Music] up the story really needs no long introduction especially for those of you who watch this channel regularly Titanic was the latest thing in a long line of proud ships each getting progressively larger lessons of safety at Sea had been written in blood through the 17 and 1800s horrific shipwrecks had given ship Builders some ideas for how best to build a vessel when Titanic set to Sea her Builders and owners were vastly proud of their achievement and honestly who could blame them today all that's left of Titanic is a tangled decrepit rack more than 3 km 12,500 ft below the surface of the ocean critically the ship is lying in two main sections both are separated by an enormous debris field and it looks more like an air crash than a shipwreck but how did the ship become like this Titanic was the very latest thing in ship building she was made of heavyduty steel and iron with a whole construction designed specifically to prevent her from breaking under the immense strain of heaving Seas now the debris field and its contents tell us some fascinating stories and gives tantalizing Clues as to how the proud ship got into such a tragic state but as ever if you really want to understand something you need to see the events Through The Eyes of the people that were there we need to rewind the clock back over 110 years to the dark cold night Titanic was lost at about 202 in the morning of April 15th 1912 Titanic was being pulled beneath the waves lit only by the stars above she had fought valiantly against flooding for 2 hours or so but the end was inevitable they left behind hundreds of people in the freezing water and hundreds more better off in the lifeboats but if not for the technological magic of the wireless Marone machine it's unlikely there would have been any survivors at all as it was the rescue vessel Carpathia was soon on Route and picked up as many survivors as she could some 76 people of the 2200 who'd been on board in the weeks and months to come they'd be questioned by friends family and authorities about what it had been like but their most important testimony would be heard by two courts of inquiry across two two separate investigations the first in the US and the second in Britain crew and passengers alike were called before the Committees to give some insight into what exactly had happened questions covered everything from the early parts of the Voyage to the Fateful Encounter With the iceberg and Beyond but some of the most interesting testimony surrounds the ship's final moments a little over 80 people were called upon to give testimony and 17 spoke directly to the ship's final minutes they were passengers and crew alike many of them had been in the boats but some had also been struggling in the water nearby nearly all of them had a perfect unobstructed view of events fortunately for the inquiry four senior officers had survived and gave their testimonies now through the course of the first inquiry in the US somebody must have mentioned they thought they saw the ship break apart as she sank Second Officer Charles loler was the most senior surviving officer from the ship and Senator Smith who presided over the hearings asked him about this he said was the vessel broken in two in any manner or intact absolutely intact light Haller had answered later the question was put the third officer Herbert Pitman who claimed to have seen the ship too Smith asked does she seem to be broken in two and Pitman responded simply oh no the other surviving officers box Hall and low claimed they didn't get to see the ship sink at all lall's testimony was particularly convincing because he had been closest to the ship as she sank washed away at the last possible minute in the end those two officers and two other passengers said they saw the ship sink in one piece the matter was accepted as fact and it remained the predominant theory for decades to come movies were made which showed the ship sink in one piece paintings and all sorts but then in 1982 something interesting happened at a Historical Society meeting that year Survivor Ruth Becka was telling her story to a packed room Ruth was a young girl at the time of the sinking just 12 years old and she was traveling second class but bundled into a Lifeboat she said she had watched Titanic sink quite clearly and she told the conference something interesting parting her hands two ways making motions representing the funnels falling she told the audience she had seen the ship break apart but as she finished the microphone was taken by the host of the event a historical society member who reassured the audience that Ruth was wrong that she had actually just seen the funnels falling had been incorrect after all the official testimony of Titanic senior officers had been that the ship sank intact and it would of course be easy for a young girl to misinterpret what she was seeing so they thought 3 years later that young girl was proven right Titanic was discovered 4 km down and split into two sections reviewing the inquiry testimony and evidence is fascinating I said that two of the ship's senior officers had said she sank intact and two passengers backed them up but 13 other survivors had told the inquiries they saw it break into two one was able-bodied Sean John po Destra who said he was only 150 yards away from the sinking and that he thought he saw the ship break apart at as he described the foremost funnel he was quizzed as to why he thought so and he said because she was short the afterpartz ranger a greaser who worked in the engineering department made it even pler he said the forward end of the ship went underneath and seemed to break off and the a level ke reading this testimony it all begins to line up Frederick Scott another Greaser said we just got at the stern of her when she started breaking up she broke off at the after funnel and when she broke off her Stern end came up in the air and came down on a level kill and disappeared sailor Frank Osman painted an even more dramatic picture he said after she got to a certain angle she exploded broke in halves and it seemed to me as if all the engines and everything that was in the after part slid out into the forward part and then the after part came up right again and as soon as it came up right down it went again nine others said very much the same thing and what's even more remarkable about this is that not many of them are passengers many are members of the ship's crew now that flies right in the face of the established narrative that Titanic had gone down in one piece but why was the testimony ignored well for one thing many of the witnesses couldn't actually agree on where the break had happened po dester had said that it was at the first funnel while Scott said it was behind the fourth this kind of Discord did not go unnoticed by the commissioner and the Attorney General at the British inquiry he pointed out that the evidence was contrary in fact those overseeing the British inquiry don't seem very interested at all in entertaining the idea that Titanic broke up the reason these eyewitnesses might have been overlooked and their testimony largely ignored if not rejected is lost to history a cynic might say that the officers who said she sank intact were protecting company interests and that the British inquiry was designed to salvage what little of the British ship building world's reputation they could the ship sinking was one thing but breaking apart as it did so was something else entirely there's another simple answer that the idea the ship might break apart was simply inconceivable they were still grappling with the idea that she could sink at all in fact many thought the iceberg had ripped a gash hundreds of feet long and that had sent the ship to the Bottom by contrast Edward Wilding one of her designers had estimated the hole left by the iceberg to be only 12 square ft large like the idea of a breakup the pride of British ship building being taken down by something so trivial as a 12T hole might have been too much to handle the final report made by the British inquiry makes no mention of wildings estimate and said simply the damage extended over a length of about 300 ft technically correct but curiously vague enough to obscure the actual truth sadly the Survivor testimonies are garbled and confusing enough to contradict each other and confuse any researcher but hidden in there is some fascinating insight and a couple of really interesting little Clues dotted throughout Baker Charles joken gave some particularly tantalizing testimony he was inside the ship during the sinking and heard some interesting noises he said I went to the deck pantry and while I was in there I thought I would take a drink of water while I was getting the drink of water I heard a kind of crash as if something had buckled as if part of the ship had buckled and then I heard a rush overhead you could have heard it but you did not really know what it was it wasn't an explosion or anything like that it was like as if the iron was parting shortly after that he went outside and climbed up to the stern famously riding the ship down he said like an elevator what joken was hearing might have been the Titanic structure in some serious distress with beams and girders bending and buckling under immense pressures now we'll put a pin in this evidence and come back to it later on it's fortunately today we can turn our attention to something which paints even more of an evocative picture the wreck [Music] itself Titanic's wreck is famously in a fairly tragic State the bow is famously intacted although its back has been broken and its sides are blown out the stone section is a different story shredded almost like it's been blown up with explosives unfortunately because stringent copyright ownership surrounds footage of the wreck I can't show you actual images but I can show you my own representations of what lies down there Titanic is lying in two sections that both Point Northeast and both sections are about 600 M or 2,000 ft apart in between and especially around the shattered Stern section is a Monumental debris field containing countless pieces of the ship everything from delicate intact Crockery glasses and wine bottles to enormous pieces of Steel torn up like they were paper when Robert Ballard and his team working for the Woodle oceanographic Institute found the site in the 80s they mapped it out by hand but over the years closer inspection has revealed some hidden fascinating truths but one thing was obvious from the outset in 1985 a huge amount of Titanic was seemingly missing now this is a comparison that I drew of the ship's profile as it was in 1912 when she was new and then the wreck after she sank the bow section is probably the largest and comprises this much of the ship the stern section 600 M away is fairly large too albeit in a pathetic state and it comprises about this much of the ship but missing in between is about 100 ft or 30 m of the ship's middle from about the third funnel and back an entire section of Titanic is just gone or at least it seems to be to Ballard and his team it must have seemed like Titanic had just disintegrated in the middle and that 100 ft of ship had been crushed into Oblivion but closer examinations of the debris field in future Dives showed otherwise slowly through a careful study of photos by experts telltale signs began to reveal themselves a massive chunk became known as the forward Tower because it would have stood about four or five stories tall beneath the ship's thirdd funnel a second huge chunk of the ship's middle was found too known as the AR Tower it encompasses about three stories of the ship's superstructure behind the third funnel within the debris field pieces could be made out but they weren't intact like the two so-called Towers big chunks of the deck house below the fourth funnel here as well as sections from the lower hle near the engines finally a chunk known as the galle deck section was found crumbled and buckled on the sea floor this had once comprised a third class kitchen area these individual pieces had once made up Titanic Center and somehow they had been torn apart but what's interesting is the fact that these pieces some as big as houses and buildings stayed intact or broke off as whole units much of the ship is difficult if not impossible to identify but some pieces are a little easier than others one of these is the so-called big piece it's a 50 ton fragment of Titanic starboard side broken off and sitting almost perfectly within the breakup Zone it gives us some clue as to where the breakup might have originated from more on this one later one more tantalizing piece of evidence was found famously discussed by James Cameron and his team of experts it's around about the 100th anniversary of the sinking in 1912 two matching pieces of the ship's double bottom the Keel and a very backbone were found ripped apart but when analyzed and joined digitally it was found that they' once fit perfectly together crucially they' once sat below the third funnel meaning that now all of Titanic's kill and bottom was accounted for on the rec side interestingly the ends of the kill are bent upward as if they'd been smooshed together at some point and we'll get that specific point later on now looking at these individual pieces of the ship alone it can be hard to interpret exactly what's happened here clearly something catastrophic had occurred causing the center of the ship to essentially fall apart it tells us obviously that's where Titanic broke up but to understand why we need to take a look inside the ship and learn what might have led to the failure that broke her into pieces this is a gorgeous set of plans for Titanic made by Matt D Winkler from Titanic honor and Glory you can buy a set of these for yourself I'll include a link down below they're Simply Stunning made after years of research and studying the ship with assistance provided by the Titanic honor and Glory team and a Litany of experts on the ship it shows us how Titanic likely looked inside deck by Deck with even the furniture's location marked out now this is extremely useful in understanding what exactly was destroyed during the breakup and how it might have happened starting here on the boat deck Titanic's uppermost deck we can see that the forward and half Towers account for a good chunk of this part of the wreck and that the break happens somewhere around here in this area there are a few internal spaces because this is mostly an exposed prominade but here you can see there's a unique feature of the ship the reciprocating engine casing this empty shaft ran all the way down to Titanic's engine room and helped ventilate the massive space allowing hot air to rise up and out of the vessel the third funnels deck house sits slightly forward of this and it comprises the officers mess and a selection of fan units and moving one deck down to a deck we can see more interior spaces of the ship now crucially you can see that around here there's a lot of empty space the third funnels casing which vented smoke out of boiler rooms 1 and two the reciprocating engine room casing right behind it the well for the first class afterr staircase behind that and then another empty shaft the turbine engine casing this shaft supplied ventilation to the turbine engine room which was directly behind the main engines famously Titanic's fourth funnel was kind of a dummy in that it didn't vent smoke from any of the boilers but it did serve to allow hot air to rise and escape from the turbine room in this section of the ship we know that the first class smoking room first class grand staircase entrance and a good chunk of the lounge were essentially ripped from the ship during the break from B deck down to C deck Things become a little more monotonous cabins upon cabins some might say but here we see the first class restaurant and Cafe penne all lost during the sinking now on C deck around the breakup Zone we can see cabins and saloons for the maids and valet on board the ship all of this disintegrated at some point during the sinking but interestingly on C deck we can see the first class Barber Shop here it had once featured a striped barber pole outside fixed to the wood paneling an early indicator that the ship had actually broken apart was the fact that the barber pole was spotted floating on the surface the next morning from from a Lifeboat Survivor Arthur pusan had spotted it and he later said that to my surprise I saw the barber pole floating The Barbers pole was on the sea deck my recollection is and that must have been a tremendous explosion to allow this pole to have broken free from its fastenings and drift with the wood pusan was convinced the ship had broken up because of this as well as the terrible sounds that he' heard he was one of the 17 who testified to witnessing Titanic breaking apart although we didn't actually see it he stated you just heard it now something else important happened here I mentioned earlier that the big piece a chunk of Titanic's Hull had broken free from the side of the ship now this piece spans about three decks High it actually starts here it aligns with the cabins c79 and c81 with the bathroom in between them clearly this entire section of the ship was ripped apart during the sinking on D deck below things get a little more interesting around the breakup Zone this was the busy pantry and Galley system that service the two main dining saloons for first and then second class it featured dozens of pieces of cooking machinery and service utensils one clue Ballard and his team had had early on that Titanic had broken up somewhere was that cooking utensils and things like pots and pans absolutely lited the sea floor and further investigation revealed why the entire complex was destroyed and now the most intact part of it is a section of the first class Pantry wrapped up somewhere in the forward Tower the big piece is located here on D Deck with a portion of the Pantry's wall in the region of this cold Locker remaining below that on a Eck other interesting things begin to happen the tops of the engine cylinders rise up this high so now the reciprocating engine casing widens outboard now this is an immense space the largest opening in any of the ship's Decks at some point during Titanic sinking the Ford most engine cylinders the low press ones were ripped right off their cast iron bed plates and and landed in the debris field down on F deck the turbine casing now widens out too to provide space for the Machinery in that room creating a section of Titanic that is essentially full of holes you have the individual uptakes for boiler rooms 2 and one followed by the reciprocating engine room and finally the turbine engine casing now that's a lot of vacant space within the ship so of course the area was heavily reinforced with stiffeners and girders as well as additional beams and heavyduty bulkheads the third class Galley here remains as one piece on the wreck an individual chunk torn from the ship but the rest has been smashed to pieces and lies twisted and bent somewhere out there in the debris field Below on the G deck and the olop deck we finally make it into the Boiler Room casings and the Machinery spaces now the stone section still contains the turbine engine room intact although it's now mostly buried by collapsing steel sections from above the reciprocating engine room is exposed but Boiler Room one is gone ripped entirely from the ship in fact the first view Robert Ballard and his team had of Titanic back in 1985 was from a single-ended boiler sitting upright on the sea floor that had once sat here in Boiler Room number one on the tank top we can actually see the arrangement of the boilers themselves the engines and the turbines now critically this shows us where the two sections of the double bottom and tank top were torn from the first here and the second behind it the boilers of boiler room to remain in place fully exposed by the jagged edges of a huge tear where the center sections of the ship had once stood so now we know where Titanic broke up the spaces that were destroyed and the pieces that have so far been found now if this isn't starting to paint a clearer picture for you yet don't worry because it's fairly confusing stuff but studying the individual pieces can reveal some interesting ideas for example we know the Titanic's Keel the ship's backbone and very bottom is now in four pieces pieces the bow section the first kill fragment the second kill fragment and then the stern section that the fragments have their ends bent and twisted upward now this kind of bending would indicate an area of extreme stress on Titanic structure with a 7t tall K and the incredibly stiff supporting steel skeleton around it was twisted like wet cardboard but what could have done that well to answer this we now need to look at the mechanics of the sinking itself and the insane forces that we're at play we all know the familiar old side of Titanic Stern lifted up high high out of the water lights blazing as she's slowly swallowed by the ocean this comes a lot from survivors testimonies people saying that row upon row of Port holes Shone brightly and the propellers were lifted clear out of the water the thing is that estimating the exact degree of the sinking is difficult sometimes eyewitnesses can be unreliable I mean after all nobody was sitting there watching with their protractors out measuring the sheer magnitude and shocking nature of such a site could inevitably lead to some exaggeration and totally fair enough too for a long time it was thought the Titanic had reached something like a 45° angle while she was sinking but this seems extremely unlikely and all for the simple reason that we know now the ship broke apart to explain this let's look at Titanic's basic structure and how the whole thing was built we'll take a cross-section of the ship like it was a loaf of bread at the very bottom and really the first step the process of actually building a ship like this the kill bar was laid and the kill was placed a top it and then the floors which span the width of the ship were laid to create the ship's backbone now this was sealed with plating on top and beneath creating what is known as the double bottom the safety feature which not only strengthened the ship's backbone but also provided protection from grounding damage from below turning the ship's Underside into a large watertight compartment about 6 or 7 ft tall now the double bottom also forms the bottom aspect of what is a essentially a large box gerder and the basic strengthening mechanic of Titanic's Hull sea ships are expected to survive a great many conditions at Sea ranging from the fair and calm to the downright terrifying waves can so stories tall and riding over them can put unbelievable stresses on the ship hogging and sagging is what happens to a ship as it crests a wave they're so big and long that they basically Bend in the middle as they ride the wave toop it's a scary thought but it's basic engineering if you make the ship too stiff it would simply snap the secret to engineering a ship like Titanic was to make it strong but flexible so to do this the hull got its strength from essentially following the design principles of a simple box girder a box girder like the name suggests essentially uses four main sections in this case that was the Titanic's double bottom both sides of the ship's Hull and then the strength deck on Titanic that was B deck now this made up the entirety of the ship's Hull and then additional decks were simply attached on top this was the Super structure it served no structural purpose for Titanic and didn't serve to support or reinforce the hull in any way they were simply attached on top of the main load bearing structure below the sides of the ship Drew their strength from the massive steel frames the ship's ribs which were spaced at intervals ranging from 24 and 27 in at 68 cm at the extreme ends of the ship to 36 in or 91 cm in the middle spacing the frames out like this meant Titanic was allowed a certain degree of flexibility in the middle so she could hog and sag the correct degree to survive riding over Heavy Seas the benefits of box girders that they're resistant to torsion or twisting and when supplemented by additional columns they have excellent loadbearing properties this makes them a popular choice for Bridge construction to this day but scal of box gter up to the size of a ship- likee Titanic and you're left with a strong flexible structure that's perfectly suited to riding through the biggest Seas but a long structure even as strong as a box girder has its limits Titanic was 882 ft or 269 m in length an immense span which tested Engineers of the day the ship's Hull was designed to survive normal day-to-day seagoing conditions it was not designed to exceed that breaking down the physics to the most simple elements on the night of the sinking the Titanic's Stone began to rise up out into the air as her water filled bow began to drop like Stone the ship became a giant 882 ft long lever now levers have been used for centuries as a basic simple machine to shift heavy loads situated on a fulcrum the lever can pivot put a load at one end and with a little effort at the other you can lift the loaded end up simple stuff but naturally through the whole process the lever itself is under huge strain not only from the load but then also from the effort at the center of the strain is the fulcrum the the lever's pivot point we can apply this basic mechanical principle to Titanic at about 2:15 in the morning with the bow water logged and sunken the load the stern has begun to rise higher and higher out into the air the stern is full of machinery and has its own inherent weight about 15,000 tons the effort which thanks to gravity is always acting to push the stern back down towards the water and this is the important part because a lever overloaded will inevitably snap and the Snapping point will inevitably be where the forces and stresses are focused usually towards the fum that night as Titanic swung higher into the air her midship Section began to act as the fulcrum unfortunately thanks to a series of interesting events we know its position exactly the fullum of Titanic sinking motion centered around this hole in the ship's side it's called the condenser discharge Outlet it's a port for seawater that had been drawn through the ship's condenser units to cool hot steam back into water to feed through the boilers again in a continual Loop it usually sat a few feet above the water line and Through the Night of the sinking it stayed put we know it didn't drop by any large amount because later on as Lifeboat 13 was being lowered they were almost flooded by it as it pumped water out as usual now the fact that it stayed in place a few feet above the waterline tells us that the fulcrum of the sinking was somewhere around here and of course it's right in the breakup zone now we're beginning to get an understanding of where the forces might be building as Titanic Rises higher in the air soon she'll reach her designed limits but for now let's take a look at what these stresses actually are Titanic's box gter like Hull is now under extreme pressures down below at the bottom of the structure the action of the lever Titanic's Hull itself is beginning to compress the lower sections of the hull together as she hogs in the middle remember at C Titanic was expected to hog and sag hogging In Waves would put the hull under the same kind of compressive forces lower down but at no point would the full weight of a 15 or 20,000 ton Stern section be expected to be independently supported by the rest of the hull as the lower section compresses the upper sections the strength decks and below are being forced apart because they are under tension the decks being pulled Tor as the stone fights its Fight Against Gravity and remember the Stern's weight the effort of the lever is constantly trying to force it down Titanic Hogs badly and its Hull is inevitably going to break so we know Titanic must have broken at a fairly shallow angle it's thought the stressors reach their maximum at about 20 or 25° with the hull under extreme pressure the lower part under compression and the top part intention we all know the outcome there was a break and now we can begin to take all these pieces of information and evidence Survivor testimonies the Rex remains and all the mechanics at play and begin to draw up conclusions over how and where the break occurred but first let's look at some final pieces of evidence not actually directly related to Titanic but from other ships because as it happens Titanic is not the first or last ship to ever violently break apart it turns out that lots of ships have encountered scenarios that far exceeded their designed limits and a lot of these res the damage that was actually inflicted upon Titanic in 1948 the Royal Male steamship magdalina was on her maiden voyage from Britain to the east coast of South America when she ran ground now she was briefly refloated and towed when as the bow took on flooding and was down by 45 ft or 14 M she snapped in half now it happened as the ship passed over a sandbank this clearly acted as something of a fulcrum to magdalen's lever as it were it was a clean neat break straight down down from top to bottom as if the ship had been sliced with a red hot knife now the super structure forward of the funnel now lacking its support from below began to Cave Inward and essentially fall out of the open tear we'll come back to that later in the 1990s the former SS America famously ran ground too stuck on the Sandy Bottom of f Ventura Beach and the Canary Islands the ship's Hull was pounded by Atlantic waves remarkably on the very first night the tons and tons of highquality steel that made up the ship's Hull was overcome she broken two again a clean break as if the steel had just been ripped down the middle now this was different to Titanic it wasn't a vertical break but one from side to side the stern section broke up but the bow section remained behind for years after the stone had sunk looking stunningly similar in concept to the bow section of Titanic finally let's look at the infamous T2 tanker ships products of the second world war now these things deserve their own video but in essence the US Navy was rudely shocked by the fact that these 10,000 ton vessels were breaking seemingly at random into halves in 1952 the SS Pendleton caught in a gale broke in half riding a wave and sank now this wasn't actually the first T2 tanker to suffer such a Fate In fact it wasn't even the only T2 tanker to sink that same day SS Fort Mercer cracked then broke into two and sank as well well actually she only half sank the stone section survived State afloat was salvaged and grafted to a new bow section to become a whole new ship nearly a decade earlier the tanker shaked had been sitting at her Moorings brand new having just completed her sea trials when suddenly completely unprompted she split cleanly in half now hopefully this doesn't add to your list of fears that might stop you from going onto a cruise ship but the sound from the break was like a cannon shot that can be heard from miles away now that we've looked at the physics that play behind a ship in Heavy Seas the causes of Pendleton and Fort merca's losses in the Gale is fairly easily explainable the ship's hogging and sagging must have exceeded their H maximum design limits now whether or not this was caused by metal fatigue or faulty welding is up for some debate but at some point a weakness in those ship's hulls caused them to break in two now the far more alarming case is that of shanak she was just sitting in Port when she suddenly broke in half now the reason for this might shock you it was the cold ships are designed to operate in cold weather of course otherwise ice breakers wouldn't exist now at the time the Coast Guard blamed faulty welding but years later a more likely culprit was brought forward the water temperature that January night the water was 39° F or 4° C while the air temperature was about 26 F or -3° C Shena had been built using what today we'd consider a low grade of Steel in the cold the steel simply became brittle if there were any defective welds or seams in the hull the stressors would concentrate but the steel wouldn't be able to hold like falling Domino's the crack once started would rip right around the hull and sever it in two now crucially this wasn't a particularly slow process in one loud bang the hull separated nearly totally and the ship's back was nearly broken the crack had run from the top strength deck all the way down to the K but the K and the bottom plating held on and weren't seven now this may seem shocking to you and it should the reason the Coast Guard blamed the faulty world alone is because Advanced metalurgy and the effects of temperature on steel weren't fully understood back then four years later shakti's sister ship ponaganset suffered an identical fate in cold water she broke nearly in two with the kill holding on for dear life albeit jacknifed upward now these are some pretty extraordinary cases but they demonstrate how a ship behaves when the hull is put under extreme stress stress in a variety of conditions none of these ships though underwent the sheer amount of stress Titanics ha did that night with at least a third of Titanic raised unsupported out in the air at a shallow angle it seems inevitable that she'd break but hold on I hear you ask what about the ships that didn't break in half as they sank the closest analoges to Titanic that we have are Lucitania and bratanic bratanic was Titanic's sister ship very similar at first glance in layout and construction when Lucitania and bratanic sank they both had their Stone sections rise High out of the water too and at the same kind of shallow angles that caused Titanic to break apart why didn't they break in half as well well there are a couple of slight differences Titanic at the end was sinking on a fairly even Keel while bratanic and Lucitania had been listing badly to the side which might have concentrated the immense forces elsewhere in the hull preventing a clean break although definitely stressing them to their absolute maximums for all their similarities though Lucitania and bratanic were built fairly differently to Titanic Lucitania was a completely different design using longitudinal bulkheads in her boiler rooms that ran the length of the ship these could have given some kind of reinforcement against hogging during the sinking and bratanic had also been reinforced after Titanic sinking with additional bulkheads too but the crucial factor in my opinion though is the temperature remember Shak she had spontaneously broken nearly in two in water that was 39 F or 4° c but Titanic was sinking in water that was even colder about 28 f orus 2 C now the quality of Titanic steel has been brought up many times in discussion around the collision with the iceberg it's been blamed for allowing the ship to sink at all now in my opinion that's totally unfair because honestly any riveted ship in that situation would have had its Hull opened up too Titanic was built with the highest grade of Steel ship Builders could use back in 1912 but 1912 quality still is very different to 2023 three Quality Steel back then it was made in furnaces with open heths which naturally allowed for impurities to be introduced to the steel typically sulfur and phosphorus and naturally this would reduce the Steel's ability to withstand fracturing in cold water to put it simply sulfur in steel is bad news it's an impurity that compromises the strength of the material manganese on the other hand is a transition metal that improves Steel's resistance to wearing and fracturing steel recovered from the wreck of Titanic has been analyzed and shows that there's a fairly low level of manganese in comparison to the sulfur present now suffice it to say shenti and her sisters probably had steel with similar or less amounts of Manganese or higher levels of sulfur and impurities present in the steel as well in 1942 when shakty broke apart this wasn't properly understood 30 years earlier in Titanic's day the knowledge was even more basic Engineers had a basic understanding that elements like sulfur and phosphorus increased the likelihood of cracking in Steel but it wasn't until World War II when ships like Shena were breaking up that proper chemical analysis was undertaken a modern day report completed by the US Department of Commerce makes for incredible reading I'll actually include a link down below after performing tests on Titanic steel the analysts came to these conclusions the measured fracture toughness of the steel from the hull of Titanic is unacceptably low for use as a structural material at ice water temperatures this is likely not due to any one single material car characteristic but a combination of several the report goes on to list the levels of sulfur present the ratio of Manganese to carbon and some other chemical reasons interestingly they found that large manganese and sulfur particles may have actually acted as crack initiators within the steel in cold water but it wasn't just the cold that did it the report goes on to say this because of a lack of understanding of Notch sensitivity in iron-based Alloys there was no attempt to remove stress concentrations from the architecture of the ship these are commonly found at hatch Corners St Junctions and the like these were found to be sources of brittle cracks and Liberty ships during and after World War II the still used to construct the armis Titanic's Hull though adequate in strength possessed a very low fracture toughness at ice water temperatures it's possible that brittle steel contributed to the damage at the bow during the impact of the iceberg but much more likely that the brittle steel was a factor in the breakup of the ship at the surface now this might seem damning how could the ship's engineers get away with using such shoddy stuff it's been the source of conjecture for poorly researched articles for decades but the simple truth is for the time this was the best we had without advanced chemical knowledge of metal working Titanic's Engineers just couldn't have known chances are you've driven over a Railway Bridge or gone into a building being held up by this exact same type of Steel for its day it was the Pinnacle of Technology by the time Titanic came along steel had had only become popular for use in ships hulls less than 30 years earlier the US report ends with these notes steps could have been taken to heat treat the steel to improve its fracture properties but this knowledge was simply not available in 1911 given the knowledge base available to engineers at the time of the ship's construction it is the author's opinion that no apparent metallurgical mistakes were made in the construction of RMS Titanic we've now looked at Titanic's breakup from a variety of different angles from the testimonies of those that were there to the remains of the wreck that sit on the sea floor today we've looked at the mechanics and physics at play the extreme stress Titanic's Hull was put under and we've even examined other ships that broke apart on the surface not too long after Titanic had now we've examined Titanic steel under the microscope to get an idea of what it was made of and how it performed in cold water so with all of that out of the way now it's time to revisit the night Titanic actually sank put all the evidence that we've accumulated so far back together let's see how the ship might have broken up it's shortly after 2: in the morning of April 15th 1912 Titanic's bow has sunk far below the ocean's surface dozens of people cling onto the stern for Refuge but it's all too temporary the end is coming from a distance passengers and crew in lifeboats look on as the stern Rises higher and higher out of the water reaching about 25° or so inside the ship down on Eck Baker Charles joken had been in his cabin when he goes to a pantry he begins to hear a strange noise he later said I heard a kind of buckling crash as if something had buckled as if part of the ship had buckled it was not an explosion or anything like that it was like as if the iron was parting he makes a break for it and rushes up on Deck he doesn't know it yet but what he's hearing is the steel members of Titanic's Hull beginning to fail his cabin is exactly in the area that is about to be rent apart it would have taken some time for jok to Rush up the flights of stairs and battle his way up to the very stern of the ship where he joined the others holding on for dear life so we can assume that Titanic's Hull had been hogging and was beginning to fail for some minutes before it finally snapped what exactly jok and heard is Up For Debate it could have been individual beams parting waves or rivets popping Under The Strain we know now that Titanic's Hull a giant lever was beginning to hog badly Under The Strain and only minutes were left the US Department of comment report tells us that there were no attempts to remove stress concentrations from the architecture of the ship these are commonly found at hatch Corners straight Junctions and the like crucially right at the fulcrum where all the stresses are concentrated on Titanic are a vast series of empty shafts the engine room casings the US Department of Commerce mentioned hatch Corners like engine casings hatches are empty shafts that lead deep into the belly of the ship as the decks begin to flex and bend with the hogging of the hull stressors begin to concentrate and build up in corners and on joining seams in this area of the ship there are a lot of them cracks probably begin to originate in the casings and radiate outwards because the steel on the outside is subjected to freezing cold water and air temperatures the shell plating itself may have begun to fail as well Titanic's lights go out as the ship's Hull breaks possibly because steam lines that serve the electric dynamos are severed as the ship tears apart we know from parts of the wreck that several things have had to have happened the double bottom and ke are jacknifed and bent upward now this exact thing happened to the shinaki 30 years later the double bottom in the KE the lowest section of Titanic's Hull are under extreme compression the hull fails here and the two sections of double bottom begin to get smooshed together bending up and breaking the forward engine cylinders bed plates in the process loosening them meanwhile the cracks radiating out of the the casings above begin to focus on one section in particular beneath the third funnel it's under extreme tension being rent apart the seams and Joints here provide neat right angles for the fractures to follow they join as one and snap like Shakti and the other ships we looked at Titanic's breakup is sudden violent and clean with a roar she suddenly Parts cleanly just forward of the third funnel magdalina America and the other ships break neatly into as well as if they were made of glass and Titanic is no different as Titanic breaks the double bottom is bent but it's not totally broken it clings on for dear life just like shaked's had and the bow section no longer supported by the stern begins to drop to the sea floor the stern has fallen down level which a lot of survivors actually see and report on the double bottom is still attached there's a moment of strange equilibrium as the stern falls back to an even level but then more destru ction occurs Frank Osman had watched it all happen he later said that the ship broke in halves and it seemed to me as if all the engines and everything that was in the after part slid out into the forward part when the RMS magdalina had broken half decades later the super structure which was once supported by the deck houses and Hull below saged down and began to collapse photos taken from the inside show the lounge roof collapsing and the entire structure was at risk of falling off the ship well these remarkable photographs of magdalen's break up are probably the closest thing we'll ever see to what Titanic looked like immediately after she broke up with nothing tangible now supporting these massive heavy structures they begin to fail the forward Tower a huge chunk of the ship beneath the third funnel breaks free from the stern and falls into the water bringing pieces of the galley and the engine room casing with it the bow now plunges down and all the strain is placed on the kill and double bottom shinaki and ponan its kills had held but they were never put through this same kind of strain the stern begins to tip up and plunge down completely open to the ocean and with no way to stop the flooding the double bottom finally separates and Titanic is in two major pieces the exposed forward engine cylinders and their supports each the height of a three-story building have already been severed by the Jack knifing double bottom they break free and Tumble out as well connected to the stern is still a large section of the so-called AF Tower and whole pieces of the smoking room and deck houses that sat below the fourth funnel but as the stone begins its wild dive of the sea floor the exposed Jagged openings of the breakup zone are put through incredible hydrodynamic stresses as before cracks in the steel form up in seams and riveting joins and the off Tower is ripped straight from the ship as one piece followed by the deck houses below the fourth funnel but that's not all almost all the shell plating is torn from Titanic starved side because now it's nowhere near as hydrodynamically shaped as the bow section which planes away just fine and lands mostly intact on the sea floor way down on the sea Flor heavy iron objects with little hydrodynamic shaping land with a thunk like rock sinking in a pond the boilers and the engine cylinders are the heaviest and least elegantly shaped they land with a huge thud and clumps almost exactly below where the ship had broken up on the surface the tower sections are different they're bigger with more surface area and like a sail in the wind they suffer resistance moving through the water they flutter out in different directions to land on the sea floor hundreds of feet away the double bottom sections the lightest of these individual breakup chunks flap down like the wings of a gull separate finally as the kill gives up and land far apart and off to the side with all resting on the sea floor that's it Titanic is gone now look over the years there have been dozens and dozens of theories as to how Titanic sank and broke up to be completely honest with you and this will probably surprise a lot of you I'm really not that interested in dabbling in the theories or what might have beens in my opinion it's pretty cut and dry at the most it's an interesting theoretical engineering exercise to try to figure out what exactly had happened but in the end it doesn't totally matter because Titanic was doomed anyway and the end result was that hundreds of people died years since enthusiasts have served to over complicate it debated endlessly hell I'll be lucky if I don't get picked apart in the comments for this one we only really need to look at other examples of ships from history that broke neatly in two it might surprise you to know that something as big as an ocean liner can just do that but they can and they have fortunately today engineering and chemistry knowledge is so Advanced that ship Builders can actually predict how their ship will behave under most if not all conditions that actually includes in the possibility of its sinking for example the Queen Mary 2 has been designed in the unlikely event of flooding that if two of her compartments were to be breached and filled with water she'd not be able to list over to either side to such an extent that the lifeboats couldn't be lowered today steel is of an extremely high quality something that engineers in 1912 just couldn't even have dreamt of in the end Titanic still stands as a symbol of engineering Daring Do and knowhow she was built to the best standards available for the time but that night she was simply stressed beyond her limits the result was a sudden violent breakup [Music] ladies and gentlemen it's your friend Mike Brady from ocean liner designs thank you so much for watching this video If you enjoyed it please leave a comment below don't forget to subscribe to the channel because we get new videos out weekly if you want to support my work and get really cool perks like behind the scenes and Early Access please visit my patreon in the link in the description below or sign up as a YouTube member come and join the crew as always stay safe stay happy I'll see you again next time

Channel: Oceanliner Designs

Views: 865,375

Keywords: great ocean liners, maritime history, ocean liners, famous oceanliners, ships documentary, history of ships, engineering, history, ships, documentary, origins explained, world history project, animated history, open educational resources, titanic, shipwreck, sinking, boats, ocean, disaster, tragedy

Id: CRyQhZg4gfM

Length: 49min 56sec (2996 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 17 2023