Will a Sinking Ship Suck You Down with It? | MythBusters

well there's a myth that says that if you're on a ship when it's sinking it'll suck you down with it you're telling me this thing when it goes down I'm gonna go down with it cuz it's gonna suck me down yeah a sinking ship is every sailors worst nightmare take this deliberate sinking in Canada it graphically illustrates the force created when a large ship goes under heather joseph-witham studies folklore including harsh tales of the sea the idea is that if there's a large ship that's going to be sinking the passengers need to get as far away from the ship as they possibly can because the ship will go down in the water and a tremendous suction will be created and it will draw anyone and anything down with it when the Titanic went down we have numerous accounts of people who were swimming or who were on lifeboats and they all said our lives were saved because we had some strong men rowing the boat and we got far away from the section of the boat sinking well Jamie what are we going to test for this what are they prevailing theories behind a boat sucking you down well apparently there are three and the first one is that air that mixes in with the water as it rushes up from the boat makes the water less dense and so it's like you're gonna fall through to the water quicker that way the second theory is that the cavities in the ship will create an area for the water to rush in and that'll pull you into the ship and then the third one is that the ship moving through the water rapidly towards the bottom will create a vortex above it kind of like drafting behind a truck when it's on the highway well you know all those three theories seem to me simple enough to actually test in the shop I think I could build a small water rig for the bubbler and some weights and some small boats and we could see all three of these theories right of their shop but you know I still think we need a real boat people aren't gonna get it unless we do it with a real boat would someone in the water be pulled down with the ship okay be careful it might roll and you get caught stay with I stay up stay with it go suck you down have you seen I'm gonna get sucked in no suction no suction at all I mean I could not have been more central to the boat where it went down i sat on it the entire boat just dropped underneath me and I hit the water my neck hit the water and I never went any lower and what did I say yeah once again Hyneman you're absolutely right about how the boat sank so I say let's get this puppy back up and call it a day I need a drink so no vortex with the mythtanic but how do they explain the dramatic tests in the swimming pool in our tests we used like 300 pounds and it went right right down really quickly the boat's not built like that it's a lot larger surface area it didn't go down that fast well you know Jamie I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say there is no effect that myth is busted yeah I'd agree you know I was right there too I didn't feel it I didn't see it didn't happen you know and with all the rigging and stuff that are on a normal ship there are some very good reasons to swim away from a boat that's going down it could pull you down you get caught in the rigging but none of them involves suction and I know our boat wasn't as big as one of these but with a nine-ton boat I think you would have felt something I'd agree

Channel: Discovery

Views: 1,849,868

Rating: 4.4508901 out of 5

Keywords: discovery channel, urban legends, sucked under water, titanic myths, mythbusters tv show, adam savage, ships sinking, mythbusters, ship suction, reality tv series, mythbusters full episodes, jamie hyneman, MBAnalytics

Id: rvU_dkKdZ0U

Length: 4min 14sec (254 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 08 2015