INERTIA IMPULSE AND RABBIT HOLES

TITANIC CONCLUSIONS

Titanic's Fatal Flaw
Mystery Unsolved  

Copyright August 2016 by Ronald D. Grose

What do rabbit holes have to do with inertia and impulse?  Very little actually, nor very little to do with the Titanic story either, but there is a commonality.  There are so many fascinating facets to the Titanic story that it is difficult for a person like me to keep on track.  I will call this tendency to wander off on side issues the “rabbit hole factor or by the acronym “RHF” (not to be confused with Rh Factor).  Since RHF is not a common acronym, its meaning will periodically be brought forth.  Some, who may not be rabbit hole knowledgeable, like myself, may want to know the significance of RHF.  This just happens to take us into the story of Alice In Wonder Land which is pretty far afield from the Titanic story.  But there you have it—an example of RHF.  I mean, have locked in urbanites even seen a large field let alone a rabbit hole in one ?  Relatively speaking I’m a rural kind of guy  and I’ve only seen one rabbit hole in my life and that was because it had a horse leg sticking out of it—but that leg story is probably an RHF on an RHF etc. etc.!

[For those of you who are too busy to look it up—a rabbit hole leads to a “borrow” which has a number of subsidiary passage ways for purposes we need not get into.  The borrows themselves can be interconnect into what are called “warrens”.]

So much for glowing examples of RHF—the rabbit hole factor.  I personally favor the Urban Dictionary definition of rabbit hole which in part states: “metaphor for conceptual paths to the true picture of reality, infinitesimally deep and complex….”  Infinitesimally is a bit strong for my tastes but the essence of this definition is what I’m endeavoring to accomplish in this writing on the Titanic. There just has to be a limitation established on the RHF(s).

INERTIA

We will consider two kinds of inertia.  Inertia obviously derives from the word inert which means, according to our English dictionary, powerless to move (in essence).  The etymology for inert is not helpful.  The two ways I wish to use the word inertial are physical and mental.  Here my large dictionary is even less helpful when it comes to inert and I quote “tendency to be physically or mentally inactive; dull, slow.  The synonyms chosen are equally negative—like lazy.  This is not the connotation I wish to express.  We do better with inertia- in summary it is a “resistance or disinclination to motion, action or change”.  This is not necessarily bad.  When it comes to mental we call inertia “mindset”.

Let’s consider mindset in context with the Titanic.  As mentioned previously, boiler explosion has not been considered in previous forensic analyses I have read and the reason for this seems to be best known to the analysists themselves.  Perhaps it may hark back to the inquiries held immediately after the tragedy in 1912..  Second Officer Lightoiler’s, testimony was held in high regard as well it should have been; after all he was the highest ranking officer to survive the sinking  He alone is mentioned by name in the British final report on the their investigation.  To illustrate, the following is an excerpt from the full report furnished in Ref. pg. ???:

“…..Very shortly afterwards, the vessel, according to Mr. Lightoiler’s account seemed to take a dive, and he just walked into the water.  When he came to the surface all the funnels were above the water.

Her stern was gradually rising out of the water and the propellers were clear of the water.  The ship did not break in two and she did eventually attain the perpendicular when the second funnel from aft about reached the water.  There were no lights burning then, though they kept alight practically until to the last

Before reaching the perpendicular when at an angle of 50 or 60 degrees, there was a rumbling sound which may be attributed to the boilers leaving their beds and crashing down on to or through the bulkheads….”

Three other witnesses agreed with Lightoiler’s recollection but fourteen other witnesses thought they had seen the ship split apart before it sank.  The fourteen were not navel experts and their view was obviously subordinated.

There you have it.  For almost seventy years that official view of the sinking held—Titanic sank intact (which implies no boiler explosion of significance), the funnels were intact (at least until it disappeared), the “roar” reported was due to the ship being perpendicular (hull keel vertical instead of horizontal) and equipment, e.g. boilers, falling through bulkheads.  This view held because the Brits were the foremost ship builders in the world. 

It held until 1985 when Dr. Ballard’s team made their famous discovery. Even up to the mid twentieth century artistic representations showed an intact vessel.  There was a book cover showing a salvaged Titanic shooting up out of the ocean surface bright and shiny as new with everything intact including the relatively delicate antennae wires strung between the two masts.  [I have made a post regarding artistic impression on my blog: lusitaniaconclusions.blogspot.com.]

The British experts were wrong; modern experts now agree --the Titanic broke apart near the surface; some funnels fell off before it sank completely; and the roar was not due to boilers falling through bulkheads.  Beyond that, there are competing theories on what really happened.   Still no boiler explosions though!

What is the boiler evidence discovered since 1985.  In summary it would appear that all boilers in the forward portion of the hull are intact—this would be boilers in rooms 3 through 6.  Five intact boilers lie on the sea floor well apart from other major wreckage pieces.  I presume these are the five double boilers from boiler room 2.  Others do not seem to agree and apparently think they are single ended boilers from boiler room 1. Is this disagreement a consequence of mindset?   If so—by whom?

Enough on mental inertia now consider the physical.  There are two kinds of physical—physical and physical.  As you can tell they are closely related like my two brothers; Bill and is identical twin sister Billy—just kidding; RHF.  For the most part we will be talking about the non-biological physical; and for those of you who majored on both kinds you will want to skip over this discourse; but for those of you, like me, who were deprived of this intellectual enterprise, the following is fundamental to understanding the dynamics of what happened to the handsome Titanic; (handsome would seem to me a mixed metamorphic adjective).  But then dear Violet said (wrote) it well.  Remember she had been on Titanic just a few days and was well ship acquainted; yet she already had formed a special attachment to it; quote: Then she went down by the head with a thundering roar of underwater explosions, our proud ship, our beautiful Titanic gone to her doom...   There it is—physical to physical.  But alas I have drifted off the subject.

Before we can get into the sinking scenario we have nagging questions which require the use of the physical side of inertia—Sir Isaac Newton’s inertia theory developed well before the ships of Titanic’s size were conceived.  Oh!; I’m sorry, I must apologize to those readers who don’t want to remember high school or college physics, I must also consider a topic related to inertia—namely “impulse”.  Those of you who know more about inertia and impulse than I do can skip over the next section, but I, and the rest of us, need to review the following or look it up on google.

TO BE CONTINUED