It is somewhat difficult to separate out the true significance of boiler room No. 6 from what is public record and what is not. The inflow of water and the reaction of the ship’s personnel to it has been written about and dramatized over and over again. On the other hand, attention seems to be focused on saving boiler room No. 5 from flooding as if that will save the ship from sinking. In so doing, the audience has been deluded into downplaying the role of boiler room No 6 This then is the public record and part of the background to the Titanic sinking; and as such it could have been in the background section. But it is not in the background section because of the special significance it played in the sinking scenario.
3.1 Overview
To help the readers orient and familiarize themselves; especially those new or forgetful like me, a brief review of the front end of the Titanic is offered up. This will help those who would like to know where boiler room No. 6 was located. Figure F-3.1 gives sort of a cut away view of the ships guts in the forward area where all the damage occurred. This view is before the Titanic struck the iceberg.
The forepeak was separated from the forepeak tank by a horizontal bulkhead (heavy solid line). The forepeak contained a separate chamber for storing the huge chains to which the anchors were attached. This was called the chain locker.
Note in particular the watertight bulkheads labeled WTB-A, WTB-B, etc. (heavy mostly vertical lines) which are not included in the following table:
Table 3.1
Titanic Numbering
FEATURE
from left to right
|
COMPARTMENT
number
|
(stern to bow)
| |
boiler room No. 4
boiler room No. 5
boiler room No. 6
cargo hold No. 3
cargo hold No. 2
cargo hold No. 1
forepeak tank
forepeak
|
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
1
|
Not shown
Not shown
Now we start to go into the middle ground between public and non-public knowledge. As any school-boy in his mid-twenties or thirties knows, Thomas Andrews said it all. In many of the docudramas the chief technical man, Thomas Andrews, representing the ship builder Harland and Wolf, is seen explaining to the captain that the ship would not sink if only the first four compartments dividing the ship were flooded (compartments number 1-4 in table T-3.1). This was an essential part of the philosophical basis upon which the ship was designed. The other parts of the design philosophy are not germane to the discussion here and can be found elsewhere. Bruce Ismay, the virtual owner of the ship, was told the same. With some measure of authority, Andrews asserted that more compartments than four, the ship would sink. That next vital compartment going aft, was compartment number five, which was, of course, boiler room six as explained previously ( F-3.1 and T-3.1).
After the sinking, the chief naval architect for Harland and Wolf, who reported to Andrews, said essentially the same thing during the inquiries in 1912 as his boss had on board the Titanic. The amazing conclusion that can be drawn from this is ( never firmly stated in the resources I have studied) —the Titanic would not have sunk at all if boiler room six had not been damaged. Not a single soul would have been injured let alone killed.
According to Wielding’s presentation at the inquires, in this condition (only the four forward compartment flooded—holds 1-4) the ship would have been down by the bow only about 1-1/2 degrees with the propellers under water. Possibly it could have made it to safe haven under its own power. Figure F-3.2 depicts this happy ending..
[A number of these images were actually presented at the disaster inquiry in England in 1912 by Wielding himself . These here have been taken from Reference 2.]
Figure F-3.2 Titanic with only compartments 1-4 flooded
Unfortunately, such was not to be the case. Figure F-3.3 provides a view of the damage sustained by the compartments —1-5 (which now includes boiler room 6) as determined by side scanning radar. The source of this image is again Ref. 2.
Figure F-3.3 Hull Damage Profile Measured by Side Scanning Radar
Titanic’s forward or bow portion is buried in the sea floor nearly up to its retracted anchors so the hull damage is only discernable through the bottom mud by radar. There was minor damage done to compartment s 6 & 7 in addition to what is depicted but it could not be detected by the radar system and so is not shown in Figure F-3.3. From the water intake reported by survivors, Wielding estimated the hull damage to be about 12 square feet which meant it could not have been a continuous gash in the hull for three hundred feet as was first thought. The radar images show Wielding was correct. Modern calculations (Ref. 2) indicate the damage amounted to something slightly less than 12 sq. ft. Figure F-3.3 shows that the damage length was greatest in boiler room 6 and the damage extended into boiler room 5 a short ways.
Boiler room six would then seem to be the whole crux of the sinking disaster. Despite what the DVD’s depicted, the activity in boiler room 5 to save the ship was mistaken and futile. Titanic was going to sink no matter what the crew did. It was going to sink even if the coal bunker door had not failed. However, other scenarios are possible and will be discussed much latter in this story.
How big was the hole in the side of Titanic’s hull in boiler room six. Calculations by Charles Weeks and Samuel Halpern indicate that water came into boiler room 6 through a relatively small hole, less than 1-1/2 square ft. (Ref. 2, pg. 113) . That is equivalent to about a sixteen in diameter circle. What is being said here is that the fate of over 2,000 people depended on a hole in the ships side not a whole lot bigger than a large dinner plate. On the surface of it, this would seem to be ludicrous situation in as much as the Titanic was the largest moving object made by man at the time. No wonder there is so much fascination with the Titanic story.
This then is pretty much where the boiler room 6 story available to the public ends; there is a bit more in what the survivors in boiler room 6 had to relate at the time of the collision Their stories will be woven into the narrative to follow and their stories are public knowledge. Next we will provide a sneak preview into the proprietary analysis of what happened in boiler room 6. Table 3.2 shows a compartment by compartment tabulation of the amount of water that invaded the ship by 12:25 am or forty-five minutes after striking the iceberg. [ data in the two leftmost columns of table 3.2 ]
Table 3.2
Water Intake per compartment at 12:25 am
COMPARTMENT H2O AREA
tons * **
| |||
Forepeak tank
|
190
|
0.06
|
Trace
|
No. 1 cargo hold
|
1,730
|
0.55
|
0.47
|
No. 2 cargo hold
|
3,040
|
0.96
|
0.80
|
No. 3 cargo hold
|
3,515
|
1.11
|
0.74
|
N0. 4 boiler room
|
187
|
0.06
|
Trace
|
No. 5 boiler room
|
180
|
0.06
|
0.04
|
No. 6 boiler room
|
4,658
|
1.47
|
1.47
|
( area in sq. ft.)
The data in these first two columns is taken from Reference 2; page 111. Through the use of the suitably modified bournuli equation along with appropriate Reynold’s number, flow coefficient, and water density (which the author’s did not disclose), Weeks and Halpern determined the area of the hole (opening) in boiler room six was about 1.47 sq. ft. (bottom row of T-3.2). A simple calculation results in the hole of 1-1/2 sq. ft. being rather slit like with an average width of less than ½ inch.
The third from the left column of table 3.2 (*) gives the area of the other holes (likewise slits) obtained by prorating (ratioing) the amount of water in the other compartment to the water and area of compartment 5, boiler room 6. The right most column (**) is the area of each opening determined from the opening lengths given in F-3.3 multiplied by a presumed ½ inch width. The correlation between the two different area determinations is surprisingly good except for cargo hold #3. The “water ratio” technique produces an opening area of 1.11 sq. ft., while the ½ inch technique produces an opening of 0.74 sq. ft. There are at least two possibilities for this discrepancy. First, the opening can be much wider than ½ inch; the second possibility is that there is at least one or more openings in compartment 4 not detected by the sub-bottom profiler. Survivor testimony suggests that the latter possibility is more likely. This testimony will be important in latter sinking analysis.
Let us now return to boiler room 6 for a more detailed discussion of what happened there. Figure 3.4 depicts a simplified cut-away view of boiler room 6 looking forward as if the boilers were not there. This is how the structure would have looked before the collision with the iceberg.
F-3.4 Boiler Room 6 Undamaged
[ F-3.4 was taken from the DVD “Titanic Achilles Heel” (Ref. D1) and which then would ostensibly infer the image was boiler room 6 of the Titanic. However the original image in the DVD showed an inner “skin” of steel plating. In the view above, this inner plating (“skin”) has been removed since the Titanic did not have an inner “skin”. Inner plating in the boiler rooms was added to both the Britannic and Olympic sister ships after the sinking of the Titanic as added precaution (and face-saving promotion by White Star line).]
This type of construction is still used today, the only difference being the welding of the structure together instead of using rivets. Much attention has been given to the possibility that rivet failure played a significant role in the sinking, but laboratory testing has pretty well downplayed this theory. Brief scenes of this testing can be viewed in DVD’s, and technical reports are also available. No doubt it is possible some rivets failed in the forward part of the Titanic which took the brunt of the impact with the iceberg initially.
The next view is boiler room 6 about 8 seconds after the collision with the iceberg. There is now a ½ inch crack in the hull plate about 2 feet up as surviving fireman xxxxx described in his court room appearances.
F-3.5 Boiler Room 6 Damaged***
(*** time=approximately 8 seconds after initial contact with iceberg)
The amazing revelation that is being disclosed here is that apart from the crack, there is absolutely no new deformation of Titanic’s structure—no bent web or channel members what so ever! At this time, approximately 8 seconds the iceberg is still in contact with the hull outside of boiler room 6 and is preventing significant water entry. The next view depicts water flow into boiler room 6 through the ½ inch crack. The reader is reminded of scale disception—the plates shown in F-3.5 (and the one with the crack) are six feet high!
Crack dynamics is the subject of the next section. Because of its proprietory nature it, the discussion of crack dynamics, cannot be presented in the blog at this time.
What can be said at this point is this crack formation is a consequence of steel embrittlement which, in the case of the Titanic is public knowledge. Aside from striking the iceberg itself, steel embrittlement at water freezing temperatures is the fatal flaw in the Titanic disaster, the root cause of the ship’s sinking and the resultant loss of life. Although made of the highest quality steel at the time of Titanic’s construction, the consequences of steel impurities at low temperatures was unknown to steel makers and users, and therefore not a subject of quality assurance. Reference XXXX provides a thorough discussion of this subject as applied to the Titanic situation and for the non-faint hearted it is recommended reading. In a nutshell, under the conditions that prevailed that night in the mid-Atlantic, the Titanic’s steel shell was shock sensitive…a metalugical “fatal flaw”, Note, as depicted in F-3.5, it was the steel plate itself that failed, not a riveted seam. A question remains! What caused the crack to be ½ inch wide? That is the subject of the next section, section 3.3.
3.3 Crack dynamics
MATERIAL IN THIS SECTION IS PROPRIETARY
NOT CONTAINED IN THE BLOG
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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