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Experts Blame Titanic Sinking on Rivets
By CARLEY PETESCH,AP
Posted: 2008-04-18 11:09:11
Filed Under: World News
NEW YORK (April 18) - The tragic sinking of the Titanic nearly a
century ago can be blamed on low-grade rivets that the ****p's builders
used on some parts of the ill-fated liner, two experts on metals
conclude in a new book.
Photo Gallery
Library of Congress / AP Questions About
Titanic's Soundness1 of 4 The hull of the Titanic rests in dry
dock during construction in 1911. In a new book, two metallurgists say
low-quality rivets played a role in the sinking of the luxury liner in
the northern Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912.
The company, Harland and Wolff of Belfast, Northern Ireland, needed to
build the ****p quickly and at reasonable cost, which may have
compromised quality, said co-author Timothy Foecke. That the ****pyard
was building two other vessels at the same time added to the
difficulty of getting the millions of rivets needed, he added.
"Under the pressure to get these ****ps up, they ramped up the
riveters, found materials from additional suppliers, and some was not
of quality," said Foecke, a metallurgist at the U.S. government's
National Institute of Standards and Technology who has been studying
the Titanic for a decade.
More than 1,500 people died when the Titanic, advertised as an
"unsinkable" luxury liner, struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage in
1912 and went down in the North Atlantic less than three hours later.
"The company knowingly purchased weaker rivets, but I think they did
it not knowing they would be purchasing something substandard enough
that when they hit an iceberg their ****p would sink," said co-author
Jennifer Hooper McCarty, who started researching the Titanic's rivets
while working on her Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in 1999.
The company disputes the idea that inferior rivets were at fault. The
theory has been around for years, but McCarty and Foecke's book, "What
Really Sank the Titanic," published last month, outlines their
extensive research into the Harland and Wolff archives and surviving
rivets from the Titanic.
McCarty spent two years in Britain studying the company's archives and
works on the training and working conditions of ****pyard workers. She
and Foecke also studied engineering textbooks from the 1890s and early
1900s to learn more about ****pbuilding practices and materials.
"I had the op****tunity to study the metallurgy of several rivets,"
McCarty said. "It was a process of taking thousands of images of the
inside of these rivets, finding out what the structure was like, doing
chemical testing and computer modeling.
"Seeing the kind of levels we saw in different areas, in different
parts of the ****p led us to believe they would have been ordered from
different people," she said, adding this may have led to the weaker
rivets.
The two metallurgists tested 48 rivets from the ****p and found that
slag concentrations were at 9 percent, when they should have been 2 to
3 percent. The slag is a byproduct of the smelting process.
"You need the slag but you need just a little to take up the load
that's applied so the iron doesn't stretch," Foecke said. "The iron
becomes weak the more slag there is because the brittleness of the
slag takes over and it breaks easily."
Foecke said the main question was not whether the Titanic would sink
after hitting the iceberg, but how fast the ****p went down.
He believes the answer is provided by the weak rivets. His analysis
showed the builders used stronger steel rivets where they expected the
greatest stress and weaker iron rivets for the stern and the bow,
where they thought there would be less pressure, he said. But it was
the ****p's bow that struck the iceberg.
"Typically you want a four bar for rivets," Foecke said, using the
measurement for the strongest rivets. "Some of the orders were for
three bar."
Harland and Wolff spokesman Joris Minne disputed the findings. "We
always say there was nothing wrong with the Titanic when it left
here," he said.
When the iceberg hit the Titanic, it scraped alongside the ****p.
Foecke said this affected a number of seams in the bow and the weak
rivets let go, putting more pressure on the strong rivets.
"Six compartments flooded. If the rivets were on average better
quality, five compartments may have flooded and the ****p would have
stayed afloat longer and more people would have been saved," Foecke
said. "If four compartments flooded, the ****p may have limped to
Halifax."
The company does not have an archivist, but it refers scientific
questions on the Titanic to retired Harland and Wolff naval engineer
David Livingstone, who also has researched the ****p's sinking.
He said he largely agrees with the authors' findings on the metallic
composition of the rivets, but added their conclusions that the rivets
were to blame for the sinking are "misleading and incorrect" because
they do not consider the ****p's overall design and the historical
context.
"You can't just look at the material and say it was substandard,"
Livingstone said. "Of course material from 100 years ago would be
inferior to material today."
He said he has found no do***ent to sup****t the argument that Harland
and Wolff knowingly used substandard material. He pointed out that the
Olympic, a ****p the company built at the same time using the same
materials, had a long life with no troubles. The third vessel turned
out in the early 1900s was attacked and sunk in World War I.
Livingstone said he is not sure why iron rivets were used in the bow
and the stern but believes it may have been because a crane-mounted
hydraulic rivet machine could not reach those points. He said the iron
rivets were wider to compensate for the difference in strength.
Contrary to Foecke's theory, Livingstone said, the Titanic did not go
down fast compared to other ****ps that have sunk.
He said the Titanic did not capsize - as do most sinking ****ps - but
maintained an even keel until the last moment, going down after about
2 1/2 hours when the weight of the water it took on became too much.
William Garzke, chairman of the forensics panel of the Society of
Naval Architects and Marine Engineers based in New Jersey, said
wrought iron was commonly used at that time, but steel was the newer,
stronger choice.
Garzke, who also has studied the Titanic sinking, said the two
scientists made a good point about the variability of the rivets, but
"the problem is not the metallurgy of the rivets, it was the design of
the riveted joints."
He said that the company used only two rivets at the site of impact,
when three would have provided more strength and durability.
Associated Press writer D'Arcy Doran contributed to this re****t from
London.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the
AP news re****t may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise
distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated
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2008-04-18 08:14:20
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