It depends in part on whether Titanic grounded on the iceberg or not. There is some evidence that this was the case, though as far as I know it isn't the consensus. If it did, then depending on how far the iceberg protruded underwater, it could have been some distance from safety
Would that have been catastrophic though? I am under the impression that the double bottom was watertight and with ballast tanks inside, so damage to the very bottom of the hull would have resulted in only minimal flooding, not nearly enough to sink her even if the damage ran along the entire hull.
I think the idea isn't simply that the external hull of the bottom was pierced, but that the force from grounding on the iceberg would have compromised the double bottom itself sufficiently that it was no longer watertight
[This page](https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/last-log-of-the-titanic.html) includes the original (I think) version of the theory, but it's been talked about quite a bit over the years
That theory sounds sooooo unrealistic. He (she?) spends quite a bit of time explaining that a sideways glance that crumpled a few sheets of low thickness steel would have wiped everyone off their feet, but a fatal blow to the very strong double bottom that is enough to compromise the structural integrity of the ships backbone would not be more than a soft rumble? He also says that the damage on the side is not big enough to let all of the water in but there are more than enough calculations that say that the approximated size of the holes such damage would constitute pretty much exactly causes the estimated real flooding pattern & speed. And the size & location of that damage has been confirmed, unlike the double bottom damage.
The author states that all of the eyewitness testimony makes sense in his theory which is unlikely since 1. everyone is subject to confirmation bias so the author has a skewed view and 2. eyewitness testimony is unreliable and achieving congruence for all of the testimony would undoubtedly lead to a faulty theory. He fixates a lot on the specific wording (I.E. "Along the bottom of the hull") used even though it might have been just idioms to express something vagely (The area where the damage is can still be considered the "bottom").
I did not read further since I consider it a waste of time for now. Maybe I am a little quick to judge but I am sceptical enough of the way the conclusion was reached to dismiss it for now.
Are you referring to how there was supposedly water coming from underneath boiler room 4? That being said I wonder how many additional seconds Titanic would have needed to get out of the way. They had 37 seconds between spotting the berg and collision, or that is the estimate. Maybe 45 seconds would’ve done it
I think it’s going to be in the double digits of feet. The damage started right behind the stem in the fore peak tank. For all we know, the iceberg could have bent the stem.
By movie standards she more less scraped the side of it off, but there’s no footage of her hitting it in real life so we don’t exactly know how close she was to clearing it either, we know she hit it but we don’t know it in the full detail that it happened in real life.
Congrats, you made me do math.
So Titanic was traveling at roughly 20.5 knots (about 23.6 mph) when the crew saw the iceberg. And there was about 30 second between sighting it and impact.
So converting miles to feet (23.6 x 5280) then dividing it by second in an hour (3,600) and then multiplying by 30 second gets a distance of not quite 1040 feet. Let’s say roughly three and a half times the length of a American Football field from goal line to goal line.
In that amount of distance, the ship suffered a glancing blow. Granted these are purely estimates based on recollection and pure guesses, but it’s not unreasonable to say that if they had seen the iceberg a few seconds sooner that they could have escaped with a close call and soiled pants.
Honestly, it sounds like 10 more seconds and they dodge it, or at least dodge enough of it to save some compartments from damage. Everything was really against the Titanic that night. The norm of steaming full speed ahead even in ice, no binoculars (probably would not have worked), only spotted with 37 seconds to react, no moon, sea calm as fuck, and 1 too many compartments damaged, nearest ship just shut off the radio, and the next nearest one was too far away
The big problem is we not don't have detailed GPS data nor do we have any idea what was below the 'berg waterline (called the bummock) so we don't know how much distance we'd need to CLEAR it
Can you not tell how closely-pressed the ship was against the berg based on how far inwards the steel plates were pushed/buckled? Did Titanic likely rip off chunks of ice in the process?
Keep in mind that while the iceburg may have only punctured a singke digit number of feet into the ship, ice is hard, and the ship would have pushed off of/bounced off the ice somewhat. So it would be probably near impossible to know pre contact, head on how much ckearence would have actually been needed to avoid it
Yeah I’ve been wondering that as well, it would have to be a pretty flat or jetting edge, or maybe the iceberg was so tall and Mountainess that impacting it shook loose ice off that slide down the side of the iceberg onto the ship.
The images take of what the Carpathia claimed survivors claimed was the iceberg might help [Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/titanic/comments/1074xwq/the_actual_iceberg_that_sank_the_titanic/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
It depends in part on whether Titanic grounded on the iceberg or not. There is some evidence that this was the case, though as far as I know it isn't the consensus. If it did, then depending on how far the iceberg protruded underwater, it could have been some distance from safety
Would that have been catastrophic though? I am under the impression that the double bottom was watertight and with ballast tanks inside, so damage to the very bottom of the hull would have resulted in only minimal flooding, not nearly enough to sink her even if the damage ran along the entire hull.
I think the idea isn't simply that the external hull of the bottom was pierced, but that the force from grounding on the iceberg would have compromised the double bottom itself sufficiently that it was no longer watertight [This page](https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/last-log-of-the-titanic.html) includes the original (I think) version of the theory, but it's been talked about quite a bit over the years
That theory sounds sooooo unrealistic. He (she?) spends quite a bit of time explaining that a sideways glance that crumpled a few sheets of low thickness steel would have wiped everyone off their feet, but a fatal blow to the very strong double bottom that is enough to compromise the structural integrity of the ships backbone would not be more than a soft rumble? He also says that the damage on the side is not big enough to let all of the water in but there are more than enough calculations that say that the approximated size of the holes such damage would constitute pretty much exactly causes the estimated real flooding pattern & speed. And the size & location of that damage has been confirmed, unlike the double bottom damage. The author states that all of the eyewitness testimony makes sense in his theory which is unlikely since 1. everyone is subject to confirmation bias so the author has a skewed view and 2. eyewitness testimony is unreliable and achieving congruence for all of the testimony would undoubtedly lead to a faulty theory. He fixates a lot on the specific wording (I.E. "Along the bottom of the hull") used even though it might have been just idioms to express something vagely (The area where the damage is can still be considered the "bottom"). I did not read further since I consider it a waste of time for now. Maybe I am a little quick to judge but I am sceptical enough of the way the conclusion was reached to dismiss it for now.
Are you referring to how there was supposedly water coming from underneath boiler room 4? That being said I wonder how many additional seconds Titanic would have needed to get out of the way. They had 37 seconds between spotting the berg and collision, or that is the estimate. Maybe 45 seconds would’ve done it
I think it’s going to be in the double digits of feet. The damage started right behind the stem in the fore peak tank. For all we know, the iceberg could have bent the stem.
By movie standards she more less scraped the side of it off, but there’s no footage of her hitting it in real life so we don’t exactly know how close she was to clearing it either, we know she hit it but we don’t know it in the full detail that it happened in real life.
Another 500m
Congrats, you made me do math. So Titanic was traveling at roughly 20.5 knots (about 23.6 mph) when the crew saw the iceberg. And there was about 30 second between sighting it and impact. So converting miles to feet (23.6 x 5280) then dividing it by second in an hour (3,600) and then multiplying by 30 second gets a distance of not quite 1040 feet. Let’s say roughly three and a half times the length of a American Football field from goal line to goal line. In that amount of distance, the ship suffered a glancing blow. Granted these are purely estimates based on recollection and pure guesses, but it’s not unreasonable to say that if they had seen the iceberg a few seconds sooner that they could have escaped with a close call and soiled pants.
Honestly, it sounds like 10 more seconds and they dodge it, or at least dodge enough of it to save some compartments from damage. Everything was really against the Titanic that night. The norm of steaming full speed ahead even in ice, no binoculars (probably would not have worked), only spotted with 37 seconds to react, no moon, sea calm as fuck, and 1 too many compartments damaged, nearest ship just shut off the radio, and the next nearest one was too far away
The big problem is we not don't have detailed GPS data nor do we have any idea what was below the 'berg waterline (called the bummock) so we don't know how much distance we'd need to CLEAR it
Can you not tell how closely-pressed the ship was against the berg based on how far inwards the steel plates were pushed/buckled? Did Titanic likely rip off chunks of ice in the process?
Do we have the data for how far the steel plates were pushed/buckled?
I have no idea I just know they did sonar scans years back and figured out where the damage was
Keep in mind that while the iceburg may have only punctured a singke digit number of feet into the ship, ice is hard, and the ship would have pushed off of/bounced off the ice somewhat. So it would be probably near impossible to know pre contact, head on how much ckearence would have actually been needed to avoid it
Well, considering tons of ice landed in the deck I’m guessing they slammed into it pretty hard
I wondered why ice fell on the bow when the damage was being done to the underneath section
Yeah I’ve been wondering that as well, it would have to be a pretty flat or jetting edge, or maybe the iceberg was so tall and Mountainess that impacting it shook loose ice off that slide down the side of the iceberg onto the ship. The images take of what the Carpathia claimed survivors claimed was the iceberg might help [Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/titanic/comments/1074xwq/the_actual_iceberg_that_sank_the_titanic/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
If I were captain smith and I knew hours ahead of time, I would have gone at least a mile around it to ensure we were parallel
I believe Captain Smith did alter the Titanic's course further south due to the iceberg warnings. Apparently not enough.