You know the Titanic story too well, don’t you? The unsinkable ship sank and went down in history as one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters, killing over 1500 people. In the quest of knowing what actually went wrong, theorems have been coined with the testimonies of a few survivors and the knowledge of some experienced scientist and shipbuilders. Here are five basic factors that may have caused the mishap, but before that, let’s look at how the boat came about.
The Titanic
Titanic got its name from a Greek Mythology which translates to be gigantic. It is officially known as Royal Mail Ship Titanic and was constructed in Belfast, Ireland, in the United Kingdom.
Its construction was done by the best shipbuilders in Harland and Wolff, they made the designs which were overseen by Lord Pirre and Thomas Andrews; a naval architect. After much deliberations and self-satisfaction, the duo took their designs to J. Bruce Ismay who approved the designs with a seal of an agreement.
The ship was designed to be 882 feet 9 inches long with a breadth of 92 feet 6 inches with the total height measured to be 104 feet from the base of the keel to the top of the bridge and measures 46,328 for its internal volume, 34 feet 7 inches for its draught and displaces 52,310 tons.
Titanic’s build was designed such that it had ten decks; The boat deck, Promenade Deck, The bridge deck, Shelter deck, Salon deck, Upper deck, Middle deck, Lower deck, Tank top and the Orlop deck. It had three engines; two served as reservoirs and the other basically controlling the pressure in the propeller.
The ship had one of the most comfortable and luxurious facilities on board, it could accommodate about 833 first class passengers, 614-second class passengers, and 1,006 third class passengers.
The Great Fall
The great ship sank on April 14, 1912, four days after its departure from Southampton England on her Maiden Voyage to New York City. You could guess the makers had their hearts all raised and assured its passengers’ of safety.
Titanic had her life pulled down the ocean after hitting an iceberg, those who testified described the collision as that of a tearing volcano, however, the collisions was terrible and within a short time, the boat was filled with icy water. You could imagine how a lot would have struggled to get at least a lifeboat or a life jacket, however, they were short of lifeboats and life jackets so people fought for life and clustered like swarming bees. Unfortunately, only 705 passengers were rescued and over 1500 passengers were lost to the cold hands of death in the most tragic way ever.
Inasmuch as there were survivors, the point at which the boat wrecked was not discovered till the year 1985 after seventy-three years of the incident by a French and American expedition which was led by Jean Louis Michel and Robert Ballad.
The Sinking Of The Titanic: Here Are 5 Factors That May Have Caused It
1. The Ship’s Unreliable Construction Materials
The discovery of the sunk ship gave clues to the materials in which it was constructed with. Scientists who took up their bids to study the reasons why the unsinkable fell studied a piece of steel discovered from the wrecked ship. They decided to run an experiment with the steel and found that as soon as the steel was lifted from an iced water and hammered, it all went into pieces. They concluded that the steel was brittle, however, other pieces gathered from the ship disapproved the theorem. You could assume probably there was a mixture of both reliable and unreliable material used in the construction of the ship.
2. Rivets and Strain
After the disapproval of the steel theorem, McCarty and Foecke picked up some rivets used in the construction of Titanic and concluded that they contained high concentrations a residue that could make metal prone to fracture known as Slag. Harland & Wolff went on with the research and discovered that the rivets used in its constructions were not reliable either.
3. The Iceberg Collision
Records have it that there was a miscommunication between the radio operator; Jack Phillips and the Ship’s Captain; Edward Smith, however, the captain pointed the fact that the oversight on the iceberg warning couldn’t be read because there was no masters’ Service Gram which would have pointed the fact that the message was urgent. Although there have been records that a crew member turned the ship the wrong way, this testimony was given by the granddaughter of the senior surviving officer Charles Lightoller.
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4. Climate
Others have put the blame on climate, verifying this, the New York Times had reportedly spoken about the year and how icy North Atlantic had become. More recent research precisely in 2012 points to the fact that there was a possible occurrence of a rare lunar event which may have erupted the iceberg on titanic’s path.
5. Shortage of Binoculars and Lifeboat
There was no access to the binoculars on the ship due to the presiding officer who had the keys was no were to be found, perhaps if he were around, the disaster could have been averted. There are also extreme belief that more lives would have been saved if there were enough lifeboats in the ship however with the trust level its builders had they never knew their hopes would be dashed just a few days after departure.
