# More Titanic Secrets Revealed?



## stiletto (Feb 7, 2006)

Is anyone planning to watch the documentary on the history channel about the newest discoveries about the Titanic's wreckage?  I work with the history channel sometimes so i've had a chance to look into the facts a bit.

A lot of people have a standpoint of 'the boat hit and iceberg and then sank'.  From what i've had a seen to look at, the situation was quite a bit more complex.  I love having shows about this kind of stuff on when i'm around the house... so i'm looking foward to finding out more about it.


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## Omega (Feb 7, 2006)

There have been all sorts of theories, like the owner of the ship wanting the captain to push her to breaking point, so they could reach their destination quickly.


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## stiletto (Feb 9, 2006)

Or maybe he had too much faith in the construction of the ship?  Looks like they found some new evidence about how the Titanic went down and what exactly the passengers and crew experienced.  Seems they may have had less time than originally though when it broke apart...


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## Gwydion (Feb 12, 2006)

The metal in the ships design was faulty. Cant remember where i heard that though. "It was experts who built the Titanic, and newbies who built the Ark." Unknown Comedian.


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## Cyril (Feb 13, 2006)

stiletto said:
			
		

> Or maybe he had too much faith in the construction of the ship?


I think it's the main reason of this disaster: a sort of naive faith in technology power which prevailed at that time. And all other elements (the iceberg, the metal weakness or inaccurate and hazardous use of the ship) only worsen the situation.

I don't know if the documentary I saw was this one (I watched it on french version of the history channel) but I guess it's the same. I liked the explanation of the tests of the boat. The Titanic passed all the security tests available at that time. Thus, for me, this is proving that the wreckage is the result of low security levels increasing human errors.


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## weaveworld (Feb 13, 2006)

I read years ago that it was actually the 'Titanic' that sank, the boats had been swapped around with other boat, can't remember the name.  It was one of those hidden secrets stories.


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## stiletto (Feb 28, 2006)

I don't know anything about the Titanic being swapped with other boats?  I'm not sure if I understand what you mean by that...

Well, the documentary aired last night, as i'm sure it will again.  As for the french version of the History Channel - I dont know if it aired there before here, but it's called "Titanic's Final Moments: Missing Pieces".  The information is ground-breaking for those interested in the subject and those who study it.  Not only does the new evidence prove that the ship broke in half the opposite way than originally assessed, but it offered an entirely new window into what the passengers and crew actually experienced.

Has anyone else had a chance to catch it?


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## Spook (Apr 20, 2006)

The conspiracy theory (which is ridiculous), is that it wasn't actually the Titanic that sank but her sister ship the 'Olympic'. The Olympic was an insurance nightmare with repeated engine failures and other mechanical problems. The theory is that they 'swapped the name tags' between Olympic and Titanic whilst the two were in dock and it was the Titanic that went to the rbeakers yard in the 1930's and the Olympic that went to the bottom of the Atlantic on April 15th 1912 and so the White Star Line collected on the insurance money from the disaster.

Yes... it really is that insane.

Incidentally White Star Line had terrible luck with her three big ships. Titanic went to the bottom; Olympic had a nightmare run of problems and Britannic was torpedoed off the Dardanelles as a Hospital ship during the first world war. 

The company took a total pasting during the wars too; and their ships were invovled in some horrific incidents that are perhaps the most famous ship sinkings in naval history. The Lusitania was torpedoed off the southern coast of Ireland in 1915, an event with contributed to bringing the United States into the First World War. Other liners lost during World War One included the Alaunia, Ascania and Laconia. During the Second World War a second liner named Laconia was torpedoed by a German U-Boat in 1942. The Laconia was loaded with women and children and Italian POWs and the loss of life was terrible. When the U-Boat commander realised what he'd done he surfaced and attempted to rescue survivors; going so far as to order other U-Boats to converge on the sinking and do likewise. Unfortunately American land based bombers arrived and, seeing U-Boats on the surface, started bombing them (they honestly didn't know what was going on). The U-Boat commander ordered his boats to dive with many survivors still on the deck and the entire thing degenerated into an even bigger catastrophe as these survivors were sucked down when the boats crashed dived and killed.

... As for the Titanic; the one thing that sunk her was arrogance.


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## ebarr (Jun 14, 2006)

Had Titiannic not seen the Iceberg at all she probably would have survived. A head on collision would have smashed in the first couple of sections but not ruptured 6+ sections has historically happened. 

It is believed now the holes that sank her were actually very small (perhaps the area of a kitchen table in total) but they spread along multiple sections. 

Oh by the way Lusitania was Cunard ship rather than White Star.


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## j d worthington (Jun 14, 2006)

Not quite on topic, but raised by something said in an earlier post. There is more than a little reason to doubt how much the sinking of the _Lusitania _contributed to our entering the Great War; contrary to common belief (including what I learned growing up). When the ship went down with the loss of 1200+ lives (128 Americans), there was some public outcry, but it was largely taken as one of those unfortunate mishaps surrounding foreign wars; the majority of the people were still largely well-disposed (or at least neutral) toward Germany; President Wilson even made a speech in response to what outcry there was which included the famous (or infamous) remark "There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight." Such things as the agitation over here by Sinn Fein and other pro-Irish and anti-English organizations, combined with hints now and again of German sympathizers attempting different schemes to "distract" America's attention from the war, slowly began to accrue negative feeling; but what finally resulted in our involvement was interception, in February 1917, of a telegram from Germany to Mexico promising Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona to that country if Mexico entered the war. Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany on April 2; the Senate approved this on Apr. 4, the House on the 6; the draft bill was signed on May 18, and the actual draft began on 5 June. So there's more than a little debate on how much, if any, the sinking of the _Lusitania_ had to do with the United States entering the "War to End All Wars."


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## Jaxom_Ruatha (Jun 15, 2006)

You're refering to teh Zimmerman Note I believe. But then you must also remember that the British had power over the news sent from Germany that necessarily passed through the British Sea's to the Americas allowing censorship to take place. So it's not that much of a stretch to believe that the British faked the letter possibly even with the knowledge and consent of the President.


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## j d worthington (Jun 15, 2006)

Perhaps, but the evidence doesn't seem to support that; various documents from Wilson's administration give no indication of that, nor anything I've seen gained from the various information acts otherwise. Still, it remains a possibility, albeit unlikely in this case. And we have quite enough evidence, for instance, that FDR knew in advance about the bombing of Pearl Harbor and was willing to use that to get us into a war that the populace was very much against -- as it turned out (as documented around 2000), there was a plan in place for the Japanese to drop atomic bombs on our west coast, which came within a hair of realization; had we not entered the war, most likely we'd have suffered an atomic britzklieg; at least, such are the indications. Most of these behind-the-scenes shenanigans are now fairly well exposed, even if it did take darned near a century.


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## Jim Colyer (Nov 27, 2006)

Each generation finds the Titanic fascinating.  Why?


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## Urien (Nov 27, 2006)

"Each generation finds the Titanic fascinating. Why?" Jim Colyer

The greatest ship ever built, sunk on her maiden voyage. Hubris, arrogance, negative serendipity.

The unsinkable ship and god going "oh yeah? We'll see about that."


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## mosaix (Nov 28, 2006)

Perhaps someone would like to comment on a theory of mine.

I believe that what caused the ship to sink (if this isn't true then bang goes my theory) was that as the ruptured forward sections flooded the ship went down at the bow and the water overflowed over the top of each water tight compartment into the next subsequently sinking the whole ship.

What if the captian had flooded aft compartments to balance the ship and stop it _going down at the bow. _Naturally the ship would have settled low in the water, maybe dangerously low.

Anyone know? Would the ship have stayed afloat or maybe taken longer to sink?


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## YuYus dumber Brother (Nov 28, 2006)

Mosaix your idea does seem like an good idea. However, at the time they didn't know how many compartments were damaged. So flooding the remaining aft compartments and then find out all front compartments are damaged wont help alot. They simply didn't have time to check, recheck and come up with a plan.


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## mosaix (Nov 28, 2006)

YuYus dumber Brother said:


> Mosaix your idea does seem like an good idea. However, at the time they didn't know how many compartments were damaged. So flooding the remaining aft compartments and then find out all front compartments are damaged wont help alot. They simply didn't have time to check, recheck and come up with a plan.



You're probably right. In the original film I remember them spreading out plans of the ship (onboard the ship) and discussing how each compartment would overflow into the next and that was what gave me the idea. 

But thinking about it that was probably just info-dump on the part of the script writers. In reality they probably didn't know much at all.


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## Angeline (Jan 22, 2007)

mosaix said:


> Perhaps someone would like to comment on a theory of mine.
> 
> I believe that what caused the ship to sink (if this isn't true then bang goes my theory) was that as the ruptured forward sections flooded the ship went down at the bow and the water overflowed over the top of each water tight compartment into the next subsequently sinking the whole ship.
> 
> ...


 
I realize this thread is a bit older, but just to comment on the flooding of compartments..........

The Titanic was said to have had a double-bottomed hull that was divided into 16 watertight compartments. Four of these could be flooded without endangering the liner's buoyancy, therefore, it was considered unsinkable. When the ship collided with an iceberg, five of its watertight compartments were ruptured, causing the ship to sink. 

If the Captain flooded more compartments he would of ended up with the same result....................sinking.  Five compartments were damaged the liner could only handle four..............???


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## High Eight (Feb 8, 2007)

ebarr said:


> Had Titiannic not seen the Iceberg at all she probably would have survived. A head on collision would have smashed in the first couple of sections but not ruptured 6+ sections has historically happened.
> 
> It is believed now the holes that sank her were actually very small (perhaps the area of a kitchen table in total) but they spread along multiple sections.
> 
> Oh by the way Lusitania was Cunard ship rather than White Star.


 

All the Cunard ships had names ending '-ia' and all the White Star ships names ended '-ic'.


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## YuYus dumber Brother (Feb 12, 2007)

Step 1 for a oneway ride to the bottom.
Firstly the Lookouts without binoculars. What kind of ship sails without them?  what kind of captian increase speed knowing there are icebergs around and his lookouts do not have binoculars. 

Step 2 
By throwing the engines in reverse all that the Xo did was create cavitation around the Rudder, which was too small in the first place. No water flow over the rudder meant no change in direction. Simply turning the wheel hard Port or Starboard would have been better then reverse engines.
At the speed of the ship and momentum no amount of reverse engines would stop her in time.

The swapping theory came from the accident the  Olympic had on her Starboard bow. The part of Titanic that whacked the iceberg incidently. She had a mishap in harbour and smashed the starboard bow. This was fixed wand the Olympic finished her career and went to the breakers yard, where they found no evidence of the Bow being smashed or rectified. That is where the theory came from.


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## jackokent (Feb 12, 2007)

Well talking of wacky theories and trying to go one better than the boat swap, I heard that the Titanic was carrying some bits and bods (or something) from Tutenkhamen's tomb and the curse of the mummy struck again.... 

Anyone got a wackier one?


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## monomaniac101 (Feb 28, 2007)

Spook said:


> ... As for the Titanic; the one thing that sunk her was arrogance.


 
I really like that. That's what I've always thought. One of my sayings as far as this goes is that "When man gets too cocky, God throws an iceberg in the middle of the road."

I actually did catch a little bit of the documetnary. I never saw the last of it, but what I did see was pretty cool. It amazed me at how mangled the stern was. It was incredible. My gosh, I've always been fascinated by things like this, so don't mind me if I go on and on. I want to state my theory.

Titanic was built beyond the standards of that day, and the lifeboats were lawfully correct because the rules overlooked the fact that _the Titanic was much bigger and therefore held many more passengers_. Another factor was that the rudder, which would probably have been fine for any other ship, was much too small for Titanic. This was proved because as Titanic was pulling out of Southampton port, it nearly collided with the _New York_. And because Titanic couldn't turn fast enough (too small rudder), it would have crashed if not for the tugboats. 

It was true that Bruce Ismay wanted Titanic to be a press spectacle, but I can't remember whether it is actually true or not that he pushed Captain Smith to go faster. That may have been some creative license on James Cameron's part.

April 14th, 1912 was a very strange night. First, there was no wind, making the sea "as calm as a mill pond." Second, the binoculars had been left in Southampton. Third, if Titanic had crashed head-on, it may not have gone down completely. That or it would have gone down slowly enough for help to arrive. But First Officer Murdoch ordered for Hard Starboard, and with too small a rudder, this was a bad decision. But he didn't know it, so we can hardly blame him. 

Many people were at fault, so pointing fingers at one person would be completely pointless and harmful.

Thankfully, we learned from this accumulation of errors, for the most part. 

You won't beieve how much mroe information on Titanic I have stored in my brain (I read the world's end on it once I saw the movie). But I will spare you by not sharing it now.


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## AphroditeMSC (Jun 12, 2007)

Jim Colyer said:


> Each generation finds the Titanic fascinating. Why?


 

The Titanic was and still is, one of life's great mysterious tragedies.  As a race we are either fearful of or obsessed by the unexplained.  Like the Bermuda Triangle and a lot of other things, we simply have to dig our selves in and speculate, imagine and wonder.


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