RMS Titanic was a passenger liner that sank in
the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912 after colliding with an iceberg during
her maiden voyage from Southampton, UK to New York City, USA. The sinking of
Titanic caused the deaths of 1514 people in one of the deadliest peacetime
maritime disasters in history. She was the largest ship afloat at the time of
her maiden voyage.
Figure of Titanic's hull |
How
did the Titanic sink then? The Titanic was claimed to be nearly unsinkable and
this gave passengers the false impression that it was a very safe ship. The
Titanic struck an iceberg at around midnight on the 14 of April 1912. However,
they have received warnings beforehand on there being pack ice around and even big
icebergs. This is due to the fact that the ship’s “wireless” system was a bit
faulty at the time when those warnings were issued and the radio operator just
ignored most of the warnings.
What made the Titanic sink the way
it did then? The Titanic was warned that there was an iceberg right ahead just
1 minute before collision and officers tried to ‘port’ the ship by swinging the
bow around the obstacle and then swing the stern so that both ends of the ship
will avoid a collision. However, this process was delayed by some error in
relation of the message. Titanic barely avoided a head-on collision but the
change in direction still caused the ship to strike the iceberg with a glancing
blow.
Figure of Titanic 'Porting around' |
An underwater spur of ice scraped along the
starboard side of the ship for about seven seconds; chunks of ice dislodged
from the upper parts of the iceberg fell onto he forward decks. A few minutes
later, all of Titanic’s engines stopped. The tear caused by the scrape caused
about 7.1 tons of water to gush in every second. This filled up 5 of its 16
watertight compartments. However, the Titanic was only designed to have 2 of
its compartments flooded and at most 3-4 compartments at different parts of the
ship. This caused the titanic to tilt a bit and when pressure was mounting near
the middle of the ship, this caused the middle of the ship to split into two
and it just sank into the bottom of the ocean where the pressure is as high as 6500
pounds per square inch.
No comments:
Post a Comment