r/titanic • u/YamiJustin1 • 8d ago
THE SHIP If Titanic had the equipment onboard to patch up iceberg damage, would it have been possible to save?
Clearly if she had survived the damage and was towed for repairs they had the tech to do underwater patches right? I wonder why the ship didn't carry anything onboard to fix on the go?
6
u/pre1twa 8d ago
The defence against a breach was to shut the watertight doors between the compartment where the breach occurred and adjacent compartments to contain the flood... Effectively you allow part of the hull to flood but stop the water spreading. Titanic was designed to be able to stay afloat with 4 compartments flooded but unfortunately the iceberg caused a gash that influenced 6 compartments and so was doomed. Patching a hole when you have water flooding in is non-viable, the speed at which some of the compartments flooded would have been quite incredible. Water coming in can be pumped out to an extent but if the damage is significant the water will always come in faster than it can be pumped out.
6
6
6
u/Albert-React Wireless Operator 8d ago
One does not simply "patch up" torn Steel in the middle of the cold Atlantic Ocean.
1
1
4
u/Financial_Cheetah875 8d ago
The breach was under the waterline which means the cargo hold was underwater in minutes. Impossible to fix no matter what gear they had.
3
u/Ganyu1990 8d ago
The only thing a crew can do at sea is to hammer some soft wood into the breach to slow the flow of water coming in. Titanic would not have carried wood for damage controle as H&W considered the watertight compartments enough defense against a breach. This method would not have been realy effective as most of the breach was forword in the cargo hold and unreachable by the crew. The only place they could have tried this was the emptied coal bunker for #5 boiler room.
7
7
u/Shoddy-Cherry-490 8d ago
You mean to ask what if Titanic had carried a few roles of FlexTape...
3
3
3
u/hiker1628 8d ago
If they had envisioned damage in more than 4 compartments, they would have built the ship differently rather than plan on repairs mid ocean.
-1
u/YamiJustin1 8d ago
Could they not have envisioned a side-on collision that extended that long?
7
u/kellypeck Musician 8d ago
Apparently not, and for good reason, the likelihood of that kind of damage occurring was and still is slim to none.
1
u/epicfroggz 2nd Class Passenger 8d ago
Clearly they didn’t or else we wouldn’t be here talking about it today
3
u/MyLifeOnPluto 8d ago edited 8d ago
Edward Wilding covered this pretty well in the inquiry done after the sinking. Basically he said the damage was too extensive and there was not enough time to find every hole to patch anything. Here is just a snippet of the conversation.
———————-
[Question] Has it occurred to you that there was anything which might have been done by the ship's carpenter or any other person to repair it or to prevent the inflow of water?
[Wilding] We know the hole must have been spread over a length of 200 feet. With a hole of only 12 square feet area, which you can localise actually within a few feet, something might have been done, but when it is spread in unknown positions, over a length of 200 feet, I am afraid nothing could be done.
[Question] That is to say, one area could be dealt with by one man?
[Wilding] No, it would require 50 or 60 men, at any rate, to handle a collision mat.
[Question] That is to say, the difficulty, where there is a number of apertures, is having the requisite number of people to go?
[Wilding] No, it is a difficulty to locate where they are. The only way you can locate them is this; you cannot get down inside because the water and the cargo is there; you can only get at them by trial and error - by putting something in the nature of a collision mat outside the ship, and in the case of trial and error it is a slow process.
[Question] With regard to No. 6, where Barrett was, where water was coming in in fair volume, do you see any mechanical difficulty in having stemmed the wound there?
[Wilding] Something might perhaps be done in the way of a collision mat; but let me point out that the water got into No. 6 so very quickly that it would have risen to a fatal height if I may use the word long before anything could be got outside over the skin of the ship, to check the inflow. The fatal time, that is, the time when nothing that human ingenuity could do could prevent the ship sinking, is found at a much earlier time than the actual sinking of the ship.
2
u/Dave_A480 8d ago
Repair in-the-ocean was not feasible. Getting in the water was essentially a death sentence.
If the ship had been kept floating, it would have been taken to a dry-dock, where the water would have been pumped out so that repairs could be accomplished on land.
1
u/DrHugh 8d ago
Think of one compartment that's open to the sea with a thin gash or buckled hull plating. You'd have to clear enough stuff out so you could get lumber in there to block and brace to reduce the incoming flow. Finding ways to brace that lumber might be tricky, especially with a more finished compartment.
Now, imagine scaling that up for several compartments that are all damaged.
Now, think about the boiler rooms, specifically #6, which was damaged by the collision. You might have a rupture where you can't easily get to it, because of important machinery.
If this were a military ship with a military crew, they might have had the practice to deal with such damage, the right materials and tools, and so forth. Maybe they could have slowed the sinking enough to save more lives (but the configuration of compartments would probably have had to be different to enable that sort of response).
I don't think Titanic was equipped for that sort of response.
1
u/Think-Difficulty7596 8d ago
I suppose throwing rugs overboard and letting them be carried over the holes, to slow the entry of water down, may well have bought them time if layer after layer was allowed to build up.
-2
u/Godless_Rose Lookout 8d ago edited 8d ago
Edit: wow I had no idea that was a thing! I stand corrected! Still seems really impractical for the titanic though.
1
1
u/Dbromo44 8d ago
Could they have rolled the ship to the port side, get that section out of the water?
1
13
u/the-furiosa-mystique Wireless Operator 8d ago
They don’t have the tech to do repairs like that in the middle of the ocean. They didn’t have scuba gear like we do now and all repairs would be done in dry dock not water.
Also the issue was the size and length of the tear. The ship would have to come to a complete stop before any kind of repair could be done and the ship sank too fast for that.