Titanic - The New Evidence

I didn't watch it, was there a big cover up

I thought you were ill !!!!!!!

 

If your thumb fails, there's always your nose ... or toes!

 

Obviously, I've not seen the documentary. Despite that, I'll pass an opinion.

The suggestion that this evidence is new is hardly true. Its been known for years that there was a fire on board. This was probably in the coal bunkers. Such fires were, and are still common in large coal fired boilers. Even remaining coal fired power stations have them.

The Titanic was not a fast ship, and, to add to that, due to a coal strike at the time, was sailing at half speed at the beginning of the voyage. That was partly due not only to the coal strike, but also to the fact that the engines were new, and had to be run in.

It is known however that the ship was travelling at full speed immediately prior to the tragedy. The standard procedure at the time, if a fire was discovered in the bunkers was to steam as quickly as possible to the nearest port to get the fire extinguished. They are difficult, if not impossible to put out at sea.

 

True, but they still would not have reached the fire. Generally speaking, a bunker coal fire would not be at the top or bottom of the bunker, but somewhere in between. As the fire burned, it would travel slowly upwards. Thus going further from where the coal was removed. On top of the bunker, there would be what were known as Coal Trimmers,

These men adjusted the level of the coal to keep the boat in trim. So to a certain extent, they would also change the relative position of the fire.

The Engineers would not risk damaging the new engines by running them at full speed unless there was an emergency that forced them to do so.

As a layman, I would make this guess. The Captain knew of the fire, therefore chose to take the gamble of saving the ship by taking the most direct route to the nearest port as quickly as possible, and take the risk of hitting icebergs that were known to be present in the area.

I'm not for one minute trying to say the evidence is incorrect, only that it is not new. I have read reports of this that are 10 or perhaps 15 years old.

 

As I have had to spend more time indoors this Christmas due to my dodgy knee so I saw the programme.Evidently photos of the Titanic which are over 100 years old have recently been found and whilst the photos were being studied closely a dark stripe on the side of the ship down near where the water line would have been has been found which is at the same level as to where the fire was but at the time people didn't know about the fire and only after more investigations it came to light about the coal fire which was burning even before the ship left Belfast.Because of the fire the fireman who were due to be aboard Titanic stated that they wouldn't be on that ship as they knew what a coal fire could do so more fireman had to be found.

Also a lot of the workers were told to keep their mouths shut and just get on with the job they were paid to do and nothing more was said.While the ship was sailing down to Cherbourg and then on to Ireland the workers were frantically trying to take out the burning coals to put into the boilers.Eventually the fire in the first coal bunker was put out but the metal on the bulkhead had warped in the 1,000c degree heat causing there to be a weakness in the metal.Also I think a second fire was found in the next coal bunker which I think was still burning at the time of the strike with the iceberg.

I saw a programme a few years ago that said that cheaper rivets and metal was used on parts of Titanic when she was being built and this was given as the reason why the rivets popped out when she struck the iceberg.

All in all it was a tragic state of affairs that so many innocent people lost their lives due to people's greed for money and fame

 

The technique they used to recreate the launch was astounding - apparently they used 2 photographs taken at different times - and filled in what happened in between. It looked just like a piece of film.

 

I must watch it some time sounds interesting.

 

I saw it. It's probably a bit more plausible than the other theory, that the titanic sunk before its maiden voyage and was swapped for the Olympic.

 

What happened to ?

Edit, I asked what happened to b and when I posted, my b vanished, but when I edit, now it's bold. Spooky.