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Weak Rivets May Have Sped Sinking of Titanic
Pickens writes "Metallurgists studying the hulk of the Titanic argue that the liner went down fast after hitting an iceberg because the ship's builder used substandard rivets that popped their heads and let tons of icy seawater rush in. They say that better rivets would have probably kept the Titanic afloat long enough for rescuers to have arrived, saving hundreds of lives. The team collected clues from 48 Titanic rivets and found many riddled with high concentrations of slag, a glassy residue of smelting that can make iron brittle. To test whether this extra slag weakened the rivets, scientists commissioned a blacksmith to make rivets to the same specifications as those used to join steel plates in the hull of the Titanic. When the plates were bent in the laboratory, the rivet heads popped off at loads of about 4,000 kg. With the right slag content they should have held up to about 9,000 kg. Even a few failures because of flawed metal would have been sufficient to unzip entire seams, because as faulty rivets popped, more stress would have been placed on the good ones, causing them to break in turn. The shipbuilder, which is still in existence, denies it all."
That the English are crap at everything they do, and they should have let us make these ships.
We'd had done a better job, and we wouldn't have locked all those Irish downstairs to drown...
I cannot provide citations or anything else, but, I think that the Titanic sunk because it hit an iceberg. It took over two hours for her to sink. If the rivets were stronger, how much longer would it have taken to sink, and how many people would still have remained complacent thinking that the ship was unsinkable and, therefore, there was no reason to rush--hence leading to them not retreating to lifeboats?
Ah yes, another self absorbed asshat taking a stand against popular culture. How dare millions of people enjoy this movie that I do not like, they're obviously idiots!