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Did the Titanic Sink Due To an Optical Illusion?
Hugh Pickens writes "According to new research by British historian Tim Maltin, records by several ships in the area where the Titanic sank show atmospheric conditions were ripe for super refraction, a bending of light that caused a false horizon, concealing the iceberg that sank the Titanic in a mirage layer, which prevented the Titanic's lookouts from seeing the iceberg in time to avoid collision. According to the new theory, Titanic was sailing from Gulf Stream waters into the frigid Labrador Current, where the air column was cooling from the bottom up. This created a thermal inversion, with layers of cold air below layers of warmer air, creating a superior mirage. The theory also explains why the freighter Californian was unable to identify the Titanic on the moonless night, because even though the Titanic sailed into the Californian's view, it appeared too small to be the great ocean liner. The abnormally stratified air may also have disrupted signals sent by the Titanic by Morse Lamp to the Californian to no avail. This is not the first time atmospheric conditions have been postulated as a factor in the disaster that took 1,517 lives. An investigation in 1992 by the British government's Marine Accident Investigation Branch also suggested that super refraction may have played a role in the disaster (PDF, see page 13), but that possibility went unexplored until Maltin mined weather records, survivors' testimony and long-forgotten ships' logs."
I think the fact that all the watertight doors of the "unsinkable ocean liner" were open sort of makes everything else irrelevant.
User error, in the extreme. Bad Captain!
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Someone go back and tell the lookouts, maybe then we can fix this disaster...
Movie re-release hype... no one cares why it happened... they hit an iceberg - it doesn't matter why.
It sank due to shitty steel. It might have collided with an iceberg due to super refraction.
It sank because it filled up with water.
What's more likely?
Lookouts weren't paying attention or a rare optical effect making the iceberg invisible.
Doesn't this situation still come about from time to time? What do captains of huge ships do nowadays to prevent collisions with icebergs hidden by mirage?
The unsinkable sank.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
"According to new research by British historian Tim Maltin, records by several ships in the area where the Titanic sank show atmospheric conditions were ripe for super refraction, a bending of light that caused a false horizon that concealed the iceberg that sank the Titanic in a mirage layer preventing the Titanic's lookouts from seeing the iceberg in time to avoid collision. According to the new theory, Olympia was sailing from Gulf Stream waters into the frigid Labrador Current, where the air column was cooling from the bottom up, creating a thermal inversion with layers of cold air below layers of warmer air creating a superior mirage. The theory also explains why the freighter Californian was unable to identify the Olympia on the moonless night because even though the Olympia sailed into the Californian's view, it appeared too small to be the great ocean liner. The abnormally stratified air may also have disrupted signals sent by the Titanic by Morse Lamp to the California to no avail. This is not the first time atmospheric conditions have been postulated as a factor in the disaster that took 1,517 lives. An investigation in 1992 by the British government's Marine Accident Investigation Branch also suggested that super refraction may have played a role in the disaster (PDF See page 13), but that possibility went unexplored until Maltin mined weather records, survivors' testimony and long-forgotten ships' logs." FTFY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdxJp2fVXJ8
Yes, the Italian captain forgot his classes before he went to the bridge, no shit.
The 'optical illusion' might have added to the many reasons that the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage but it certainly was not the main cause. The ship was legendary at the time before it had even made its maiden voyage. The largest and most elaborate and ornate vessel of its time. A floating palace. A moving island on the sea. The Titanic.
The ship's captain and others postulated that running the ship at full speed from its last stop in Europe all the way to America would make enormous headlines. If the ship arrived in New York ahead of schedule by a day it would be a media sensation and basically the best advertising that they could buy. So the ship's operators plowed through the ocean at the fastest possible speed (which was a common practice though).
To make things worse the ship's operators both ignored and missed warnings about dangerous fields of ice that they were approaching. An area of ocean crowded with frozen solid and tremendously large icebergs. A nearby ship, the Californian, stopped near where the Titanic sank that night, only a few miles away, because they were extremely cautious and nervous about smashing the ship into a mass of ice. So they waited to resume travel until the morning. The Californian even sent messages to the Titanic warning them of the ice fields. Those messages were essentially ignored.
At the time that Titanic was built it was considered unsinkable. There had been accidents in the past where large ships had smashed head first into icebergs and stayed above water. And the Titanic had been built stronger, sturdier, and tougher than any ship ever made. The Titanic's captain even said before the first voyage, "there is no condition which would cause a ship to founder. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that".
The ship is going full speed. It's traveling into an area where there are icebergs the size of small islands. The lookouts are not equipped with binoculars and are not aware of what kind of field they are traveling into. The moon is black so there is no light over the ocean. The water is completely calm so they can't hear waves crashing against the icebergs to warn them (years later it is then known that calm water indicates fields of ice). And by the time that the lookouts spot the iceberg...they are traveling full speed right for it and there isn't enough time to turn. They were traveling full speed, blind, deaf, and into a death trap.
The ship smashes into the iceberg and grinds its side into the mass of ice tearing a few small holes into the side of the ship. The tears are only a few feet long and inches wide but the ocean water is relentless. The Titanic was designed to survive the front two below deck compartments flooding with water. Or any other four compartments located below deck flooding completely. Instead, the first five compartments are almost instantly flooded from ocean water raging through the breaches, the ship is doomed. The ship will sink in less than two hours and there is nothing to stop it. Trapped in the middle of the ocean with nowhere to go and lifeboats for less than half of the passengers.
While there were only half as many lifeboats as would have been necessary to save everyone, over two-thirds of people on the ship were not able to escape. One reason is that people were so zealous about the "women and children" first rule that they were sending half empty lifeboats off of the ship without loading any men on them. Also they were loading lifeboats according to your travel class. First class passengers were more likely to be saved. Third class passengers had to wait their turns. That's why for the blockbuster Titanic they had a first class woman paired with a third class man. Those two had the best and worst odds of surviving the disaster based on lifeboat placement.
So no it wasn't an optical illusion. It was a series of many things that contributed to the Titanic sinking on its maiden voyage. Poor lookouts. Dangerous speeds. Lack of modern understanding of calm water indicating dangerous conditions. No moonlight. Purposefully ignoring warnings of dangerous conditions including icebergs. Even without an optical illusion that ship unfortunately still sinks.
it scraped an iceberg, it would have been better for everyone if they had hit it.
1. Lookouts not paying attention
2. Ship was going too fast
3. Rivets and steel were sub-par
4. Pure arrogance
5. Captain was a dunce
6. Etc
Like a woman talking on the phone while driving an SUV full of children - an accident looking for a place to happen.
The biggest problem, as is disclosed in the inquiry transcripts, is that the lookouts were unbelievably not issued binoculars.
no. it sank because it hit a massive block of ice which put a massive hole in it...
portfolio
Less likely, but more interesting to consider.
Gently reply
The ship was legendary at the time before it had even made its maiden voyage. The largest and most elaborate and ornate vessel of its time. A floating palace. A moving island on the sea. The Titanic.
All that, and at the same time the Titanic being of the Olympic class it is just a good copy of the Olympic
John Kerry, whichever way the wind blows...
Turn the ship around and go back to the floating iceberg, board it, and wait for help there?
Lo and behold, for I am a sig!
One of the most controversial[6][7] and complex theories was put forward by Robin Gardiner in his book, Titanic: The Ship That Never Sank?[8] In it, Gardiner draws on several events and coincidences that occurred in the months, days, and hours leading up to the sinking of the Titanic, and concludes that the ship that sank was in fact Titanic's sister ship Olympic, disguised as Titanic, as an insurance scam.
Olympic was the older sister of Titanic, built alongside the more famous vessel but launched in October 1910. Her exterior profile was nearly identical to Titanic, save for small detailing such as the promenade deck windows. These were not glazed in Olympic. In Titanic, the front half of the promenade deck was fitted with smaller glazed windows to protect passengers from spray.
On September 20, 1911, the Olympic was involved in a collision with the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Hawke near Southampton. The cruiser smashed its ram into the side of the Olympic, seriously damaging both ships. The inquiry found Hawke free of all blame. This set in motion Gardiner's theory. White Star Line was allegedly not insured for the cost of fixing the damaged Olympic (which, according to Gardiner, had damaged the central turbine's mountings and the keel). The White Star's flagship would also be out of action during any repairs, and the Titanic's completion date would have to be delayed. All this would amount to a serious financial loss for the company. Gardiner proposes that, to make sure at least one vessel would be earning money. Olympic was then converted to become the Titanic. Gardiner states that few parts of either ship bore the name, other than the easily removed lifeboats, bell, compass binnacle, and name badges. Thus, Gardiner believes the Titanic spent 25 years in service as the Olympic.
Gardiner uses as evidence the length of Titanic's sea trials. Olympic's trials in 1910 took two days, including several high speed runs, but Titanic's trials reportedly only lasted for one day, with no working over half-speed. Gardiner says this was because the patched-up hull could not take any long periods of high speed.
Gardiner suggests the plan was to dispose of the Olympic to collect insurance money. He supposes that the seacocks were to be opened at sea to slowly flood the ship. If numerous ships were stationed nearby to take off the passengers, the shortage of lifeboats would not matter as the ship would sink slowly and the boats could make several trips to the rescuers.
Gardiner maintains that on April 14, Officer Murdoch was not officially on duty yet was on the bridge because he was one of the few high-ranking officers who knew of the plan and was keeping a watch out for the rescue ships. One of Gardiner's most controversial statements is that the Titanic did not strike an iceberg, but an IMM rescue ship that was drifting on station with its lights out. Gardiner based this hypothesis on the idea that the supposed iceberg was seen at such a short distance by the lookouts on the Titanic because it was actually a darkened ship, and he also does not believe an iceberg could inflict such sustained and serious damage to a steel double-hulled (sic) vessel such as the Titanic.
Gardiner further hypothesizes that the ship that was hit by the Titanic was the one seen by the Californian firing distress rockets, and that this explains the perceived inaction of the Californian (which traditionally is seen as failing to come to the rescue of the Titanic after sighting its distress rockets). Gardiner's hypothesis is that the Californian was not expecting rockets, but a rendezvous. The ice on the deck of the Titanic is explained by Gardiner as ice from the rigging of both the Titanic and the mystery ship it hit. Researchers Bruce Beve
Regarding this statement:
"...creating a thermal inversion with layers of cold air below layers of warmer air..."
Isn't that normal? Cold air falls, warm air rises. What's inverted about that?
The Titanic sank because of hubris.
Not an uncommon problem.
Deleted
Also they were loading lifeboats according to your travel class. First class passengers were more likely to be saved. Third class passengers had to wait their turns.
Well, that's because you are a more worthy person if you're rich.
More money == better person.
The American way.
Brings tears to my eyes.
This is one of those myths that gets repeated despite not being true. The first class passengers had an advantage in that the lifeboats were located on the upper decks and thus the started physically closer to them, but no attempt was made to keep third class passengers from the lifeboats, nor where the first class passengers given preferential seating.
And the actual best/worst survival case was second class children and second class males (in fact, the survival rater for third class males was 50% higher than for second class males).
There's an apocryphal story about a journalist who asked an Astronomer for an article on life on Mars. The Astronomer replied "Nobody knows". Not satisfied with this, the journalist hounded the expert and finally ended up sending him a prepaid telegram (those were the days!) for 2000 words on Life on Mars. The Astronomer replied "Nobody know. Nobody knows. Nobody knows. Nobody knows..." etc
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
... did James Cameron fund some research to get the marketing machine for Titanic 3D going?
I'm glad you were there to clear this all up for us!
years later it is then known that calm water indicates fields of ice
You know, if this is true, I'm pretty sure it was figured out a loooooong time before the Titanic sank. Whalers had been operating in icy waters since the 1600s.
If the ship had made it to port a day ahead of time, the captain could have participated in an ebullient quarterly shareholders' call. No one wants to be late for a photo op.
Let's boil that down: Abnormal air disrupted (signals sent to no avail). Tragic. Seems like not such a great resume item for a Senior Chair at the Academy of Five Whys.
A conjecture, not a fact. (Even though you've cleverly slipped it in at the end of a long series of facts, assumptions, myths, hyperbole, and misinformation all presented as fact in an attempt to pass it off as a fact.)
Considering the fact that the Titantic was the only modern ship of the era to actually hit an iceberg while every other vessel managed just nicely in the north Atlantic, I think simplest explanations are best. There have been some articles to suggest that it was a misunderstood navigation order where the vessel turned into the path of the iceberg before trying to turn away again. Human error.... (Think Concordia switching off it's GPS systems, ignoring navigation waypoints and sailing off course to close to shore as possible.)
I've also read from other accounts that the reason so many lifeboats were set afloat half full was because so few people, including those loading the lifeboats, understood the situation. They were under the impression that the Titanic was only partially disabled and that they were all going to be transferred to another ship when it arrived in a matter of hours. Not too many people were keen on getting into a little open craft on the open water exposed to the freezing air just to wait for that other ship when they could stay onboard the Titanic and enjoy the amenities until the lines died down.
Q: Did the Titanic Sink Due To an Optical Illusion?
A: No.
easy wasn't it.
next question, vi or Emacs ?
Its still doesn't explain why did the Itanic sunk.
lol... not... but he definitely would like to claim it was the case at this point :p
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
I was under the impression that a Navy Captain sometimes had to order one or more compartments sealed with sailors still inside. The idea is that you sacrifice some of your men to save the ship and the remaining crew. Do I have this wrong?
I believe it was Seconds from Disaster on National Geographic that said they looked into this and that binoculars are not a significant help under those conditions. It's not that easy to scan the horizon with them, apparently. That said, they did have them but were apparently locked up somewhere in the boat and no one had seen them since Southampton.
Shoddy construction caused it to sink. Optical illusions may have hampered the rescue efforts, but it was dark - the other ship could not approach in the dark. There was no RADAR or night vision systems in those days.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I was just about to take these back... back to the pants store.
Not that I'm an expert here or anything, but I've heard / read the following additional factors.
1) The wheelhouse on the ship had both a tiller and a big round wheel. Move the tiller to the right, the ship goes left. Move the wheel to the left, the ship goes left. When the order was given to turn the ship left, the attendant panicked and turned the wheel the wrong way! Then corrected the movement. That wasted precious time.
2) The order was given to reverse engines. There are 3 propellers. The 2 outside propellers could go both forward and reverse. The center propeller could only go forward. So the reverse order stopped the center propeller dead. There is only one rudder right behind the center propeller. The water flow over the rudder was reduced by the center propeller having stopped. That made the ship turn slower.
When I was writing my own book on the Titanic and the Californian (the infamous ship that saw the Titanic and her distress rockets and did practically nothing to offer assistance), I came across a report written in 1961 by Captain Quick of the UK Board of Trade technical department. It mentioned the possibility that super-refraction had existed that night and had allowed the two ships to see each other "over the horizon" due to the bending of light rays caused by warmer areas of air mixing with colder areas. I mention this in my book, but I don't go into it in any great depth, as I feel that you don't need to invoke super refraction to explain what was seen and done that night. Simple analysis of witnesses reports and an appreciation for the current affecting ship's navigation will suffice. Incidentally, my book (quick plug) is here and my own Titanic pages are here
A U-boat lookout who failed to use his binoculars because "it's not that easy to scan the horizon with them" would have been chewed out, beat senseless, keel hauled, and thrown off the boat, in that order. Same with any lookout on any warship.
I.e., it's complete nonsense.
http://titanicarchive-online.com/index.php4?page=319
Researchers from the National Institute for Standards and Technology and John Hopkins University favor the weak rivet theory. They found that most of the rivets recovered from RMS Titanic also contained excessive amounts of slag that made them more brittle, and therefore, more likely to snap off at the head upon impact with the iceberg. Their analyses of steel hull plate indicated, however, that "it is possible that brittle steel contributed to the damage at the bow due to the impact with the iceberg, but much more likely that the brittle steel was a factor in the breakup of the ship at the surface" (Foecke 1998:14).
After reviewing and debating the results from these investigations, the Marine Forensics Panel (SD-7) in a 1997 report to the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers concluded that the cause of sinking was in large part due to the failure of the rivets that fastened together its hull. Metallurgical analyses are continuing at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and John Hopkins University. The results of these additional analyses may shed better light on the influence of steel and rivets on the sinking of RMS Titanic during that dark night of April 14, 1912.
**disclaimer my Dad was a contributing engineer on the project....
"Don't be so humble - you are not that great." - Golda Meir
It was sunk by time travelling Nazis in flying saucers with heat rays. I thought everyone knew that.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Talk about "destined to sink". It seems that there were so many factors against poor Titanic, that it was going to sink no matter what.
It is not the same thing. I suspect warships are using binoculars to identify foreign objects. Identification was not needed on Titanic -- it didn't matter what it was, they shouldn't have been slamming into it. I can't find anything specific and detailed online, but I've heard a number of times that generally you look with your eyes and then take out the binoculars to look at something you've already seen. Another factor I've heard is that with the temperature and wind, eyes would have been tearing up making it harder to spot something anyway.
The Captain (or whoever was manning the bridge at the time) made the wrong decision on how to avoid the iceberg. They tried to steer around the iceberg and also slowed and then reversed the engines to reduce speed. This probably doomed the ship. A ship as large as the Titanic cannot "turn on a dime" and the slow water movement over the rudder at reduced speed destroyed it's ability to turn the ship. Even worse, reversing the engines caused the water to cavitate around the rudder reducing it's effect even more. Had they ordered "Full Speed Ahead" the rudder would have been more effective and the ship might have been able to steer clear of the iceberg before it hit.
The Titanic did not sink due to an optical illusion. It sank due to a collision with an iceberg.
After reading this I have to say I never head of anything like this and I have spent over 14 years studying the "Olympic-Class Ships" (Olympic, Titanic and Britannic). I have gone through information with a fine tooth comb, so to speak, including weather reports. The reason the lookouts didn't see the iceberg in time is because it was a rare black/blue berg they do not reflect any light, what is called "ice blink" If this "historian" knows anything about icebergs, he would have known that fact. It is important to have a science background in geophysics to understand how glacial activity and iceberg calving occurs and how icebergs moved further south into the shipping lanes in 1912. Since I have studied Atmospherics, there "might" have been a possibility for refraction on the horizon. It can not be said with a great deal of certainty this is what caused the disaster. The lookouts saw the haze shortly before sighting the iceberg, due to Titanic's high rate of speed and the order given to put the ship in reverse after the hard a starboard order, this cut the power to center turbine and the forceful water flow to the rudder and therefore, inhibited her ability to turn efficiently. If they would have done just the hard a starboard order, there is a good possibility the ship could have cleared the iceberg. A ship can turn faster with the greater forward momentum. By cutting the water flow to the turbine, made it difficult for the ship to turn and this is why she could only turn 20 degrees to port.
I am sorry, but as a Maritime Historian, that has spent so much time working with Titanic and her sister ships, I cannot accept this theory as fact. It is simply someones theory and that is all. I want facts that is what I work with. This will be very difficult to prove as a fact as a factor in the disaster.
Julianne Annemarie Troutman
Maritime Historian
That's like saying the USS Enterprise is just a good copy of the USS Constitution, Galaxy and Sovereign for which those starship classes were named, when we all know it's the *second* ship in each of those classes that's worth following around with a a film crew and documenting everything.
You can't be keel hauled without being thrown off the boat.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I am quite sure that the effects and causes of super-refraction and the likelihood of calm seas in those northern waters indicating the near presence of ice were both well known to trained mariners in those days. The ship appears quite simply to have been travelling too fast for the conditions. We can only hypothesize why.
Sorry but you should do a bit more research. Read the testimony given at the inquiries and you will see that black/blue bergs are very rare. Only one captain who gave testimony ever saw one. If the iceberg was so dark, why did the quartermaster at the stern say that the berg was white, not dark, as it slipped by him? The originator of the blue/dark berg theory was 2nd Officer Lightoller, and his testimony reads a lot like someone who was protecting his employers from potential litigation.
Have you read the Marine Accident Investigation Branch report from 1992/3 in which they mention the super refraction theory? If not, why didn't you pick up on it your 14 years of superlative research?
I wouldn't use the "haze" as an excuse. No one saw it but the lookouts, and even then they were dismissive of it. Reg Lee said the haze was bad, and said his companion, Fred Fleet (who saw the iceberg) had uttered "If we can see through that we'll be lucky."
Fleet denied saying this, and said the haze wasn't too bad. The British Inquiry said that the haze was just an excuse to explain why the iceberg wasn't seen till so late.
Consider this: a crewman by the name of Olliver was stationed between funnels two and three when he heard the look-out's bell ring. He then walked to the bridge and was just in time to see the iceberg head astern. From looking at the layout of the ship, it would have taken 60 seconds to walk that far. That means that from the time of the warning bell to the time the iceberg was level with the iceberg (where Olliver saw it), the iceberg was 2280 feet away, given that the ship was travelling at 22.5 knots. That is sufficiently far enough away for the ship to have taken evasive action. And yet it wasn't. Why?
It's hard to take someone seriously when they don't know the difference between it's and its.
The captain of the Titanic had a "habit" of drinking too much and running ships aground. He typically captained cargo ships which is why they didn't get so much notoriety. He was due for retirement, but was given an honor to captain "the unsinkable" for his last go.
He was a lot like the recent Italian cruise ship Captain, although he at least had a lot more honor than that guy. He went down with the ship.
Thus endeth the history lesson.