Causes and Effects of the Rapid Sinking of the Titanic (2024)

Understanding the causes for the rapid sinking of the Titanic is necessary to prevent similar accidents in the future. The changes made in ship design and safety regulations following the disaster were effective in decreasing the casualties of accidents at sea. Examples include the successful rescues of 1600 passengers and crew from the Andrea Doria in 1956, 700 passengers from the Prinsendam in 1980, and all the passengers and crew from Mikhail Lermentov in 1986 and the Oceanos in 1992 [Garzke and others, 1994]. Other lessons need to be learned, however. Just because shipbuilding companies have the technology to build something does not mean that they should. In the case of the Titanic disaster, the causes for the sinking indicate that shipbuilding technology was far more advanced than the understanding which engineers had of the materials they were using to build the ships.

Glossary

bow: the front section of a ship. (Back)

bulkheads: the upright partitions dividing a ship into compartments. (Back)

Charpy test: a common test of brittleness in structural materials. A Charpy test is run by placing a specimen against a steel backing and striking it with a large pendulum. (Back)

coupon: a cigarette-sized sample of material. Coupons are the test specimens used with the Charpy test. (Back)

davits: the small cranes that project over the side of a ship and are used to raise and lower lifeboats. (Back)

References

Division of the History of Technology, Transportation Collections, National Museum of American History, in cooperation with the Public Inquiry Mail Service, Smithsonian Institution, "The Titanic," http://www.si.edu/resource/faq/nmah/titanic.htm (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, May 1997).

Gannon, Robert, "What Really Sank the Titanic," Popular Science, vol. 246, no. 2 (February 1995), pp. 49-55.

Garzke, William H., David K. Brown, and Arthur Saniford, "The Structural Failure of the Titanic," Oceans Conference Record (IEEE), vol. 3 (1994), pp. 138-148.

Hill, Steve, "The Mystery of the Titanic: A Case of Brittle Fracture?" Materials World, vol. 4, no. 6 (June 1996), pp. 334-335.

Manning, George, The Theory and Technique of Ship Design (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1956), pp. 25-53.

Muckle, William, Modern Naval Architecture (London: W.P. Griffith & Sons, 1951), pp. 121-125.

Refrigerator, Mister, "R.M.S. Titanic," http://www.scv.net/~fridge/index.htm (May 1998).

Rogers, Patrick, Anne-Marie O'Neill, and Sophfronia S. Gregory, "Sunken Dreams," People, vol. 49, no. 10 (March 1998), pp. 44-51.

Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, Principles of Naval Architecture, 4th ed. (New York: The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, 1977), pp. 121-133.

Author's Note: When she wrote this report, Vicki Bassett was a senior in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin. (Back to Beginning)