So here’s a video, produced by the group Titanic: Honor and Glory, showing how the Titanic sank—in real time. That means that it’s 2 hours and 40 minutes long. It also doesn’t show any people, probably out of a misguided fear of looking gruesome. (If you want to see people die, watch the 1997 movie Titanic). At any rate, it’s fascinating, though if you’re like me you’ll just watch the first bit, when the ship hits the iceberg, and the last bit, when it breaks up and goes under:
Animation: Titanic sinks in real time
April 20, 2016 • 1:00 pm
Sub(merged)
Laughing at Sub(merged). Not that the disaster was a laughing matter.
As a member of the game development industry, I can speculate on another reason to leave people out. Adding some 2,000 individuals, or even a few hundred to represent everyone, would have increased the complexity of the project by several orders of magnitude. Each character would need a moderately unique appearance and, more importantly, their own believable behaviors and unique paths through the ship, onto the lifeboats, into the ocean etc.
I watched “A Night to Remember” which was on television the other night, that I now realize was the anniversary of the disaster. It is a pretty good movie and I’ve seen it before. But this time, I was gripped with unease as I watched knowing the fate of the doomed ocean liner and many of the crew and passengers. I don’t know too many stories or films that do that to me.
I played the whole thing on my second monitor while i was doing other work. I only wish there had been some little audio cue when a text description popped up as i’m sure i missed some of them. Very sad. 1500 people were still on the ship when it went down according to the video.
I thought the sequel, Titanic 2, was better.
Hard to believe that lights would remain working almost throughout. All generators would have been under water long before…
I thought the same thing, but I checked, and the generators were in the stern and were among the last things to go under. Lights stayed on until very near the end.
Amazing. Would have thought they would mostly be deep down where the boilers and steam were made.
But then, generators don’t run without power?
There’s quite a discussion of this at the Encyclopaedia Titanica (!)
Obviously the Titanic fascinates many people.
http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/forums/collision-sinking-theories/9347-electricity-during-sinking.html
cr
There were probably battery – powered emergency lighting systems. Maybe not the same “battery in every em.light unit system we currently use, but dual circuits powering alternating fittings per corridor/ companionway so that lighting degrades gracefully under catastrophic failure.
Safety engineering lessons are generally written in corpse’s blood, but there had been plenty of blood shed learning these lessons before the first keel of an Olympic class ships was laid.
You can step through fairly fast by using the right arrow key. This allows you to stop when you see textual descriptions.
Here are to points where interiors are shown:
1:20
1:23
1:49
2:14
2:32
The ship breaks in two at 2:39
A strange fact was that the lifeboats were only partially filled – I thin one had only about 20 of a possible 68. The captain tried to call some back to get more people, but none returned.
The sailors didn’t know what their capacities were, so erred on the side of caution. There was supposed to be a lifeboat drill early in the voyage when such details might have been discussed, but the captain cancelled it.
And even if filled to capacity were they not capable of handling only about half the numbers on the ship. If I recall, one of the safety things to come in after the Titanic was they had to carry enough life boats for “all”.
At the time, maritime law didn’t required ships to carry enough lifeboats for all passengers.
Since there had been no drill, many passengers went to only one side of the ship, leaving the other side with few people to get into the boats.
I saw a TV programme which made the point that because of the ship’s system of watertight bulkheads the designers thought that if the ship ever did sink it would go down very slowly – and as the ship was intended to sail the well-travelled North Atlantic route, there would always be other ships nearby in the sea-lanes.
Hence it was expected that the lifeboats would be used as ferries to transfer everyone to nearby ships, and so there was no need for sufficient capacity to hold everyone at the same time.
To be fair to the designers, that was the general practice of the time regarding lifeboats. Most passenger ships didn’t carry enough boats for all on board.
The Titanic disaster was a major factor in getting the regulations changed to 100%.
http://www.rina.org.uk/lifeboats.html has a page on the history of lifeboat requirements.
cr
What did the Greek gods do to people who exhibited ‘hubris’? First they drove them mad. Then they drove them insane. Death was a mercy.
The designers of the Olympic class didn’t know they were being hubristic. No matter. Gods are vengeful and inhuman. And inhumane. (Except for the FSM (sauce be upon him).)
Modern practice is to have enough lifeboat seats ON EITHER SIDE OF THE VESSEL to accommodate all POB. Because it is common for vessels to list (lean to one side). Davit-launched life boat can only launch on (below) a certain slope of the vessel, otherwise friction can flip the life boat as it slides down the slope.
See previous comments about lessons learned in blood, “totally enclosed survival craft”, their seat belts, and loading order. All are important in getting POB to the water and away from the distressed vessel. Did I mention that TEMPSCs are self-righting IFF the complement are secured in their seats.
Did I mention that you endanger others if you do not pay attention in your lifeboat drill?
Mis-applied Birkenhead Drill. “Women and children first” mis-applied as “not one man gets off until every woman and child is off, even if there are no women or children near a ready – to – launch lifeboat. It’s not an easy situation for a cox’n to be decide on.
What a shame. You can see where the idea of large print labels on the lifeboats might have come in handy: CAPACITY – 68 SOULS.
Please (mentally) move this comment under Lou Jost, above.
“CAPACITY – 68 SOULS.”
(Atheists and heathens can just drown in the usual way…)
cr
POB -Person On Board – has been the standard terminology for at least 3 decades. Probably longer. It was certainly in SOLAS (Safety Of Life At Sea) ’84, but I’m not sure if it was in the predecessor.
I think that even America has signed up to SOLAS’84, despite their notorious habit of not accepting international regulations. Certainly, when I’ve worked on American vessels, these rules have been followed. USCG Bizzare regulations about cabling in flammable atmospheres notwithstanding.
In aviation, they still refer formally to souls on board, at least when I earned my license. A technominclatural eddy.
This is obviously an incorrect terminology, regardless of the fact they’re 30,000 feet closer to heaven then the rest of us.
Both atheists and Catholics (in the case of pregnant women) would assert that they’ve got the count wrong 😉
cr
The number of seats (and seatbelts) in modern TEMPSCs leaves no doubt over that. Plus the filling order.
Evacuating a large vessel is a non-trivial operation. Which is why it is the duty of every POB (Person On Board) to participate fully in every drill.
I don’t make any friends when I recommend that boat drills take place at 03:00 (local) even if it is a howling gale. If you don’t KNOW your role in an evacuation, you can look forward to knowing that your incompetence killed people.
Caveat. Yes, that does mean that I have to identify myself to the crew as a trained mariner (BOSIET) so I can be assigned appropriate tasks. And that also means I’ll likely be in the crew boats, not the passenger ones.
I don’t see cruising as being a duty – free holiday. I also do fires.
Sorry, TEMPSCS =Tolally Enclosed Motor Propelled Survival Craft s
If I ever go on one of those god-forsaken cruise ships, I want you along with me. The largest such ships have sever deficiencies:
“18 lifeboats with a capacity of 370 equals only 6,660 people. Oasis has a total maximum population of around 8,500 when you count its capacity of around 6,300 passengers and 2,200 crew members. That means that there are around 1,850 people without the lifeboats which Royal Caribbean raves about.”
The rest of the souls on board are supposed to jump 4 stories down a shoot into inflatable rafts. Sounds like Titanic Redux.
http://www.cruiselawnews.com/2013/01/articles/sinking/titanic-redux-can-royal-caribbean-safely-evacuate-8500-passengers-crew-from-the-oasis-of-the-seas/
Those things aren’t ships, more like floating hotels. And probably handle like one, too.
The old ocean liners looked the part – graceful and elegant. So did cargo ships. These modern cruise ‘ships’ are so overloaded with stacked-up decks, they look like bloated packing cases. I think container ships are better looking, at least they have the justification of being functional.
cr
That’ll be the Skyscape system. It’s a half-hour addition to your one-day BOSIET refresher course, or a half-day on your initial course.
Yes, it does take a bit of practice to get down one quickly, but after the first couple of runs, it’s actually almost fun until you get bored. The should set one up over the swimming pool and encourage people to practice.
8500 POB is hellish. Let’s see, 350 crew going into 18 lifeboats (370 POB capacity lifeboats! See below!) is 19 crew per boat. 2 cox’ns, 2 for each launch davit. A medic or two. The rest will be guiding (forcefully) passengers into their seats, strapping them in, then mopping up vomit.
What they don’t advertise is that with 350 landlubbers on board, even with everyone strapped into their places (which is what keeps the weight “down” in the SC, and makes it self-righting), they still roll around like nothing you have ever been in. Not quite as bad as a liferaft, but it is continuous. Of the 350 landlubbers, at least one will vomit. Since the hatches will be closed and dogged shut (to prevent seawater and/ or fumes form the burning ship from entering) the atmosphere will get disgusting very rapidly. So another will vomit. Happens EVERY time. I’ve seen it happen on a familiarisation drive around the harbour in a flat calm – those boats have almost no keel (so they can slide over debris) so they really roll.
That’s the fatal flaw – the lack of ventilation. I’m 100% vomit-proof *until* someone hurls near me. Then watch out…
cr
The control of ventilation is deliberate. Burning vessels produce lots of smoke, and the control of smoke-emitting products on ships is not as strict as on planes. Another lesson written in the blood of corpses.
So is everyone else (for certain values of “near”). In the emergency supplies of the life boat, among the 1/4 litre/day allowance of water, the “hard tack” biscuits, etc, are anti-seasickness pills. These are not a luxury – the crew may have authority to force them down resister’s throats (I don’t work in amateur shipping ; here failure to comply is a sacking offence). Someone spewing their guts is losing a lot of fluid, and the supplies on the life boat are limited. Likewise the bottled clean air supply (for getting past burning fuel on the water) is a precious resource whose misuse (e.g. for personal comfort) could kill all POB.
Life boat design and operation is not a simple, small topic. People died teaching us these things.
I’d suggest, instead of forcing anti-seasickness pills down people’s throats, break out bags of ginger snaps and ginger candy. It has much the same effect and engenders much less resistance.
😉
I would hope they would have clear plastic windows so that at least you could watch the ship go down.
No. That would allow too much heat into the cabin. The shells are constructed of ablative glass-fibre-reinforced-plastic (Crystic series of resins originally, but their patents are expired now) ; plumbed into the engine (with electric, hand-cranked hydraulic, and manual starts ; yes, as a trained user, you have to be able to use all three) is a cooling water pump to (1) cool the engine, and (2) discharge water through “hand rails” to flow over the skin of the craft to prevent burn-through.
People have got into the lifeboats, cast off, then been unable to start the engine and the POB burned to death on drifting into a patch of burning fuel. Incorporating controls on ventilation and cooling water pumping systems did not happen by accident.
I’m glad someone has been thinking about these things.
That’s what inquests are for. Though preferably you’d work these things out without killing people, but that isn’t how the industry has developed.
See comment a few moments ago about some musician who hated sirens, fundamentally misunderstanding their purpose.
That goes for almost any industry. I’m thinking of coal mining, for example. In the U.S., OSHA (Occupational Safety & Health Administration) targets most of its inspectors and other resources at the most dangerous industries – construction is another risky area. In other words they follow the body count.
I worked in safety for a few years and it was quite rewarding knowing we probably prevented considerable pain and suffering simply by supporting simple rules and regulations.
The depressing obverse side to that coin is watching people try to figure ways around your simple rules and regulations.
You know, I’ve never felt any desire to get out on the open ocean before, but this video made me realize how awesome the stargazing could be! I’ll think I’ll just stick with going to Montana or Wyoming, though….
I went backpacking in central Vancouver Island in the mountains just outside of Strathcona park. When I woke up in the middle of the night to pee it was a perfectly clear moonless night, far from any city light and the Milky Way was brighter and larger than I’d ever seen it before in my life.
It was the most beautiful and awe inspiring sight I’ve ever seen.
I wish I hadn’t been so tired from all the backpacking, I couldn’t stay awake all that long. Now seeing the stars from my town is a sad letdown.
I have never in my life see the Milky Way with my own eyes. 🙁
I am beginning to think that it is simply a myth in which other people believe, like that other magic thing in the sky (Now what’s it called? YHWH? Yahweh? Something like that).
You have not LIVED until you’ve stood on the upwind end of a boat being grit – blasted by hurricane – force winds carrying seawater freezing into hail, and screamed “Rage winds! Blow! Crack you cheeks! Blow!” at the elements. (King Lear, forget the Sc &Act)
Then we had a 22m wave try to fit through the 18m gap between our underside and the nominal sea level.
I bumped into a medic who used to work on that tub last week. Good memories.
Stupid phone s/w puts undesired spaces both sides of every hyphen. Android developers, I am blunting my fleshing knives!
Quite impressive video. They’ve got the creaking and rumbling noises of equipment breaking loose very well.
I’d forgotten that it was, apparently, a very calm night.
There are several videos on Youtube – Seconds from Disaster did one –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zyNxiV6PgY
cr
I heard the game developer on NPR last night. This is just a trailer for the game and there will be people. It’s also all about the history of the sailors, passengers etc – where they’re from (starts in S. Hampton) and includes a mystery that the player gets involved in. The developer(s) are quite into Titanic history, especially the human aspect. Sounds very interesting!
Errm, forgive me for hairsplitting, but that’d be Southampton. (South Hampton I assume would be one of the Hamptons which I vaguely recall are upmarket seaside resorts somewhere in New England?)
There’s a museum which features the Titanic there, (Southampton in England, that is) since more than half the crew came from there.
cr
Yes, the correct contraction of Southampton is Soton.
Oh yes, sometimes abbreviated to So’ton I think. But only ever used in writing, never spoken so far as I know. Probably sounds too much like Totton.
cr
Don’t forget that they loaded up on Steerage passengers at Cobh, then in Ireland.
You can visit the Graves in Halifax NS of the Bodies thay recovered, very sad.
There’s nothing more helpless-seeming than a big ship with its screws dangling above the waterline.
The “unsinkable” Titanic goes down in 1912, two years before the outbreak of the War to End All Wars. They had quite the knack for overstatement back then.