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-Lurid Crime Tales-

Toady in History: RMS Titanic

2008-04-15

At 11:40 PM while sailing south of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, lookouts Fredrick Fleet and Reginald Lee spotted a large iceberg directly ahead of the ship. Fleet sounded the ship's bell three times and telephoned the bridge exclaiming, "Iceberg, right ahead!" First Officer Murdoch ordered an abrupt turn to port and full speed astern, which stopped and then reversed the ship's engines. A collision was inevitable and the iceberg brushed the ship's starboard side, buckling the hull in several places and popping out rivets below the waterline over a length of 300 ft. As seawater filled the forward compartments, watertight doors shut. However, while the ship could stay afloat with four flooded compartments, five were filling with water. . . .

Posted by:Mike

#13 ICERIGGER, YYou are correct, WS was the customer, not the builder. I stand corrected.

Posted by: USN,Ret. 2008-04-15 18:08

#12 Wilson also gave us the League of Nations.

Hmmm.

Posted by: Seafarious 2008-04-15 16:23

#11 I would add the passage of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution in 1913 authorizing the Income Tax (via the Revenue Act of 1913) to the list of disasters leading to the decline of Millionaires Row. Most of those fortunes were built prior to the income tax.

By the way, Woodrow Wilson was President and the Dems had both Houses of Congress in 1913 when the Income Tax became the law of the land.

Posted by: RWV 2008-04-15 16:17

#10 I'm not an economist, but I've thought for a while that the Depression was caused by the income tax.

The income tax took vast sums of capital that was circulating freely through the country and throughout the global economy, and locked it up in Fort Knox, where it provided no value to anyone, except its security staff.

Removing all that capital from the system crippled it, and left the New Dealers in the catbird seat, when they could crack open Fort Knox and allow all that money to flow again for their own purposes.

Posted by: Seafarious 2008-04-15 16:16

#9 USN Ret.
Respectfully the White Star Line didn't build the Titanic. Harland & Wolff knew they were putting in type 2 rivets not the required type 3. Simply put (if I understood the study description) Harland & Wolff put iron rivets which would crack in place of the required steel rivets. I find it hard to believe that in 1912 the builder's didn't know the property differences between iron and steel.

As of NASA I wasn't thinking about one incident and I apologize for such a broad remark. I remember being with one aeronautic engineer watching the testing of a Mars rover computer.

They tested it by hitting it with a kind of hammer. Then they put that same computer into the Rover and sent it on the mission. The engineer just shook it head, "welcome to NASA".

We later watched dumbfounded as NASA engineers solved the Mars Rover Balloon parachute test failure by reducing the number of jagged surfaces in the test impact room.

If I recall it was filmed by NOVA.

Fascinating story about the decline of the Tycoons around WWI. Now a days they have been replace by corporations and I don't think there is a boat big enough to take care of that problem. At least the Tycoons had, a touch of class.

Posted by: Icerigger 2008-04-15 15:55

#8 A few years ago, I visited my son who was living in Belfast, where the Titanic was built. We took a tour which included the shipyard where Titanic and her sister ship the Olympic were built. Apparently while the Titanic was being built, it was set aside while they did some repairs on the Olympic. As a result, the maiden voyage was delayed for several months. Thus, the Titanic sailed later in the season. If she had left as originally scheduled, she probably would have not collided with the iceberg, we would have never heard of the Titanic (unless you were a shipping historian), and Leonardo DiCaprio would have one less movie to star in.

Posted by: Rambler in California 2008-04-15 15:17

#7 Icerigger: before you toss too many darts at the NASA QA dept, i suggest you read the Challenger accident investigation: the QA guys tried to stop the launch, based on what they saw of the orings properties in the cold weather. it was the OPS guys who pushed for schedule compliance, much like the story you quoted from that the White Star board was scrounging for rivets from anybody. its a fair bat that there was no inspection department in 1912, and the properties of metals not as well understood as they are now.
i cannot help but wonder if this story is a back handed slap at Boeing for their fastener crisis on the 787......
(disclosure, I am a QA manager and ISO 9001/AS9100 auditor)

Posted by: USN,Ret. 2008-04-15 13:44

#6 Interesting question TW; maybe this will explain. Millionaires row was a product of the Gilded Age or Age of the Moguls which began in the 1880s and ended in the first third of the 20th century.
"Some cite the 15th of April 1912, the night when the ocean liner Titanic sank. Others mention World War I or the stock market crash of October 24, 1929. All these events certainly had an impact on the factors which put an end to the age of moguls in America.
The Titanic disaster taught mankind that there were still limits to where it could go.
World War I started a process in which the power of the federal government was increased against the power of the tycoons, a process which would be furthered by the depression which followed the stock market crash of 1929.
But what really put an end to the Gilded Age or the age of the moguls, was the introduction of income and estate taxes during the Wilson administration. Corporate and income taxes rendered wealth accumulation slower and more difficult, whereas the estate taxes prevented the perpetuation of wealth in the hands of the founding families." Source

Posted by: GK 2008-04-15 11:41

#5 It wasn't actually explained, and I didn't think to ask. But perhaps the business climate changed.

Posted by: Seafarious 2008-04-15 11:03

#4 Interested in hearing more about the WWI Sea.

Quote of the day: Harland & Wolff rejected the researchers' findings.

"There was nothing wrong with the materials," company spokesman Joris Minne said.

These guys must work for NASA's quality and control department.

Posted by: Icerigger 2008-04-15 10:59

#3 The Titanic? Fascinating, Seafarious. But why the first world war?

Posted by: trailing wife 2008-04-15 10:55

#2 A few years ago I took a tour of Millionaire's Row at Newport, Rhode Island. They cited three causes for the decline of Newport as the playground of NYC's wealthiest families: 1. the income tax, 2. WWI, 3. the loss of most of the heads of those families on the Titanic.

Posted by: Seafarious 2008-04-15 10:51

#1 Royal Mail Ship

In case you were wondering.

Posted by: Chief Running Gag 2008-04-15 10:32

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