The mystery of the sinking of Titanic

Titanic was once proudly called "unsinkable ship" in the history of world navigation, equivalent to the length of three and a half residential buildings, and was praised as "the city on the sea" by the European and American press. 191April 15, it was carrying 2207 passengers and crew on its maiden voyage and collided with the same floating iceberg for only 12 seconds, resulting in the tragedy of 15 13 passengers being killed. This brilliant maiden voyage brought it the bad luck of being buried at the bottom of the sea.

Titanic set sail for new york from Southampton, England on April 19 12. The wealthy businessman Dajia and British and American celebrities who boarded the ship want to spend a wonderful week on this brand-new miracle ship. Below the deck, there are hundreds of immigrants living in the lower cabin. They want to cross the Atlantic and start a new life on the other side.

The first few days passed safely, but on the fourth day, the operator received an emergency telegram from the ship sailing ahead, reminding them that the iceberg was floating abnormally south and had reached the nearby sea area. On Sunday, April 14, Titanic received an urgent telegram with the same content. However, these warnings were not taken seriously by the arrogant crew. The first alarm was thrown aside and was not reported to the captain for several hours. The next two times were never sent to the command room. Just after dusk, the temperature began to plummet. Although the signs of iceberg approaching are very obvious, Titanic neither changed course nor slowed down.

After nightfall, Captain edward smith began to look for icebergs. At 23: 40, the lookout first found the iceberg, and the duty officer ordered a sharp turn to the right chord. But it's too late. The iceberg knocked the outer wall of the ship's string open a gap 100 meters long. Most passengers only felt a slight vibration, which hardly attracted anyone's attention, but the engineers on board decided that the ship was hopeless after inspection. They think that if there are only four water tanks on board 16, the ship can still float on the water, but unfortunately, the outer walls of the five bottom tanks are torn by icebergs. Most of the passengers in the third class got up because the floor of their room had been flooded by the sea. The operator uses Morse code to send out the latest SOS distress signal, which is the first time to use this signal in a shipwreck. At midnight 12: 05, according to the captain's order, the lifeboat began to launch.

Passengers don't know that all lifeboats have only 1 178 seats, which can only accommodate half of the total number of people, but according to the laws at that time, this life-saving condition is quite sufficient. At first, the passengers did not panic. They don't believe there will be any danger at all, because the Titanic is unsinkable! It was not until the hull tilted dangerously that they lost their previous composure. Women and children leave the ship first. The first-class passengers boarded the lifeboat first, and only four women were killed in the shipwreck. Of the 272 women in second class and third class, only 96 survived. At one time, the door of the third-class cabin leading to the deck was even locked to prevent the passengers below from rushing onto the deck. On the increasingly inclined deck, the band has been playing the music of the mob.

At 2: 40 in the morning, the Titanic almost stood upright in the water, and then plunged into the Atlantic Ocean at a depth of 3,000 meters. The immigrants who stayed in the dark cabin were buried at the bottom of the sea with the Titanic, and all the people on the deck were thrown into the cold sea, which became the funerary objects of the famous shipwreck in this ice sea.

The iceberg that led to the sinking of this luxury ship is actually not a mysterious thing, but a huge piece of ice floating in the polar waters. Every spring and summer, it is formed by the rupture of polar ocean ice due to rising temperature, and gradually disappears when drifting to temperate and tropical regions. Their size varies greatly, and large icebergs can reach several kilometers long. Such a behemoth is a great threat to maritime navigation.

The sinking of Titanic shows that the power of nature is enormous, and human beings must not be blind and arrogant. We must pay enough attention to various natural phenomena, otherwise tragedy will be inevitable.

A new explanation for the sinking of Titanic

While the audience was still immersed in the sentimental love story of the new movie Titanic, several scientists from the State Bureau of Technical Supervision of the United States came to an incredible conclusion: encountering an iceberg was only one of the reasons for the sinking of the Titanic, and the other culprit was the fixed rivets connecting various parts of the hull, which were actually made of inferior metal mixed slag.

Timmas Fokker, a metallurgical expert at the US State Bureau of Technical Supervision, said that under normal circumstances, even if the Titanic hit an iceberg, it could float on the sea for at least 12 hours. If the damage is not serious, it can even try to sail back to the port. However, scientists have found that the steel used to make rivets is extremely impure, and its slag content is twice that of standard steel. According to metallurgical theory, this excessive impurity makes the rivet easy to break when it is violently hit. Fogg said that even if one of the six watertight compartments of the Titanic didn't enter the water due to the collision, there would still be enough time to wait for the arrival of the rescue ship. If two cabins are saved, the Titanic can at least return to the port. However, all six watertight compartments were mysteriously leaked, which eventually led to the rapid sinking of the ship within 2 hours.

In fact, as early as the beginning of 1996, several French divers had discovered that the wreck of the Titanic, which was 4,000 meters underwater in the North Atlantic and buried in the mud with a depth of 18 meters, was not almost split in two as the world imagined. There are only six cracks on the Titanic, which are about the same size, and they are all located at the cabin joints that should be fixed by rivets. Perhaps it was the discovery of these divers that finally focused scientists' attention on the original humble rivet. In addition, this new conclusion about the sinking of the Titanic is basically consistent with the description of a shipwreck survivor at that time. The sailor said that he saw seawater pouring in from the joint between cabins.

But up to now, people can't investigate who cut corners in shipbuilding and planted the curse of disaster. In addition to this human error, Fokker also stressed that another reason for the heavy casualties caused by the death of the Titanic was that there were not enough rescue boats, which made people unable to escape quickly.