anderson@uwmacc.UUCP (Jess Anderson) (07/31/86)
Re: *Where* the Titanic broke up (I haven't been able to convince myself of even *one* reason why the question of where interests anyone): Whoozits who made the recent dives in Alvin said last night on TV that he thinks she broke near the surface. At any rate he says the two portions now lie about 600 meters apart, and that the portion more or less from just in front of the 3rd stack to just behind the 4th stack is gone. He says the bow has plowed 50 feet into the mud. He says the iceberg did not gash the hull, but rather popped the rivets on her plates. The pictures *are* quite amazing. When's the video cassette coming out, I wonder?
alanj@orca.UUCP (Alan Jeddeloh) (08/08/86)
The other day I read the previous posting on the Titanic's sister ships, (sorry, lost the reference) particularly the Britanic, with great interest. I remembered a Cousteau program where they found the Britanic's wreck and explored it. Well, I got home last night and what do you suppose KATU (one of the local independents) was showing? I took notes, but I missed the first 15 minutes. The Britanic was designed as a luxury liner but never saw commercial service. The war started before she was finished and she was pressed into duty as a hospital ship. In fact, she was never even properly christened -- "They just builds her and shoves her in" was the quote from one disgruntled worker. On her last trip to England she had carried 15,000 wounded (no, I didn't slip an order of magnitude --- they crammed hospital beds everywhere. There was a sequence of the divers poking among the bedframes in the grand ballroom.) She was outward bound from England to pick up more wounded when she was sunk. The controversy around the sinking was that there were two explosions, one from a mine or torpedo, and one unexplained. A German U-boat in the area has been accused of firing on the hospital ship. The other side charges that a single torpedo or mine shouldn't have been able to do enough damage to sink the ship as fast as she went down. They claim she must have been carrying munitions on the outward leg of her voyage. When the ship was struck, it was in a channel (I didn't catch the name) somewhere in the Aegean Sea. It was right offshore from an island, but that side of the island had high cliffs. The captain tried to steam for the other side, where he could beach the stricken ship. Unfortuately, the damage was too great, and she never made it. She lies on her side 370 feet down. (The is quite deep for scuba --- the divers were limited to 15 minutes work, then they had to come up and spend 2 hours 45 minutes in decompression.) Apparently most of those on board made it to life boats, but there was still great loss of life. The ship was still trying to make it to the other side of the island as the boats were being put into the water. The bow was going under first, and the props started to come out of the water. The huge props (38 tons each!) created a churning maelstrom that sucked in the little boats and tore them and their passengers to shreds. The captain was the last one off -- he finally jumped off the bridge and was picked up by a launch. Back to the controversy. The divers explored the giant rent in the bow of the ship. The poked around inside. They found no evidence the ship was carrying munitions. They did find quite a lot of coal from the bunkers scattered 100 feet from hull. The U-boat's log states that it was laying mines in the channel that day. It states that it sighted the Britanic but did not fire on her. From the amount of coal scattered around, and the U-boat log, the Cousteau party concluded that the Britanic struck a mine. The mine explosion detonated coal dust in the ships bunkers, which was the second, massive explosion that doomed the ship. All in all this was one of the most interesting Cousteau offerings. There was a wonderful interview with a little old lady from Edinburgh who had been a nurse on the ship. In the last part of the program they flew her out to the Calipso in a helicopter and took her (gray hairnet and all) down in a submersible to view the wreck. It wass fun to watch the lady, obviously having the time of her life! -Alan `Landlubber' Jeddeloh Tektronix GWD Wilsonville, OR (503) 685-2991 tektronix!orca!alanj