Why did the Titanic sink?
Did the titanic really have to sink?

We all know the last hours and minutes of titanic.
From discovery channel, several movies, news etc.
Especially eyewitnesses who survived the event said,
“Titanic nose dipped, then broke in half, and sank within minutes.'

I have worked on ships before with sizes up to 1000tons only. Our job was unloading those ships filled with soybean. There I learned that loading and unloading a ship the wrong fashion can break even those 1000ton ships in half and sink them within seconds. We had captains jumping around in circles and shouting if we refused to move the crane forth and back as they wished. That only for the fear, the ship could break apart. Now reconsider, these are just 1000tons compare to the megatons titanic was.

So what happened in the last hours?
Titanic striped an iceberg and was sliced open on the length of I guess four compartments.
The compartments in the front.
The damaged compartments were sealed and no water could flow evenly from front to back.
The ship was loaded in the wrong fashion. Then nose dipped lifting its back out of the water.
The stresses on the ship were then big enough to literally snap the ship in half.
By that time titanic was only loaded with probably (eventually)  just one third of its full capacity.
Also it took several hours for titanic to come so far.

I had the discussion with one of my students and I challenged common thinking.
when there was a leak in the old times, the sailors tried to fix it.
But when any business gets to big, no one is responsible any longer.

My questions are;
Could they have opened the compartments, let the ship flood evenly and therefor keep it from breaking apart.
How big were the leaks? Was there a way to close them by pushing mattresses, furniture etc. from the outside. It could have slowed everything down at least.
“No that can't work”, was my students reply. So I took a plastic bottle punched a hole in it and dipped it into the water. With its top open of course. We counted the second 1-20 and it was full.
Then we did it one more time but this time put some wet paper in front of it.
The paper got sucked to the hole closing it up by 60 we stopped counting.
You might want to try and share your opinion.
Thanks

[edited: 2008-12-06, 02:03 PM CET by Admin]