Riveting story of Titanic by 2 metallurgists - 30 Apr 200896...

Riveting story of Titanic by 2 metallurgists
- 30 Apr 2008

96 years ago, on April 14th 1912, the supposedly unsinkable Titanic hit an iceberg off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland in the Atlantic Ocean and went straight to the bottom of the sea.

A study of the disaster and a new book, “What Really Sank the Titanic” by Ms Jennifer Hooper McCarty who started researching the Titanic's rivets while working on her Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in 1999 and Mr Timothy Foecke form a metallurgist at the U.S. government's National Institute of Standards and Technology who has been studying the Titanic for a decade argue that substandard rivets used in the ship's construction was a main cause for its sinking.

Ms McCarty and Mr Foecke claim to have uncovered new evidence from archives in London, the shipyard and the wreck that Belfast’s Harland and Wolff shipyard overreached itself with three projects to build White Star Line ships The Titanic, The Olympic and The Britannic and resorted to buying batches of poor quality iron to save money.

As a result, the authors say, the 46,000 tonne ship was constructed using cheaper rivets which popped prematurely when it collided with an iceberg. While exploring the wreck, the expedition did not find a large gash, but rather narrow slits where the metal plates of the hull had split apart. This stood in contrast to what was previously suspected to be the cause of the wreck.

Examining the iron rivets from the wreck, Ms McCarty and Mr Foecke found high levels of slag which under pressure can make steel brittle and therefore weak. Approximately 3 million rivets were used in the Titanic, which measured 882 feet 9 inches long and displaced 52,310 tonnes.

Mr Foecke said that “Under the pressure to get these ships up, they ramped up the riveters, found materials from additional suppliers, and some was not of quality.”

Ms McCarty said "The company knowingly purchased weaker rivets, but I think they did it not knowing they would be purchasing something substandard enough that when they hit an iceberg their ship would sink.”

The authors noted that at the time the Titanic was built, there were not a whole lot of skilled riveters around so the work was substandard work. Riveters were making the transition to steel rivets, which are much stronger than iron, but they were used only in the central hull, where stress was expected to be the greatest. Of course, the Titanic took its blow to the front, where the rivets were the weakest.

Had the rivets been stronger, some have speculated, rescue boats could have arrived in time to rescue passengers. More than 1,500 people died in the shipwreck.