Titanic And The Titanic

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In 1908 the White Star Line was looking to replace three of the fleet’s oldest ships. These three ships had to be the best of both worlds with quickness in the water and to be the biggest ever built. The Olympic-class ocean liners where bought by the company looking to gain an edge over the competition. Three Olympic-class liners were built for the line; the RMS Olympic, the RMS Titanic, and the HMHS Britannic. All three were made to be transatlantic passenger ships but with the onset of World War I the Britannic was put to use as a hospital ship for the Allies war efforts. The White Star Line ran into problems with the Olympic but those where fixed before the Titanic was launched in 1911. SOURCE
The maiden voyage of the Titanic took the ship from Southampton, England to Cherbourg, France and finally to Queenstown, Ireland where it was to start its main leg of the trip to New York City, United States. The ship did not run into any problems until the night of April 14, 1912. (Clarkson).
The night the Titanic sank the air and water temperatures were very cold. The steel sheet metal that the hull was made out of and the rivets that held it together failed catastrophically. This catastrophic failure was a brittle fracture which was caused by many factors. These causes are the low temperature of the area, the high impact loading where the iceberg and the ship collided, and the steel the hull was manufactured out of had a high sulphur level. Metals in colder environments will be inherently weaker in structure than a warmer counterpart. The sulphur in the steel caused it to have a lower carbon count than steel made in our age. The infused sulphur disrupts the grain structure of the steel which increases the brittleness of th...

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... were transferred to the Titanic due to a coal strike would have never known of the deemed fate that was to come. Was this merely an accident of the night, was it poor craftsmanship and engineering to the making of the ship as it could not stand up to an iceberg, nor taking on the water that poured in after scrapping a large portion of the ship, not having enough lifeboats to accommodate all of the passengers. Could it have been a deliberate attempt by the owner to collect insurance money as one could imagine the cost incurred of the making of such a ship. It is my belief that this was a combination of an accident, craftsmanship, and poor planning. The Titanic could have all the luxury in the world and could have been touted as the “The Unsinkable Titanic” but it appears that the Titanic was not as the lives that were lost were much more than the ship Titanic.

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