Correction

[Justatruthseeker]

Meh -- you got me on that one!

Nah you said it earlier, or someone did, I'm just repeating it

 

[jayem]

Lives were lost because the Titanic sank. The blame for sinking belongs to the designers, regardless of any other blame.

I've read that the rivets holding the hull plates together in the bow were of low quality iron. On impact with the iceberg, they popped out like champagne corks. The hull breach was larger, which increased the flooding, and caused the ship to sink faster. Which increased the casualties.

Like most disasters, many links in the chain of causation can be found. The Titanic sinking was a perfect storm of bad design, bad construction, bad navigation, and bad safety practices.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

I'd like to make a correction to something I've been saying for some time.

I've been giving scientists credit for dividing the number of passengers on the Titanic by the number of persons-per-lifeboat and coming up with the wrong answer.

Well it turns out they divided correctly.

But they got the dividend wrong.

They used the ship's tonnage, not the number of passengers, as the dividend.

Thus, only 48 lifeboats were called for, instead of 60 that was needed.

(This 48 was pared down to 20 by administration for aesthetic reasons.)

That's the way they ascertained the number of lifeboats to have onboard back then.

Science: more legal than safe.

... I really do not see how this is a correction. You're STILL blaming scientists fro something that is not the fault of scientists.

 

[jayem]

Off topic: I hope I don't get reported for this. It's an ethnic joke that mentions the Titanic. (Weird, I know.) Here goes:

A Chinese guy and a Jewish guy were talking. The Jewish guy says, "You know, I just can't forgive the Chinese for bombing Pearl Harbor and killing all those people. Just terrible."

Chinese guy: "The Chinese had nothing to do with that. Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese."

Jewish guy: "Oh, Chinese, Japanese...it's all the same to me."

Chinese guy: "Well, I just can't forgive the Jews for sinking the Titanic and killing all those people. Just terrible."

Jewish guy: "The Jews had nothing to do with that. The Titanic was sunk by an iceberg."

Chinese guy: "Oh, iceberg, Goldberg...it's all the same to me."

 

[RealityCheck01]

I'd like to make a correction to something I've been saying for some time.

Where were you saying that?
What are your sources for the "scientists" doing this basic arithmetic?

FYI: Ship designers are not scientists. They are marine engineers.

These are the lifeboats of the RMS Titanic

Titanic did not have enough lifeboats to evacuate everyone on board. She only had enough lifeboats to accommodate approximately a third of the ship's total capacity. Had every lifeboat been filled accordingly, they could have only evacuated about 53 percent of those actually on board on the night of her sinking.[11] The shortage of lifeboats was not due to the lack of space; Titanic had actually been designed to accommodate up to 64 boats[5] – nor was it because of cost, as the price of an extra 32 lifeboats would only have been some $16,000, a tiny fraction of the $7.5 million that the company had spent on Titanic.[12] The reason lay in a combination of outdated safety regulations and complacency by the White Star Line, Titanic's operators.[13]

The outdated safety regulations may be the subject of this thread. They only regulated vessels up to 10,000 tons, a quarter the tonnage of the Titanic. That allowed 33 of the 39 British liners over 10,000 tons at the time to have not have enough lifeboats for all aboard. As you can see the Titanic was not alone in having too few lifeboats.

The prevailing opinion at the time was that the ship itself should be a lifeboat (i.e. designed to be "unsinkable"). The usefulness of life boats was restricted by sea conditions.

 

[theQuincunx5]

I'd like to make a correction to something I've been saying for some time.

I've been giving scientists credit for dividing the number of passengers on the Titanic by the number of persons-per-lifeboat and coming up with the wrong answer.

Well it turns out they divided correctly.

But they got the dividend wrong.

They used the ship's tonnage, not the number of passengers, as the dividend.

Thus, only 48 lifeboats were called for, instead of 60 that was needed.

(This 48 was pared down to 20 by administration for aesthetic reasons.)

That's the way they ascertained the number of lifeboats to have onboard back then.

Science: more legal than safe.

=sigh=