Jack Thayer's drawing of sinking---confirmed?

[Parks Stephenson]

I was doing some work on a finite elemtn analysis model of the Titanic using data from Tim Foecke's book,

With what program are you building your finite element analysis model? MAESTRO, by any chance?

Parks

[Trevor Rommelley]

I was using my own, using a Runge-Kutta method.

[Parks Stephenson]

So, then, yours is entirely mathematical? You're not building a virtual Titanic model?

I've been working with a naval architectural team developing a model in POSSE -- derived from the original H&W plans down to the individual frames -- to perform a flooding analysis, and then from there exporting into MAESTRO in order to perform the finite element analysis and stress projections. The flooding analysis is just about complete and work on the MAESTRO model begins this month. From the POSSE model, we've found significant errors in both Hackett/Bedford's assumptions and the Gibbs & Cox model used for the SNAME analysis.

Parks

[Aaron Quirey]

The added weight of passengers and crew could make a difference. Lightoller said it was enough to force the Titanic on an even keel again. The average person weighs 150 pounds. That means 150 pounds X 1,500 people = 112 Tons of extra weight moving around.


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[Parks Stephenson]

Aaron,

Of course there are many factors, although I hope that you didn't move 1500 people all at once. Permeability of each space has to be considered, something that was left out of previous models. Also the weight of coal and food stores, after factoring in consumption by that point in the voyage. I'll be sure to list my assumptions when the results of our analysis is made public.

Parks

[Aaron Quirey]

Where was the coal stored on Titanic? Survivor Lawrence Beesley was told the coal was making the Titanic list to port during the voyage, and because of the Coal Strike many ships were carrying extra coal in very strange places.

From the New York Times






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[Parks Stephenson]

All the evidence I have seen indicate that the coal was stored in the coal bunkers. Murdoch indicated to his sister in his last letter (posted in Q'town) that they were running light on coal for the voyage, so I don't see the same situation as what you raised for Olympic. If you have evidence to the contrary, I would love to see it. In the meantime, we are using 5892 tons as an assumption (which is less than her stated 6611 capacity).

Parks

[Trevor Rommelley]

Hi Parks,
Well, to be honest, visualising the Titanic is not really what I am after, just a mathematical model of the ship at various stages of the sinking process. I last used finite element anlaysis years ago, and it involved the use of the Numerical Alogirthm Libraries linked to a fortran 77 routine. Not very sophisticated by today's standards but it was a start and gave me the ins[iration for my latest work, which has been curtailed due to Christmas.

Just out of interest, what errors do you see in the Bedford and Hackett work? I see some problems with the timeline
in the middle half of their analysis as their floodign scenario doesn't quite match survivor's accounts...but then the accounts relied on estimates of time which may be a bit off

Best,

Trev

[Parks Stephenson]

Trevor,

Because my modelling effort is a funded study, I cannot provide details at this time. However, it will be publicly presented in the near future, after which I can go into it as thoroughly as you like.

I will agree with you, though, that eyewitness accounts are necessary but have to be delicately considered due to the inaccuracy of each individual's ability to estimate time. The most reliable are those that can be associated with solid benchmarks, and therein lies the rub.

Parks

[SamHalpern]

I find the date in that news clipping about where coal was stored on Olympic quite amusing.

[Aly Jones]

It appears that the newpaper clipping does not have "newyork times" written on it, otherwise i would have believed it myself.
I have seen countless of times,newspaper clippings at the time of Titanic's launch and just after the Titanic's sinking,that it would have the name of the newspaper writen on the stop,either "newyork times" or the british newspaper of that time (can't remember the name )

[Jeremy Aufderheide]

Not if the item was buried at the bottom of the page.

[Aly Jones]

Not if the item was buried at the bottom of the page.

Sounds silly,it's always on top.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference ... index.html

[Christopher Poulios]

The entire story of the unfortunate Allison family has become so garbled with falsities and urban legends. First of all, Alice Cleaver, the nurse, was not the same Alice Cleaver who had murdered her infant son by throwing him from a moving train. That woman was still in prison, and died there in 1915. Second, there were three other servants traveling as members of the Allison party: Sarah Daniels, the maid, also accompanying the Allisons in First Class, and two other servants traveling in Second Class: the chauffeur, George Swane, and the cook, Mildred Brown. Daniels and Brown escaped (Brown in the same boat as Alice and Trevor), Swane perished. Some accounts have Bess and Loraine actually getting into a lifeboat, but then suddenly leaving it (the crew would never have allowed this) while another account shows Bess (no mention of Loraine) getting into one of the boats that ultimately capsized, and with Bess falling into the water. (None of the lifeboats capsized, the only oddities being Collapsibles A and B that floated off the ship as it sunk, and to which several people clung to save their lives). Some accounts have Hudson, Bess and Loraine together, others have Hudson separated from Bess and Loraine. The story of the three of them on the boat deck with Bess smiling is completely ludicrous. No one was in any mood to smile at that point, especially Bess, who knew that she and two members of her family were about to die and without being certain about her infant son.

[steve]

again another account of when the lights were on, and before the breaking they do say similar things, the ship rising at a high angle. Some PPL when they say they saw the ship in the air, they probably mean the ship was rising right out of the water at 35 to 45 degrees. Passengers are never going to go into technical details, of how and when their not genius's, but the drawing shows us the ship was at a high angle

[Joshua Noble]

Bess according to Alice was hysterical throughout the time. I believe Bess was somewhat hysterical and distraught, but not as much as Alice made her out to be. I believe that she began to panic and when Alice was separated from the rest of the family, Bess became hysterical. How would any mother act in losing her son on a sinking ship? I don't know any loving mother that would leave the ship not knowing where her baby is. Bess had a difficult decision with Lorraine though. She could either send her 3 year old alone in a lifeboat into the cold dark ocean far below, or wait until they found the baby and get into a lifeboat later. Apparently she either didn't even think about the former, or just chose the latter. As with many historical events that are in the dark, the only things we can do is examine historical evidence and documents and put ourselves in their shoes knowing the situation and who those people are and come up with a hypothesis matches the evidence.