The Grounding vs. the Sideswipe

Is it possible that the Titanic grounded on the iceberg instead of sideswiping it? This is possible, but it is highly unlikely that any damage to the double bottom caused any significant damage that would have contributed to the ship’s sinking. Unfortunately, hard evidence is incomplete. We do have a lot to go on, however; let’s briefly walk through some facts on the matter.

Many of those who believe in a grounding of the Titanic are convinced that a conventional “sideswipe” scenario simply could not take place. Why? Because ships are steered by stern-mounted rudders. Perhaps an illustration could make this clearer to those not familiar with vessel operation: think about trying to drive your car in reverse on a moderately slippery road. In this scenario, the back end of your vehicle would represent the bow of the Titanic. This, grounders argue, could not have allowed the starboard bow of the Titanic’s side plating to come into contact with the iceberg; in a traditional turning scenario, it is argued, the damage should have been done to her stern half, not her bow.

Does this mean that the reason damage was done to her bow section was because she grounded, instead of side-swiping the berg? No. Indeed, let’s look at things from another viewpoint: The Titanic drew slightly more water at her stern than at her bow; in a grounding scenario, this would tend to point toward a stern collision as well, and yet we know the collision took place along the forward 300 feet of the ship, where the ship drew less water. The grounding scenario, by this line of reasoning, would seem similarly impossible.

The Titanic had a double-bottom design. Double bottoms were a feature that offered many advantages. No longer did ships have to manually load and offload weights (usually in the form of small boulders or rocks) for ballast purposes. With the advent of the double bottom system (a plated bottom above the bottom plating of the hull), it was found that this space worked quite well for holding and mechanically pumping water which was in turn used for boiler feed, ship’s water use, as well as ballast. If it was made strong enough, this double bottom offered a protection to the ship’s hull up to the turn of her bilge. By the time the Titanic came around, the designs of double bottoms had evolved to be quite substantive and reliable.

Groundings were commonplace in Titanic’s era, and the reputable shipbuilders like Harland & Wolff knew quite well that the larger ships would more often than not find themselves aground in insufficiently dredged waterways, either by accident or other circumstances. The double bottom design would, under normal circumstances, have prevented any inflow of water from a grounding collision. Those who expound grounding counter that the double bottom did not extend port to starboard to the full turn of the bilge forward of Boiler Room No. 6. Instead, through the entire length of Cargo Holds Nos. 1-3, the outboard flanks of the area were not covered with a double bottom, and hence any strike along the bottom in that region would have allowed water directly into the hull. (Double bottom tanks were present along the centerline of the ship in these three compartments, but they did not extend to both sides of the shell plating.)

This is most certainly true along the outer flanks; however, it must also be remembered that in this area of the ship, seen in a fore/aft elevation, the outer hull more resembled a “V” in shape than a box, as it did astern. So trying to define in rigid terms what areas of the starboard bow in these three cargo holds were “bottom” and what areas were “side” becomes a very complicated and thorny process. Additionally, this does not get around the fact that the ship was designed to stay afloat with all three cargo holds flooded. This means that the real area of question in the “grounding” scenario comes into play in the area of the forward two boiler rooms. The flooding in these two compartments, when taken in addition to that forward, was crucial, and was what caused the ship to founder.

So in Boiler Room Nos. 6 and 5, where there was a full double bottom, and where the shape of the hull was more of a “box” along the underside, where was the damage? The answer to that is quite simple: approximately two feet above the plates of the Tank Top (roughly ten feet above the keel) along the starboard hull for nearly the entire length of Boiler Room No. 6 and stretching just past the bulkhead into the forward coal bunker of Boiler Room No. 5. How do we know this?

Because of direct eyewitness testimony. Senator Smith, conducting the American Inquiry into the sinking, went to New York to take testimony from some of the Olympic’s crew while she was in New York . Among those he interviewed was Leading Stoker Fred Barrett, who had been working in Boiler Room No. 6 on the Titanic at the time of the impact, and who had survived the sinking with his treasure trove of information. Being in Boiler Room No. 6 at the time of the collision, he reported that he was having a conversation with the Second Engineer when “the bell rang, the red light showed. We sang out shut the doors and there was a crash just as we sung out. The water came through the ship’s side.” When asked exactly where the water came through, he responded: “About 2 feet above the floor plates, starboard side.”

He was asked: “How much water?” His response was “A large volume of water came through,” and again affirmed that the damage was “about 2 feet above the floor plates.”

“You think it was a large tear?” Smith asked, to which he responded: “Yes; I do.”

• Q. How much water? - A. A large volume of water came through.
• Q. How big was this hole in the side? - A. About 2 feet above the floor plates.
• Q. You think it was a large tear? - A. Yes; I do.
• Q. All along the side of No. 6? - A. Yes.
• Q. How far along? - A. Past the bulkhead between sections 5 and 6, and it was a hole 2 feet into the coal bunkers. She was torn through No. 6 and also through 2 feet abaft the bulkhead in the bunker at the forward head of No.5 section. We got through before the doors broke, the doors dropped instantly automatically from the bridge. I went back to No. 6 fireroom and there was 8 feet of water in there.

Thus, in the area of the No. 6 Boiler Room, where the double bottom was complete and the hull was in a relatively box-like shape, we know that the damage was done to the side plating of the ship, not her bottom. In fact, although much of the lower portion of Titanic’s bow section is buried in mud, a portion of this damage is still visible today, right where Barrett said it would be.

We also do not know anything about the exact shape of the iceberg, especially its all-important underwater shape or any possible projections along its left (to those standing on the Titanic) side. Because steel is much stronger than ice, we also don’t know what kind of damage the hull of the Titanic did to the iceberg and any projection(s) along its face. The port turning motion of the ship’s bow might not have been enough to actually clear underwater obstruction(s), creating the contact with the hull, but instead the ice may have given way under contact with the steel plates.

We know that the Titanic was decelerating from approximately 22 knots as she approached the berg, with her helm turned to starboard (to produce a port turn of her bow). We also know that the bow of the ship had turned roughly two points to port when she began to make contact with the berg. In addition we know that this turn came at the last moment – those present grew worried because the ship seemed to stay on course for many of those 37 seconds after the helm was put over. This was a very unusual scenario – if the ship had been 5-10 feet further south, or the helm had been put over 100 feet further back, it is quite possible that she would have missed the berg entirely. Additionally, we know that damage was done to a point just past the bulkhead separating Boiler Rooms Nos. 6 and 5 – interestingly, this was the exact region in which the ship’s flare toward her fullest beam flattened. As the Titanic continued her port turn, it is possible that the angles that allowed a sideswipe to begin with merely altered to the point where the connection was broken between the two objects.

At the British Inquiry, Harland & Wolff’s Edward Wilding listened carefully to the testimony being given regarding the damage inflicted on the ship, and showed himself to be a decent witness in his directness and clear line of reasoning. It seemed that he had a good grasp of the matter from the testimony at hand. From the testimony he heard, he was able to state:

“From a calculation which I will refer to in a moment, I cannot believe that the wound was absolutely continuous the whole way. I believe that it was in a series of steps, and that from what we heard Barrett say in his evidence it was the end of one of the series of wounds which flooded the different spaces; that before the ship finally cleared the iceberg as the helm was put over, she would be tending to swing her side into the iceberg, and that a very light contact was made in No. 4. It seemed very probable, quite apart from actual direct evidence of the fact; that is, that after the ship had finished tearing herself at the forward end of No. 5, she would tend to push herself against the iceberg a little, or push herself up the iceberg, and there would be a certain tendency, as the stern came round to aft under the helm, to bang against the iceberg again further aft [in Boiler Room No. 4].”

The above testimony was discussing the possibility of damage in Boiler Room No. 4, and its fit with the overall picture of the damage forward of that. At this point, there are several explanations of the damage in No. 4 (which if it existed, according to Wilding had absolutely no bearing on the sinking); for the purposes of our discussion, however, we can clearly focus on the description of the collision forward that Wilding is referring to. He clearly saw the hip ‘swinging her side into the berg,’ and he also saw the damage as being non-continuous.

Wilding knew the Titanic better than any other man alive at that point. He also knew how ships moved under scenarios like that which the Titanic faced that night, and he never said that he believed a sideswipe was impossible; in fact his testimony clearly shows otherwise. The collision with the iceberg was “a particularly light one,” in Wilding’s opinion. He came to this conclusion because very few on the ship felt a great amount of motion; most described it as a shudder or likened it to an extra heave of the ship’s engines. Wilding apparently felt that this was because of the turn to port, and wholeheartedly agreed with the Commissioner when he said that perhaps it would have been better “if this ship had driven on to the iceberg stem.”

When asked by Mr. Rowlatt whether he knew ‘what the evidence is as to the sort of wound the ship had’, he answered: “Yes.” He followed later on with further details:

• (Answering 20422.) When the inflow started the evidence we have as to the vertical position of the damage indicated that the head would be about 25 feet. Of course, as the water rose inside, that head would be reduced and the rate of inflow would be reduced somewhat. Making allowance for those, my estimate for the size of the hole required (and making some allowance for the obstruction due to the presence of decks and other things.), is that the total area through which water was entering the ship, was somewhere about 12 square feet. The extent of the damage fore and aft, that is from the foremost puncture to the aftermost puncture in the cross bunker at the forward end of No. 5 boiler room, is about 500 feet, and the average width of the hole extending the whole way is only about three-quarters of an inch. That was my reason for stating this morning that I believe it must have been in places, that is, not a continuous rip. A hole three-quarters of an inch wide and 200 feet long does not seem to describe to me the probable damage, but it must have averaged about that amount.
• 20423. You mean, if there was a considerably thick hole, that hole could not have gone as far along the ship as four compartments? - Yes, that is so. It can only have been a comparatively short length, and the aggregate of the holes must have been somewhere about 12 square feet. One cannot put it any better than that.
• 20424. I suppose it is possible that a piece of ice made a hole and then got itself broken off? - Yes, quite probable.
• 20425. And then another piece of ice made another hole, and so on? - Yes, that is what I believe happened.

This latter calculation of 12 square feet has just recently been re-confirmed in an article posted on the TRMA, written by Sam Halpern. This very small amount of aggregate damage tends to work against the likelihood of a grounding scenario because groundings frequently create far more damage to ship’s hulls. From this figure of 12 square feet a grounding theorist also has to deduct the damage along the starboard side of Boiler Room No. 6, which was apparently the longest point of sustained contact with the berg. What is remaining after this calculation is a very small amount of damage spread out over the four forward compartments. A non-continuous grounding scenario would probably have produced more ingress than would fall into this aggregate 12 square feet.

Lord Mersey and his fellow lawyers were not master mariners; nor were they naval architects or marine engineers. They relied on expert witnesses like Edward Wilding to inform them about the collision damage and other matters. After hearing the testimony of Wilding and others, they concluded:

“It will thus be seen that all the six compartments forward of No. 4 boiler room were open to the sea by damage which existed at about 10 feet above the keel. At 10 minutes after the collision the water seems to have risen to about 14 feet above the keel in all these compartments except No. 5 boiler room.”

At this point, with so much evidence in favor of a sideswipe, the proponents of a grounding theory take a bizarre line of reasoning. They feel that Wilding was motivated by Harland & Wolff to offer false testimony in order to lead the court away from a grounding scenario, in order to cover some fatal design flaw with the ship. However, as we can clearly see, Wilding’s testimony was quite clear and well thought out. Reading through the testimony when he was on the stand, there is no obvious tension between him and Mersey and the other lawyers. The course of testimony seemed quite free and convivial. In fact, Wilding was quite open and frank in stating areas where he thought the ship’s design could have been improved to combat the flooding in certain scenarios, and what other design changes would have made little or no difference in the sinking.

In addition, we can clearly say that the basic design of the Titanic was quite strong and that it complied with Board of Trade requirements of the period. Hence, there is no real reason to think that Harland & Wolff or Edward Wilding were motivated to alter the conclusions in order to stay away from a grounding scenario. It made little difference to them whether the ship grounded or sideswiped, because the end result was the same: the Titanic sank. Where Harland & Wolff felt improvements could be made to the watertight subdivision of the Olympic and Britannic, they made these alterations, despite drastic expense.

Indeed, even if Harland & Wolff and Wilding had felt the need to steer Mersey or the public away from a grounding scenario (or if Mersey secretly conspired with Harland & Wolff to cook the books and free the Board of Trade of blame), it must also be remembered that these proceedings and testimony were quite public. The shipbuilding industry at the time was very competitive, and the Titanic question was enormously important to the entire maritime industry. It would have been very easy for them to call Harland & Wolff and Wilding on the matter and to get a “leg-up” on the competition; but no one ever did.

There is no real reason to believe that any of the evidence or conclusions of the British court were “doctored” in any way. Wilding clearly believed, based on the evidence in hand, which is still available to us today, that the Titanic sideswiped lightly across the berg, creating intermittent contact about ten feet above the keel. We know that the damage in Boiler Rooms Nos. 6 and 5 was side damage, and there is no evidence to support an allegation that grounding occurred to the extent that the double bottom was compromised in either of these two compartments. It is possible that forward of Bulkhead D (where the bow began to take on its “V” shape), some might argue that the damage was “grounding”, but again, this would be based on a very rigid definition of what was “bottom” and what was “side” in this area. Damage here would also have to have fallen outside of the centerline double bottom tanks that were in this region.

The evidence by Barrett about side damage, beyond any other information available on the subject, tends to put a crimp in the arguments of grounders. When this is taken in combination with all other evidence available regarding the damage the ship sustained, the sideswipe is the most likely scenario to produce the damage that sank the Titanic.

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Acknowledgments: Special thanks go to Bruce Beveridge of the TRMA for his assistance in the finer technical points of this discussion.