REASONS BEHIND THE CATASTOROPHY OF THE TITANIC

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE: HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF THE TITANIC
CHAPTER TWO: FLAWS, ERRORS AND MISTAKES
CHAPTER THREE: POSITIVE CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE CATATROSPHY
CONCLUSION
GLOSSARY OF TERMS







INTRODUCTION
Ship wrecks, mishaps and catastrophes are unarguably one of the heaviest contributors to epic tales of both the ancient and modern world. This is obviously due to the international nature of the shipping industry. What probably makes this more breathtaking and heart wrenching is the fact that a majority of these occurrences aren’t a mere figment of a deranged writer’s imagination, but are actual events which took place at certain points in time and to certain humans! The Titanic does not fail to command such awe, sympathy and arousal of interest and curiousity that befits its size and magnitude. Hence, it would seem both improper and too ambiguous to write about the causes and reasons behind a catastrophe that took place more than a century ago without first saying something about the genesis of everything. So I’m going to do a brief rundown of the history of the Titanic.




CHAPTER ONE: HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
    The Titanic was a White Star Line steamship built in the early nineteen hundreds by Harland and Wolff of Belfast, Ireland. At the time of her construction, she was the largest moving object ever built. With a weight of more than 46,000 tons, a length of nearly 900 feet, and a height of more than 25 stories, she was the largest of three sister ships owned by the White Star Line. The Titanic was also equipped with the ultimate in turn-of-the-century design and technology, including sixteen major watertight compartments in her lower section that could easily be sealed off in the event of a punctured hull. Because of her many safety features and a comment by her designer that she was nearly unsinkable, the Titanic was immediately deemed an unsinkable ship.
Beginning in Southampton, England and bound for New York, New York, the Titanic was deemed virtually unsinkable. The largest vessel at the, she was equipped with the finest luxuries and latest technology of her time. On her maiden voyage, the Titanic left with 2,240 passengers and made its way across the Atlantic Ocean toward its destination. Temperatures began dropping during the voyage and Captain Edward J. Smith had received iceberg warnings over the radio and adjusted the course of the Titanic slightly south. Marconi radio operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride had received iceberg warnings via wireless radio, but since they were employed by Marconi and given the task to relay messages to and from passengers, they were not focused on relaying ice messages to the bridge. At 23:40 sailing near the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, lookouts Fredrick Fleet and Reginald Lee spotted an iceberg directly ahead of the Titanic. What happened next would forever change history.
First Officer Murdoch gave the order “hard-a-starboard” using the traditional to turn to port (left). He adjusted the engines via telegraph for either ‘full reverse’ or ‘stop’, though the actual testimony is unclear. The iceberg had caused the hull to buckle in multiple places, shooting out the rivets and causing the first five watertight compartments to flood.
The weight from the filling compartments weighed the ship down so that more compartments began to flood. Shortly after midnight on April 15, the Titanic lifeboats were ordered to be released and a distress call was sent out. Operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride sent out CQD distress signals. Ships including Mount Temple, Frankfurt, and Titanic sister ship Olympic received the signals, but weren’t close enough to rescue the Titanic. The closest ship was the Carpathia which was about four hours away-too late to rescue all of the Titanic’s passengers.
A nearby vessel could be seen off of the port side of the Titanic, but the ship’s identity remains a mystery to this day. Theories suggest that the ship was either the Californian or a sealer called the Sampson.
The ship off in the distance wasn’t responding to the wireless, so Fourth Officer Boxall and Quartermaster Rowe attempted signaling the ship with a Morse lamp and distress rockets. Despite their attempts, the ship never responded.
The first lifeboat launched was Lifeboat 7 on the starboard side with 28 people on board out of a possible 65. Lifeboat 6 and 5 were launched shortly after or at least this is what is believed by the British Inquiry. Lifeboat 1 was the fifth lifeboat, Lifeboat 11 was overloaded with 70 people.
A strict women and children first policy was enacted and men were only allowed to board if oarsmen were needed. Many individuals were reluctant to get onto tiny lifeboats, leaving the false sense of security of remaining on the Titanic. As a result of this, many of the lifeboats weren’t filled to capacity before being deployed. By 2:05 am the entire bow of the boat was underwater and all the lifeboats beside two had been launched.
Around 2:10, the stern rose out of the water, exposing the propellers and the last two lifeboats floated off the deck, one upside down and the other filled with water.
Below is a brief summary of the timeline of events that heralded the sinking of the Titanic:
11:35 p.m. -- Lookouts spot the iceberg 1/4 mile ahead.
11:40 p.m. -- The Titanic sideswipes the iceberg, damaging nearly 300 feet of the hull.
Midnight -- Watertight compartments are filling; water begins to spill over the tops of the transverse bulkheads.
1:20 a.m. -- The bow pitches; water floods through anchor-chain holes.
2:00 a.m. -- The bow continues to submerge; propellers lift out of the water.
2:10 a.m.  -- The Titanic tilts 45 degrees or more; the upper structure steel disintegrates.
2:12 a.m. -- The stern rises up out of the water; the bow, filling with water, grows heavier.
2:18 a.m. -- Weighing 16,000 tons, the bow rips loose; the stern rises to almost vertical.
2:20 a.m. -- The stern slips beneath the surface.
2:29 a.m. -- Coasting at about 13 mph, the bow strikes the ocean floor.
2:56 a.m. -- Falling at about 4 mph, the stern strikes the ocean floor.
The damage caused by the collision allowed water to flood six of the sixteen major watertight compartments. As water rushed into the starboard side of the ship's bow, the ship began to tilt down in front and slightly to the right. By midnight, water in the damaged compartments began to spill over into others because the compartments were watertight only horizontally and the walls extended only a few feet above waterline. By 1:20 a.m., water began flooding through anchor-chain holes. Around 2:00, as the bow continued submerging, the propellers in the stern were lifted out of the water. Flooding progressed until, at about 2:10, the bow of the ship was under water and the stern was lifted out of the water almost 45 degrees. Because of the tremendous weight of the three large propellers in the stern of the ship, the stresses in the ship's midsection increased immensely as the stern was lifted out of the water. At an angle of 45 degrees or more, the stresses in the midsection exceeded the ultimate stresses of the steel and the steel failed. Stresses at failure were estimated at nearly 15 tons per square inch. What survivors of the disaster then described was a loud noise that sounded like breaking china or falling equipment. This noise can be attributed to the tearing and disintegration of the Titanic's upper structure. By 2:12, with the bow and stern attached by only the inner bottom structure, the stern angled high out of the water. The bow, dangling beneath, continued to fill with water. At 2:18, when the bow reached a weight of about 16,000 tons, it ripped loose from the stern. Free from the weight of the bow, the stern rose again sharply to an almost vertical position. Slowly filling with water, the stern began to sink into the water. At 2:20, the stern slid beneath the surface. Meanwhile, the bow had been coasting down at about 13 miles per hour (mph). At 2:29, the bow struck the bottom of the ocean. Falling nearly vertical at about 4 mph, the stern crashed into the ocean floor 27 minutes later.
The two pieces of the Titanic lie 2,000 feet apart, pointing in opposite directions beneath 12,500 feet of water. The bow section remains mostly intact, although the damaged portion of the hull is covered with a 35-foot high wall of silt and mud that plowed up when the Titanic hit bottom, so the point of fracture cannot be seen. The stern section is a tangled wreck, as implosions occurred during the descent due to air trapped within the structure succumbing to the increased water pressure at greater depths. Between the two sections is a wide field of debris.
For 73 years, the Titanic remained undisturbed on the ocean floor. On September 1, 1985, oceanographer Bob Ballard and his crew discovered the wreck of the Titanic about 350 miles southeast of Newfoundland, Canada. Since then, four more expeditions have visited the Titanic. In 1991, the first purely scientific team visited the site. The dive was called the IMAX dive because the purpose was to create a film for IMAX theaters. The Soviet submersibles used in the dive were capable of staying submerged for twenty hours and were equipped with 110,000- HYPERLINK "http://www.writing.eng.vt.edu/uer/bassett.html" \l "8" lumen lamps. With this equipment, scientists were able to take pictures of the Titanic wreck and eventually uncover new evidence into the cause of the Titanic disaster.







CHAPTER TWO: CAUSES OF THE RAPID SINKING
On an expedition in 1991 to the Titanic wreck, scientists discovered a chunk of metal lying on the ocean floor that once was a part of the Titanic's hull. The Frisbee sized piece of steel was an inch thick with three rivet holes, each 1.25 inches in diameter. Since the retrieval of this piece of steel, extensive research has been done to uncover additional clues to the cause of the rapid sinking of the Titanic. The following is a discussion of the material failures and design that contributed to the disaster.
Material Failures
When the Titanic collided with the iceberg, the hull steel and the wrought iron rivets failed because of brittle fracture. A type of catastrophic failure in structural materials, brittle fracture occurs without prior plastic deformation and at extremely high speeds. The causes of brittle fracture include low temperature, high impact loading, and high sulphur content. On the night of the Titanic disaster, each of these three factors was present: The water temperature was below freezing, the Titanic was travelling at a high speed on impact with the iceberg, and the hull steel contained high levels of sulphur. It was initially thought that the iceberg had cut a hole in the side of the Titanic, but further research shows that it had actually caused the hull to buckle in multiple places allowing water to enter between her steel plates. Analysis of the plating from the Titanic wreck found that it was of a metallurgy that loses its elasticity and becomes brittle in icy water.

The Hull Steel. The first hint that brittle fracture of the hull steel contributed to the Titanic disaster came following the recovery of a piece of the hull steel from the Titanic wreck. After cleaning the piece of steel, the scientists noted the condition of the edges. Jagged and sharp, the edges of the piece of steel appeared almost shattered, like broken china. Also, the metal showed no evidence bending or deformation. Typical high-quality ship steel is more ductile and deforms rather than breaks.
Similar behavior was found in the damaged hull steel of the Titanic's sister ship, Olympic, after a collision while leaving harbor on September 20, 1911. A 36-foot high opening was torn into the starboard side of the Olympic's hull when a British cruiser broadsided her. Failure of the riveted joints and ripping of the hull plates were apparent in the area of impact. However, the plate tears exhibited little plastic deformation and the edges were unusually sharp, having the appearance of brittle fractures.
Further evidence of the brittle fracture of the hull steel was found when a cigarette-sized  HYPERLINK "http://www.writing.eng.vt.edu/uer/bassett.html" \l "4" coupon of the steel taken from the Titanic wreck was subjected to a Charpy test. Used to measure the brittleness of a material, the Charpy test is run by holding the coupon against a steel backing and striking the coupon with a 67 pound pendulum on a 2.5-foot-long arm. The pendulum's point of contact is instrumented, with a readout of forces electronically recorded in millisecond detail. A piece of modern high-quality steel was tested along with the coupon from the hull steel. Both coupons were placed in a bath of alcohol at -1°C to simulate the conditions on the night of the Titanic disaster. When the coupon of the modern steel was tested, the pendulum swung down and halted with a thud; the test piece had bent into a "V." However, when the coupon of the Titanic steel was tested, the pendulum struck the coupon with a sharp "ping," barely slowed, and continued up on its swing; the sample, broken into two pieces, sailed across the room [Gannon, 1995]. Pictures of the two coupons following the Charpy test are shown in Figure 1. What the test showed, and the readout confirmed, is the brittleness of the Titanic's hull steel. When the Titanic struck the iceberg, the hull plates did not deform. They fractured.
A micro structural analysis of the Titanic steel also showed the plausibility of brittle fracture of the hull steel. The test showed high levels of both oxygen and sulphur, which implies that the steel was semi-kilned low carbon steel, made using the open-hearth process. High oxygen content leads to an increased ductile-to-brittle transition temperature, which was determined as 25 to 35°C for the Titanic steel. Most modern steels would need to be chilled below -60°C before they exhibited similar behavior. High sulphur content increases the brittleness of steel by disrupting the  HYPERLINK "http://www.writing.eng.vt.edu/uer/bassett.html" \l "6" grain structure The sulphur combines with magnesium in the steel to form stringers of magnesium sulphide, which act as "highways" for crack propagation. Although most of the steel used for shipbuilding in the early 1900s had a relatively high sulphur content, the Titanic's steel was high even for the times.

The Rivets. The wrought iron rivets that fastened the hull plates to the Titanic's main structure also failed because of brittle fracture from the high impact loading of the collision with the iceberg and the low temperature water on the night of the disaster. Figure 2 shows the Titanic during her construction, with the riveted hull plates of her stern visible. With the ship travelling at nearly 25 mph, the contact with the iceberg was probably a series of impacts that caused the rivets to fail either in shear or by elongation. As the iceberg scraped along sections of the Titanic's hull, the rivets were sheared off, which opened up riveted seams. Also, because of the tremendous forces created on impact with the iceberg, the rivet heads in the areas of contact were simply popped off, which caused more seams to open up. Normally, the rivets would have deformed before failing because of their ductility, but with water temperatures below freezing, the rivets had become extremely brittle. Scientists found that the rivets contained a high concentration of slag. A side product of smelting, slag can make rivets brittle and the company had a shortage of skilled riveters, a trade that took great skill.


Fig 1: The Titanic in the shipyard during her construction [Refrigerato Note the hull plates, fastened on all sides to the ship's main structure by thousands of rivets.


Design Flaws
Along with the material failures, poor design of the watertight compartments in the Titanic's lower section was a factor in the disaster. The lower section of the Titanic was divided into sixteen major watertight compartments that could easily be sealed off if part of the hull was punctured and leaking water. After the collision with the iceberg, the hull portion of six of these sixteen compartments was damaged, as shown in Figure 3. Sealing off the compartments was completed immediately after the damage was realized, but as the bow of the ship began to pitch forward from the weight of the water in that area of the ship, the water in some of the compartments began to spill over into adjacent compartments. Although the compartments were called watertight, they were actually only watertight horizontally; their tops were open and the walls extended only a few feet above the waterline. If the transverse bulkheads (the walls of the watertight compartments that are positioned across the width of the ship) had been a few feet taller, the water would have been better contained within the damaged compartments. Consequently, the sinking would have been slowed, possibly allowing enough time for nearby ships to help. However, because of the extensive flooding of the bow compartments and the subsequent flooding of the entire ship, the Titanic was gradually pulled below the waterline.



Fig. 2: A layout of the watertight compartments and the damage from the collision.

The thick black lines below the waterline indicate the approximate locations of the damage to the hull.
The watertight compartments were useless to countering the damage done by the collision with the iceberg. Some of the scientists studying the disaster have even concluded that the watertight compartments contributed to the disaster by keeping the flood waters in the bow of the ship. If there had been no compartments at all, the incoming water would have spread out, and the Titanic would have remained horizontal. Eventually, the ship would have sunk, but she would have remained afloat for another six hours before foundering. This amount of time would have been sufficient for nearby ships to reach the Titanic's location so all of her passengers and crew could have been saved.

Turning Ability
Construction of the rudders on the Titanic met the requirements of a ship her size, but the design was far from revolutionary. BBC History research showed that the rudder of the Titanic was an exact copy of an 18-century sailing ship showing a great lack of technical development. Little thought was put into how a ship of the size of the Titanic would maneuver out of the way of something like an iceberg for example.
Another factor contributing to the limited maneuverability of the Titanic was her triple screw engine configuration. This setup had steam engines driving her wing propellers and a steam turbine driving her central propeller. The turbine engine was not reversible although the steam engines were. Accounts state that a telegraph had been sent to the engine room ordering to set the engines in reverse in order to avoid the iceberg crippling the ship’s ability to turn.
Orientation of Impact
Many believe that the Titanic could have been saved if she had hit the iceberg head on. The bow of the Titanic was naturally stronger and that the impact would have only affected one or two of the watertight compartments (the ship could stay afloat with as many as 4 flooded). The buckling in the side of the hull resulted in five compartments to be flooded which eventually sunk the ship. Another faulty design was the single pump design that the Titanic was equipped with. Multiple pumps may have saved the ship when multiple compartments were being flooded.

Weather Conditions
An obvious possible reason for the Titanic sinking is the weather on the Atlantic during the time of the tragedy. The ocean was unusual because of the calm sea without wind or swell. Under normal conditions the waves would have broken over the base of the iceberg giving lookouts sooner warning.

Speed
The official report to the Titanic tragedy dictated that the cause for the Titanic sinking was due to collision with an iceberg, brought about by excessive speed in which the ship was being navigated. It is said that if the Titanic had maintained a lower cruising speed (she was at about 22 knots which was 2 less than her 24 knots top speed) that the iceberg could have been avoided.










CHAPTER THREE: POSITIVE EFFECTS OF The SINKING
It would be grossly unjust not to mention the fact that the international shipping industry has gained positively from the sinking of the great titanic. In an effort to prevent repeating their mistakes, the White Star Line modified several of their existing ships following the Titanic disaster. The changes were based on the design flaws that were assumed to have contributed to the disaster. Along with these design changes, the White Star Line, and all shipbuilding companies at the time, had newly established safety regulations, agreed upon by both the British and American governments, that they had to follow. Developing safety regulations for ships at sea was another attempt to avoid accidents similar to the Titanic. I’d therefore outline a few of these positive contributions and implementations that stemmed from the disaster of the Titanic.

Ship Design
Following the Titanic disaster, the White Star Line modified the design of the Titanic's sister ships in two ways: the double bottoms were extended up the sides of the hull and the transverse bulkheads of the watertight compartments were raised. The double bottom on ships is constructed by taking two layers of steel that span the length of the ship and separating them by five feet of space. When a ship runs aground or strikes something in the water, the bottom plate of the hull can be punctured without damage incurred to the top plate. With a double bottom, the chance that a punctured hull would allow water into the watertight compartments is minimized. By extending the double bottoms up the sides of the hull, which adds another layer of steel to the sides of the ship, a similar event can be prevented. If an iceberg, or a collision with another ship, barely punctures the hull, only the space between the inner and outer sidewalls would flood with water. The watertight compartments would remain undamaged.
The ends of the transverse bulkheads of the watertight compartments were raised to prevent a tragedy similar to the Titanic. When the hull of the Titanic was torn open in the collision with the iceberg, water began to flood the damaged compartments in the bow. As the ship pitched forward under the weight of the water in the bow compartments, water began to spill over the tops of the bulkheads into adjacent, undamaged compartments. Although called watertight, the watertight compartments were actually only watertight horizontally; their tops were open and the walls extended only a few feet above the waterline. By raising the ends of the transverse bulkheads, if a ship were taking in water through the bow compartments and the ship began to pitch forward, the water in the compartments could not flow over the tops of the bulkheads into the next compartments. As a result, flooding of the damaged compartments could be controlled and isolated to only the damaged sections.
At the 1948 Convention on Safety of Life at Sea, specifications for the orientation, length, and number of watertight compartments in passenger ships were established. The watertight compartments, which improve a ship's ability to withstand the effects of underwater damage, are used to control flooding in the hull of the ship. To maintain a nearly level position, the walls of the watertight compartments are to be oriented horizontally, or across the width of the ship, rather than vertically. If one side of the hull is damaged, the water that fills the hull will even out across the width of the ship. With vertical walls, the water in the hull would remain on the damaged side of the ship, causing the ship to lean to that side. The length of the watertight compartments is determined by the length of the ship. Shorter ships should have shorter compartments while longer ships should have longer compartments. The number of compartments is also determined by the size of the ship. One criterion that must be met, however, is that the ship must remain afloat with two of the watertight compartments flooded.

Safety Regulations
Along with the changes in ship design that resulted from the Titanic disaster, safety regulations were established to govern passenger ships while at sea. Many of these regulations were established at the 1948 Convention on Safety of Life at Sea. The mandatory use of the wireless, the increased lifeboat capacity, and the implementation of the ice patrol-each of these was developed to prevent accidents similar to the sinking of the Titanic. Wireless is the means of communication for ships at sea. The regulations require that ships exceeding 1600 tons be equipped with wireless apparatus. Use of the wireless is beneficial for ships because they are able to receive weather reports, check their positions, and call for help in emergencies. On the night of the Titanic disaster, several warnings were called in to the Titanic from ships aware of her position. Following her collision with the iceberg, the Titanic was able to send out distress signals to other ships with her position and the status of her damage so help was on the way immediately.
Although there was room on deck for twice as many lifeboats, the Titanic carried lifeboats for just over half of the passengers and crew on board. The designer of the Titanic had allowed room on deck for two rows of lifeboats, but one row was removed before the voyage began to make the deck more aesthetically pleasing. With outdated British Board of Trade regulations, the Titanic's twenty lifeboats actually exceeded requirements by 10 percent capacity. The new safety regulations increased the required number of lifeboats to a number that would accommodate all passengers and crew aboard the ship. Based on the length of the ship, a given number of  HYPERLINK "http://www.writing.eng.vt.edu/uer/bassett.html" \l "5" davits, which are the mechanism used to raise and lower the lifeboats, are mounted along the perimeter of the lower deck. Figure 4 shows the davits and lifeboats on the deck of the Titanic. If the minimum lifeboat capacity is not met, additional lifeboats must be stowed under other boats. Regulations also specify that each of the lifeboats must carry oars, sails, a compass, signaling devices, food, and water. In addition, for large ships, two of the boats need to be motor boats. The United States Government began the ice patrol so that ships travelling between England and the United States could be alerted of approaching ice fields. The ice patrol studies and observes the ice conditions in the North Atlantic in order to keep track of where the ice fields are in relation to nearby ships. Ice fields, large expanses of floating ice that are more than five miles in their greatest dimension, shift around depending on weather conditions. Therefore, without the ice patrol, ships would need to constantly monitor the positions of the ice fields. For the Titanic, the ice patrol could have informed the captain of the ice fields and surrounding icebergs and instructed him to stop the ship until morning.





CONCLUSION
The sinking of the Titanic has become one of the most well known disasters in history. Because of the terrible loss of life and the demise of what everyone believed was an "unsinkable" ship, people are intrigued and curious about what caused the rapid sinking of the Titanic. Several theories have developed since the sinking to explain the events that occurred on that fateful night. This article has presented the most probable theory, which has become dominant as a result of evidence acquired during several expeditions to the Titanic site.
The failure of the hull steel resulted from brittle fractures caused by the high sulphur content of the steel, the low temperature water on the night of the disaster, and the high impact loading of the collision with the iceberg. When the Titanic hit the iceberg, the hull plates split open and continued cracking as the water flooded the ship. Low water temperatures and high impact loading also caused the brittle failure of the rivets used to fasten the hull plates to the ship's main structure. On impact, the rivets were either sheared off or the heads popped off because of excessive loading, which opened up riveted seams. Also, the rivets around the perimeter of the plates elongated due to the stresses applied by the water, which broke the caulking and provided another inlet for the water.
The rapid sinking of the Titanic was worsened by the poor design of the transverse bulkheads of the watertight compartments. As water flooded the damaged compartments of the hull, the ship began to pitch forward, and water in the damaged compartments was able to spill over into adjacent compartments. Not only did the compartments not control the flooding, but they also contained the water in the bow, which increased the rate of sinking.
Following the Titanic disaster, double-sided hulls were added to ships to prevent minor hull punctures from causing major damage. Also, the transverse bulkheads of the watertight compartments were raised so that water could not spill over the tops if the ship were pitched at a slight angle. Safety regulations established after the sinking include the mandatory use of the wireless for large ships, the minimum lifeboat capacity equal to the number of passengers and crew aboard, and the implementation of the ice patrol to warn ships of nearby ice fields.
Understanding the causes for the rapid sinking of the Titanic is necessary to prevent similar accidents in the future. The changes made in ship design and safety regulations following the disaster were effective in decreasing the casualties of accidents at sea. Examples include the successful rescues of 1600 passengers and crew from the Andrea Doria in 1956, 700 passengers from the Prinsendam in 1980, and all the passengers and crew from Mikhail Lermentov in 1986 and the Oceanos in 1992 [Garzke and others, 1994]. Other lessons need to be learned, however. Just because shipbuilding companies have the technology to build something does not mean that they should. In the case of the Titanic disaster, the causes for the sinking indicate that shipbuilding technology was far more advanced than the understanding which engineers had of the materials they were using to build the ships.




GLOSSARY
bow: the front section of a ship.
bulkheads: the upright partitions dividing a ship into compartments.
Charpy test: a common test of brittleness in structural materials. A Charpy test is run by placing a specimen against a steel backing and striking it with a large pendulum.
coupon: a cigarette-sized sample of material. Coupons are the test specimens used with the Charpy test.
davits: the small cranes that project over the side of a ship and are used to raise and lower lifeboats.
grain structure: the arrangement or pattern of the particles composing a substance.
ice field: a large, level expanse of floating ice that is more than 5 miles in its greatest dimension.
lumen: the unit of luminous flux equal to the light given off by one candle.
stern: the rear section of a ship.
wireless: a radio telegraph or radiotelephone system.






References
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Garzke, William H., David K. Brown, and Arthur Saniford, "The Structural Failure of the Titanic," Oceans Conference Record (IEEE), vol. 3 (1994), pp. 138-148.
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Manning, George, The Theory and Technique of Ship Design (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1956), pp. 25-53.
Muckle, William, Modern Naval Architecture (London: W.P. Griffith & Sons, 1951), pp. 121-125.
Refrigerator, Mister, "R.M.S. Titanic," http://www.scv.net/~fridge/index.htm(May 1998).
Rogers, Patrick, Anne-Marie O'Neill, and Sophfronia S. Gregory, "Sunken Dreams," People, vol. 49, no. 10 (March 1998), pp. 44-51.
Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, Principles of Naval Architecture, 4th ed. (New York: The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, 1977), pp. 121-133.