The Costa Concordia incident proved that large, state of the art passenger ships, built to the latest SOLAS standards, can still sink after striking a submerged object. They were just lucky that it didn't happen hundreds of miles from the nearest assistance.
And Costa Concordia suffered another dreadful design flaw, that EU shipping experts had tried unsuccessfully to warn the EU about for over ten years. Modern cruise liners all resemble the Costa Concordia, and the danger (which is what happened to that ship) is that if the hull is opened on one side, water will rush in and capsize the ship to the other side. There are many photographs of the hole that sank Costa Concordia, with the rock still in it, high-and-dry after the ship capsized. The Island of Giglio recovered the rock and built it into a monument to the tragedy.
@@benthomson6665 most modern ship aren't built to the standard of ocean liners some cruise ships are really safe but a lot of ship mainly carnival ships have some design flaws
Not to mention, that Titanic's crew was only aware around ... 40 or so minutes after the crash that the ship was doomed. On the other hand, the crew of the Queen would be almost immediately aware of the situation due to the intercom system, and wouldn't lose as much time as Titanic's crew.
Not quite. The bulk of the time taken on Titanic to realize what was going on was due to the fact that she was a very big ship, and they had to walk around to investigate... Nevermind, you have a point. WIth a widespread telephone system on board, all sections of the ship could have informed the bridge of what areas were damaged and how badly within minutes.
@@K9TheFirst1 yes but of course the crew in the damgaged area, boiler room 6 were probably too distracted to get shut the dampers, shut everything down and get out of the boiler room before it flooded. And the rest of the engineering crew would have been busy at getting the pumps online and fight the flooding so other people had to come down and see what was going on
the Titanic’s crew had the “issue” that they believed that they are on an unsinkable ship. which slowed down their efforts at first. its almost as if “this is not necessary, just precautions” and the size of the ship did not help to notice how dire the situation is from the first second of the hit. i am not saying the crew was at fault, just they ate up the marketing BS too (which i think even White Star Line thought its true) so the loss if time and reluctant start of evaluating the ship is indeed part of the missing full intercom, but also the fact that the Titanic was marketed and believed to be unsinkable
ThebTitanic's crew knew very well that she was not "unsinkable". The whole thing thing was overblown advertising hyperbole. A newspaper article called Titanic "practically unsinkable" due to her advanced safety features for 1912. That article became the basis for the myth.
Very true but had the titanic not sank how long would it have taken before safety features were improved would we have carried on thinking each new ship was more unsinkable than the last especially if titanic had hit and not sank?
Without Titanic hitting the berg, I doubt that SOLAS Conventions would be enacted. The safety of life at sea conventions of 1914 were a direct result of Titanic's sinking. They, among other things, provided for enough lifeboats and 24 hour radio watches. QM's safety was greatly enhanced by improvements made after the loss of hull 401.
If it wasn't Titanic that struck an iceberg, it would've happened to another ship eventually. It was only a matter of time. Just a few years prior to Titanic in 1907, the North German Lloyd liner SS Kronprinz Wilhelm struck an iceberg and suffered damage to her bow. Fortunately, she managed to limp into port. It was this incident and the RMS Republic sinking that helped fuel the mistaken belief that ships were either too safe to sink or would take so long to do so that help would arrive with plenty of time to spare. The lifeboats, of course, acting to ferry passengers and crew to the rescue vessel. But the Kronprinz Wilhelm accident illustrates that given time and no change in procedure, something like the Titanic disaster was all but inevitable.
@@thomasackerman5399 if only they had just taken precautions before lives are loss.... And if the republic or the SS Kronprinz Wihelm sank or sank faster than Titanic's passengers could have been spared
One thing to keep in mind about "Mauretania" vs "Titanic" was that "Mauretania" had been built with a loan from the Admiralty with the idea that she (and her sister-ship "Lusitania" could be converted into armed merchant cruisers in time of war. So, their construction was done with naval requirements in mind.
@@streamerbtwa229 Actually it was, because that "double hull" was actually just the coal bunkers. It didn't help the Lusitania at all, and is even speculated that it worked against her. Double hull is a double edged sword, it's more weight on the sides which can propagate issues with list, even the Queen Mary was known for heavy list. Fill these spaces with water and you get a list prohibiting launching of lifeboats on the opposite side, and water has a history of breaking through coal bunker bulkheads. The issue wasn't the way those big ships were built, it was that they were built before proper emergency and rescue procedures were put into place to make sure they could be used safely.
The funny this is that the lessons of the titanic were put into titanic’s still under construction sister, the Britannic. It was retrofitted with massive electric lifeboat davits. When the ship sank, even with a heavy list and only 55 minutes. Everyone got into a lifeboat and off the ship. That didn’t save all of them from the propeller unfortunately. And that was a retrofitted Titanic, so I think a ship entirely built with the titanic disaster in mind would have no problem ensuring the safety of its passengers.
Britannic was out of this world unlucky,just like her younger sister Titanic.Due to war,watertight doors were always closed but were opened for 5 minutes from time to time for crew to pass,and thats when she struck a mine.The mine caused damage that jammed the watertight doors open.Im positive she wouldve made it without that misfortune.
@@ajsnagratin6504 well there is always the issue of open portholes. Regulations were for those portholes to remain closed at all times but unfortunately many of them were not at the time of her sinking. It is likely that many would have ended up below the waterline even if that watertight door had not failed and might have dragged the ship under anyway.
It was interesting seeing that the Queen Mary almost did sink in very heavy seas too. It needed to roll about another 3-4 degrees and it would have rolled over. It had the nickname 'The rolling Mary' as it was top heavy and was actually built higher than the original plans had allowed for. 2 people even died in accidents during the ships history on the seas due to it's rolling nature.
The wave that hit QM and knocked her on her beam ends was a freak wave - she actually did remarkably well to right herself after being hit by it - several other ships have been sunk by them.
That’s the one thing that modern ships seem to forget - the higher you go, the more ballast you need to maintain a 90° upright position! Without this any list is going to cause a ship to potentially roll. Constaconcordia aside, I wonder if it’s extremely wise to keep building cruise ships so tall without the beam being appropriate with? Granted this makes it hard to go through various locks around the world, but at the same time unless you have enough beam versus another deck, you’re gonna have a problem!
@@tomriley5790 That incident happened during wartime with close to 10,000 troops onboard. That's a lot of extra weight being carried, and still she didn't capsize. She was a lucky ship.
I didn't know the literal extent of the Queen Mary's double-bottom hull, or the lifeboats' outer ribs. I had fragmented understandings about these features. I learn so much from you, Alex. I've loved the Queen Mary since late elementary school, and you know way more than I do.
I stand in awe of the fact that this living legend still exists today. I mean you have to realize that this vessel is a little bit bigger than the Titanic but a direct cousin to her. I’m so happy to be able to see such a magnificent ship today.
TITANIC 46'000 QM 80'000 It's not far off twice the size. TITANIC white star line. QM Cunard QM was more of a cousin to MAURITANIA and LUSITANIA. TITANIC to OLYMPIC and BRITANNIC..
Another work of "Alex" art. Nothing like a good Queen Mary story to make a day. While at work today, at lunch, we watched your "Disneyland Railroad" series. Thanks for all your "HOURS" of hard work you do for us the viewer.
What if it didn't...No Samsung or Golaith in Belfast built either boat ...What if it was a Titanic Story! A kind of Trojan Horse, instead a way to move Staten Island Chambers Offshore...A Genocidal Media stunt, Imagine arriving at the port to be herded onto Skellig or into the Shanwick Triangle... offshore funding with human traffick ... The story is as Fictional as the boat DNA Graphene, Chernobyl and Geiger Counters... Deepfake Cover story for NATO NAZI EAPC Genocide! Another mouse trap like the Twin Towers? Organ trafficking is not Slavery it is UNWTO NATO Epstein Farming, Hunting, Gathering, Stalking, Baiting, Killing collecting Royalties and Charity Money for Depopulation Funding... De-colonisation Re-colonisation Decommissioning Recommissioning The Human Genome Project and science on humans military pension Ponzi schemes of death... Instructions Not Included...IVF babies delivered to police stations like Pablo Escobar and Krays on Trays... while Journalists write Johnson stories...a boat was relabelled, the cargo off loaded on Skellig, part of a moon landing fund raising stunt. Staten Island moving offshore. Today Ryanair Apple and Google Titanicked over 160 million into the Shanwick Triangle...Not NATO. NAT
The thing people tend to forget when they compare more modern ships to Titanic is that Titanic herself influenced the design of these newer vessels. The Queen Mary was designed with Titanic's sinking in mind, with features to avoid the litany of problems that occurred that night. And, to the credit of the crew, Titanic remained afloat longer than even her designer predicted. It just wasn't long enough.
This was such a captivating video on the safety features of the wonderful RMS Queen Mary and how they would fare in a similar collision as Titanic. Despite over a dozen visits to her in Long Beach and building several models of her, you shared many details that were previously unknown. Most notably, it was interesting to learn that she too had longitudinal bulkheads like the Lusitania/Mauretania, had caps at the top of her watertight bulkheads to potentially confine flood water, and ribs on the lifeboats to allow them to pass over the riverheads in the event of a list during an evacuation. The question that next comes to mind is, how would a modern ocean liner like Queen Mary 2 handle such a collision? Of broader curiosity, how would a less robustly built standard cruise ship handle this? As for the RMS Queen Mary herself, please spread the word on her current plight as repairs are so urgently needed to save her for future generations. Many thanks for all your work in creating this video for us!
Thanks Bruce, my video series on the Queen Mary is meant to mainly educate people on the history and technology of the ship. My hope is to show people there is more to know about her, and inspire someone to step forward to help save her.
@@AlextheHistorian Surprisinglly little has been said that the hull of the ship was manufactered in Belast Ireland.Could it be the hull as made out of inferior material not capable of withstanding the frigid water temps.?!
I mostly agree with this, but Titanic was going around 21 to 22 knots when she collided with the iceberg. Queen Mary was an even more massive ship that could easily reach 28 knots. Wouldn't this make a difference?
Another great vid Alex. Agree with all your conclusions.Worth a mention: Queen Mary sailing under 1914 SOLAS regulation required lifeboat drill on 1st day so pax would be familiar with their boat location and life preservers. Titanic never had a lifeboat drill as the Capt. cancelled it on 4th day out because it was Sunday.
The Queen Mary was simply a newer ship, built with the lessons learned from the Titanic disaster and the loss of Titanic's sister ship, the Britannic. She was far more resistant to damage.
I had a namesake on the Titanic, and I have been intrigued by it since first reading Walter Lord's book, "A Night to Remember" back in the late 1950s. But, despite the fact that you have no authoritative knowledge, I like your reasoning and your humility. I'm also impressed by the quality of the visual illustrations in the Video, Alex! Well done!! :)
Nah they won't do that, it's too expensive. The ship is still capable of generating revenue, so as long as they refurbish it, they can make a return on that investment, even at a slow rate. That's why it's undergoing preservation work
Queen Mary Sinking Scenario: Generally, I agree that QM would have had a much better chance at surviving a collision similar to Titanic's. However, I would like to bring forward that QM was both heavier and - all other factors being equal in the scenario - would have been going much faster than Titanic. That changes a lot of factors that can affect everything else, as the crew may have less time to react from seeing the berg, to the ship receiving more damage, to a number of other things that cannot be accounted for, and can affect the scenario further down the line. So again: I agree that QM had all the advantages that Titanic lacked in construction and cultural experience (the QM's entire career was with Titanic in living memory for one thing, and Titanic was the cause of a lot of the changes that were incorporated into QM), and as British steamlines recruited officers from the Royal Naval Reserve, they would have had the training and discipline to deal with such a crisis. But when you have thousands of people crammed into what is in comparison a very small can on a very big ocean, it can easily turn into disaster even with the best of effort. 3:00 - 'Why didn't Titanic have a double hull?' Because the probability of the ship taking the sort of damage that would require it was very unlikely. Titanic was built with the most probable collision scenarios of ship disasters up to that point: Ramming something, being rammed, and running aground. All of which are more likely while close to shore and/or port, with rocks that may or may not be properly charted, and crowded shipping lanes, and are thus typically at half or slow speeds. A full speed side-swipe - while potentially possible - was as close as you can get to an Outside Context Problem while not relying on fantasy or sci-fi. Furthermore, remember that Mauretania was built to near military spec, due to being largely funded by HM Government with the expectation of being used as an auxiliary cruiser in wartime. Hence the side compartments - She and Lusitania are (in the most strict definition) the largest Protected Cruisers in the world. Had Cunard been able to build them normally, the coal would have been stored more like Titanic. QM's double hull/fuel bunker setup has more in common with Olympic's Post-War configuration, after she was converted to burning oil. 7:05 - Titanic did develop a list, though while it certainly affected boats on the starboard side, it wasn't as bad as you made it out to be. In comparison, Lusitania - Mauretania's sistership and in possession of the side-bunkers - leaned far enough over to genuinely make lowering boats impossible, and genuinely would have benefitted from those rails on the sides of the boats.
Factor he does not seem to know or remember was that Lusitania and Mauritania were both subsided by the British Government to be used as auxiliary Cruisers- In fact both were built in response to J.P. Morgan buying up ocean liner companies (White Star Line and Holland America for starters) (this was in the INM company) Cunard was in danger of loosing out to rivals so went to the British Government who helped pay for new Ocean Liners thus cost was not as big of an issue as with Olympic Class which were not built with a subsidy.
I hope nobody here thinks I was trying to put down Titanic's design. I wasn't trying to make it sound like she wasn't well built. As for the collision scenario, I was estimating that all factors were the same, that INCLUDED speed. In my scenario, Queen Mary was traveling the same speed as Titanic. I was trying to eliminate as many outside variables as possible in order to understand the difference in collision reaction. Also, I know that Lusitania and Mauretania were government subsidized and built to better war specifications, I guess I just assumed that with the advent of double hull design, I thought every company would want their ships to have it. Especially when a ship is branded "unsinkable".
@@AlextheHistorian I think the extra cost was why. plus part of the extra plating was since they were being intended to be Aux Cruisers. Just think in a different time line we might have had HMS Lusitania and HMS Mauritania running around escorting conveys. As it happened only Olympic sank a U-Boat. The fact that the Cunards' were partly government subsidized to serve war purposes gives me some fantasy today that the Government would subsidize construction of Modern Ocean Liners that could be converted to use as hospital ships. This is particularly reasonable since the Navy is not happy with Comfort and Mercy since their Tanker construction makes them very slow so they take forever to get to a disaster area. A modern Ocean liner could be built specifically to be easily converted to a Hospitable ship within a very short time (the crew could even be duel merchant Marines so that they would be trained for both)
Or, they could rebuild the fastest ocean liner of all, the S.S. United States, which sits, gutted in Philidelphia, ready for an internal rebuilding. No other liner has ever beat her Blue Ribband crossing time of three days plus. Her hull plating was built to military specs. at an inch and a half thick. She is faster in reverse than any other liner was at full ahead! As a hospital ship she could get anywhere in the world in a !atter of days.
I would assume, that the damage to the ship is proportional. So Queen Mary being longer than Titanic, should get around 310 feet long breach. It can also be supported by the ship shape. Titanic damage is where ship is getting narrower toward the bow. Breach end where the hull is getting straight. So Queen mary would suffer floding in 8 compartments. The question is if the damage would be deep enough to breach oil tanks. Most likely not. But with 5 fully floded compartments her bow will dip below the waves and water start getting into the ship from the top, above the watertight compartments, and then ship is doomed anyway. It would most likely take much more time to sink.
Great video! Towards why the Lusitania and Mauritania had double hulls but the Olympic and Titanic did not, I believe it was to how the two classes were financed. The Lucy and Maury were partially financed by the Royal Navy, and as a result were expected to be converted to auxiliary cruisers in wartime. As part of that, their mechanical spaces had to be protected from shells, thus a double hull was worked into the design with the coal bunkers acting as the buffer, similar to warships at the time. Olympic and Titanic were privately financed and thus did not have that same restriction placed on them. I suppose the thinking for the time with private enterprise was that the subdivided hull would be enough, and that the most likely damage to occur would be from the bottom through groundings (IE the strange 1909 accident the RMS Empress of Ireland had). Any damage from the side would likely result from collisions with other vessels, thence why she was rated for any two compartments flooded or the first 4.
wait, i thought the Empress of Ireland was involved in a collision, not a grounding? edit: yup, she was. "RMS Empress of Ireland was an ocean liner that sank near the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River in Canada following a collision in thick fog with the Norwegian collier Storstad in the early hours of 29 May 1914."
True on both counts. As ships kept getting bigger, nobody thought that they could sustain enough damage to breach 4 compartments, let alone more than that.
@@Railman1225 yep a deep laden collier at that so when she was struck amid ship the worst damage was especially low and especially deep in her hull. However he is right about why Lucy and Mary's coal bunkers lined the hull instead of being placed athwart ship.
Lusitania was double hull and she sunk so Queen Mary would also sink. Double hull would not protect against torpedoes or mines but a relatively gentle impact like the one Titanic had, double hull would be handy.
@@samanli-tw3idyeah a double hull would not survive a mine or a torpedo hit, because it will burst the two steel plated when either struck a double hull ship, Example is the RMS Lusitania. The mine hit in the Boiler room, below the First funnel, that part of the ship has a double hull.
3:44 - read Simpson's book on the Lusitania, those compartment were made "useless because the weight of the coal lodged coal in the seams of the door, making them impossible to shut. They were actually cut off early on. I think Colin had the number of open doors through the hull to the engine rooms at 127. I LOVE THIS VIDEO!
Just a technical note: The iceberg that was struck by Titanic did not "puncture" the steel plates. It buckled (or bent) the plates and popped rivets that held the plates together, compromising the watertight integrity of the ship in those 1st 5 compartments. Engineers have calculated that the total size of the openings created in the hull was about 12 sq feet. Approximately the size of the front door to an average house.
I know, I only said that it "pierced the hull". I wasn't directly referring to it ripping the plates apart, only that the iceberg made it so water entered the hull.
That is astonishing to think about. It makes sense, though, when one considers that the water entering through those gaps between the plates was under significant pressure.
@@AlextheHistorian one reason the hul of the Ttanic was ripped brcause of inferior brittle steei manufactured in Belfast Ireland causing the hull to bemuch more brittle than original specs. called for.This was the death sentence for the the great ship!
Also in era of Queen Mary, communications with other ships(inter ship communication) would have been better coordinated and there would have been scenario of California not responding to Titanic's calls. That would have definitely saved more lives..
I think it's unlikely she would have sunk, obviously she could have however one of the key differences is that there was a better understanding of the fracture characteristics of steel and therefore the steel that QM was built from would likely have behaved in a less brittle and more ductile failure - leading to less water ingress. QM going down by the head would likely have been able to deploy her lifeboats and there were sufficient lifeboats for her passengers, all lessons learnt from the Titanic. Good video I agree with your conclusions! Interestingly although I can find a turning circle for the titanic, I cannot find one for the Queen Mary, Titanic had a famously undersized rudder for her mass, I doubt QM did - it's possible QM would have missed the iceberg completely.
Let’s not forget she had a head on collision in WWII and she faired well. I don’t know how many bulkheads were breached but the collision mirrored that of the RMS Olympics collision before the Titanic set sail. Loved the video excellent work.
Then there's the "Stockholm", who survived a head-on collision in the 1950s and went on to survive for several more decades under different names. She tried to go to Havana during the Cuban Missile Crisis under East German ownership, and she was also attacked by pirates in the Gulf of Aden in 2008. Unfortunately, the ship she collided with - the Andrea Doria - sank.
When considering that the first passenger ship in the world with a double hull, the *SS Great Eastern* , survived a larger amount of damage on a voyage than the Titanic, and made it to port, says it all about the benefits of a Double Hull. RMS Olympic was retrofitted to have a double hull (among other features), so at least some good came of the tragedy. I think also that the Titanic's crew trying to run hoses from the engine room to assist with damage control (once the scale of the damage was known) is often overlooked, despite the ship having the most powerful marine engines in service at that time. The cruel irony is that this was among multiple things on-board that could have kept her afloat if implemented sooner / at all.
Once Titanc struck the iceberg, nothing was going to keep her afloat. Getting the pumps running sooner would have bought her a bit more time, but she was still going to the bottom.
^ Disagree. There were - in hindsight - multiple materials and resources onboard that would have brought the flooding under control, but only one of those was actually attempted (running hoses from the engine room to aid the pumps), but too late to tip the balance. The disaster did lead to radical rethinking of nautical safety though, and was less ghastly than it could have been. (see the fate of the Naronic for why)
@@TSR1989FF you can disagree all you want but it doesn't change the fact that nothing on earth was going to keep Titanic afloat once she hit that berg. When the managing director of Harland and Wolf, the man most directly responsible for her design and construction says that she has no chance and will be on the bottom of the ocean in an hour you can rest assured he had considered all of the design elements of the ship that might keep her afloat. Titanic did NOT have the most powerful engines afloat either. The most powerful engines afloat at the time of her maiden voyage belonged to Lusitania and Mauritania.
^ Amusing attempt at absolutism, but false, on both points. The supposed [yet uncited] opinion of one historical figure is also irrelevant, as it doesn't disprove the contrasting examples given.
I found this very interesting and enjoyable. I imagine that even if the Queen Mary's bow gone further underwater, to the point where the Titanic split apart, she wouldn't have split due to the hull features you described. Or maybe she would. I know nothing about engineering or shipbuilding. But I do wonder if the Queen Mary was built to prevent it
I think even back then, no one believed Titanic split. The commonly accepted detail was that Titanic slipped beneath the surface in one whole piece, with grace and dignity...which was far from true. It's for that reason I don't think Queen Mary could stay in one piece.
I read a book written before the wreck was discovered. It was a fiction adventure story about a team who accidentally found the wreck, whole except for the rent in her hull. So they devise a plan to repair and raise her to the surface. It's a better story than I make it sound. But I think it shows that everyone still thought she sank in one piece for a long time
@@AlextheHistorian Britannic sank in one piece, and was structurally almost identical to Titanic. The one notable change was the bottom of the expansion joints in the superstructure. On Titanic they ended in a wedge, which may have focused stresses and caused cracks to extend down the side of the hull beneath (think like the groves int he top of a bar of chocolate making it easier to snap). on Britannic, they had swapped those for a rounded end to the joints which dispersed stresses evenly and avoided cracks.
To make a long answer short, if it's the exact same extent of damage - 5 to 6 compartments breached - then yes she should survive and even if she sinks, one it oughta take longer due to her greater size and strength, and two most if not everyone should be saved. :D It still amazes me just how similar these two ships are.
At least one of the Titanic's sister ships was refitted after her sinking with a double hull. It did require shrinking the size of the central boiler to give room. This potentially points to why Titanic didn't have it initially. The blue riband, or speed record for the fastest Atlantic crossing. It was a huge point of pride to be the record holder.
The thing is that Titanic nor her sister ships could ever dream of capturing the Blue Riband, they were not built for speed and were too slow to compete with Mauritania.
Britannic was still at Harland and Wolff and was built with one - it was one of the causes of the delay, Olympic was retrofitted causing a huge amount of time out of service which also included the firemen going on strike. Other modifications structurally took place as well.
It's good to see that one of the most inexplicably persistent Titanic myths is finally starting to fade away. The absurdity of an Olympic class ship making a run at the Atlantic Record (Blue Riband) is analogous to someone entering their Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham in the Daytona 500 and hoping to win.
I GIVE YOU MY GREATEST COMPLIMENT! Alex, one of my bugaboos over the sixty plus years I've indulged my Titanic fascination is that almost NO ONE EVER MENTIONS the reality sticking up right in their faces! YOU HAVE! You see, no one bothers to address the fact that subsequent (and even earlier ones) had watertight compartments with, well, for lack of a better name, CLOSED TOPS! Yes, the water spilled over the Titanic's poorly designed compartment and with the Mary, no such luck, water! So GOOD FOR YOU. Details matter to understanding. One tiny picky little thing? I DID note how in one near to the end of the vid scene, you snuck in a pic of the TWO FUNNELED Queen Liz. Just wanted you to know I saw that and that I know what I'M TALKING ABOUT, which is why my compliment to you COUNTS! Best wishes and continue your great vids!
Nice job putting this together. I think it is almost impossible to speculate if QM even with better communications, newer construction architecture & engineering, and advancements in life saving equipment would survive hitting Titanics iceberg. Cunards Luisitania has the same double hull and side mounted coal bunkers and one torpedo sunk her in 18 minutes. The communications advantage ie intercoms and electric davits might if failed taking on that much water, who knows? There are many factors that may of saved QM or may of doomed QM. I dont know either. But I did enjoy the video and your thoughts for healthy debate
I think you are incorrect about the oil tanks. They are actually integral in the double hull, i.e. the oil is stored in the space formed by the inside and outside skin. There is no third skin.
I'm really glad you're making this video series. One of my favorite places to go is the Queen Mary. It's a treasure that needs to be preserved. Of a more civilized age.
Just waiting to wake up one morning and hearing the hull on the QM finally suffered a catastrophic breech from the 50 years of rust deterioration inside the hull. She's in dreadful shape today.
Neat very well done. I crossed the Atlantic from Southampton on the QE2. Captain Warrick gave an afternoon briefing with maps that showed even by modern standards the Titanic was further north than even today ships consider safe for crossing. So I guess we can assume Queen Mary would not knowingly steam into an ice field. Reading criticism of Titanic it is noted that no other ship is known to have lost its life to an iceberg.
My opinion is that amount of damage may have still sunk the Queen Mary. One of the prominent features of the titanic sinking is she only developed a minor list. Most of the passenger ships since up to and including the Costa Concordia capsized while flooding and sinking. Another Prominent example is the Andria Doria. She also listed greatly and layer over on her side as she sank. I believe the regulations now require the cruise ships and ocean liners be designed and equipped to be able to completely evacuate all the passengers and crew in somewhere around 45 minutes to 1 hour. However, the costa Concordia totally failed in that mission.
Wow! Very interesting. The short is I believe that Queen Mary would survive a collision with a Iceberg. Look at the incidents she actually had. She rammed Caracao at full speed and survive. And in 1937 and 1942, she was slammed by 90 foot tidal waves and manage to hang on. Queen Mary is just more technologically advance for her time. Not to sound haughty but she can ever survive running around which is more than I can say for Costa Concordia. Thank you for your insight, Alex
Are you able to make more comparisons with the titanic and queen Mary. Like what if britannic hit titanics iceberg or what if queen Mary sank backwards idk I was just thinking how all this would work out.great video by the way!
The reason the hull breached so easy was the lack of knowledge at the time of carbon content in the steel and how it becomes brittle in severely cold water temperatures. The steel plates acted like glass in those cold water temperatures. Unfortunately they did not understand impact properties at low temperatures and how critical the carbon content of the steel is at those temps.
They have never found evidence of the steel plates being fractured or ripped from the impact with the iceberg. What they did find was missing or torn rivets. Rivets had to be slightly weaker than the steel plates so that the riveters could pound them in by hand. And the rivets didn't fail because of weak steel, they failed because two massive objects far greater and heavier than them collided.
Carbon steel had existed for nearly 2,000 years by the time Titanic was built, the reason the hull breeched so easily is because over 40,000 tons of ship met hundreds of thousands of tons of ice while going 20 knots... for a scale reference, make the best thimble you can out of any material, but it has to be foil thin, then place it on the sidewalk and smash it with a hammer. The material and temperature won't matter, it's the force of the hammer (representing the momentum of a massive ship) trying to dump its energy into an immovable object (the sidewalk, which represents the iceberg) with a relatively thin wall between the 2 (the thimble which represents the hull of the Titanic). Ships this big going this fast don't bounce off of things, either the thing they hit moves out of the way or something breaks.
@@vchiu9560 Indeed. But Olympic's longevity rather disproves the sub-standard materials claim. Titanic sank because of an event totally outside her design parameters, not because of any intrinsic design or material flaws.
An interesting idea. I don't blame you for the 20 years difference, as Cunard clearly had a different approach to their hulls that would as you pointed out could have changed the whole affair. An equally good one would be the Titanic and one of today's cruise ships. You would naturally have to factor in that the passengers today would be drunk, in the casino, and at the buffet, and probably someone would want a safe space lifeboat.
Oh indeed! When I was on a cruise ship during the initial passenger drill/evacuation training, a couple refused to take part in it. First they said that one of them was sick. When the doctor went to give aid, it turns out they simply refused, because "We live on an island, we know everything about boats". [The next day they got a a special induction by the Safety Officer...]
@@katho8472 I knew lots of Bahamians who didn't know how to swim. What the hell does living on an island have to do with anything. haha Glad to see that the SO was on the ball.
@@davidshepherd397 My thoughts exactly. Thanks to them the drill took around 30 minutes longer than usual. Quite unhelpful if the (theater/entertainment/food&beverage) crew is on a tight schedule for the "Welcome aboard" party...
The most important factor in the Titanic sinking was the coal fire. And no, I don't mean that the fire weakened the hull and caused it to sink faster- that's a myth. The fire meant that all the coal in that bunker on the starboard side had to be shoveled out and transferred to the port side. Those hundreds of additional tons of coal being moved resulted in Titanic crossing the Atlantic with a one or two degree list to port. In effect, it was a counter balance to the water rushing in from the starboard side after the collision. Forty minutes after the collision, Thomas Andrews calculated the ship would sink within the hour. In his mind, after an hour or so, Titanic would capsize to starboard. He wasn't factoring in the coal fire. Instead, the ship took more than two and a half hours to sink and remained mostly stable until after she split in two. In every other shipwreck, the vessel capsized. Titanic did not, and that was because of the coal fire. My guess is IF the QMII suffered enough damage to sink following a collision, then the odds are that she would capsize and probably sink much quicker.
The Mauretania and the Lusitania were financed by the British government with the provision they be designed to serve as armed merchant cruisers in the event of war. This does explain why the Mauretania had the coal bunkers placed on the side (to protect against shellfire as the submarine was an unknown menace at the time of her construction) and why she had the full double hull. No I imagine with the Olympic & Titanic the designers assumed that there was no possibility that more than 4 compartments could possibly be breached in any conceivable accident or collision so the addition of a double hull would have been considered an unnecessary expense.
Question: so if the submarine threat was known at the time, what would have to be done differently with Lusitania and Mauretania's design to better protect them from a torpedo strike?
@@Kaidhicksii perhaps the provision of a hollow double hull *plus* Olympic style transverse coal bunkers (coal dust will ignite when detonated) to lessen the chance a torpedo would hit a bunker. Significantly enhanced pumping capacity, and more redundancy in everything. Perhaps a longitudinal watertight bulkhead splitting the engine & boiler rooms (controversial however - can lead to capsizing).
@@Kaidhicksii Too late by then. Master's instructions for Lusitania / Mauretania included that if the ships ever assumed a certain list and did not then right themselves, the Master was to abandon ship at once. The cause of this would be penetration of a coal bunker and the loss of its buoyancy on that side - Empress of Ireland gives a grisly example of what could happen. Lusitania suffered two more debilitations; a coal dust (they think - the ship was not carrying enough munitions to create an explosion like it suffered) explosion that (apparently - the wreck has collapsed on the side with the torpedo hit, and it can't be examined) blew out part of the bottom, and once the ship listed the up-side lifeboats were almost unuseable as they dangled inboard, and couldn't easily be swung over the railing. Those that were, risked tearing their sides out on the hull's rivets; and Lusitania sank much more quickly than Titanic so there just wasn't enough time to get everybody off. Lusitania never received the warning that u-boats had been lurking in the vicinity of the Old Head of Kinsale, Lusitania's customary landfall, or the Captain wouldn't have stopped zig-zagging.
And Empress of Ireland suffered a further design flaw. It was common for coal bunkers to run along the ships' sides, for easier refilling; but additionally, Empress of Ireland's staircases ran across-ship instead of fore-and-aft. So when the ship listed, half of the staircases were vertical and the other half didn't go anywhere fleeing passengers would conceivably want to go. And thanks to penetration of a coal bunker, Empress of Ireland also sank very fast.
Quite a good summation. QM wasn't exactly double hull (that's only for modern tankers and container ships) but she did have an 'inner skin' as shown which would protect against the berg penetrating into the main spaces. As mentioned, it could possibly breach the fuel/water tank(s) as well but the list would be slight as there's not a lot of difference in the weight of heavy oil (around 900kg/m3) and seawater at 1024kg/m3. Any list could be counterflooded by the tanks on the port side. If Lusitania had been oil-fired, she could possibly have survived as the bunkers would have been oil/water tight. However, the same inner skin was applied to Britannic, and she still sank!
The QM would have also sunk just in a different way. The bow would have dipped below the waterline and the starboard oil tanks would become filled with sea water causing a list to that side. Water would also enter the ship through other unforeseen means such as unlatched/improperly secure or open portholes or unsecured gangway doors. This would lead to flooding on the starboard side eventually culminating in a full capsize event. The survivors would then have to contend with an ocean full of Number 6 engine oil whose fumes would easily overwhelm many of them. The lifeboats would probably allow most or all of the passengers and crew to escape however assuming there was order and they were filled to capacity.
Just a nitpick. Titanic couldn’t stay afloat with ANY 4 compartments flooded. It was at its core a two compartment ship, but could stay afloat with certain combinations of 3 or 4 compartments.
The evidence indicates Titanic did have her engines at full ahead when she hit the berg. It took quite a bit of time to execute any engine orders back then and the engine room crew was not on stand-by at the time. Over the years the testimony of Fourth Officer Boxhall, who was not present on the Bridge when the evasive action orders were given, was taken as gospel. Other testimony indicates there was not time for engine room orders to be carried out either way before the impact. Titanic could stay afloat with 2-4 compartments flooded, depending on the location of the damage. I doubt QM could survive with ANY 5 compartments filled with water. The longitudinal bulkheads on Lusitania/Mauretania were problematic. If more than two flooded, the ships were in serious danger of capsizing. A floodable length curve for QM would be a good starting point. There are several major errors here, so the speculation has little basis.
From what I have seen about the building of the Titanic , I think there are several reasons why it didn't have the safety features the QM did . First was Bruce Ismay was concerned on cost . And second , they were rushing to get the ships to sea . Adding a full double hull would cost way more time and money . Also having steel lifeboats and more of them would add a lot more cost as well .
@@AlextheHistorian Titanic did have quite large lifeboats compared to other ships of the time IIRC. Her and Olympic's Welin davits were also superior to the ones on Lucy and Maury.
Please not again with the 'Titanic's rudder was too small' trope. It was a proven design on White Star's previous liners, just scaled up to meet the size of the Olympic-class. Studies found that at most, the rudders were only a few hundredths of something (forgot the measurement unit) too small. No. The problem was the ships weren't designed for speed and agility like with the Lusitania and Mauretania. Those 2 had rudders meant to help them make sharp turns, due partly to Cunard's partnership with the British Admiralty for their ships to be used as armed cruisers (which in itself later turned out to be ineffective due to the ships' great size) in the event of war. Titanic and her sisters were designed to operate as passenger liners and nothing more. Nobody expected that they would be put in a scenario where they'd have to make such a sudden and drastic turn. Even then, avoiding the scenario Titanic found herself in would've been a high order for any ship: you can't seriously expect to steer a ship over an eighth of a mile long like a high-performance car away from an obstacle that is only some 30-45 seconds away. Yet in spite of all this, the Olympic-class still had excellent maneuverability. Titanic herself very nearly missed the iceberg, only suffering a glancing blow that ruptured her hull rather than tore through it. And in WW1, Olympic was able to steer sharply into a German U-Boat which was hounding her, and if you know the story, she became the only ocean liner in history to ram and sink one.
Titanic's water tight bulk heads didn't go to top deck, so water could spill over. Also, one door may have been damaged by the coal fire. Also, it is possible that Titanic actually when over the iceberg which punctured a hole its bottom. Titanic was listing a little bit because the burned coal was moved to the other side of the ship. Since Queen Mary is newer and had improved safety features, it had a better chance of survival
@@AlextheHistorian its one of the theories, i don't think it has been truly proven but it is one of the more modern theories that has come from newer research
I have read she sustained impact with a large rogue Wave- it briefly rolled her on the side, but she quickly righted herself, just as designed. This was a very well made ship!
There are many factors that would affect the performance of the Mary vs. Titanic in an Iceberg scenario .. Due to the fantail & undersized rudder design of Titanic, she couldn't turn very fast at high speeds. The Mary's larger rudder, together with her 4 turbines producing 180,000HP, gave her much quicker response to sudden dangers. Additionally, the Mary's 4 huge propellers, were all capable of full reverse speed, vs. Titanic's two (her third center was only able to turn in forward direction. So it's a "Model T" vs. a "Ferrari"!
Well that scenario assumes the Queen Mary avoids the iceberg, which I'm sure she would have, but I wanted discuss whether or not she would survive a collision.
It was the hubris that was the "folly" of Titanic. The steamship Sultana actually have more loss of life than Titanic (but was an earlier disaster) To NOT make "water tight" bulkheads that went all the way UP made it a "mute point" It was the arrogance that the ship would "never SINK" was on the minds of the crew as well as passengers. But, we know what reality WAS. There were also sooo many human errors including but not ltd to poor communication, bad decision making, parlaying fear + cowardice from a few.
Isn't that more mythology than fact? How do we know that arrogance was in the minds of the crew and who claimed that Titanic would never sink? What evidence of hubris is there on the part of either White Star or its employees? Were the builders or owners remiss in their duties or did anyone fail to follow standard operating procedure? By the way, the word is moot not 'mute'.
Interesting detail. To this day, the Queen Mary lifeboats are plugged into the ships electrical grid to keep them warm so they would start instantly when lowered. They used to do a demonstration at 2 pm as you lunched in Sir Winstons Restaurant and Lounge. The things one can learn over champagne.
4:10 In answering to this, Titanic was built to be a passenger liner first and foremost. Mauretania was designed to Admiralty specifications with the understanding that by funding their construction, the British Admiralty would retain the right to requisition the Mauretania and Lusitania as armed merchant cruisers in war. Having a double hull and coal bunkers running along the side was in line with British warship design at the time.
Fun fact: the coal bunker was breached and that’s what did the Titanic in. Yes five compartments breached would sink the ship but the pumps were able to keep up. When the coal bunker’s wall blew the fifth compartment was overwhelmed and the Ship was doomed.
Longitudinal bulkheads aren't always helpful Lusitania rapidly developed a massive list after being torpedoed, because the coal bunkers on that side of the ship flooded rapidly. Andrea Doria also developed a huge list after one of her fuel tanks were punctured, because the tank on that side filled with water whereas the tank on the opposite side was empty.
Interesting video, well done! I'm now wondering what would have happened to the Titanic's greater sister Olympic if she had hit an iceberg after her 1913 refit which included the addition of a second skin. Might be something to ponder?
The Titanic's hull sulphur-steel hull which became incredibly brittle in cold temperatures also meant the hole was far larger than it would be for a ship without that weakness suffering the same collision.
People comparing the Concordia to why the Mary would sink BUT. Ocean liners are built with more problems/ safety features due to the fact they have to cross the Atlantic unlike cruises. I do agree I think the Mary could stay afloat. Concordia wasn’t built with the same level of concern for the Atlantic
Great video, with an excellent explanation of many of the different factors. I just have one quibble: at 1:07 you mention "a rare formation of ice that created an overhang." Like you, I am not a maritime engineer, but I was taught that as icebergs are 90% underwater, almost all of them will extend much further underwater than they do above the surface. It would be possible for severe damage to happen below the waterline, without the iceberg ever touching the ship above the water. If I get back to Long Beach, I will visit the QM and contribute to the restoration fund. Thanks again for a fascinating video.
Those weren't my words, National Geographic said that there was a nob of ice that jutted out away from the main berg. That it was a rare formation of ice creating an overhang. If it wasn't for that, she would have cleared the underwater part of the berg by several meters
That is correct. I noticed that. Underwater 'spurs' are actually fairly common on icebergs. One might have them, another won't. I believe it is due to uneven melting between the exposed (above the waterline) portion of the berg, and the submerged part (which is actually much harder and therefore a lot more resistant to melting).
I would add the challenge of making the damage relative to size. While the Titanic's damage was large it would be less to the Mary, therefore I would increase that amount of damage to correspond to the size of the ship. Secondly, the Titanic was driven through the water for 5 to 8 minutes again after the accident, which overpowered the pumps. I'd like to add that to the equation just for fun, it adds a few more variables to the comparison..
Modern passenger liners REQUIRE a muster drill (that's where the passengers get acquainted as to where to go in case of emergency and which lifeboat they're to show up at) for all passengers within 24 hours of sailing. Miss the muster drill and you're going to get kicked off the cruise. I'm pretty sure the Queen Mary was doing muster drills when she was in service. THAT in itself tilts the odds way in the favor the Queen Mary getting the vast majority of passengers OFF the ship in the face of an iceberg collision. (Not to mention that the Queen Mary had lifeboats for everyone and room for the odd pet somebody insisted on bringing with them.)
I think you have done a good job with this analysis of your hypothetical scenario. One small quibble; at 7:24 it would've been more accurate to say "...they would act like the runners on sleds.. " since runners are the curved metal pieces on the bottoms of sleds which come into contact with the snow and/or ice and enable the sled and its rider to slide along.
The Titanic was not designed to float with ANY 4 or 5 compartments flooded. The minimum buoyancy reserve was any 2 compartments. The ship was also designed to stay afloat with the forward 4 compartments breached, at least in calm waters, as the bulkheads forward, including the so-called "collision bulkhead" reached several decks higher than the ones in the middle of the hull. Mauretania and Lusitania did NOT have double hull construction, but the arrangement of their coal bunkers along the sides acted, at least in theory, similar to a double hull, provided the coal bunker doors were shut or could be shut in the event of flooding from damage to the sides. Stability would indeed be a serious concern with this layout as the risk of capsizing with several of those bunkers filled was definitely high, especially in rougher seas.
The great British marine engineer, I. K. Brunel, launched his enormous masterpiece, the 'Great Eastern' in the 1850s. The largest passenger liner in the world at the time, and the only vessel powered by both paddles and a propeller, the Great Eastern also featured watertight bulkheads that extended up to the main deck, and a double hull that extended well above the waterline. In 1861, on approach to New York, that feature was tested, when the great ship struck an uncharted rock, which ripped open about 90 feet of the outer hull below the waterline.. The result was only a slight list, with no water penetration past the inner hull, and the ship made it safely to New York.
At the time of making this video, I didn't have access to the full blueprints of either ships, so I didn't know what the bilge pump arrangement was. But now that I do, they wouldn't have made much of a difference.
The Costa Concordia incident proved that large, state of the art passenger ships, built to the latest SOLAS standards, can still sink after striking a submerged object. They were just lucky that it didn't happen hundreds of miles from the nearest assistance.
it also proved that the intercom is only as useful as the captain speaking into it
And Costa Concordia suffered another dreadful design flaw, that EU shipping experts had tried unsuccessfully to warn the EU about for over ten years. Modern cruise liners all resemble the Costa Concordia, and the danger (which is what happened to that ship) is that if the hull is opened on one side, water will rush in and capsize the ship to the other side. There are many photographs of the hole that sank Costa Concordia, with the rock still in it, high-and-dry after the ship capsized. The Island of Giglio recovered the rock and built it into a monument to the tragedy.
And the costa Concordia suffered less damage than titanic
@@benthomson6665 most modern ship aren't built to the standard of ocean liners some cruise ships are really safe but a lot of ship mainly carnival ships have some design flaws
It’s also a cruise ship. Hull made of paper vs an ocean liners hull.
Not to mention, that Titanic's crew was only aware around ... 40 or so minutes after the crash that the ship was doomed. On the other hand, the crew of the Queen would be almost immediately aware of the situation due to the intercom system, and wouldn't lose as much time as Titanic's crew.
Not quite. The bulk of the time taken on Titanic to realize what was going on was due to the fact that she was a very big ship, and they had to walk around to investigate... Nevermind, you have a point. WIth a widespread telephone system on board, all sections of the ship could have informed the bridge of what areas were damaged and how badly within minutes.
@@K9TheFirst1 yes but of course the crew in the damgaged area, boiler room 6 were probably too distracted to get shut the dampers, shut everything down and get out of the boiler room before it flooded. And the rest of the engineering crew would have been busy at getting the pumps online and fight the flooding so other people had to come down and see what was going on
the Titanic’s crew had the “issue” that they believed that they are on an unsinkable ship. which slowed down their efforts at first. its almost as if “this is not necessary, just precautions” and the size of the ship did not help to notice how dire the situation is from the first second of the hit.
i am not saying the crew was at fault, just they ate up the marketing BS too (which i think even White Star Line thought its true)
so the loss if time and reluctant start of evaluating the ship is indeed part of the missing full intercom, but also the fact that the Titanic was marketed and believed to be unsinkable
ThebTitanic's crew knew very well that she was not "unsinkable". The whole thing thing was overblown advertising hyperbole. A newspaper article called Titanic "practically unsinkable" due to her advanced safety features for 1912. That article became the basis for the myth.
Very true but had the titanic not sank how long would it have taken before safety features were improved would we have carried on thinking each new ship was more unsinkable than the last especially if titanic had hit and not sank?
Without Titanic hitting the berg, I doubt that SOLAS Conventions would be enacted. The safety of life at sea conventions of 1914 were a direct result of Titanic's sinking. They, among other things, provided for enough lifeboats and 24 hour radio watches. QM's safety was greatly enhanced by improvements made after the loss of hull 401.
true, but this is a hypothetical scenario asking what would happen if the Queen Mary ended up in a situation LIKE the Titanic, not take it's place
Though the 2 wars likely would have still happened forcing the innovation of shipping to a similar level
If it wasn't Titanic that struck an iceberg, it would've happened to another ship eventually. It was only a matter of time. Just a few years prior to Titanic in 1907, the North German Lloyd liner SS Kronprinz Wilhelm struck an iceberg and suffered damage to her bow. Fortunately, she managed to limp into port. It was this incident and the RMS Republic sinking that helped fuel the mistaken belief that ships were either too safe to sink or would take so long to do so that help would arrive with plenty of time to spare. The lifeboats, of course, acting to ferry passengers and crew to the rescue vessel.
But the Kronprinz Wilhelm accident illustrates that given time and no change in procedure, something like the Titanic disaster was all but inevitable.
@@thomasackerman5399 if only they had just taken precautions before lives are loss....
And if the republic or the SS Kronprinz Wihelm sank or sank faster than Titanic's passengers could have been spared
Excellent point. I often wonder how long it would have been before ship safety was improved had Titanic not sunk.
One thing to keep in mind about "Mauretania" vs "Titanic" was that "Mauretania" had been built with a loan from the Admiralty with the idea that she (and her sister-ship "Lusitania" could be converted into armed merchant cruisers in time of war. So, their construction was done with naval requirements in mind.
Still not an excuse for not having a double Hull
@@streamerbtwa229 Actually it was, because that "double hull" was actually just the coal bunkers.
It didn't help the Lusitania at all, and is even speculated that it worked against her.
Double hull is a double edged sword, it's more weight on the sides which can propagate issues with list, even the Queen Mary was known for heavy list.
Fill these spaces with water and you get a list prohibiting launching of lifeboats on the opposite side, and water has a history of breaking through coal bunker bulkheads.
The issue wasn't the way those big ships were built, it was that they were built before proper emergency and rescue procedures were put into place to make sure they could be used safely.
The funny this is that the lessons of the titanic were put into titanic’s still under construction sister, the Britannic. It was retrofitted with massive electric lifeboat davits. When the ship sank, even with a heavy list and only 55 minutes. Everyone got into a lifeboat and off the ship. That didn’t save all of them from the propeller unfortunately. And that was a retrofitted Titanic, so I think a ship entirely built with the titanic disaster in mind would have no problem ensuring the safety of its passengers.
Yeah agreed
It's a surprise that gantry Davits never caught one
Britannic was out of this world unlucky,just like her younger sister Titanic.Due to war,watertight doors were always closed but were opened for 5 minutes from time to time for crew to pass,and thats when she struck a mine.The mine caused damage that jammed the watertight doors open.Im positive she wouldve made it without that misfortune.
Olympic was the 1st to be retrofitted
@@ajsnagratin6504 well there is always the issue of open portholes. Regulations were for those portholes to remain closed at all times but unfortunately many of them were not at the time of her sinking. It is likely that many would have ended up below the waterline even if that watertight door had not failed and might have dragged the ship under anyway.
Crew launched boats against orders before the engines were stopped.
It was interesting seeing that the Queen Mary almost did sink in very heavy seas too. It needed to roll about another 3-4 degrees and it would have rolled over. It had the nickname 'The rolling Mary' as it was top heavy and was actually built higher than the original plans had allowed for. 2 people even died in accidents during the ships history on the seas due to it's rolling nature.
True. I think the height was compensated with width on the olympic class ships, if I remember correctly passengers noted how steady they were
@@89schofe i haven't really looked into those but i wouldn't be surprised. I find the older ocean liners fascinating though compared to modern ships.
The wave that hit QM and knocked her on her beam ends was a freak wave - she actually did remarkably well to right herself after being hit by it - several other ships have been sunk by them.
That’s the one thing that modern ships seem to forget - the higher you go, the more ballast you need to maintain a 90° upright position! Without this any list is going to cause a ship to potentially roll.
Constaconcordia aside, I wonder if it’s extremely wise to keep building cruise ships so tall without the beam being appropriate with? Granted this makes it hard to go through various locks around the world, but at the same time unless you have enough beam versus another deck, you’re gonna have a problem!
@@tomriley5790 That incident happened during wartime with close to 10,000 troops onboard. That's a lot of extra weight being carried, and still she didn't capsize. She was a lucky ship.
I didn't know the literal extent of the Queen Mary's double-bottom hull, or the lifeboats' outer ribs. I had fragmented understandings about these features. I learn so much from you, Alex. I've loved the Queen Mary since late elementary school, and you know way more than I do.
I stand in awe of the fact that this living legend still exists today. I mean you have to realize that this vessel is a little bit bigger than the Titanic but a direct cousin to her. I’m so happy to be able to see such a magnificent ship today.
TITANIC 46'000 QM 80'000 It's not far off twice the size.
TITANIC white star line. QM Cunard QM was more of a cousin to MAURITANIA and LUSITANIA. TITANIC to OLYMPIC and BRITANNIC..
Much much bigger
Then titanic
Another work of "Alex" art. Nothing like a good Queen Mary story to make a day. While at work today, at lunch, we watched your "Disneyland Railroad" series. Thanks for all your "HOURS" of hard work you do for us the viewer.
Thanks! Glad you like the videos!
What if it didn't...No Samsung or Golaith in Belfast built either boat ...What if it was a Titanic Story! A kind of Trojan Horse, instead a way to move Staten Island Chambers Offshore...A Genocidal Media stunt, Imagine arriving at the port to be herded onto Skellig or into the Shanwick Triangle... offshore funding with human traffick ... The story is as Fictional as the boat DNA Graphene, Chernobyl and Geiger Counters... Deepfake Cover story for NATO NAZI EAPC Genocide! Another mouse trap like the Twin Towers? Organ trafficking is not Slavery it is UNWTO NATO Epstein Farming, Hunting, Gathering, Stalking, Baiting, Killing collecting Royalties and Charity Money for Depopulation Funding... De-colonisation Re-colonisation Decommissioning Recommissioning The Human Genome Project and science on humans military pension Ponzi schemes of death... Instructions Not Included...IVF babies delivered to police stations like Pablo Escobar and Krays on Trays... while Journalists write Johnson stories...a boat was relabelled, the cargo off loaded on Skellig, part of a moon landing fund raising stunt. Staten Island moving offshore. Today Ryanair Apple and Google Titanicked over 160 million into the Shanwick Triangle...Not NATO. NAT
The thing people tend to forget when they compare more modern ships to Titanic is that Titanic herself influenced the design of these newer vessels. The Queen Mary was designed with Titanic's sinking in mind, with features to avoid the litany of problems that occurred that night. And, to the credit of the crew, Titanic remained afloat longer than even her designer predicted. It just wasn't long enough.
This was such a captivating video on the safety features of the wonderful RMS Queen Mary and how they would fare in a similar collision as Titanic. Despite over a dozen visits to her in Long Beach and building several models of her, you shared many details that were previously unknown. Most notably, it was interesting to learn that she too had longitudinal bulkheads like the Lusitania/Mauretania, had caps at the top of her watertight bulkheads to potentially confine flood water, and ribs on the lifeboats to allow them to pass over the riverheads in the event of a list during an evacuation. The question that next comes to mind is, how would a modern ocean liner like Queen Mary 2 handle such a collision? Of broader curiosity, how would a less robustly built standard cruise ship handle this? As for the RMS Queen Mary herself, please spread the word on her current plight as repairs are so urgently needed to save her for future generations. Many thanks for all your work in creating this video for us!
Thanks Bruce, my video series on the Queen Mary is meant to mainly educate people on the history and technology of the ship. My hope is to show people there is more to know about her, and inspire someone to step forward to help save her.
A lot people think the longitudinal bulkheads is what made Lusitania sink quicker
@@AlextheHistorian Surprisinglly little has been said that the hull of the ship was manufactered in Belast Ireland.Could it be the hull as made out of inferior material not capable of withstanding the frigid water temps.?!
What if The Olympic rammed an ice berg?
I mostly agree with this, but Titanic was going around 21 to 22 knots when she collided with the iceberg. Queen Mary was an even more massive ship that could easily reach 28 knots. Wouldn't this make a difference?
I would think that her reaction to the helm would have been even faster because of her far greater speed.
@@cunard61 plus two rudders!
Queen Mary only had one rudder
It’s all hypothetical, we will never know.
Another great vid Alex. Agree with all your conclusions.Worth a mention: Queen Mary sailing under 1914 SOLAS regulation required lifeboat drill on 1st day so pax would be familiar with their boat location and life preservers. Titanic never had a lifeboat drill as the Capt. cancelled it on 4th day out because it was Sunday.
The Queen Mary was simply a newer ship, built with the lessons learned from the Titanic disaster and the loss of Titanic's sister ship, the Britannic. She was far more resistant to damage.
Yes but I had wondered how much better the Queen Mary would have done. In the end, not much better, there's a high chance she too would have sank.
@@AlextheHistorian The lessons learned mostly went into avoiding collisions with icebergs in the first place.
I had a namesake on the Titanic, and I have been intrigued by it since first reading Walter Lord's book, "A Night to Remember" back in the late 1950s.
But, despite the fact that you have no authoritative knowledge, I like your reasoning and your humility. I'm also impressed by the quality of the visual illustrations in the Video, Alex! Well done!! :)
Thanks! Sometimes we ocean liner fans just need a fun video, even if it lacks engineering knowledge.
A namesake? Someone named Beat Mueller?
Sadly the Queen is very much neglected and in need of tens of millions for restoration. The money isn't really available. I hope a solution is found
They Should Just Scrap The Damn Thing 😃
Nah they won't do that, it's too expensive. The ship is still capable of generating revenue, so as long as they refurbish it, they can make a return on that investment, even at a slow rate. That's why it's undergoing preservation work
Queen Mary Sinking Scenario: Generally, I agree that QM would have had a much better chance at surviving a collision similar to Titanic's. However, I would like to bring forward that QM was both heavier and - all other factors being equal in the scenario - would have been going much faster than Titanic. That changes a lot of factors that can affect everything else, as the crew may have less time to react from seeing the berg, to the ship receiving more damage, to a number of other things that cannot be accounted for, and can affect the scenario further down the line.
So again: I agree that QM had all the advantages that Titanic lacked in construction and cultural experience (the QM's entire career was with Titanic in living memory for one thing, and Titanic was the cause of a lot of the changes that were incorporated into QM), and as British steamlines recruited officers from the Royal Naval Reserve, they would have had the training and discipline to deal with such a crisis. But when you have thousands of people crammed into what is in comparison a very small can on a very big ocean, it can easily turn into disaster even with the best of effort.
3:00 - 'Why didn't Titanic have a double hull?' Because the probability of the ship taking the sort of damage that would require it was very unlikely. Titanic was built with the most probable collision scenarios of ship disasters up to that point: Ramming something, being rammed, and running aground. All of which are more likely while close to shore and/or port, with rocks that may or may not be properly charted, and crowded shipping lanes, and are thus typically at half or slow speeds. A full speed side-swipe - while potentially possible - was as close as you can get to an Outside Context Problem while not relying on fantasy or sci-fi.
Furthermore, remember that Mauretania was built to near military spec, due to being largely funded by HM Government with the expectation of being used as an auxiliary cruiser in wartime. Hence the side compartments - She and Lusitania are (in the most strict definition) the largest Protected Cruisers in the world. Had Cunard been able to build them normally, the coal would have been stored more like Titanic.
QM's double hull/fuel bunker setup has more in common with Olympic's Post-War configuration, after she was converted to burning oil.
7:05 - Titanic did develop a list, though while it certainly affected boats on the starboard side, it wasn't as bad as you made it out to be. In comparison, Lusitania - Mauretania's sistership and in possession of the side-bunkers - leaned far enough over to genuinely make lowering boats impossible, and genuinely would have benefitted from those rails on the sides of the boats.
look no further, Olympic is a testament o how well-built these sisters were..!!
Factor he does not seem to know or remember was that Lusitania and Mauritania were both subsided by the British Government to be used as auxiliary Cruisers-
In fact both were built in response to J.P. Morgan buying up ocean liner companies (White Star Line and Holland America for starters) (this was in the INM company) Cunard was in danger of loosing out to rivals so went to the British Government who helped pay for new Ocean Liners thus cost was not as big of an issue as with Olympic Class which were not built with a subsidy.
I hope nobody here thinks I was trying to put down Titanic's design. I wasn't trying to make it sound like she wasn't well built.
As for the collision scenario, I was estimating that all factors were the same, that INCLUDED speed. In my scenario, Queen Mary was traveling the same speed as Titanic. I was trying to eliminate as many outside variables as possible in order to understand the difference in collision reaction.
Also, I know that Lusitania and Mauretania were government subsidized and built to better war specifications, I guess I just assumed that with the advent of double hull design, I thought every company would want their ships to have it. Especially when a ship is branded "unsinkable".
@@AlextheHistorian I think the extra cost was why. plus part of the extra plating was since they were being intended to be Aux Cruisers. Just think in a different time line we might have had HMS Lusitania and HMS Mauritania running around escorting conveys.
As it happened only Olympic sank a U-Boat.
The fact that the Cunards' were partly government subsidized to serve war purposes gives me some fantasy today that the Government would subsidize construction of Modern Ocean Liners that could be converted to use as hospital ships.
This is particularly reasonable since the Navy is not happy with Comfort and Mercy since their Tanker construction makes them very slow so they take forever to get to a disaster area.
A modern Ocean liner could be built specifically to be easily converted to a Hospitable ship within a very short time (the crew could even be duel merchant Marines so that they would be trained for both)
Or, they could rebuild the fastest ocean liner of all, the S.S. United States, which sits, gutted in Philidelphia, ready for an internal rebuilding.
No other liner has ever beat her Blue Ribband crossing time of three days plus. Her hull plating was built to military specs. at an inch and a half thick. She is faster in reverse than any other liner was at full ahead! As a hospital ship she could get anywhere in the world in a !atter of days.
I would assume, that the damage to the ship is proportional. So Queen Mary being longer than Titanic, should get around 310 feet long breach. It can also be supported by the ship shape. Titanic damage is where ship is getting narrower toward the bow. Breach end where the hull is getting straight. So Queen mary would suffer floding in 8 compartments. The question is if the damage would be deep enough to breach oil tanks. Most likely not. But with 5 fully floded compartments her bow will dip below the waves and water start getting into the ship from the top, above the watertight compartments, and then ship is doomed anyway. It would most likely take much more time to sink.
Ya know, this man deserves more subscribers
Great video! Towards why the Lusitania and Mauritania had double hulls but the Olympic and Titanic did not, I believe it was to how the two classes were financed. The Lucy and Maury were partially financed by the Royal Navy, and as a result were expected to be converted to auxiliary cruisers in wartime. As part of that, their mechanical spaces had to be protected from shells, thus a double hull was worked into the design with the coal bunkers acting as the buffer, similar to warships at the time. Olympic and Titanic were privately financed and thus did not have that same restriction placed on them. I suppose the thinking for the time with private enterprise was that the subdivided hull would be enough, and that the most likely damage to occur would be from the bottom through groundings (IE the strange 1909 accident the RMS Empress of Ireland had). Any damage from the side would likely result from collisions with other vessels, thence why she was rated for any two compartments flooded or the first 4.
wait, i thought the Empress of Ireland was involved in a collision, not a grounding?
edit: yup, she was. "RMS Empress of Ireland was an ocean liner that sank near the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River in Canada following a collision in thick fog with the Norwegian collier Storstad in the early hours of 29 May 1914."
True on both counts. As ships kept getting bigger, nobody thought that they could sustain enough damage to breach 4 compartments, let alone more than that.
@@Railman1225 yep a deep laden collier at that so when she was struck amid ship the worst damage was especially low and especially deep in her hull. However he is right about why Lucy and Mary's coal bunkers lined the hull instead of being placed athwart ship.
Suggestion, same topic: would Queen Mary survive what sunk Titanic’s sister ship the Britannic
Lusitania was double hull and she sunk so Queen Mary would also sink. Double hull would not protect against torpedoes or mines but a relatively gentle impact like the one Titanic had, double hull would be handy.
@@samanli-tw3idyeah a double hull would not survive a mine or a torpedo hit, because it will burst the two steel plated when either struck a double hull ship,
Example is the RMS Lusitania.
The mine hit in the Boiler room, below the First funnel, that part of the ship has a double hull.
3:44 - read Simpson's book on the Lusitania, those compartment were made "useless because the weight of the coal lodged coal in the seams of the door, making them impossible to shut. They were actually cut off early on. I think Colin had the number of open doors through the hull to the engine rooms at 127. I LOVE THIS VIDEO!
Just a technical note:
The iceberg that was struck by Titanic did not "puncture" the steel plates.
It buckled (or bent) the plates and popped rivets that held the plates together, compromising the watertight integrity of the ship in those 1st 5 compartments.
Engineers have calculated that the total size of the openings created in the hull was about 12 sq feet.
Approximately the size of the front door to an average house.
I know, I only said that it "pierced the hull". I wasn't directly referring to it ripping the plates apart, only that the iceberg made it so water entered the hull.
That is astonishing to think about. It makes sense, though, when one considers that the water entering through those gaps between the plates was under significant pressure.
and even that let in 7.1tonnes of water in a second
@@AlextheHistorian"Breached" would be a better word choice.
@@AlextheHistorian one reason the hul of the Ttanic was ripped brcause of inferior brittle steei manufactured in Belfast Ireland causing the hull to bemuch more brittle than original specs. called for.This was the death sentence for the the great ship!
Nice discussion. Well prompted as an opinion. Good points.
I particularily like the rib-ski detail on the lifeboats.
Also in era of Queen Mary, communications with other ships(inter ship communication) would have been better coordinated and there would have been scenario of California not responding to Titanic's calls. That would have definitely saved more lives..
Wow! That must have been the longest 45 seconds ever! before hitting the Iceberg! Thank You Alex for sharing both the Ships history.
I think it's unlikely she would have sunk, obviously she could have however one of the key differences is that there was a better understanding of the fracture characteristics of steel and therefore the steel that QM was built from would likely have behaved in a less brittle and more ductile failure - leading to less water ingress. QM going down by the head would likely have been able to deploy her lifeboats and there were sufficient lifeboats for her passengers, all lessons learnt from the Titanic. Good video I agree with your conclusions! Interestingly although I can find a turning circle for the titanic, I cannot find one for the Queen Mary, Titanic had a famously undersized rudder for her mass, I doubt QM did - it's possible QM would have missed the iceberg completely.
Let’s not forget she had a head on collision in WWII and she faired well. I don’t know how many bulkheads were breached but the collision mirrored that of the RMS Olympics collision before the Titanic set sail. Loved the video excellent work.
Then there's the "Stockholm", who survived a head-on collision in the 1950s and went on to survive for several more decades under different names. She tried to go to Havana during the Cuban Missile Crisis under East German ownership, and she was also attacked by pirates in the Gulf of Aden in 2008.
Unfortunately, the ship she collided with - the Andrea Doria - sank.
@@Rickyrab And (I believe at the time of writing) she's still in service today, the oldest passenger\cruise ship in service.
When considering that the first passenger ship in the world with a double hull, the *SS Great Eastern* , survived a larger amount of damage on a voyage than the Titanic, and made it to port, says it all about the benefits of a Double Hull. RMS Olympic was retrofitted to have a double hull (among other features), so at least some good came of the tragedy.
I think also that the Titanic's crew trying to run hoses from the engine room to assist with damage control (once the scale of the damage was known) is often overlooked, despite the ship having the most powerful marine engines in service at that time. The cruel irony is that this was among multiple things on-board that could have kept her afloat if implemented sooner / at all.
SS Great Eastern was like that because it was constructed by engineering legend Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
Once Titanc struck the iceberg, nothing was going to keep her afloat. Getting the pumps running sooner would have bought her a bit more time, but she was still going to the bottom.
^ Disagree. There were - in hindsight - multiple materials and resources onboard that would have brought the flooding under control, but only one of those was actually attempted (running hoses from the engine room to aid the pumps), but too late to tip the balance.
The disaster did lead to radical rethinking of nautical safety though, and was less ghastly than it could have been.
(see the fate of the Naronic for why)
@@TSR1989FF you can disagree all you want but it doesn't change the fact that nothing on earth was going to keep Titanic afloat once she hit that berg. When the managing director of Harland and Wolf, the man most directly responsible for her design and construction says that she has no chance and will be on the bottom of the ocean in an hour you can rest assured he had considered all of the design elements of the ship that might keep her afloat.
Titanic did NOT have the most powerful engines afloat either. The most powerful engines afloat at the time of her maiden voyage belonged to Lusitania and Mauritania.
^ Amusing attempt at absolutism, but false, on both points.
The supposed [yet uncited] opinion of one historical figure is also irrelevant, as it doesn't disprove the contrasting examples given.
Well thought out and well supported. Thank you, Alex, for another entertaining video.
I found this very interesting and enjoyable. I imagine that even if the Queen Mary's bow gone further underwater, to the point where the Titanic split apart, she wouldn't have split due to the hull features you described. Or maybe she would. I know nothing about engineering or shipbuilding. But I do wonder if the Queen Mary was built to prevent it
I think even back then, no one believed Titanic split. The commonly accepted detail was that Titanic slipped beneath the surface in one whole piece, with grace and dignity...which was far from true. It's for that reason I don't think Queen Mary could stay in one piece.
I read a book written before the wreck was discovered. It was a fiction adventure story about a team who accidentally found the wreck, whole except for the rent in her hull. So they devise a plan to repair and raise her to the surface. It's a better story than I make it sound. But I think it shows that everyone still thought she sank in one piece for a long time
@@deborahsojourner6755 isn't that Raise the Titanic?
@@AlextheHistorian Britannic sank in one piece, and was structurally almost identical to Titanic. The one notable change was the bottom of the expansion joints in the superstructure. On Titanic they ended in a wedge, which may have focused stresses and caused cracks to extend down the side of the hull beneath (think like the groves int he top of a bar of chocolate making it easier to snap). on Britannic, they had swapped those for a rounded end to the joints which dispersed stresses evenly and avoided cracks.
Awesome. Very insightful. My new fav channel
Thanks!
To make a long answer short, if it's the exact same extent of damage - 5 to 6 compartments breached - then yes she should survive and even if she sinks, one it oughta take longer due to her greater size and strength, and two most if not everyone should be saved. :D
It still amazes me just how similar these two ships are.
Alex there is nothing like your videos!!!
Amazing and very informative!!!
Thank you!
At least one of the Titanic's sister ships was refitted after her sinking with a double hull. It did require shrinking the size of the central boiler to give room.
This potentially points to why Titanic didn't have it initially. The blue riband, or speed record for the fastest Atlantic crossing. It was a huge point of pride to be the record holder.
The thing is that Titanic nor her sister ships could ever dream of capturing the Blue Riband, they were not built for speed and were too slow to compete with Mauritania.
@@AlextheHistorian I belive White Star & Bruce Ismay designed the Olympic class ships for luxury & not for speed.
Yes I know, I was only telling tnexus13 that because they thought Titanic would have got the Blue Riband eventually and that's not the case
Britannic was still at Harland and Wolff and was built with one - it was one of the causes of the delay, Olympic was retrofitted causing a huge amount of time out of service which also included the firemen going on strike.
Other modifications structurally took place as well.
It's good to see that one of the most inexplicably persistent Titanic myths is finally starting to fade away. The absurdity of an Olympic class ship making a run at the Atlantic Record (Blue Riband) is analogous to someone entering their Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham in the Daytona 500 and hoping to win.
Alex makes a great point 3 mins in: lack of logitudinal bulkheads: Olympic class compartments were far too big.
Maybe if the Queen Mary was to hit Titanic's iceberg, the Queen Mary would have probably stayed afloat with 5 or 6 compartments flooded.
I appreciated the disclaimer. Having said that , I thoroughly enjoyed the presentation, bring a QM buff.
And Brunels' Great Eastern also had an inner hull !
I GIVE YOU MY GREATEST COMPLIMENT! Alex, one of my bugaboos over the sixty plus years I've indulged my Titanic fascination is that almost NO ONE EVER MENTIONS the reality sticking up right in their faces! YOU HAVE! You see, no one bothers to address the fact that subsequent (and even earlier ones) had watertight compartments with, well, for lack of a better name, CLOSED TOPS! Yes, the water spilled over the Titanic's poorly designed compartment and with the Mary, no such luck, water! So GOOD FOR YOU. Details matter to understanding. One tiny picky little thing? I DID note how in one near to the end of the vid scene, you snuck in a pic of the TWO FUNNELED Queen Liz. Just wanted you to know I saw that and that I know what I'M TALKING ABOUT, which is why my compliment to you COUNTS! Best wishes and continue your great vids!
Nice job putting this together.
I think it is almost impossible to speculate if QM even with better communications, newer construction architecture & engineering, and advancements in life saving equipment would survive hitting Titanics iceberg.
Cunards Luisitania has the same double hull and side mounted coal bunkers and one torpedo sunk her in 18 minutes.
The communications advantage ie intercoms and electric davits might if failed taking on that much water, who knows?
There are many factors that may of saved QM or may of doomed QM. I dont know either.
But I did enjoy the video and your thoughts for healthy debate
I enjoyed this comparative analysis of the Queen Mary's chances, hitting Titanic's burg. Thanks.
I think you are incorrect about the oil tanks. They are actually integral in the double hull, i.e. the oil is stored in the space formed by the inside and outside skin. There is no third skin.
I hadn't thought of it that way, I think you're right.
I don’t even wanna think about the queen going down, that would of most definitely changed the course of history
I'm really glad you're making this video series. One of my favorite places to go is the Queen Mary. It's a treasure that needs to be preserved. Of a more civilized age.
Thanks Alex for sharing a very good video!!! Enjoying your videos!
Just waiting to wake up one morning and hearing the hull on the QM finally suffered a catastrophic breech from the 50 years of rust deterioration inside the hull. She's in dreadful shape today.
Salt water is the enemy of all things man made.
Neat very well done. I crossed the Atlantic from Southampton on the QE2. Captain Warrick gave an afternoon briefing with maps that showed even by modern standards the Titanic was further north than even today ships consider safe for crossing. So I guess we can assume Queen Mary would not knowingly steam into an ice field. Reading criticism of Titanic it is noted that no other ship is known to have lost its life to an iceberg.
My opinion is that amount of damage may have still sunk the Queen Mary. One of the prominent features of the titanic sinking is she only developed a minor list. Most of the passenger ships since up to and including the Costa Concordia capsized while flooding and sinking. Another Prominent example is the Andria Doria. She also listed greatly and layer over on her side as she sank.
I believe the regulations now require the cruise ships and ocean liners be designed and equipped to be able to completely evacuate all the passengers and crew in somewhere around 45 minutes to 1 hour.
However, the costa Concordia totally failed in that mission.
Wow! Very interesting. The short is I believe that Queen Mary would survive a collision with a Iceberg. Look at the incidents she actually had. She rammed Caracao at full speed and survive. And in 1937 and 1942, she was slammed by 90 foot tidal waves and manage to hang on. Queen Mary is just more technologically advance for her time. Not to sound haughty but she can ever survive running around which is more than I can say for Costa Concordia. Thank you for your insight, Alex
Are you able to make more comparisons with the titanic and queen Mary. Like what if britannic hit titanics iceberg or what if queen Mary sank backwards idk I was just thinking how all this would work out.great video by the way!
I have now watched all the videos in the Queen Mary series. You sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.
Thank you
The reason the hull breached so easy was the lack of knowledge at the time of carbon content in the steel and how it becomes brittle in severely cold water temperatures. The steel plates acted like glass in those cold water temperatures. Unfortunately they did not understand impact properties at low temperatures and how critical the carbon content of the steel is at those temps.
They have never found evidence of the steel plates being fractured or ripped from the impact with the iceberg. What they did find was missing or torn rivets. Rivets had to be slightly weaker than the steel plates so that the riveters could pound them in by hand. And the rivets didn't fail because of weak steel, they failed because two massive objects far greater and heavier than them collided.
Carbon steel had existed for nearly 2,000 years by the time Titanic was built, the reason the hull breeched so easily is because over 40,000 tons of ship met hundreds of thousands of tons of ice while going 20 knots... for a scale reference, make the best thimble you can out of any material, but it has to be foil thin, then place it on the sidewalk and smash it with a hammer. The material and temperature won't matter, it's the force of the hammer (representing the momentum of a massive ship) trying to dump its energy into an immovable object (the sidewalk, which represents the iceberg) with a relatively thin wall between the 2 (the thimble which represents the hull of the Titanic). Ships this big going this fast don't bounce off of things, either the thing they hit moves out of the way or something breaks.
How is it then that Titanic's sister ship operated successfully for 23 years?
@@dovetonsturdee7033 Not colliding with an iceberg may have helped a lot I guess...
@@vchiu9560 Indeed. But Olympic's longevity rather disproves the sub-standard materials claim. Titanic sank because of an event totally outside her design parameters, not because of any intrinsic design or material flaws.
This was quite a cool analysis I like how you aded detaile
An interesting idea. I don't blame you for the 20 years difference, as Cunard clearly had a different approach to their hulls that would as you pointed out could have changed the whole affair. An equally good one would be the Titanic and one of today's cruise ships. You would naturally have to factor in that the passengers today would be drunk, in the casino, and at the buffet, and probably someone would want a safe space lifeboat.
and more passengers would be morbidly obese.
Cunard built their ships to essential military standards.
Oh indeed! When I was on a cruise ship during the initial passenger drill/evacuation training, a couple refused to take part in it. First they said that one of them was sick. When the doctor went to give aid, it turns out they simply refused, because "We live on an island, we know everything about boats".
[The next day they got a a special induction by the Safety Officer...]
@@katho8472 I knew lots of Bahamians who didn't know how to swim. What the hell does living on an island have to do with anything. haha Glad to see that the SO was on the ball.
@@davidshepherd397 My thoughts exactly. Thanks to them the drill took around 30 minutes longer than usual. Quite unhelpful if the (theater/entertainment/food&beverage) crew is on a tight schedule for the "Welcome aboard" party...
The most important factor in the Titanic sinking was the coal fire. And no, I don't mean that the fire weakened the hull and caused it to sink faster- that's a myth. The fire meant that all the coal in that bunker on the starboard side had to be shoveled out and transferred to the port side. Those hundreds of additional tons of coal being moved resulted in Titanic crossing the Atlantic with a one or two degree list to port. In effect, it was a counter balance to the water rushing in from the starboard side after the collision. Forty minutes after the collision, Thomas Andrews calculated the ship would sink within the hour. In his mind, after an hour or so, Titanic would capsize to starboard. He wasn't factoring in the coal fire. Instead, the ship took more than two and a half hours to sink and remained mostly stable until after she split in two. In every other shipwreck, the vessel capsized. Titanic did not, and that was because of the coal fire.
My guess is IF the QMII suffered enough damage to sink following a collision, then the odds are that she would capsize and probably sink much quicker.
Queen Mary 2 wasn't the subject of this video
@@AlextheHistorian Typo. My bad lol
The Mauretania and the Lusitania were financed by the British government with the provision they be designed to serve as armed merchant cruisers in the event of war. This does explain why the Mauretania had the coal bunkers placed on the side (to protect against shellfire as the submarine was an unknown menace at the time of her construction) and why she had the full double hull. No I imagine with the Olympic & Titanic the designers assumed that there was no possibility that more than 4 compartments could possibly be breached in any conceivable accident or collision so the addition of a double hull would have been considered an unnecessary expense.
Question: so if the submarine threat was known at the time, what would have to be done differently with Lusitania and Mauretania's design to better protect them from a torpedo strike?
@@Kaidhicksii perhaps the provision of a hollow double hull *plus* Olympic style transverse coal bunkers (coal dust will ignite when detonated) to lessen the chance a torpedo would hit a bunker.
Significantly enhanced pumping capacity, and more redundancy in everything. Perhaps a longitudinal watertight bulkhead splitting the engine & boiler rooms (controversial however - can lead to capsizing).
@@Kaidhicksii Too late by then. Master's instructions for Lusitania / Mauretania included that if the ships ever assumed a certain list and did not then right themselves, the Master was to abandon ship at once. The cause of this would be penetration of a coal bunker and the loss of its buoyancy on that side - Empress of Ireland gives a grisly example of what could happen. Lusitania suffered two more debilitations; a coal dust (they think - the ship was not carrying enough munitions to create an explosion like it suffered) explosion that (apparently - the wreck has collapsed on the side with the torpedo hit, and it can't be examined) blew out part of the bottom, and once the ship listed the up-side lifeboats were almost unuseable as they dangled inboard, and couldn't easily be swung over the railing. Those that were, risked tearing their sides out on the hull's rivets; and Lusitania sank much more quickly than Titanic so there just wasn't enough time to get everybody off. Lusitania never received the warning that u-boats had been lurking in the vicinity of the Old Head of Kinsale, Lusitania's customary landfall, or the Captain wouldn't have stopped zig-zagging.
And Empress of Ireland suffered a further design flaw. It was common for coal bunkers to run along the ships' sides, for easier refilling; but additionally, Empress of Ireland's staircases ran across-ship instead of fore-and-aft. So when the ship listed, half of the staircases were vertical and the other half didn't go anywhere fleeing passengers would conceivably want to go. And thanks to penetration of a coal bunker, Empress of Ireland also sank very fast.
Quite a good summation. QM wasn't exactly double hull (that's only for modern tankers and container ships) but she did have an 'inner skin' as shown which would protect against the berg penetrating into the main spaces. As mentioned, it could possibly breach the fuel/water tank(s) as well but the list would be slight as there's not a lot of difference in the weight of heavy oil (around 900kg/m3) and seawater at 1024kg/m3. Any list could be counterflooded by the tanks on the port side.
If Lusitania had been oil-fired, she could possibly have survived as the bunkers would have been oil/water tight.
However, the same inner skin was applied to Britannic, and she still sank!
The QM would have also sunk just in a different way. The bow would have dipped below the waterline and the starboard oil tanks would become filled with sea water causing a list to that side. Water would also enter the ship through other unforeseen means such as unlatched/improperly secure or open portholes or unsecured gangway doors. This would lead to flooding on the starboard side eventually culminating in a full capsize event. The survivors would then have to contend with an ocean full of Number 6 engine oil whose fumes would easily overwhelm many of them. The lifeboats would probably allow most or all of the passengers and crew to escape however assuming there was order and they were filled to capacity.
*More organised crew.
*Better intercoms.
*Navy level staff.
*Double hull
Just a nitpick. Titanic couldn’t stay afloat with ANY 4 compartments flooded. It was at its core a two compartment ship, but could stay afloat with certain combinations of 3 or 4 compartments.
Where you find that cause experts were saying the first 4 or any combination could keep it floating
@@Truecrimeresearcher224 It was any TWO compartments or the first four.
This was awesome Alex! Seriously great research and what-if lore, based in known facts.
The evidence indicates Titanic did have her engines at full ahead when she hit the berg. It took quite a bit of time to execute any engine orders back then and the engine room crew was not on stand-by at the time. Over the years the testimony of Fourth Officer Boxhall, who was not present on the Bridge when the evasive action orders were given, was taken as gospel. Other testimony indicates there was not time for engine room orders to be carried out either way before the impact. Titanic could stay afloat with 2-4 compartments flooded, depending on the location of the damage. I doubt QM could survive with ANY 5 compartments filled with water. The longitudinal bulkheads on Lusitania/Mauretania were problematic. If more than two flooded, the ships were in serious danger of capsizing.
A floodable length curve for QM would be a good starting point.
There are several major errors here, so the speculation has little basis.
Queen Mary: oh no, an Iceberg!
(hits and sank)
(moments later)
Titanic: oh hey, a new friend
I guess the Queen Mary would sink because she’s also made of iron
*steel
Yes, both Titanic and Queen Mary were made of steel.
Ok thanks for the corrections
I love your channel keep up the great stuff!
From what I have seen about the building of the Titanic , I think there are several reasons why it didn't have the safety features the QM did . First was Bruce Ismay was concerned on cost . And second , they were rushing to get the ships to sea . Adding a full double hull would cost way more time and money . Also having steel lifeboats and more of them would add a lot more cost as well .
Well I can forgive Titanic not having steel lifeboats, no ship had steel lifeboats back then, so I wouldn't expect it.
What they believed that there would always be other ships nearby to help as Titanic was designed to operate in a busy shipping lane.
@@AlextheHistorian Titanic did have quite large lifeboats compared to other ships of the time IIRC. Her and Olympic's Welin davits were also superior to the ones on Lucy and Maury.
Reminds me of my friend Mike Brady. Good work, excellent video.
The QM has water tight doors going much higher. But for starters also had a bigger rudder.
Please not again with the 'Titanic's rudder was too small' trope. It was a proven design on White Star's previous liners, just scaled up to meet the size of the Olympic-class. Studies found that at most, the rudders were only a few hundredths of something (forgot the measurement unit) too small. No. The problem was the ships weren't designed for speed and agility like with the Lusitania and Mauretania. Those 2 had rudders meant to help them make sharp turns, due partly to Cunard's partnership with the British Admiralty for their ships to be used as armed cruisers (which in itself later turned out to be ineffective due to the ships' great size) in the event of war. Titanic and her sisters were designed to operate as passenger liners and nothing more. Nobody expected that they would be put in a scenario where they'd have to make such a sudden and drastic turn. Even then, avoiding the scenario Titanic found herself in would've been a high order for any ship: you can't seriously expect to steer a ship over an eighth of a mile long like a high-performance car away from an obstacle that is only some 30-45 seconds away. Yet in spite of all this, the Olympic-class still had excellent maneuverability. Titanic herself very nearly missed the iceberg, only suffering a glancing blow that ruptured her hull rather than tore through it. And in WW1, Olympic was able to steer sharply into a German U-Boat which was hounding her, and if you know the story, she became the only ocean liner in history to ram and sink one.
Very good narrative! Keep making them!
Titanic's water tight bulk heads didn't go to top deck, so water could spill over. Also, one door may have been damaged by the coal fire. Also, it is possible that Titanic actually when over the iceberg which punctured a hole its bottom. Titanic was listing a little bit because the burned coal was moved to the other side of the ship. Since Queen Mary is newer and had improved safety features, it had a better chance of survival
Oh that's interesting I never knew the ship might have gone over part of the iceberg.
Also the steel in Queen Mary probably wouldn't be brittle from the cold water as Titanic's was like glass.
@@AlextheHistorian its one of the theories, i don't think it has been truly proven but it is one of the more modern theories that has come from newer research
I have read she sustained impact with a large rogue Wave- it briefly rolled her on the side, but she quickly righted herself, just as designed. This was a very well made ship!
There are many factors that would affect the performance of the Mary vs. Titanic in an Iceberg scenario
.. Due to the fantail & undersized rudder design of Titanic, she couldn't turn very fast at high speeds. The Mary's larger rudder, together with her 4 turbines producing 180,000HP, gave her much quicker response to sudden dangers. Additionally, the Mary's 4 huge propellers, were all capable of full reverse speed, vs. Titanic's two (her third center was only able to turn in forward direction. So it's a "Model T" vs. a "Ferrari"!
Well that scenario assumes the Queen Mary avoids the iceberg, which I'm sure she would have, but I wanted discuss whether or not she would survive a collision.
Can't emphasize enough that the life boat updates helped the most
It was the hubris that was the "folly" of Titanic. The steamship Sultana actually have more loss of life than Titanic (but was an earlier disaster) To NOT make "water tight" bulkheads that went all the way UP made it a "mute point" It was the arrogance that the ship would "never SINK" was on the minds of the crew as well as passengers. But, we know what reality WAS. There were also sooo many human errors including but not ltd to poor communication, bad decision making, parlaying fear + cowardice from a few.
Isn't that more mythology than fact? How do we know that arrogance was in the minds of the crew and who claimed that Titanic would never sink? What evidence of hubris is there on the part of either White Star or its employees? Were the builders or owners remiss in their duties or did anyone fail to follow standard operating procedure? By the way, the word is moot not 'mute'.
Good stuff man. I like this analytical speculation. We’ll put together. I appreciate you humble disclaimer 👍🏻👍🏻
Interesting detail.
To this day, the Queen Mary lifeboats are plugged into the ships electrical grid to keep them warm so they would start instantly when lowered.
They used to do a demonstration at 2 pm as you lunched in Sir Winstons Restaurant and Lounge. The things one can learn over champagne.
It’s cute that you illustrate Queen Mary as a smaller Ship than Titanic.
No I dont
4:10 In answering to this, Titanic was built to be a passenger liner first and foremost. Mauretania was designed to Admiralty specifications with the understanding that by funding their construction, the British Admiralty would retain the right to requisition the Mauretania and Lusitania as armed merchant cruisers in war. Having a double hull and coal bunkers running along the side was in line with British warship design at the time.
Fun fact: the coal bunker was breached and that’s what did the Titanic in. Yes five compartments breached would sink the ship but the pumps were able to keep up. When the coal bunker’s wall blew the fifth compartment was overwhelmed and the Ship was doomed.
Longitudinal bulkheads aren't always helpful Lusitania rapidly developed a massive list after being torpedoed, because the coal bunkers on that side of the ship flooded rapidly. Andrea Doria also developed a huge list after one of her fuel tanks were punctured, because the tank on that side filled with water whereas the tank on the opposite side was empty.
Ballast tanks can be used to counteract this problem in modern ships today!🙂👍🏻
HI CPT. ALEX ,, WE ENJOYED WATCHING YOUR VIDEO AGAIN!! WE LEARNED MORE ,WHEN YOU SEE SOME THING TWICE YOU ALWAYS SEE SOMETHING DIFFERNT.. VETERAN...
Nicely presented video. Thank you. You do have a good voice for narrating.
Thanks!
Great video and very informative. Thanks from a new subscriber :)
Thank you Alex.
Well she did survive t-boning the Curacoa, slicing it in half and kept going like it was a speed bump!
Interesting video, well done! I'm now wondering what would have happened to the Titanic's greater sister Olympic if she had hit an iceberg after her 1913 refit which included the addition of a second skin. Might be something to ponder?
The Titanic's hull sulphur-steel hull which became incredibly brittle in cold temperatures also meant the hole was far larger than it would be for a ship without that weakness suffering the same collision.
Thank you for making this - it's a very interesting video. I would love a similar one for today's QM2.
Queen Mary had significantly more and larger water pumps. Lessons learnt from titanic.
Very interesting and well done video!
People comparing the Concordia to why the Mary would sink BUT. Ocean liners are built with more problems/ safety features due to the fact they have to cross the Atlantic unlike cruises. I do agree I think the Mary could stay afloat. Concordia wasn’t built with the same level of concern for the Atlantic
Great video, with an excellent explanation of many of the different factors. I just have one quibble: at 1:07 you mention "a rare formation of ice that created an overhang." Like you, I am not a maritime engineer, but I was taught that as icebergs are 90% underwater, almost all of them will extend much further underwater than they do above the surface. It would be possible for severe damage to happen below the waterline, without the iceberg ever touching the ship above the water.
If I get back to Long Beach, I will visit the QM and contribute to the restoration fund.
Thanks again for a fascinating video.
Those weren't my words, National Geographic said that there was a nob of ice that jutted out away from the main berg. That it was a rare formation of ice creating an overhang. If it wasn't for that, she would have cleared the underwater part of the berg by several meters
That is correct. I noticed that. Underwater 'spurs' are actually fairly common on icebergs. One might have them, another won't. I believe it is due to uneven melting between the exposed (above the waterline) portion of the berg, and the submerged part (which is actually much harder and therefore a lot more resistant to melting).
I would add the challenge of making the damage relative to size. While the Titanic's damage was large it would be less to the Mary, therefore I would increase that amount of damage to correspond to the size of the ship. Secondly, the Titanic was driven through the water for 5 to 8 minutes again after the accident, which overpowered the pumps. I'd like to add that to the equation just for fun, it adds a few more variables to the comparison..
Modern passenger liners REQUIRE a muster drill (that's where the passengers get acquainted as to where to go in case of emergency and which lifeboat they're to show up at) for all passengers within 24 hours of sailing. Miss the muster drill and you're going to get kicked off the cruise. I'm pretty sure the Queen Mary was doing muster drills when she was in service. THAT in itself tilts the odds way in the favor the Queen Mary getting the vast majority of passengers OFF the ship in the face of an iceberg collision. (Not to mention that the Queen Mary had lifeboats for everyone and room for the odd pet somebody insisted on bringing with them.)
whoa, thank you, impressive analysis !
I think you have done a good job with this analysis of your hypothetical scenario.
One small quibble; at 7:24 it would've been more accurate to say "...they would act like the runners on sleds.. " since runners are the curved metal pieces on the bottoms of sleds which come into contact with the snow and/or ice and enable the sled and its rider to slide along.
The Titanic was not designed to float with ANY 4 or 5 compartments flooded. The minimum buoyancy reserve was any 2 compartments. The ship was also designed to stay afloat with the forward 4 compartments breached, at least in calm waters, as the bulkheads forward, including the so-called "collision bulkhead" reached several decks higher than the ones in the middle of the hull. Mauretania and Lusitania did NOT have double hull construction, but the arrangement of their coal bunkers along the sides acted, at least in theory, similar to a double hull, provided the coal bunker doors were shut or could be shut in the event of flooding from damage to the sides. Stability would indeed be a serious concern with this layout as the risk of capsizing with several of those bunkers filled was definitely high, especially in rougher seas.
The great British marine engineer, I. K. Brunel, launched his enormous masterpiece, the 'Great Eastern' in the 1850s. The largest passenger liner in the world at the time, and the only vessel powered by both paddles and a propeller, the Great Eastern also featured watertight bulkheads that extended up to the main deck, and a double hull that extended well above the waterline. In 1861, on approach to New York, that feature was tested, when the great ship struck an uncharted rock, which ripped open about 90 feet of the outer hull below the waterline.. The result was only a slight list, with no water penetration past the inner hull, and the ship made it safely to New York.
I think you should also have touched upon bilge pumps arrangement in Titanic vs Queen Mary.
A very good comparison though!!
At the time of making this video, I didn't have access to the full blueprints of either ships, so I didn't know what the bilge pump arrangement was. But now that I do, they wouldn't have made much of a difference.