When Did They Start Talking About the Expanshion Joint on the Titanic Again

Kea, Greece – A hundred years later on it sank in the Aegean, the Britannic is shedding light on what sent its doomed sister-ship, the Titanic, to the bottom of the Atlantic, equally well as creating a new diving industry in Greece.

The HMS Britannic had been serving as a World War I infirmary ship when it struck a High german mine five kilometres off the island of Kea, 60km southeast of Athens, in November 1916. The ship sank in just 55 minutes.

Leading up to the November 21 centenary of the sinking, applications for diving permits have soared and the Greek authorities wants the 49,000-tonne wreck, the largest in the world, to become the centrepiece of a serial of marine museums across the country.

"[It] volition be the kickoff underwater historical museum in Greece with international importance," says Angeliki Simosi, head of Greece'due south underwater antiquities department.

The reason why: Because the Britannic may concord the key to how and why the Titanic sank in 1912.

The Britannic's keel was laid at the Harland and Wolff shipyards in Belfast, simply five months earlier the Titanic was launched. The transport was barely taking shape when the Titanic went downwardly, and the disaster threw the shipyard into a crisis of confidence.

"These [ships] were technological firsts. They were the first ships ever this big," says Richie Kohler, who has made two documentaries nigh the Britannic. "They were extending the known abilities of engineering, given their ability to understand the tensile strength and things like that."

 The Titanic – a transport once deemed 'unsinkable' – went downwards in the Atlantic after a fateful standoff with an iceberg in 1912 [Omikron Omikron/Getty]

Kohler and his squad started diving on the Britannic 10 years ago "to hunt down a theory that the builders were afraid the Titanic had a failure, that they were correcting that failure on the Britannic, that they were trying to cover upwardly the possibility that the Titanic was a weak ship. The only way to do that was to become down and run into the design changes that were fabricated on the Britannic," Kohler says.

Some of those design changes are well-known. The Titanic'southward double hull only extended across the lesser of the send, defending the deep-drafted vessel against scraping the seabed. The iceberg had cutting just below the waterline, where the ship's pare was vulnerable. The Britannic was widened by one-half-a-metre so that a double skin could be installed along two-thirds of its length, protecting the boilers and engine rooms.

As the Titanic flooded, the h2o rose to overwhelm the bulkheads separating its compartments, spilling into 1 compartment after another. The Britannic'due south bulkheads were raised all the manner to the bridge deck.

Nearly important of all: the Britannic rectified the lack of lifeboats on the Titanic. Four enormous gantry davits were added to the decks capable of launching 44 lifeboats on both sides of the ship simultaneously.

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"The Britannic would have survived the damage which the iceberg inflicted on the Titanic," says historian Simon Mills, who bought the wreck of the Britannic 21 years ago, but Kohler and his squad discovered an additional, more subtle improvement, which may suggest that the builders had deeper concerns that the Titanic may have been doomed owing to a design flaw.

During British and American inquests into the Titanic'south sinking, the question of whether information technology had cleaved upwardly at the surface was raised. The reports were inconclusive.

In 1986, oceanographer Robert Ballard discovered the Titanic on the Atlantic sea flooring and plant that the send was indeed broken into two.

"Where did the Titanic crevice in half? Right at an expansion joint," says Kohler, who was on Ballard's trek.

Naval engineer Roger Long has since suggested that the joints, which captivated metal expansion owing to heat and stress from loftier seas, were poorly designed.

If truthful, the Olympic, the Titanic's predecessor, and the Britannic, its successor, as well suffered from the same fatal flaw.

"Roger Long's theory is that if any of the Olympians had got into a storm with 40ft waves, they would have broken in one-half on the surface," says Kohler, of the 3 ships. He discovered in 2009 that "Britannic'southward expansion joints were unlike".

The blueprint alter may advise that while the Titanic and the Britannic were meant to stay afloat with six compartments flooded, Harland and Wolff may accept suspected that their expansion joints couldn't withstand the stress of having half of the ship flooded and the other buoyant.

"At virtually 15 degrees, [the Titanic] went from beingness intact to breaking apart," believes Kohler.

Why did it sink?

Given the Britannic'south design improvements, why information technology sank remains a mystery. It is understood that the German mine it hit caused much more significant damage than the "pokes and stabs" the iceberg inflicted on the Titanic.

"They worked out that the hole that sank the Titanic amounted to about 1.5 square metres," says Mills. "On the Britannic, the scale of the damage was much, much bigger."

A giant crane lowers a 490-tonne boiler into Britannic's hull [Courtesy Simon Mills]

The admiralty's official report of the sinking says: "In that location seems to have been a period of one to 2 minutes from the time of the explosion until the h2o in the stokeholds was also deep for work to be performed." In other words, the massive boilers in forward holds v and vi, an area measuring 10.6m x 27.4m, were overwhelmed almost instantaneously.

"The mine hit in the worst possible place at the worst possible time. All those watertight doors downwardly below were open considering they were changing picket at 8 o'clock in the morning. Those doors should have been closed," says Mills.

In his own report of the incident, Captain Charles Bartlett says orders were "rung below to close watertight doors". This should have prevented the cross flooding of the holds.

"For some reason, the doors in the forward part of the send didn't close," says Mills. Fifty-fifty if electrical switches failed, the doors had manual levers. Declining that, a float mechanism should have triggered them.

Helm Bartlett reports that after the explosion, the send started "trembling and vibrating nigh violently fore and aft, standing for some time".

READ More than: In the Titanic's wake 100 years on

Underwater museum

The idea of an underwater museum was mooted every bit early on every bit 1963, but was only legislated in 2013. More 1,000 wrecks have been mapped in the Greek seas and some are already designated museums, just Kea dreams of becoming a global underwater Earth War I museum with three wrecks.

The Burdigala, a French steamer that sank while serving as a troop carrier just a calendar week before the Britannic, lies at a depth of 75m.

"It is intact. It was discovered eight years ago," says diver Yiannis Tzevelekos. "It actually is like being in an underwater museum. You can run across the telegraph, Marconi, ship's bong and chandeliers all in place … It's too upright, every bit though a human hand has placed it in a sailing position."

Betwixt the Burdigala and the Britannic, at just 35 metres, lies the Patris, a Greek storm-sunk steamer with 1 of its paddle wheels all the same in place. All are to become part of Kea'due south network of underwater galleries.

"Mass tourism isn't interested in pocket-sized destinations. If a place can show that it has a different profile, and so information technology can claim a piece of the market place," says Mayor Yiannis Evangeliou, who has spent four decades in the tourism industry. He plans to get further, and create a marine wildlife park for less experienced divers.

Vintage maritime history photograph of the RMS Titanic's propellers as the transport sits in dry dock [John Parrot/Stocktrek Images/Getty]

The beauty of the Britannic

Technical divers who have braved its 120-metre depth to see the Britannic's hulk stretching almost a third of a kilometre in the gloom, speak of information technology with awe. Jacques Cousteau, the first to visit the ship in 1976, allegedly said that "diving beyond the Britannic is like being a flea on the back of an elephant".

"What takes your breath abroad is the sheer size of the shipwreck," says Leigh Bishop, one of the world'southward virtually experienced deep-sea wreck defined. "You're physically in bear on with one of the Olympic Star liners. Where else tin can y'all effectively swoop down to the Titanic?"

"On the Titanic, you lot're painfully enlightened that 1,500 people died. Information technology is a night, barren, lifeless ship," says Kohler. "When yous go to the Britannic it is bathed in beautiful light; it is such a comfy, warm, blue-green … covered with growth and corals and sponges and fans, and everything is striving for low-cal and life."

The Britannic had its ain tragedy. As information technology evacuated a thousand crew members, Captain Bartlett tried to beach information technology on Kea. The ship had already begun to list to starboard, and the port propeller hung one-half out of the water as it roared to life. "Two boats were pulled into the turning propeller, and they were smashed to matchwood. Thirty people were killed and xxx or 40 were very seriously injured," says Mills.

The Britannic is important across its casualties and the lite it sheds on what happened to the Titanic. The ultimate Olympic class liner, it carried the largest boilers and steam-driven engines always built before or since.

Its speed of twenty knots was unprecedented for its size. Information technology was then the safest passenger vessel ever built. The Harland and Wolff launch booklet called it "both in design and construction, as perfect a specimen of man's creative ability equally information technology is possible to excogitate".

All the same, this pinnacle of Edwardian applied science was chop-chop overtaken by events. It never served as a passenger liner. Its life as a hospital send lasted just 11 months. The Britannic, perhaps more than any concrete object, lies every bit a testament to how shockingly and irreversibly the Nifty War changed the world.

Britannic takes shape in the Harland & Wolff Shipyard in Belfast [Courtesy Simon Mills]

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Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2016/11/21/the-britannic-and-the-titanic-a-story-of-two-ships

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