EoW July 2008

T ransat lant ic Cable

Popped rivets challenge bow-gash as an explanation for the sinking of the Titanic

until retirement. Another Harland and Wolff source, a former official of the company, said that big shipyards often had to scramble for parts and workers – and do, still, apparently. On one recent job, he said, Harland and Wolff had to look to Romania to supply welders. The marine scientists argue the case for faulty rivets, and detail their archive findings, in “What Really Sank the Titanic,” a new book from Citadel Press. James Alexander Carlisle, whose grandfather was a Titanic riveter, bluntly refutes the rivet theory on the website www.belfast-titanic.com Mr Carlisle wrote, “On the Titanic’s port side there is a three-metre dent, caused by the ship hitting the seabed. The dent has caused a 270-degree bend in the steel plates. This is most probably caused by the ship trying to bend after hitting the sea bottom. All rivets are in their original place.”

The general assumption has long been that an iceberg tore a huge gash in the starboard hull of the Titanic, which sank in under three hours in the early hours of 15 th April 1912. The discovery, in 1985, of Titanic’s resting-place two miles down in the North Atlantic opened up new avenues of inquiry. An expedition of 1996 found not a large gash but, obscured by mud, six narrow slits where bow plates appeared to have parted from the hull. Naval experts speculated that rivets had popped along the seams, admitting seawater under high pressure. Writing in the International Herald Tribune on the 96 th anniversary of the catastrophe, William J Broad picked up the story with the involvement, as of 1997, of Timothy Foecke of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal agency in Gaithersburg, Maryland. A specialist in metal fracture, Mr Foecke analysed two rivets salvaged from the Titanic and found about three times more slag than occurs in modern wrought iron. Slag, a glassy residue of smelting, could make rivets brittle and prone to fracture. (“Weak Rivets a Possible Key to Titanic’s Doom,” 15 th April) A team of scientists including Mr Foecke and Jennifer Hooper McCarty, whose doctoral thesis at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, analysed Titanic’s rivets, went on to study 48 rivets recovered over two decades from the ship’s grave and found many riddled with high concentrations of slag. In early 1998, the marine forensic experts announced their tentative findings. Mr Broad wrote: “The scientists found that the ship’s builder, Harland and Wolff, of Belfast, struggled for years to obtain adequate supplies of rivets and riveters to build the world’s three biggest ships at once: the Titanic and two sisters, Olympic and Britannic. Each required three million rivets, and shortages peaked during construction of the Titanic.” The account from that point, as pieced together from company and British government documents, has Harland and Wolff reaching beyond its customary suppliers of rivet iron to smaller forges employing workers of less experience and skill. Mr Broad wrote, “Adding to the threat, the company, in buying iron for Titanic’s rivets, ordered No 3 bar, known as ‘best,’ not No 4, known as ‘best-best,’ the scientists found.” According to Mr Foecke, “Some material the company bought was not rivet quality.”The damage to the hull, he said, “ends close to where the rivets transition from iron to steel.” Harland and Wolff also faced shortages of skilled riveters, according to archive papers cited by the scientists. Ms McCarty told the Herald Tribune that for a half-year, from late 1911 to April 1912, when Titanic set sail, the company’s board addressed the shortfalls at every meeting. The conclusions of the marine scientists are vigorously ❈ ❈ rejected by Harland and Wolff, still very much in business in Belfast. A company spokesman pointed out that Olympic, sister ship to the Titanic, sailed without incident for 24 years

Declares this voice of the opposition, “BAD RIVETS NOWAY!”

NAFTA and the neighbours

President Bush, contemplating a tattered legacy, tries to check erosion of his free-trade policies

“We talked a lot about [the North American Free Trade Agreement], and of course we agreed that this is not the time to even think about amending it or cancelling it,” said President Felipe Calderón, of Mexico, in the presence of President George W Bush, of the United States, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, of Canada. The Mexican president added, “This is the time to strengthen and reinvigorate this free trade agreement among our countries.” Perhaps. But the three counterparts have to know that their assertion of economic progress since 1994, when NAFTA was inaugurated, is not wholly embraced in any of their countries. Indeed, after two days of meetings with Mr Bush in New Orleans, in April, under the auspices of the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Mexican and Canadian leaders made a point of saying that, while they affirm their own faith in the pact that has eliminated tariffs and other restrictions on products traded among the US, Canada, and Mexico, they cannot bind their successors. Nor, of course, can the American president speak for his successor, who will be elected on 4 th November and take office on 1 st January 2009. But, while Mr Bush seems comfortable with the idea of quitting the Oval Office with much other important business on the desk, viz the Iraq war, he is clearly intent on shoring up his free-trade policy, which had seemed set to become one of the less contentious holdovers of his presidency. Over the months leading up to the election, Mr Bush has been increasingly critical of the two candidates for the Democratic nomination, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, both of whom have repeatedly pledged themselves to seek renegotiation of the terms of NAFTA.

24

EuroWire – January 2006 EuroWire – J ly 2008