Posted by Scott Andrews on April 26, 1999 at 08:00:46 in 205.147.245.41 :
In Reply to: Titanic-Discovery special posted by Dan Cherry on April 26, 1999 at 04:38:08:
Dan,
I have to agree with your assessment of the two specials. There was very little information presented in the first that was "new" or a "revelation". The towing tank experiment was interesting in that it confirmed one theory and put others to rest on how the bow sank and why it arrived on the bottom relatively intact.
The second special was very good, with the recorded survivor accounts and all. I'm still a little disappointed in the amount of interior footage they showed. Cameron's Russian crew actually got better interior footage of the wreck during their dives than Tulloch's people did. Stills from Cameron's footage were published in a recent issue of the THS's quarterly journal showing a good deal of intact woodwork within the first class reception room on D deck.
One theory these engineers are now espousing is that the stern of the ship didn't rise to the near perpendicular angle that all accounts of the sinking describe. In nearly every survivor account, passengers and crew alike, the same final event of the stern standing on end and remaining in this position for a period of time before slowly diving under is repeated over and over. In spite of what these engineers, Bill Garzke in particular, believe about this particular part of the sinking, the fact remains that there are several hundred eye-witness accounts on record of the ship's final moments. These accounts were from people located 360 degrees around the ship and at varying distances. At least one of these accounts (chief baker Charles Joughin's)was from the ship itself. It was a clear calm night and people in the boats could see the ship quite well, even after her lights had gone out. For years, many of these same people claimed to have seen the ship beginning to break up and no one believed them (too dark, too far away, didn't understand what they were seeing, etc.). Yet, now we know what they claimed to have seen to be true. So, why should anyone doubt the validity of the rest of these peopless observations? I would think that if these engineers were truely interested in the forensic study of thie sinking, they ought to be looking at how the chain of events would cause the stern to stand on end (pulled up to that position by the weight of the bow section still attached by the keel and bottom structure would be my guess) rather than espousing a theory that ignores what hundreds of people witnessed with their own eyes!
Regards,
Scott