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Mental Floss brings us “Ship Happens - 10 Things To Know Before Boarding an “Unsinkable” Ship“:

So, on that note, today is the 96th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Yes, we all know about Jack and Rose and their brief-but-intense relationship aboard the ship, but which details did James Cameron get right, which did he exaggerate and what did he leave out altogether? Below are 10 things you may not know about the real Titanic.

Read the full article HERE then head over and buy the official “Ship Happens” t-shirt HERE. While you have the credit card out… might as well pick up a gCaptain t-shirt!

Our recent post Was the titanic sunk by a small key? elicited some great response from our readers. Surprisingly, the best ones had little to do with the titanic itself and more to do with the cause of all maritime incidents… the error chain. First a recap from the original post:

While some point to the ship’s excessive speed, the vessel’s design or the positioning of the ship’s compass as the cause of the incident the facts clearly show the titanic sunk as a direct result of the accident chain>. In other words the titanic sunk, not due to one large error but a combination of small errors that linked together caused the tragic circumstances. Remove one small link in the chain and the incident is avoided.

It is interesting to note that a string of small errors caused by human error is the cause of most large maritime incidents. The lesson to be learned….. next time you make a mistake aboard ship listen for the voice in the back of your mind and quickly ask yourself; is this an isolated incident or indication of larger problems?

Shrivan states; “Now I understand how important keys can be in ships” to which Fred Fry replies; “Keys are important. Keys are power!”

This comment reminded Jim of a quote from his Captain: “Give a man key with a clipboard and you’ll find out what kind of person he is. Give them in the morning and you’ll know by lunch.”

Things start to get serious around comment number 20 where Bob Couttie writes:

In the past I’ve used ‘error chain’ and ‘domino effect when discussing accidents but, at the risk of getting too theoretical I think both are inadequate since they are basically descriptions of single-point failure (A chain fails when a single link fails, a domino falls over when its neighbour hits it).

The best physical description I think is the wooden tower game, “Jenga” or “Topple” in which players take turns removing blocks from a stack. The first few extractions don’t do much harm but as the process continues the stack becomes more and more unstable until one reaches a point where removing any block at all will cause the stack to fall over.

If you think of the tower as ’safety’ and the individual blocks as the elements, precautions, procedures that make up safety, you’ve got a fairly good visual model for how accidents happen.

Kennebec Captain replies in agreement and points us to this post on his blog:

A more helpful model is the Swiss Cheese Model first proposed by British psychologist James T. Reason (nice name!).

This site (Dukes.edu) has a nice graphic of the S.C. model.

The Swiss Cheese Model provide a positive method of reducing risk, rather then seeking to break some invisible chain, one simply adds layers, or increases the effectiveness of the existing layers (making the holes smaller). As an example, one could add a layer of crew training, or seek ways to improve the effectiveness of existing training, or use additional care during passage planning.

On a well run ship you can observe the Swiss Cheese Model in action Each near miss, representing a hole in one layer, is evaluated and if needed procedures are modified. Near misses, lessons learned, Bridge Resource Management, careful passage planning can all be seen as adding layers of cheese. Of course it may not be called that. Another name for the application of the Swiss Cheese model is - good seamanship.

So from the Titanic to Swiss Cheese I enjoyed the comments… thanks to all who participated!

Fellow maritime podcaster and friend Peter Mello points us to this interesting theory about the sinking of the world’s most famous ship. The NYTimes writes:

Researchers have discovered that the builder of the Titanic struggled for years to obtain enough good rivets and riveters and ultimately settled on faulty materials that doomed the ship, which sank 96 years ago Tuesday.

The builder’s own archives, two scientists say, harbor evidence of a deadly mix of low quality rivets and lofty ambition as the builder labored to construct the three biggest ships in the world at once — the Titanic and two sisters, the Olympic and the Britannic.

For a decade, the scientists have argued that the storied liner went down fast after hitting an iceberg because the ship’s builder used substandard rivets that popped their heads and let tons of icy seawater rush in. More than 1,500 people died.

When the safety of the rivets was first questioned 10 years ago, the builder ignored the accusation and said it did not have an archivist who could address the issue.

Now, historians say new evidence uncovered in the archive of the builder, Harland and Wolff, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, settles the argument and finally solves the riddle of one of the most famous sinkings of all time. The company says the findings are deeply flawed. Continue Reading….

The U.K.’s Daily Mail has the story of Second Mate David Blair, the lucky Merchant Mariner who was pulled off the Titanic just prior to her infamous voyage.

(Note: We are republishing this post on Today, the 96th Anniversary of the tragedy.)

Blair was replaced with the more experienced officer Charles Lightroller, Chief Mate of the Olympic, by White Star just four days prior to the tragic events and hours before departure. In the rushed turnover he made a seemly small but potentially critical mistake.

For those readers not familiar with the duties of a merchant officer, turnover is a critical time aboard ship. Today most mariners work an equal time-on time-off scheduled. For example, you may work 3 months aboard a ship then have the next 3 months off meaning there are two officers assigned to the ship in each position. The turnover between the two, however, is often a hurried process. The industry has built in many ways to avoid problems but the fact is you have one person excited to go home and another just starting a long hitch and sometimes “things” are missed.

So the day Blair signed-off he likely briefed Lightroller on his duties and operational specifics then gave him written notes and any items needed for the job. The mistake? Blair accidentally took the key to the binocular locker home with him.

The Daily Mail tells us;

Blair’s rush to leave Titanic he carried this key off with him in his pocket and forgot to hand it to his replacement, Charles Lightoller.

“Had Lightoller had the key then there probably would have been a pair of binoculars in the crows nest.

“It is supposition but, in lookout Fleet’s own words, they would have seen the iceberg sooner with the binoculars.

“It is the key that had the potential to save the Titanic.”

Senator Smith, chair of the inquiry, asked Fleet: “Suppose you had glasses … could you have seen this black object [the iceberg] at a greater distance?”

Fleet replied: “We could have seen it a bit sooner.”

Asked “How much sooner?”, he said: “Well, enough to get out of the way.”

I must stop the story and make it clear this mistake was just that ….a small error… therefore should Blair be blamed for the accident? Of course not. While some point to the ship’s excessive speed, the vessel’s design or the positioning of the ship’s compass as the cause of the incident the facts clearly show the titanic sunk as a direct result of the accident chain. In other words the titanic sunk, not due to one large error but a combination of small errors that linked together caused the tragic circumstances. Remove one small link in the chain and the incident is avoided.

It is interesting to note that a string of small errors caused by human error is the cause of most large maritime incidents. The lesson to be learned….. next time you make a mistake aboard ship listen for the voice in the back of your mind and quickly ask yourself; is this an isolated incident or indication of larger problems?

Ship incidents caused by Error Chains;

• How Ship Captain’s Avoid Incidents
• Pasha Bulker - Part 1 & Part 2
• Tampa Skyway Bridge Disaster
• Exxon Valdez
• Empress of the North
• Cell Phone Causes Ship Grounding

(This article was originally posted Oct 2007)

MS Wilhelm Gustloff, 9,000 lives lost in 1945

With a death toll six times greater than the Titanic, new light has been shed on MS Wilhelm Gustloff, as a result a TV series that aired on Germany’s ZDF Channel last night.

The Independent is reporting:

“There was this sea of adult heads floating all around me, but alongside them there were hundreds of children’s legs half sticking up in the air. Their heads were under water,” Mr Schön, now 82, said. “They all drowned. Nobody realized that a child’s head is heavier than its legs.”

The Independent post is here.

An estimated 9,000 passengers and crew, fleeing East Prussia, perished (5,000 children) as a result of the the sinking of MS Wilhelm Gustloff back in January, 1945. Gustloff was carrying 10,000 refugees packed into every corner of the ship. Struck by three Soviet torpedoes, she took only 70 minutes to sink.

During her life, MS Wilhelm Gustloff saw many incarnations: Cruise ship, Hospital ship, Navy ship, and Rescue ship.

The sinking (from Gustloff website) Sometime before 8PM , the first officer on the S-13 spots lights in the distance. Marinesko promptly makes his way to the conning tower. When the snow clears for a moment he spots in his words “the silhouette of an [enormous] ocean liner, even [with its] lights showing”. Over the next two hours, Marinesko shadows the Wilhelm Gustloff, fine tuning his plan of attack. His crew on board begin to sense that their luck is about to change.

MS Wilhelm Gustloff in better days

Her history is well chronicled here.

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This post was written by Richard Rodriguez, Rescue Tug Captain, and US Coast Guard approved instructor for License Training. You can read more of his articles at the BitterEnd

“This video contains a lot of (very old) pictures on Titanic, and even two short (original) films”

Related Post:

Was the titanic sunk by a small key?