Mystery Damage to Bottom of Shipwreck

[William_2020]

Does anyone know what could have caused this kind of damage to the bottom of this ship?





This is part of the Titanic which broke away from the ship and landed up side down on the seafloor. The image has been turned around. The ship had allegedly snapped in two by the weight of the elevated stern (hard to believe I know). Is it my imagination or does it look like an explosion of some kind had taken place, or that something heavy had crashed through? Are the edges (color and shape) consistent with other shipwrecks that suffered an explosion? One of the great unsolved mysteries of the Titanic.

 

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[Salvor6]

Looks like it hit a rock.

 

[Shawnmcc]

Could be a damage caused by another ship maybe submarine hiding under the iceberg cause I dont think the iceberg did all the damage maybe pirate ship before ww1.

 

[Blak bart]

Looks like it hit a rock.

Looks like it hit an iceberg.

 

[aquanut]

Boiler explosion is one possibility.

 

[Red-Coat]

It would help to know which section of the wreck you are picturing and some indication of scale, but I see nothing unusual in the photograph. The evidence suggests Titanic did break her back in her final moments when the stern rose sufficiently high out of the water that there was no longer sufficient buoyancy to counteract the weight of the stern. It’s estimated that the angle of the ship had reached 11 degrees at the time this happened. From a structural engineering point of view it’s not hard to understand, since the steelwork was not designed to withstand those kinds of stresses without buoyant support. Additionally, various pieces of heavy equipment were thrown from their mountings and crashed through the bulkheads of the ship. Any compartmented areas that that were still essentially watertight suffered implosive compression at various depths as the two pieces descended, coming to rest about a third of a mile apart..

Titanic probably began her descent with the two pieces still attached like a partially snapped matchstick before separating into two main pieces soon afterwards as a result of stresses from uneven descent. Estimates vary, but the bow section probably hit the seabed at about 35 miles an hour at an angle of around 20 degrees. The stern section spiralled as it descended, with chunks being torn from it including one larger piece, and was travelling faster. Possibly as fast as 50 miles an hour.

Titanic’s boilers did not explode. Ballard’s exploration of the wreckage showed the boilers to be more or less intact with no evidence of any explosion. The ‘boiler explosion’ myth arose from eye witness reports, notably Able Seaman Frank Osman’s account. Osman said that he heard, and saw, an explosion together with steam and coal spewing out of the funnels as the ship sank. His observations were accurate, but were the result of the ship breaking up, heavy equipment breaking loose, and sudden massive flooding. The noise was tremendous, but other witnesses described it as “sustained” noise rather than a sudden explosion.

 

[William_2020]

The damaged section was located where the ship had broken and two large pieces of the bottom broke free and landed on the sea floor upside down. The confusing thing is, the edges are all cut clean, except for one corner which looks like something blew out of it.


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Was this a result of the break up or could something have fallen out of the ship and crashed throw and made the hole? The Titanic had a double bottom with about 5 feet space which was subdivided and watertight. Could it implode? I've heard people say that it might have been caused by the iceberg when the ship slid her bottom over it. Survivor Harold Bride was a wireless operator aboard the ship and said "The captain told us we had been struck amidships, or just aft of amidships." Was this hole created by the force of the weight of the ship's bottom hitting the the ice? I was looking up survivors who mentioned the sinking and the breaking. There appeared to be streams of sparks coming out of the funnels. Would this be caused by imploded boilers or an explosive release of compressed air which propelled everything into the sky?



Esther Hart. "For a few moments we could see everything that was happening, for, as the vessel sank, millions and millions of sparks flew up and lit everything around us."

Charlotte Collyer. "It came with a deafening roar that stunned me. Something in the very bowels of the Titanic exploded and millions of sparks shot up to the sky. This red spurt was fan shaped as it went up but the sparks dispersed in every direction in the shape of a fountain of fire. Two other explosions followed dull and heavy, as if below the surface the Titanic broke into two before my eyes."

Harold Bride. "Smoke and sparks were rushing out of her funnels."

John Thayer. "One of the funnels seemed to be lifted off and fell towards me about fifteen yards away, with a mass of sparks and steam coming out of it."

 

[Shawnmcc]

It kind of looks like a torpedo hole. That went in and exploded. There are images on google that look similar to it.

 

[Magoopeter]

 

[hound]

That's not a torpedo hit. At that time period torpedos were not the fastest and would explode on impact. There would be no penetration nor if it was a dud would it likely even cause a dent in that hull plate. The ship hit an iceberg and sank, no conspiracies need.

There's mountains of documentation in WW2 during the early years of dud torpedos fired from US submarines bouncing off of cargo ship hulls. The magnetic influence detonators of the torpedoes were defective so they went to impact detonations. There was also a design fault in the impact fuses as impacts would crush a support ring and that would divert the striker so the weapon wouldn't detonate. The damage came from detonation not impact so no, the torpedo didn't penetrate a thick piece of iron and blow that out.

 

[PetesPockets55]

Why wouldn't the stern travel pointed at a downward angle with residual air escaping out the midsection? Lots of weight at the props and stern to pull it down stern first, the stern hits bottom hard enough to shatter ice cold steel, and at enough of an angle that the stern turned upside down.

If it was traveling at 50 MPH, wouldn't that be sufficient force to cause the rupture depicted in the image?

EDIT: I guess I should have looked at the video MagooPeter posted. Pretty much shows everything except the stern flipping over.

 

[ARC]

This looks like to me... Torn.

Consistent with other aspects of torn metal on this wreck.