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10 causes of theTitanic tragedy

The "unsinkable" Titanic was sunk by an iceberg, but there are other reasonswhy the tragedy that occurred 100 years ago this month was as tragic as itwas.Even a century later, the case of the Titanic illustrates how technologicalfailures often result from a succession of omissions, missteps and bad luckrather than one big mess-up.

"No one thing sent the Titanic to the bottom of the North Atlantic," RichardCorfield writes in a Physics World retrospective on the disaster that caused1,514 deaths on April 14-15, 1912. "Rather, the ship was ensnared by a perfectstorm of circumstances that conspired her to her doom. Such a chain is familiar to those who study disasters it is called an event cascade."

The iceberg that the Titanic struck on its way from Southampton to New York isNo. 1 on a top-10 list of circumstances. Here are nine other suggestedcircumstances from Cornfield s article and other sources:

Climate caused more icebergs: Weather conditions in the North Atlantic wereparticularly conducive for corralling icebergs at the intersection of the Labrador

Current and the Gulf Stream, due to warmer-than-usual waters in the Gulf Stream, Richard Norris of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography told PhysicsWorld. "Oceanographically, the upshot of that was that icebergs, sea ice andgrowlers were concentrated in the very position where the collision happened,"Norris said.

Tides sent icebergs southward: Last month, astronomers at Texas StateUniversity at San Marcos noted that the sun, the moon and Earth were alignedin such a way that could have led to unusually high tides in January 1912. They

speculated that the tides could have dislodged icebergs that were stuck in theLabrador Sea, sending more of them toward the waters traversed by theTitanica couple of months later.

The ship was going too fast: ManyTitanicologists have said that the ship scaptain, Edward J. Smith, was aiming to better the crossing time of the Olympic,the Titanic solder sibling in the White Starfleet. For some, the fact that theTitanic was sailing full speed ahead despite concerns about icebergs wasSmith s biggest misstep. "Simply put, Titanic was traveling way too fast in an

area known to contain ice; thats the bottom line," says Mark Nichol, webmaster for the Titanic and Other White StarShipswebsite.

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Iceberg warnings went unheeded: The Titanic received multiple warnings aboutice fields in the North Atlantic over the wireless, but Cornfield notes that the lastand most specific warning was not passed along by senior radio operator Jack

Phillips to Captain Smith, apparently because it didnt carry the prefix "MSG"(Masters Service Gram). That would have required a personal acknowledgmentfrom the captain. "Phillips interpretedit as non-urgent and returned to sendingpassenger messages to the receiver on shore at Cape Race, Newfoundland,before it went out of range," Corfield writes.

The binoculars were locked up: Corfield also says binoculars that could havebeen used by look outs on the night of the collision were locked up aboard theship and the key was held by David Blair, an officer who was bumped from

the crew before the ships departure from Southampton. Some historians havespeculated that the fatal iceberg might have been spotted earlier if thebinoculars were in use, but others say it wouldnt have made a difference.

The steersman took a wrong turn: Did the Titanic s steersman turn the shiptoward the iceberg, dooming the ship? Thats the claim made in 2010 by LouisePatten, who said the story was passed down from her grandfather, the mostsenior ship officer to survive the disaster. After the iceberg was spotted, thecommand was issued to turn "hard a starboard," but as the command was

passed down the line, it was misinterpreted as meaning "make the ship turnright" rather than "push the tiller right to make the ship head left," Patten said.She said the error was quickly discovered, but not quickly enough to avert thecollision. She also speculated that if the ship had stopped where it was hit, seawater would not have pushed into one interior compartment after another as itdid, and the ship might not have sunk as quickly.

Reverse thrust reduced the ship s maneuverability: Just before impact, firstofficer William McMaster Murdoch is said to have telegraphed the engine room

to put the ship s engines into reverse. That would cause the left and rightpropeller to turn back ward, but because of the configuration of the stern, thecentral propeller could only be halted, not reversed.

Corfield said the fact that the steering propeller was not rotating severelydiminished the turning ability of the ship. It is one of the many bitter ironies of the Titanic tragedy that the ship might well have avoided the iceberg if Murdochhad not told the engine room to reduce and then reverse thrust."

The iron rivets were too weak: Metallurgists Tim Foecke and Jennifer Hooper McCarty looked into the materials used for the building of the Titanic at its

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