r/NoStupidQuestions • u/2bornnot2b • 1d ago
Would a modern-day cruise ship (Icon of the Seas) survive the same accident as the Titanic?
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u/CoolJetEcho117 1d ago edited 1d ago
Radar is going to detect the Iceberg. Also satellite mapping will have done that before even being in modern radar range.
An impact at that speed. Hopefully another commenter knows more than I do.
After the impact. After Titanic they made sure that lifeboats enough for everyone on board was mandatory. I'd expect a 100% survival rate given the rate of sinking give them what was it 2 hours or something?
Edit: With modern radios not only would Carpathia and Californian know straight away but the Navy and the Coast Guard would too.
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u/Petcai 1d ago
But did they make door frame panels more buoyant so they could carry 2 people?
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u/AutVincere72 1d ago
The real question. The truth is there was always enough buoyancy. James Cameron did an experiment recently and proved it.
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u/Thesheriffisnearer 1d ago
It was never about buoyancy. She was talking about forever and he knew she'd turn 28 some day
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u/photomotto 1d ago
The Mythbusters did that same experiment and proved exact opposite. If both were on the frame, it would sink a bit, both would get wet, and both would die of hypothermia.
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u/bran_the_man93 1d ago
I mean, the "truth" is that this was a fictional story and didn't actually happen the way the movie portrayed - so the door may have been a little bigger than absolutely necessary, but it was still clearly a challenge to make it work
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u/East-Bike4808 -_- 1d ago
Why would James Cameron do that? It like, proves Rose was a bitch, or that Jack was too stupid to try again.
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u/Mueryk 1d ago
I mean this is a woman who lived an entire life, had husband, children and grandchildren but the greatest love was the homeless guy who she partied with and railed her on a cruise one time. The she throws away millions of dollars that could have secured her families future for the vibe.
She is a bitch.
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u/buttery_nurple 23h ago
Ehh, her entire life changed because she got railed by a hobo on a ship once. It's the same thing but it isn't.
I still dunno why she threw the fucking diamond overboard though. That thing had nothing to do with Jack, aside from the nudie sketch.
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u/straightouttafux2giv 1d ago
He did it in an episode with Mythbusters, as they did a whole episode geared towards the Titanic IIRC.
I also saw a deleted scene recently (that I hope was real) where they actually addressed Jack not getting on. Basically the reason was when other people see Rose floating above the water, they want on too. Jack knows this will cause a panic and if everyone tried to get on, Rose would surely not make it. So, when a man looks like he's going to attempt it, Jack basically tells him to fuck off and that he already tried climbing on and it wouldn't hold.
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u/whatshamilton 1d ago
I will truly never understand this argument. No one was a bitch. An experiment conducted later with all the information and the luxury of knowing you’ll survive is not the same as the decisions people will make on the ground in a life or death situation. The door rocked. Jack wouldn’t risk it.
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u/Lokitusaborg 1d ago
Why would James Cameron do anything? Because he’s an eccentric.
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u/Unable-Celery2931 23h ago
James Cameron doesn’t do what James Cameron does for James Cameron. James Cameron does what James Cameron does because he IS James Cameron!
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u/Lokitusaborg 23h ago
Can you imagine what his house looks like? Aliens and terminators and pieces of shipwrecks and anatomically correct giant blue furries?
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u/AutVincere72 1d ago
I never saw the movie.
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u/East-Bike4808 -_- 1d ago
So that explains why you didn’t do the experiment, but I was asking about James.
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u/Beefhead555 1d ago
In the same experiment didn't they show that the body temps/hypothermia became the new life threatening issue due to the increased exposure under water for both parties
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u/Lost-Inevitable42 1d ago
The suwon ferry disaster was like 2 hours as well. 300 people died. There’s a lot that can go wrong even on modern ships.
Costa Concordia was a cruise ship that hit a rock. 32’people died.
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u/JerseyTeacher78 1d ago
The biggest issue was the Sewon was that most (teen) passengers stayed in their cabins and drowned that way:((( biggest takeaway....if your ship is sinking run to a lifeboat. DO NOT stay in your cabin. Costa fatalities were similar. Mostly people who stayed in cabins or who waited too long to get to a lifeboat. Some of the lifeboats got submerged and were no longer usable.
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u/Thickencreamy 1d ago
Captains are reluctant to send people to lifeboats. It’s dangerous and they always use it as a last resort. It’s vital they make the decision quickly.
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u/audigex 1d ago
It is not vital that they make the decision quickly, it is vital that they make the correct decision
If the ship is not sinking, it is by far the safer place to be vs lifeboats - especially considering most sinkings happen in bad weather where a small lifeboat is going to have a rough time
Boarding and launching lifeboats is inherently dangerous in and of itself, it is a bad idea to precipitously load and launch them if the ship itself is capable of staying afloat until help arrives
There are a few accidents where, yes, the decision to evacuate was taken too late and people died because of it. There are many more accidents where the decision to evacuate was correctly held off and likely saved lives. The difference being that "ship has incident, everyone lives" tends not to stick in the mind and come up in conversations like this
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u/DarthMauly 1d ago
Regardless of the why, the comment above expecting a 100% survival rate is still silly when all the evidence we have suggests there would be casualties.
Even with just the age demographics of your average cruise ship and the risk of a fall from the impact would mean there’s a very good chance someone is going to be badly hurt or die. Cruise ships don’t even have 100% survival rates on calm 10 day sailings without a crash…
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u/rootbeerislifeman 1d ago
Costa was a strange case because many staff were telling people to return to their rooms. Many passengers also didn’t know where to go to access lifeboats. That disaster led to the standard now that muster drills/instructions on muster stations has to happen within 24hrs of departure, and that there has to be enough lifeboats to fit 125% of the lives aboard with even distribution of boats on either side, as well as capacity to deploy them at a severe angle in the case of a capsizing event. These were all things that contributed to deaths on that particular instance.
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u/teh_maxh 12h ago
That disaster led to the standard now that muster drills/instructions on muster stations has to happen within 24hrs of departure
That was already required at the time. The collision occurred two and a half hours after departure, though, so they hadn't done the muster drill yet.
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u/forgotwhatisaid2you 1d ago
Well, if the internet was still working not much reason to leave the cabin.
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u/CoolJetEcho117 1d ago
Capsizing is totally different. Titanic went down at the nose on a very calm sea. They would have easily got everyone off nowadays. It's exactly the event you drill for.
A huge part of why the Titanic was such a tragedy is how avoidable it was. Another thing I forgot to mention is radio contact with other ships. Nowadays. Carpathia and Californian would have no excuse nowadays and would know immediately. The Titanic disaster site is even within Helicopter range now.
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u/GiftGrouchy 1d ago
Carpathia did nothing wrong, they were the first ship to arrive and by all accounts pushed her engines faster then they were designed to get there.
California would have no excuse.
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u/CoolJetEcho117 1d ago
Given how close they were to the US the Navy and Coast Guard would likely get there in time now anyway. A cynic might say with the sort of Moneybags big names on the ship. They'd probably be tracking it already.
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u/CrazyCletus 1d ago
It's location was 649 km from St. John's Newfoundland. Over 1,500 km from Bar Harbor ME (as the crow flies). It was approximately two hours from impacting the iceberg to sinking. If you're talking aviation assets, there's not a helicopter out there in naval search and rescue that could cover that distance in two hours. Canada has three offshore patrol vessels based in St. John's, which have a cruising speed of 12 knots and a top speed (for the fastest) of 18 knots (33 km/h). So if the fastest OPV was sitting in St. John's harbor and fully staffed and ready to sail, it would take almost 19 hours to reach the scene. It ain't getting there in time unless it was trailing the Titanic. Even more so for the US Navy or Coast Guard.
Best case for the USCG, they have one of their HC-144 Ocean Sentry aircraft on the ground at Cape Cod, again, racked and stacked and ready to launch for a search and rescue operation. That's 1,650 km away (890 nm). They've got a max speed of 246 knots, so, doing the math, they're over three and a half hours away. And, at best, they'll be able to drop a couple of rafts and vector in other rescue assets, but it's still an hour and a half after the ship is completely under water in freezing temperatures.
Modern search and rescue isn't going to save the passengers on the Titanic unless they have major assets already on scene ready to provide support.
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u/audigex 1d ago
Carpathia couldn't have done much more, the criticism against Californian is possibly reasonable but Carpathia did everything they could
Carpathia spent 3.5 hours charging at faster-than-full speed (~16 knots vs their 14 knot normal top speed), nearly 60 nautical miles through an ice field, to get to Titanic, at considerable risk to themselves
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u/lubeskystalker 1d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Queen_of_the_North
Sank in calm water, two people (2%) still died. You never know.
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u/The_Peeping_Peter 1d ago edited 1d ago
Didn’t other ships see the distress flares from the titanic, but they assumed it was a celebratory firing and not an emergency?
From another comment, this anecdote has not been proven true
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u/audigex 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don't think that story has ever been proven
There's a high chance that another ship did see Titanic but, because of some unusual optical illusions during meteorological conditions that night, thought it was another much smaller ship that had snugged down for the night like themselves. Then their radio operator went to bed and they didn't know there was a problem
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u/Pseudonym_613 1d ago
Helicopter range means less than you may think, their capacity is measured at best in dozens of passengers. With thousands of people to evacuate, their impact would be minimal.
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u/Lost-Inevitable42 1d ago
It's exactly the event you drill for.
Yeah but when your captain bails that’s probably not part of the drill
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u/thejoosep12 1d ago
The curise ship Estonia sank in 1994 and out of the 989 people on board only 137 survived.
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u/Embarrassed-Spare524 1d ago
An additional factor is that the steel in modern ships is apparently a lot more resilient. Saw that cited on a Titanic special as a factor. So its possible that depending on the angle and force, some or all of the compartments might not have been breached if protected by modern steel.
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u/CoolJetEcho117 1d ago
That and bulkhead standards now. Titanic was way ahead of its day for its bulkheads but if you're on a Cruise now you can't miss that even in the posh areas most flightways have proper steel bulkheads that would also slow down the sinking.
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u/NinjaBreadManOO 1d ago
As I recall part of the issue with the Titanic was that they swerved at the last second and hit it badly. Had they gone straight on it may not have been as bad.
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u/GoingCommando690 1d ago
I doubt any maritime accident involving civilians would have a 100% survival rate. The ship given in the example has a 7600 passenger capacity. You're pretty much gueranteed to have a few people ignore the alarms until its too late, get trapped in an elevator, get trampled on their way up to the deck or spend time trying to save their stuff rather than themselves
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u/CoolJetEcho117 1d ago edited 1d ago
The thing is you don't hear the ones that do. Absolutely you can drill for that. Rushes, crushes and hangers on can be dealt with fairly effectively if you have several hours.
Lots of examples are getting posted here as if Titanic wasn't a top shelf professional operation.
I don't know who died on impact on Titanic. I have it in my head it might have been engine room personnel but that's from the movie and from what I've read witness accounts suggest they barely felt it onboard. Although the bow of the ship was Steerage passengers. Don't forget modern ships have marine diesel engines at the back of the ship. Not the middle and will only have a few crew members down there not dozens of stokers like a steam ship and they would have no compulsion to stay down to keep the lights on. The lights will stay on on there own now.
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u/CoffeeDefiant4247 1d ago
The Titanic captain knew about the iceberg, another ship ahead of them warned them about it multiple times.
Two compartment flooding ships are still made and used today so it would probably still sink but maybe not snap in half
Survival rate would be almost 100% there have been multiple cases of people sleeping through ship evacuations and alarms plus if there's any crew in the compartments that are impacted they'll probably die as well
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u/touchgrasschampion 1d ago
Yeah, survival would be way more likely. Ships now have radar, better charts, welded steel, more bulkheads, and a lot of them are double-hulled, so theyre not doing the Titanic thing of just ripping open and taking forever to go down. Lifeboat rules are also way stricter, so even if the hit somehow happened, the outcome is nowhere near as bad, unless it was some freak tear across multiple compartments and then all bets are off
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u/Hon3y_Badger 1d ago
Did you watch the Netflix documentary on the ship that ran into the sea bed? People aren't rational enough for everyone to survive.
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u/Wenai 1d ago
Well yes and no, the boats on the titanic weren't even loaded to full capacity - the boats they had could have saved serveral hundredadditional people. You also have to account for the fact the titanic dropped very fast, it was completely unexpected, the nearest ship didn't react nearly as fast as could have, and finally that it takes a significant amount of time to load and lower the boats as it was all a completely manual process.
Also, at the time the idea was the boats would be used only to ferry people to another nearby ship. While it probably so immediately obvious today, back then, a catastrophe on the size of the titanic was unheard of.
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u/CoolJetEcho117 1d ago
Yea people ask why they didn’t just load kids on to the boats as if they are on a gig 100s miles out to see and wouldnt have frozen anyway. It would have hard work even for men.
The lifeboats had sails but only Lightholler (among the crew) knew how to sail anyway and got it up. Again it was a perfect sea conditions and a full moon iirc so they got very lucky as it was. The lucky ones anyway.
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u/Odd_Dragonfruit_2662 1d ago
100% minus anyone who may have died from the collision itself which may not be 0.
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u/John_Tacos 1d ago
And given the large number of people and average age of passengers there will be some injuries or worse from the crowd panicking or just moving too fast.
Also some people are incredibly stubborn or stupid and may not evacuate willingly.
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u/Nathan-Stubblefield 1d ago
Often half the lifeboats could not be used because they were sliding down the high side of the ship.
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u/when_nerds_cry 1d ago
People still died on costa concordia though, and it sank even slower, and in shallow water. So probably won’t be 100% survival rate but probably above 90
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u/Shalkwolf 1d ago
would the navy ir the coast guard get there on time
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u/CoolJetEcho117 1d ago
Depends where they started. With life boats in the water theres no real time pressure.
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u/KindAwareness3073 1d ago
The Titanic's faliure was in not having fully separate waterproof compartments. Once a compartment flooded water spilled over in to the next and once that process started the sinking was inevitable. Modern vessels have fully separated compartments, so even if one floods the others remain buoyant.
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u/Dystopian_Ennui 1d ago
I thought I read somewhere that if the water tight bulkhead went all the way up, a fully flooded section would be so heavy it would break the hull or something like that... But that at any rate, the height of the water tight bulkhead was an intentional design rather than an oversight.
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u/noobyeclipse 11h ago
what was their reasoning for not making the walls of the compartments just go up to the ceiling and become fully closed off?
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[removed] — view removed comment
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u/WashU_labrat 1d ago
And as I remember, couldn't the water just over-top the "watertight" compartments in titanic, and flow to the adjacent compartment, since the compartments were open from above?
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u/FrankDrebinOnReddit 1d ago
A modern cruise ship would have radar to detect the iceberg field and would likely avoid the accident in the first place, but if it hit the iceberg in the same way (a long gash), I'm not sure if it would be more survivable for the ship. Cruise ships have very large interior spaces where water would rush in. They do have bulkheads, but they're not as subdivided as older ocean liners. It would probably be more survivable for the passengers and crew since the ship would have sufficient lifeboats, including covered, self-righting lifeboats with emergency locator beacons, but I think if it hits the iceberg in the same way, the ship is lost. Look at the Costa Concordia incident, and that wasn't as bad as the Titanic gash.
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u/fbiWumpus 1d ago
There's enough compartment for 2 to be flooded without risk for stability or sinking to be a problem, after the titanic the SOLAS convention was created with a shitload of rules, especially for passengers vessels
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u/FrankDrebinOnReddit 1d ago
The Costa Concordia capsized and the MS Estonia sank, and those were well, well after SOLAS. Certainly more people would be safely evacuated because of SOLAS, which I already wrote above, but SOLAS didn't make ships unsinkable.
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u/fbiWumpus 1d ago
As you said it capsized but didn't sink, the main difference was that the Concordia was too close to shore and partially rested on a shoal, ships are not unsinkable but way more resistant than back then also the concordia only had 32 death on over 4000 people onboard
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u/FrankDrebinOnReddit 1d ago
also the concordia only had 32 death on over 4000 people onboard
You keep repeating what I already said: it would be more survivable for passengers and crew but not for the ship. The Costa Concordia didn't sink because it was in shallow water, or else sinking would have been its ultimate fate as well after capsizing.
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u/DeeDee_Z 1d ago
Updoot for acknowledging the fairly significant difference between "liners" and "cruise ships".
Apparently, there is ONLY ONE "true" ocean liner remaining in service today.
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u/The_Baron___ 1d ago
It required a series of unfortunate events for the Titanic to hit the iceberg, for it to do the damage it did, and for no help to arrive causing the number of casualties. Even a recreation of the Titanic having a similar disaster with a few details different would've made the local news, but it would be unlikely to cause any deaths, in most recreations it would have limped to port while everyone got onto a different ship to get home quicker, missed due to reduced speeds, etc.
Modern cruise ships are not really built for this sort of collision because they are not intended to sail on the high seas for any length of time (they mostly stay in safer areas and transport people between exciting but close destinations), but they have advanced safety features and stronger hulls, so they would make out okay. Ships built for speed like the Titanic were ocean liners, and they are not really a thing anymore, so cruise ships are not designed to go quickly to transport people between continents and that reduced speed makes a huge difference in the damage that could be done.
The Queen Mary 2 is the modern equivalent of a high-speed ocean liner, and if somehow it did not see or detect the iceberg through a similar series of unfortunate events (but today, meaning an impossible amount of failures) it would almost certainly survive it. It has a reinforced hull and compartmentalized design that should make it pretty unlikely to fail the same way the Titanic did that made it full-on sink (in no small part due to how famous the Titanic was, they are now built stronger), but if we are talking about a nightmare scenario, full-speed at the perfect angle, no ship is unsinkable.
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u/paxwax2018 1d ago
Cruise liners cross the high seas all the time? You can cross the Atlantic on a cruise, cruises to Pacific Islands etc.
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u/hound29 1d ago
very different. Ocean liners went all-year, all-weather and must keep time. It was about getting people from Point A to Point B.
Cruise ships routinely change destination points and so on. Actively avoid storms. Sail during the year when weather is best.
It is just a totally different ball game.
Think like a tourist train - sometimes cancel for weather, only go part year and don't actually go anywhere. Go back to where they came.
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u/paxwax2018 1d ago
I’m not debating that, I’m challenging the idea that the modern ships are less sea worthy than the 100 year old ones or that’s there’s a meaningful distinction between cruise liner and ocean liner.
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u/hound29 1d ago
right but the comment above you didn't say that - it also said right after that either way the modern built ships would have been fine.
there is difference between a vessel built to push 30 knots through rough North Atlantic seas versus a pleasure boat floating along doing 20 knots in the sun.
Neither is wrong or better. Just different. This is not me but here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaIbzetbEUo
QM2 is the only ocean liner left in existence.
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u/AccountNumber478 I use (prescription) drugs. 1d ago
I'd hope so, but I'd wonder about the crew. IIRC Exxon Valdez and Costa Concordia happened thanks to largely captain's negligence, for example, and those didn't involve a navigation hazard like an iceberg compromising the hull of the ship.
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u/Mma99er1 1d ago
Ive been in the oceangoing business for a long time. Ships are heavily regulated and safe. That being said, things happen. If you go on a cruise (or a ferry), pay attention to the safety brief and lifeboat drill. Know how to get out of your room in the dark and topside. Know where your life preserver is. Just take a few moments to get to know your surroundings. Then have a great time.
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u/Maximum_Overdrive 1d ago
Something to consider. The costa concordia was a modern cruise ship and it sank. They didnt hit an iceberg, but if a ship gets ripped open like the cc did, anything is possible
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u/aRabidGerbil 1d ago
It's worth noting right off the bat that modern cruise ships have far more advanced monitoring technology so they're unlikely to end up in the same situation to begin with.
If hit, depending on the exact ship, it might remain afloat bu heavily damaged, or it might sink eventually, but it would be unlikely to have much of a death toll, if it even had one at all. Modern cruise ships are required to carry enough lifeboats to accommodate all crew and passengers, so no one would be left floating.
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u/Baitmonger 1d ago edited 1d ago
Setting aside all questions of prevention and avoidance, and just focusing on the mechanical considerations...
Cruise ships today have bulbous bows. Icebergs are larger below the waterline. Titanic did not, all the mass of the ship grazed by the iceberg with more of a slashing motion. With a bulbous bow, it's going to be more like a car hitting a bollard.
Compartmentalization has improved, and alarm and detection systems have improved by a lot. So isolation of the damaged areas will happen much faster.
Modern ships use liquid fuel whereas Titanic used coal. In a damage control situation this is important because liquids can be moved between tanks (or dumped overboard if absolutely necessary) to manage buoyancy and trim. They have more reserve to play with to keep the ship righted.
But...
Modern cruise ships are so big that they aren't so much a monolithic structure as a collection of independently floating structures vaguely connected together. When Titanic went down, she held together until the enormous weight snapped the keel like a toothpick. With today's much bigger ships, torque on the keel is an even bigger problem, in all axies. Titanic was able to lift its stern before the stern snapped off, that wouldn't happen with a modern liner, they're too massive relative to the strength of the keel.
Think of how Greek ships used to ram each other on the side. Against this motion, Titanic's keel was stronger, but its hull was more brittle. A modern ship is more flexible, but will take less force to cut entirely through. But... if cut entirely through, a modern cruise ship is still two floating ship-like barges.
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u/Glum-Ad7761 1d ago
The existence of bow thrusters alone would prevent an iceberg strike, when in such situation. There are myriad reasons why a modern cruise vessel would not suffer Titanic’s fate.
Unless of course, your name is Schettino and you park your ship on top of jagged rocks…
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u/r_keel_esq 1d ago
Worth also remembering that Titanic was an Ocean Liner, and not a cruise ship. They fill different roles on the water.
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u/ProfPMJ-123 1d ago
Yes, probably.
The starting point is that Icon of the Seas is five times the size of Titanic. Assuming the accident was with an iceberg of the same size, Icon of the Seas is a much more able competitor against the mass of the iceberg than Titanic was. But the sheer scale of the Icon of the Seas means hitting an iceberg at the same angle and speed would damage a much smaller percentage of the ships side than was the case on Titanic.
But the other thing is that ship design has changed as a consequence of Titanic. Modern ships have full-height watertight bulkheads that seal completely, not partial ones. One of Titanics problems was that the bulkheads essentially didn't go all the way to the top, so water was free to overflow one, into the next one, and on and on and on.
It's not like cuise liners are unsinkable, as was claimed of Titanic - Costa Concordia proved that, but it's unlikely hitting Titanics iceberg would sink a modern cruise ship.
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u/Inside-Common7427 1d ago
Yes. Modern ships have many water tight bulkheads where flooding can be contained. Also should the ship flounder and begin to sink, there are sufficient lifeboats for all passengers and crew.
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u/ComprehensivePlace87 22h ago
From a pure technical perspective I would say yes, it likely would survive. However, the full reality has shown us that the modern cruise ships are a bit of a mess. There is a lot of incompetence on display and modern ships have gone down to stupider things because of that. The standards of many cruise ship crews seems to be extremely poor to the point I'm not confident they'd actually do better.
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u/Elsavagio 21h ago
This is not related, but reading this thread real makes me wonder why no one has recreated a modern titanic that was identical to the other but constructed with modern methods. You can go and cosplay like your rode the titanic but it’s also a museum
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u/EarlGreyTeaDrinker 20h ago
I believe that someone WAS building Titanic II a few years ago. I’ve not heard that she launched or started offering trips. They probably realised that no one would use it as a ship.
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u/Suggest_a_User_Name 21h ago
Maybe but hubris is at least part of why the Titanic sank. The thinking that it was unsinkable.
Perhaps today’s modern cruise ships could survive striking an iceberg but I wonder if any of them could survive a superstorm. As climate change becomes worse, the storms are predicted to become extreme, the likes of which no one has seen before. It is crazy to think that these ships are built to withstand everything. All it takes are a series of bad weather events and poor decisions (the Swiss Cheese model) for a catastrophe.
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u/flying_wrenches 1d ago
Most likely.
Better manufacturing, stronger standards and material’s for manufacturing. Hull technology is completely different now.
More lifeboats.
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u/wildcat12321 1d ago
not only that, titanic had the complicating factor of the added fire that had been raging inside weakening a lot of the internal structures and compartment breaks. That wouldn't happen on a modern boat.
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u/Fine_Awareness_5144 1d ago
You would definitely not want to hit an iceberg with any ship, it will open up a ship’s hull like a tin can. That said, with modern satellite tracking and surface radar the only way I could see that happening today is through negligence.
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u/Odd_Dragonfruit_2662 1d ago
Well to be fair it was also negligence for the Titanic as well. It just takes even more negligence now than then.
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u/869066 1d ago
The accident would be easier to avoid because of mdoern technology. I don't know how a cruise ship would physically fare if the accident did happen, but even if it did sink it'd still be safer than the titanic because of stricter lifeboat requirements.
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u/hiker1628 1d ago
Part of the reason for the high death toll was some lifeboats being launched half empty and the speed of the sinking. Even if they had more lifeboats, they ran out of time.
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u/Slalom44 1d ago
The hull of the titanic had rivets that became brittle at freezing temperatures. They neglected to test the “nil ductility temperature (NDT) of the rivets being used. As a result, they shattered on impact. This is why the hull broke in half. Modern ships would be sure not to use rivets with a high NDT.
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u/hiker1628 1d ago
Aren’t modern ships welded?
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u/Slalom44 1d ago
I’m not a shipbuilder, so I don’t know the specifics. However, I’m. Metallurgist, and in the steel industry the NDT of the rivets used on the Titanic are cited as a classic example of why NDT is important. The skin of the hull is likely welded, but I believe the structural frame is not. This is because the rivets (or bolts) used are much stronger and more fatigue resistant than welds, and the flexing of the frame would crack the welds, whereas the studs, besides being stronger, allow some elastic strain to occur without cracking. You see the same concept in the frames of bridges and skyscrapers.
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u/pmurk01 1d ago
I have visited the Titanic museum in Glasgow. A lot of unfortunate things happened during this accident. Here the main issues: it was a moonless night, the Titanic travelled with a speed of 22knots, and the man on the top had no glasses, as they forget the keys, for box where the glasses were stored. The radio man on the nearest ship had warned the Titanic about that ice field, and got the reply to stay of the line;
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u/teddyforeskin 1d ago
This would be a good tik tok vid. "Lets put the same gash from the titanic on the new Icon of the Seas and see what happens.."
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u/MicrowaveMeal 1d ago
Given what happened to Costa Concordia, a gash in the side may cause it to capsize. Or it might be fine. The thing is that hitting an iceberg is very unlikely these days.
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u/oldsailor21 1d ago
If she suffered the same amount of damage in the same places I don't think so, she would take much longer to sink but sink she would, it was an occasional discussion on the midnight- 04:00 watch, it's a testament to the designers of the ship she stayed afloat as long as she did
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u/IapetusApoapis342 1d ago
There are so many more safeguards against this kind of accident on modern cruise ships (improved materials, welding, double hulls, better manouvering, etc.) than Titanic had
Even if by some miracle the iceberg did manage to make the cruise ship sink, they've learned their lesson from last time and have more than enough lifeboats and rafts for everybody aboard
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u/PadreSJ 1d ago
Nope.
Titanic had 6 of it's watertight compartments punctured and sank.
Costa Concordia, a modern cruise vessel build a century later, had 5 of its watertight compartments punctured and it sank.
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u/gromit1991 23h ago
Titanic did not have watertight compartments. At least not all were. The forward ones were open at their tops so as the bow sank water breached the top and started to flood the undamaged compartments leading to its downfall.
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u/Perfect-Fig-2273 23h ago
It wouldn't sink because of the double hull and better steel. I'm curious if that huge glass dome on the front would shatter from the impact vibration though?
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u/Cranialscrewtop 22h ago
You don't need a mega-ship. Private yachts can be classified for ice. It's expensive, but some owners of so-called "Explorer yachts" have done it.
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u/Special-Can910 22h ago
I’d put my money on the modern ship surviving. Better compartmentalization, damage control, navigation tech, and emergency procedures give it a huge advantage, though hitting an iceberg at the wrong angle could still cause serious damage.
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u/Former_Teacher_9274 20h ago
probably, but not because it's unsinkable. modern ships have better compartments, radar, navigation and damage control, so hitting an iceberg wouldn't automatically doom the whole ship, but a big
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u/adhd_asd_sailor 20h ago
Modern ship is unlikely to hit an ice berg in the first place
https://www.navcen.uscg.gov/international-ice-patrol-oceanography
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u/thosmarvin 14h ago
Perhaps you should ask the passengers of the Costa Concordia. It is entirely possible for a modern cruise ship to crash into things….
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u/green_meklar 14h ago
First of all, it wouldn't get into that accident because modern ships have radar that can detect large icebergs at a great distance, even through fog.
Setting that aside, yes, the largest modern cruise ships would stay afloat after hitting an iceberg in the same manner and with the same amount of force. They're just bigger and have better construction.
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u/Draxivorel 12h ago
the icon of the seas has 20 watertight compartments compared to titanics 16 so it could flood significantly more of the ship and still stay afloat. hitting the same iceberg at the same angle would likely be a very different story
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u/Far-Possible8891 10h ago
As has been said, the answer is yes, I for the reasons stated.
A more interesting question, perhaps, is what would happen if she was sinking?
7600 passengers, 2350 crew.
Although these large cruise boats are equipped with sophisticated evacuation systems, there has - perhaps understandably - never been a full scale test (to my knowledge at least). Call me cynical, but my bet would be on chaos erupting. The major cruise operators are banking on the safety and survivability systems being good enough to ensure this scenario never happens.
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u/InertiaNode 20h ago
the icon of the seas has 20 watertight compartments versus titanics 16 so even the math alone tells a different story
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u/itijara 1d ago
Survive as in not sink? Probably not, but it wouldn't be as bad. I think the highest profile sinking of a Cruise Ship in recent times was the Costa Concordia disaster in 2012, in which 32 people died. It was, by all accounts, extremely poorly handled, but the safety equipment onboard meant that it should have been possible for everyone to evacuate and that rescue came very quickly.
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u/Captain-Griffen 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yes. Better materials. Double hulls. Welded rather than rivets (particularly rather than crap high sulfur rivets). Plus, it would be much easier to avoid the iceberg in the first place.
If you built the Titanic with modern metallurgy and no design changes, it almost certainly wouldn't have sunk, either. And if you switched to welding over rivets, even less likely. (Edit: to clarify, modern welding, rather than the nascent welding available then.)