How can ice possibly cut through a thick metal hull? Isn't that theoretically impossible? Has ice tearing through metal ever been replicated under scientific testing conditions?
Also, isn't this unprecedented in that it's never happened to a ship before, even to ships made of wood?
And isn't it odd how the Titanic suddenly split in half like that? How can a sturdy unsinkable ship just break in half like that? Why so much damage and destruction just for scraping ice?
Here is something interesting by the way:
http://www.gettysburgghosts.net/titan.htm
In April 14, 1912, the huge "unsinkable" ship the Titanic was steaming across the Atlantic towards New York. This was the Titanic's maiden voyage, and her captain was encouraged to break the record for speed while making the voyage. As most people know, after striking an iceberg, the unsinkable ship went down in only a matter of hours. Out of the 2,201 passengers, only 711 were saved. Since then, there have been many books and movies about the Titanic.
There was one fictional story written by a merchant seaman by the name of Morgan Robertson. Robertson's book was about an unsinkable passenger liner that sank while carrying the elite people of the time. The ship in Robertson's story was called the Titan and the book was titled The Wreck of the Titan. Even though the book is fictitious, the events in the story parallel the events of the Titanic. Both ships were built to be unsinkable. Both ships sank after striking an iceberg. Both ships were on their maiden voyage. The most well to do famous people were on the Titan and Titanic. Only one third of the passengers on each ship survived. Both ships had an inadequate number of lifeboats. Both ships were encouraged to break speed records during their voyage.
Robertson's book The Wreck of the Titan was never published. Each time it was rejected by editor's, they told him the same thing. The story was unbelievable. Surely the events he wrote of could not possibly happen to an unsinkable ship.
The book, The Wreck of the Titan was written in 1898, fourteen years before the Titanic hit an iceberg and settled on the bottom of the northern Atlantic.
http://www.cracked.com/article_18421_6- ... pened.html
#5. Morgan Robertson Writes About the Titanic... 14 Years Early
A hundred years before James Cameron turned douchebaggery into an art form at the Oscars, American author Morgan Robertson wrote a shitty book called Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan, about the sinking of an "unsinkable" ocean liner. When you see the cover, you figure you're pretty clearly looking at a fictionalized version of the Titanic story.
No surprise there; it's a story that's been told over and over (there were 13 Titanic movies before Cameron's, including one by the Nazis) but Robertson's book was first.
Where it Gets Weird:
He was so eager to be first, apparently, that he didn't bother to wait for the Titanic to actually sink before writing about it. The Wreck of the Titan was published in 1898, 14 years before RMS Titanic was even finished being [cheaply] built.
The similarities between Robertson's work and the Titanic disaster are so astounding that one has to imagine if White Star Line built Titanic to Robertson's specs as a dare. The Titan was described as "the largest craft afloat and the greatest of the works of men," "equal to that of a first class hotel," and, of course, "unsinkable".
Both ships were British-owned steel vessels, both around 800 feet long and sank after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic, in April, "around midnight." Sound like enough to keep you up at night? Maybe that's why Robertson republished the book in 1912 just in case enough people didn't know that he wrote it.
Where it Gets Even Weirder:
While the novel does bear some curious coincidences with the Titanic disaster, there are quite a few things that Robertson got flat wrong. For one, the Titanic did not crash into an iceberg "400 miles from Newfoundland" at 25 knots. It crashed into an iceberg 400 miles from Newfoundland at 22.5 knots.
Wait, what the f**k? That's one hell of a lucky guess!
But maybe the weirdest thing about Titan were points that had nothing to do with the story, but check out after numerous inquires and expeditions to the Titanic wreck site.
For one, both the Titan and the Titanic had too few lifeboats to accommodate every passenger on board; the Titan carrying "as few as the law allowed." While Robertson decided to be generous and include four lifeboats more on his ship than Titanic, it's an odd point to bring up when you consider that lifeboats had nothing to do with the f***ing story. When Titan hit the iceberg (starboard bow, naturally), the ship sank immediately, making the point made about lifeboats inconsequential. Why the f**k mention this?!
It'd be like HAL 9000 addressing the danger posed by O-rings at low temperature decades before the Challenger disaster.
