What Happened to Titanic's Stern?

[Music] in 1985 a team of researchers was absolutely glued to their screens because they were seeing something [Music] remarkable they just rediscovered the wreck of Titanic lost for over seven decades at the bottom of the North Atlantic their cameras found the bow of the ship beautifully intact sitting incred rly upright on the sea floor after a 122,000 ft nearly 4,000 km drop straight down and they swept along the hull which rose up like a cliff face from the ocean floor but then it just kind of well stopped there came a sudden realization the passenger reports that the ship had broken apart during the sinking were actually true now we've done a video covering the breakup before more passengers said the ship broke up than those that didn't but it was still a stunning Revelation I me the stern section was still somewhere out there just waiting to be found amazingly it was discovered resting some 2,600 ft nearly 800 M away and oh boy what a mess the stern section was in a shocking state of Destruction and Expedition members were AED by the level of damage it looked many have said since as if a giant bomb had gone off what happened to Titanic's stern why is the ship in two pieces one beautifully Frozen in Time the other a shattered empty husk all kinds of theories have been put forward from implosion to even the idea of the devastating explosion of goods stored on board ladies and gentlemen I'm your friend Mike Brady from ocean liner designs and today we're going to Deep dive pun intended into the physics behind what happened to Titanic's stern section [Music] this wreck footage from RMS Titanic Inc gives us a remarkable view of Titanic as she sits on the sea floor particularly interesting is all this damage to the stern up close it can very often be hard to tell what you're even looking at it looks like bent and folded cardboard but this is still plating an inch thick in some places there are popped rivets in their thousands Twisted frames made of solid steel what on Earth happened here well Dr Robert Ballard and the research team back in 1985 asked themselves the exact same question now viewing things up close like this it's really difficult to get a picture of what the whole Stern section actually even looks like back then there weren't any fancy Sid scans sonar imagery or the techniques like we have today the stern had to be recreated created the oldfashioned way by hand and fortunately they had just the man to do it artist Ken Marshal was called in to refer to the hundreds of tiny photos of the stern section to paint what it might look down there in its entirety the results were shocking his paintings of the wreck have been published in books and magazines around the world arguably it's his painting of the stone section which captures the imagination the most so what happened to the ship to cause all of this well to begin with we need to wind the clock back to the early hours of April 15th 1912 when the Titanic was in her final death throws the ship's bow had sunk far below the ocean's surface and the stone was Rising higher and higher into the air with the lights still burning although dimmed as the ship's Machinery struggled to work under the onor conditions the ship's three bronze propellers and about 25,000 tons of stern section towered above the heads of survivors and then with a snap the Lights Went Out the ship began to tear itself apart breaking around the region of the third funnel we looked closely at this and other ships which have broken apart in another video and concluded the breakout would probably have been quite clean not unlike that of the RMS magdalina here what happened next is up for some debate whether the stern was pulled down or sank under the massive weight of its own engines more than 1,300 tons of Iron and Steel at the very forward exposure osed end of the breakup Zone either way survivors watched on as the stern pulled back up to the near vertical and then slipped beneath the waves somewhere along the way from the surface of the ocean to the sea floor 12 1/ 12,000 ft down Titanic stern was horribly horribly disfigured so what happened well there's a few things we need to consider the first explanation often offered for this is one that has been very much more in the public radar since June 2023 and that is the theory of an implosion now the theory that Titanic Stern imploded violently can trace its Origins back to director and underwater Explorer James Cameron and we all know him as the driving force behind the 1997 film but Cameron also has some serious underwater chops having died the wreck many times and seen the damage and destruction of close and personal through the years he's analyzed his findings and the footage captured from the wreck to piece together the puzzle of the ship's final moments and these have been presented many times in documentaries for National Geographic and others in 2012 it was time for Cameron to do it for the last time putting together a team of experts to analyze the wreck to find out what had happened in the animation they put together they show Titanic Sterns slip beneath the waves before boom it implodes causing massive damage the theory is that Titanic's stern section unlike the bow flooded and sank in a very very short amount of time at the end there meant that there was air still left trapped inside and that once the stern had sunk down to 2 or 300 ft the water pressure caused the stern structure to fail along the hull resulting in an enormous boom that blasted it apart the only issue is this is highly unlikely to have actually happened but before we go into why we need to understand what an implosion actually is it sounds self-explanatory but there's actually a few physics things in there that really convolute things first we all understand the concept of water pressure that the deeper down you go the more pressure there is you can think of it simply as the weight of water the deeper down you go the more water there is simply above you pressing down it's a linear scale that is the water pressure increases at the same rate with depth about one of Earth's atmospheres for every 10 m or 33 ft it means that at the bottom of some of the deepest parts of the ocean the pressure can exceed a th000 atmospheres now this is equivalent to the weight of two SUV cars pressing down on every square inch of your body ouch now what these kinds of pressures can do to man-made structures was dramatically and tragically demonstrated in mid 2023 when the submersible Titan catastrophically failed above the wreck of the Titanic now this was caused most likely by the failure of the carbon fiber pressure Hull of the submersible thanks to a little thing called pressure differential now this is a state where there's significant difference between the pressure outside of a hollow object versus inside that object essentially the Great greater pressure outside will act to push the hollow structure in on itself crushing it like you might crush a tin can in your hands now for a structure to experience a a pressure differential great enough to cause an implosion it needs to be like the submersible Titan watertight obviously but also airtight if there's no way for the air to get out and the water to get in then the pressure builds alarmingly eventually there comes a Breaking Point and a critical failure occurs the structure blasts inwards on it self the air inside being completely compressed rapidly briefly hitting massive temperatures now the reason air Heats as it compresses is because the molecules are forced closer together and bounce off one another like little rubber balls faster and faster all the while with more energy this is called adiabatic compression and it happens all in a fraction of a second of course so in short for conditions to actually cause an implosion on a structure we need a sealed airtight container if the container wasn't watertight or airtight then it would partially flood inside but the air above could compress to a point where the pressure differential would equalize there couldn't be an implosion because the air would be pushing back with the same Force as the water pressing in on it so now we need to apply all this to Titanic as the ship Stern is pulled underwater suddenly all the trapped air inside is rushing out with extreme force being replaced inside by the ocean itself now air pockets and ships are a thing they can form where air becomes trapped say in awkward corners or sealed compartments like Refrigeration units now does this mean Titanic could have made it hundreds or even thousands of feet down with air pockets still trapped inside well yeah I mean it's a pretty scary thought actually some people have survived being in air pockets for days in May 2013 a chef spent 60 hours in an air pocket about 100 ft below the surface in a sunken ship now Titanic did have refrigerators and some cold insulated storage deep down in her Stern section now Cameron and his team would tell us that enough air was trapped in Titanic Stern section that is at past two or 300 ft of depth it's suddenly and catastrophically imploded similar to the Titan submersible except that other ships have sunk at similar speeds to Titanic but not suffered implosion damage to the scale that ship is supposed to have for example the wreck of Lucitania the ship sank in only 20 or so minutes although today it's in a shocking state of disrepair there's actually no discernable evidence of implosion the same's true of the sister ship of Titanic bratanic she's in remarkable condition on Lucitania you'd expect plating and bulkheads to be buckled inward under the extreme outside pressure remember that little thing called pressure differential we were talking about but there's nothing like that there's really nothing like that down on Titanic either shell plating and bits of the ship have clearly been ripped away but it doesn't seem like it collapsed in on itself none of the plating is buckled or pressed inwards instead it's been blasted away we also have to think about why an implosion would be unlikely because the way the ship was actually built remember we said we need correct conditions for an implosion airtight and watertight compartments or Pockets within the ship's Hull but Titanic had very very few true air or watertight spaces virtually every compartment within the ship had to be ventilated to allow fresh air in and out even the refrigeration and storage compartments enclosed voids and ships with no ventilation at all are an enormous risk to life you could easily get overwhelmed by gases or carbon dioxide and die designers go out of their way to remove this risk as much as possible with ventilation not only that but Titanic Stern section was made up of dozens and dozens of state rooms and cabins separated only by Timber planked walls not metal bulkheads as you'd imagine there's very little down there that would be able to withstand the forces of water pressure to even build a Pockets Cameron and his team show the stern section acting like a single structure falling in one go so we need to look at the stern itself and ask if it meets the conditions of air and water tightness well after being broken apart and ripped apart at one end it obviously doesn't there was plenty of opportunity for air to escape on mass as it was forced out by the ocean one way is the hundreds of Port holes along the ship's side we know from Passenger testimonies that Titanic third class accommodations were uncomfortably warm on the night of the sinking and passengers weren't able to control their instat room heat with thermostats like we might today now to account for this many might have opened their port holes to allow the cool air in with dozens of Port holes possibly open the air trap within Titanic Stern could have been pushed out under Force as the ship sank there were other Escape Routes too every stateroom cabin and public room was fed fresh air by a complicated system of ducts and trunking which led down into the ship from up on the top decks even the fourth funnel that was torn off during the sinking but its stories deep shaft LED right down into the turbine room and open it up to the sky there were also four cargo hatchers on the stern section each topped only with a relatively flimsy cover that displaced air under pressure from below could easily pop off even given the rapid final plunge of the stern section it's unlikely that large amounts of air were trapped at all because Titanic's stern was not built to be airtight like a submersible like Titan is watertight sure but with hundreds and hundreds of avenues for air to escape if under pressure there's this great little moment right at the end of the 1997 movie where the Skylight cover over the steering room at the very stern of the ship explodes out as air is being pushed out of the ship by the water under extreme pressure but there's even more compelling real life footage that might show us what Titanic Stern looked like as it went down in 1991 the oceanos cruise ship and former ocean liner suffered flooding and she sank in the final moments the Stone Rose vertically and began to slip below and huge amounts of air and spray erupted from the structure as it went right at the end you can see this cloud of dark Dusty air that's like 40 years worth of gathered dust forced out of the ship by the sinking it's amazing stuff so if it wasn't an implosion what on Earth ripped the stern section apart like that well to get an understanding of this let's take a look at the damage itself to see if there are any clues down there along one section of the stern on the starboard side the shell plating the ship's skin is almost entirely peeled off the poop deck the very Stern deck has been peeled up and folded over onto itself like a tin can whole sections of the ship's Hull around the breakup Zone have been torn off almost intact and dumped on the ocean floor the stone sections decks have then collapsed down on one another nowadays the Sterns actually know higher than the height of the engines which were originally deep down in the ship's bowels an implosion wasn't necessary to achieve this what we're seeing is most likely a testament to the destructive forces of water itself hydrodynamics is a really interesting field of engineering it explains to us why things like ships and submarines move more efficiently and smoother through the water a simple kind of reductive explainer tells us that a streamlined object will move smoothly through the water because it doesn't create resistance distance or drag thanks to its shape but an object with a large flat uneven surface will catch the water as it goes and create lots of drag and that puts large force on the structure itself Titanic's bow when it sank was facing the way it was designed to face forward it fell forward it went down through the water to hit the ocean floor facing forward and of course it was designed with hydrodynamics in mind to cut through the ocean Like a Knife simple it did that when it sank now the stern was designed hydrodynamically too but only if it was heading in the right direction as the stern section sank down weighted at its forward End by the 1300 or so tons of engine it was going in completely the wrong direction and opened up to the ocean was a 10 story tall nearly 100t wide Jagged Mo of torn and Twisted Metal just ideal for creating drag now the scale of these physics is really hard to comprehend when you take my drawing here of the broken Stern section and add a for scale you start to understand why but let's try to imagine what the stern might have gone through as it [Music] sank in the final plunge water is roaring through the stern at an immensely rapid pace and the air is being forced out at the same speed Windows shatter as air surges through open port holes Roar as all the air inside is being forced out inside the ocean tears through the state rooms and public rooms like an Unstoppable tidal wave a battering ram of boiling white water that shreds everything in its path with devastating force it leaves the interior of the ship an unrecognizable empty mess because everything has been flattened by the sheer destructive weight of this almost tsunami of water as it was being swept through with the air forced out and the interior flattened the stone begins to drop for the sea floor but upset in its path because of the weird shape of the breakup weakened sections like the area behind the third funnel are torn off in their entirety as the 20,000 ton Stern sinks through the water at speeds of somewhere between 10 and 20 knots spinning as it does any structure attached to the stone that's not hydrodynamically streamlined sticks out and creates huge drag with massive forces then acting on that structure it simply breaks off the stern probably Twisted as it sank down exerting forces all over exposed shell plating is being ripped and torn off like an old land a deck houses are flattened the decks themselves pancake down and to top it all off the stern itself larger in tonnage than the ocean liner RMS Cedric and longer than the SS Adriatic of 1857 slams into the sea floor with such awful force that the weaken decks collapse and it nearly flattens we've already seen what a huge weight of water can do to a ship rogue waves have smashed super structures in like they were made out of tin cans on the Lucitania the impact was so severe that a rogue wave squashed the bridge permanently back by a few inches on the Michelangelo the forward superstructure collapsed in entirely on QE2 railings were bent like they were wet spaghetti now that was just after a quick strike from a wave imagine that kind of force applied to Titanic's already weak in Stern section for minutes on end as it fell no implosion would be needed to cause this kind of damage the destructive forces of water are already scary enough what we're seeing is most likely the result of hydrodynamic forces at play on a structure never designed to deal with anything like that and when you look at the damage itself things torn off almost intact like cranes and even whole sections of the hull it makes a lot of sense the water simply plucked them off bit by bit taking the stone apart as it dropped down you can see the telltale signs of this in a lot of places the poop deck torn up and folded over itself as if being flattened down again by the stream of water surging over it the plating here around sea deck at the ship's after welldeck has been bent back by the force of water acting against it possibly even the engines themselves at the breakup zone two cylinders were ripped off their bed plates what they sat on was snapped and the columns on top were just torn away now this could have happened during the breakup sure but given that the breakup happened further forward around the third funnel it's also possible the exposed engines would just ripped off by the force of water as the stern swiveled and violently pivoted around towards the sea floor the terrible state of the stern section actually has ramifications we're still seeing today in essence the stone is likely to rot and collapse much sooner than the bow section because of the way corrosion Works underwater on recks typically if a ship suffers damage during the sinking then that is where the corrosion will happen the most and that's why the stern is probably going to collapse much sooner than the bow it can be seen demonstrated on ships in Wartime for example the Destroyer Escort USS Samuel B Roberts where that ship suffered shell hits and Splinter damage she's corroding the most Titanic Stern has gone through much much more than a few shell hits the entire thing has been beaten like a giant pinata it means it's now collapsed down to a pathetic height a shadow of its former glory while the bow Stands Tall and proud and is eaten away from the breakup Zone forward towards the very prow section the stern is being eaten away all at once because literally everything is damaged soon it will be gone almost completely thankfully its state has been recorded in many ways first by Ken's spectacular paintings then by compelling close-up HD footage and more recently by full 3d scans of the wreck how long it will take for the stone section to actually collapse completely is beyond me and to be honest with you I'd hate to even throw an estimate out there but for now it tells us a story of Destruction and it gives us many Clues as to the great ships final moments [Music]