The Other Titanics

enGine
ENGLISCH
FÜR
INGENIEURE
Juni 2011
HISTORY AUDIO-DATEI
The Other Titanics
... mehr in der PRINTAUSGABE:
FEATURE Englische Artikel mit Vokabelhilfe
TECHNOLOGY Fachwissen auf Englisch
LANGUAGE Vokabel- und Grammatikübungen
WELTWEIT Interkulturelle Kommunikation
RUBRIKEN Neues aus Technik und Business
... mehr unter www.engine-magazin.de
History
Audio-Datei
The Other Titanics
We can expect another round of fascination
with the Titanic in 2012 – the centennial of its
sinking. Yet three sister ships were built for
the White Star Line, and Titanic was only the
middle sister. They were Olympic, Titanic, and
Gigantic. Titanic went down before Gigantic
was finished, so the White Star line decided
she needed a more muted name. They changed
Gigantic to Britannic.
It’s too bad people didn’t pay closer attention to the elder sister Olympic. Her troubles
foreshadowed her sister’s death, and they derived
from her great size. Before 1986 the only
wrecked ship larger than Titanic was the former
Queen Elizabeth (and she’d burned in port
with no loss of life.) That’s because, in her time,
Titanic was a much bigger ship than people
knew how to handle.
Imagine two ships moving side-by-side. Since
ships are widest toward their middle, the gap
between them narrows and water has to move
faster to get through. As its velocity increases, its
pressure, in turn, decreases – the so-called Bernoulli Effect. The ships are pulled together just
as an airplane wing is lifted by air accelerating
where the top of the wing is highest.
Olympic was the glistening pride of the White
Star line in 1911. In fact, Thomas Bonsall tells
us that Titanic was finished in comparative
anonymity. Seven months before Titanic sank,
Olympic was leaving Southampton on her fifth
voyage when she encountered the British cruiser
Hawke in the Spithead Channel.
The ships were sailing parallel through the
channel within a distance considerably less than
their lengths when Hawke veered into Olympic. The collision destroyed Hawke’s bow and
punched two huge holes in Olympic. Was it pilot
error or the Bernoulli Effect? The board of inquiry
finally blamed it on physics, not on pilots.
Olympic went into dry dock for six weeks to
repair one gash above the waterline, and another below it. A few months later, Titanic received
an omen of things to come on her maiden voyage.
As she passed the steamer New York, New York
lurched toward her, snapping her mooring lines
(another clear Bernoulli Effect.)
www.engine-magazin.de
anticipate
*see list
*see list
effort
subtle
hinted at ... came
destroyed
space
rises
drops
glittering ... finest
relative
met ... *see list
turned
front
pierced
*see list
hole
first journey
rolled ... *see list
Since no one had been killed in the Olympic/Hawke collision, we have to wonder how
history would’ve been rewritten if Titanic and
New York had actually collided. But they didn’t
and Titanic sailed on to meet her iceberg fourand-a-half days later.
Whether or not the Bernoulli Effect played
any part in that collision, we cannot know.
But the inability to control such a huge floating
mass of ship played a huge part. Titanic took a
full half minute to respond to the captain’s attempt to turn away. During that time she came
almost a thousand feet closer to her now-unavoidable collision.
Everything changes when you alter the
physical scale of things. That’s why men’s and
women’s basketball are such different games
from one another. It’s also the reason that we
had to learn how to manage ships, all over
again, in the twentieth century. n *OHN¬,IENHARD
attempt
board of inquiry
bow
centennial
comparative
cruiser
decrease, to
derive, to
encounter, to
expect, to
foreshadow, to
gap
gash
glisten, to
inability
increase, to
lurch, to
maiden voyage
mooring line
muted
pride
punch, to
veer, to
wreck, to
Versuch, Anlauf
Untersuchungsausschuss
Bug
Hundertjahrfeier
vergleichsweise, relativ
Kreuzer
sich verringern, abfallen
ableiten, herrühren
begegnen, treffen
erwarten, rechnen mit
andeuten, ahnen lassen
Zwischenraum, Spalt
klaffende Wunde, Schmiss
glitzern, funkeln
Unfähigkeit, Unvermögen
sich vergrößern, ansteigen
taumeln, schlingern
Jungfernfahrt
Bootsleine
gedämpft, gedeckt
Stolz
durchlöchern
ausscheren, abdrehen
zerstören, vernichten
Je
tz
t
Te eng
l
od efo ine
er n ab
w 061 on
w 5 n
w 1/ ie
.e 38 re
ng 0 n
in -36 od
e- 6 er
m ,F E
ag ax in
az 06 ze
in 1 lhe
.d 51 ft
e /3 e
A 80 b
bo - es
se 99 te
rv 36 lle
ice 6 n!
Vor hundert Jahren lief die Olympic, das
Schwesterschiff der Titanic, vom Stapel. Im
gleichen Jahr hatte auch sie einen schweren
Unfall, der jedoch nicht von einem Eisberg
verursacht wurde, sondern von der Physik.
Die Olympic fiel dem Bernoulli-Effekt zum
Opfer.
Dieser Text ist Teil der
Radioserie „Engines of Our
Ingenuity“ und wird hier
mit freundlicher Genehmigung des Autors und der
Radiostation KUHF wiedergegeben. Den Originaltext
und weitere 2600 Kurzberichte über die Geschichte
der Technik finden Sie unter
www.uh.edu/engines