NEW YORK — The tragic sinking of the Titanic nearly a century ago can be blamed on low grade rivets that the ship's builders used on some parts of the ill-fated liner, two experts on metals conclude in a new book.

The company, Harland and Wolff of Belfast, Northern Ireland, needed to build the ship quickly and at reasonable cost, which may have compromised quality, said co-author Timothy Foecke. That the shipyard was building two other vessels at the same time added to the difficulty of getting the millions of rivets needed, he added.

"Under the pressure to get these ships up, they ramped up the riveters, found materials from additional suppliers, and some was not of quality," said Foecke, a metallurgist at the U.S. government's National Institute of Standards and Technology who has been studying the Titanic for a decade.

More than 1,500 people died when the Titanic, advertised as an "unsinkable" luxury liner, struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage in 1912 and went down in the North Atlantic less than three hours later.

"The company knowingly purchased weaker rivets, but I think they did it not knowing they would be purchasing something substandard enough that when they hit an iceberg their ship would sink," said co-author Jennifer Hooper McCarty, who started researching the Titanic's rivets while working on her Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in 1999.

The company disputes the idea that inferior rivets were at fault. The theory has been around for years, but McCarty and Foecke's book, "What Really Sank the Titanic," published last month, outlines their extensive research into the Harland and Wolff archives and surviving rivets from the Titanic.

McCarty spent two years in Britain studying the company's archives and works on the training and working conditions of shipyard workers. She and Foecke also studied engineering textbooks from the 1890s and early 1900s to learn more about shipbuilding practices and materials.

"I had the opportunity to study the metallurgy of several rivets," McCarty said. "It was a process of taking thousands of images of the inside of these rivets, finding out what the structure was like, doing chemical testing and computer modeling.

"Seeing the kind of levels we saw in different areas, in different parts of the ship led us to believe they would have ordered from different people," she said, adding this may have led to the weaker rivets.

The rest of the story

But then how would strong rivets stop the ship from sinking?

they would have been able to keep the compartments from collapsing.. allegedly

The crack below waterline would have been considerably smaller.

But the rivets were not the only problem, a fire in a coal bunker had damaged the bulkhead of a compartment, which also buckled when the water broke int the compartment adjacent. The rivets were one of the causes but not THE cause. If they would have been OK it may would have been possible to save the passengers but not the ship.

hmm. I'll agree that faulty rivets were probably one of the contributing factors. Tempting fate by refering to the ship 'Unsinkable' Didn'd do much good either.

That is one of the many legends about the Titanic. For a long time ships with multiple compartments have been considered "unsinkable" before the Titanic. And they were almost right, because nobody ever considered that a hole would fill up more than one compartment. The difference with previous ships, such as the Deutschland, is that the Titanic could have had up to four compartments under water before being in a serious danger.

BTW the Deutschland also sunk after running on a sandbank in the Thames estuary.

maybe it was the iceberg, did anyone see the programme saying the titanic sinking was an insurance job, wre they even switched the titanic with its sister ship.

I'm Not a very nautical person, but I think there is definitely fate and luck involved with the sailing of ships.

for instance, Friday was regarded as an unlucky day to launch ships. the royal navy tried to disprove this.
they launched a ship on a friday the 13th. it was called the HMS Friday and was captained by a man called friday.

it sank without trace.

i know that the titanic was not launched on a friday, but sinking on it's maiden voyage is a bit unlucky...

cheers for putting up with this somewhat lengthy post of mine.

Most of that is seaman's yarn.

Any sinking is a bit unlucky... even if I sink my fishing boat.

The ship was jinxed from the get go, how many times since has one labeled a ship "unsinkable"

New Book? This is old news.

And why would be sinking the Olympic any better than sinking the Titanic?