Jennifer Hooper McCarty

This short but interesting work is by a pair of material scientists who sought a more complete and plausible explanation for the great ship's demise other than the one promoted by some "experts" and the media in the first decade of the 2000's. Both authors were team members for one of the later material science evaluations of Titanic wreckage recovered from the wreck site beginning in 1987, so they had plenty of exposure to the various personalities and theories swirling around the fate of the ocean liner in the wake of Robert Ballard's 1985 discovery. This work is an attempt to move past the media hype and domination over scientific truth.

With 248 pages, this book attempts to do much. The reader gets a short preface, with the bulk of the text divided into four parts, each with multiple chapters. The authors follow this text with endnotes, a bibliography, a glossary, a brief who's who of Titanic personalities, acknowledgments, and an index. Part I, The Background, includes Chapters 1-5 and speaks to the building of Titanic and the shipbuilding practices of the late Edwardian era, especially those practices of Titanic's builder, the Harland & Wolff Shipyard of Belfast, Northern Ireland. Chapter 4 in particular is dedicated to describing the riveting process as it applied to shipbuilding, so the authors have given the show away early as to where this book will lead you.

Part II, The Facts, presents what the authors take as facts mostly established from the various testimonies offered at both the American and British investigations into the disaster. Chapter 7 specifically addresses the mission and outcome of the various expeditions to the wreck site after Ballard's, delving into what materials some of these expeditions recovered as a basis for a material science-oriented investigation into the materials used in the construction of the ship. Based on the results of these investigations and experiments, Chapter 8 proceeds to outline a number of scenarios that can be connected to investigation results.

Part III, The Analysis, takes a look at the facts uncovered in Part II. Chapter 10 aims specifically at what the authors feel was a faulty testing process that, coupled with aggressive media promulgation of the "brittle steel" theory as to why the ship went down. The authors' disagreement with both the testing methods and the media push towards this particular solution is why they wrote this book to begin with. The authors also emphasize that much about the collision with the iceberg remains unknown and is perhaps unknowable. Part IV is a catch-all chapter tying up loose ends such as other theories about Titanic's loss and what is physically happening to the wreck at the bottom of the ocean as this book went to press in 2008.

This book is a quick read even if it does expose the reader to materials science. The authors do not allow the book to get bogged down in scientific ephemera that often drowns the non-technical reader. This book also points out a couple of the dangers that their experiences have exposed. First, is the lack of respect for historic events and the artifacts associated with them. Beginning with Ballard's 1985 discovery of the wreck, responsible scientists have urged a "hands off" approach to the Titanic--in other words, look but don't touch except for extraordinary science and history investigation. It is clear from this book as well as other sources that this approach has been soundly rejected by the many monied interests who wish to exploit the wreck for financial gain. Unfortunately that attitude was made possible to some extent by the ready availability of the very expensive equipment necessary to investigate and recover materials from the ocean floor. The end of the Cold War especially made Russian oceanographic technology available for this work, and unscrupulous individuals and organizations made use of the technology to recover items of non-scientific interest that were best left undisturbed.

The second danger this book presents is that of the current media environment. In those naive days before the Information Age, theories, scientific, historic, or otherwise used to take years to disseminate through their various communities, to be absorbed, debated, and otherwise vetted. Nowadays it seems that victory comes to those who publish and publicize first. Rather than being debated and vetted, these theories are quickly turned into canon, and the path for those who rightfully challenge these quickly developed theories instantly becomes a challenge. The shrill cry of the media plays a hand in this as well as managers and corporate types unknown determine which ideas are too complex for the interested public. In the case of this work and its authors, the "brittle steel" theory emerged as relatively easy to understand and plausible without going into details. The authors' theory that faulty rivet manufacture and non-standard quality control on hand riveting jobs required readers to take a deeper dive into the construction process, shipbuilding material supply, and their contexts in the early 20th century. Evidently that was a bit much for the reading public to swallow in the mind of media executives.

These dangers have been spoken about in far more detail elsewhere, but they remain dangers today and have the potential to get worse as today's reading public seems to be getting lazy about finding out about things on their own.....… (more)