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NEW YORK ( AP ) – The tragic sinking of the Titanic nearly a century ago can be blamed on low-pitched grade rivets that the ship ’s constructor used on some parts of the ill - doomed liner , two experts on metal reason in a new record . The company , Harland and Wolff of Belfast , Northern Ireland , needed to build the ship quickly and at sensible toll , which may have compromised quality , state carbon monoxide gas - author Timothy Foecke . That the shipyard was building two other vas at the same time added to the difficulty of get the millions of stud needed , he added . " Under the pressure to get these ship up , they ramped up the riveting machine , regain fabric from additional suppliers , and some was not of calibre , '' said Foecke , a metallurgist at the U.S. government ’s National Institute of Standards and Technology who has been studying the Titanic for a 10 . More than 1,500 citizenry died when the Titanic , advertised as an " unsinkable '' luxury ocean liner , struck an berg on its maiden voyage in 1912 and went down in the North Atlantic less than three hour later . " The society wittingly purchase weaker rivets , but I cogitate they did it not know they would be purchasing something deficient enough that when they hit an iceberg their ship would slump , '' tell co - author Jennifer Hooper McCarty , who begin researching the Titanic ’s stud while work on her Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in 1999 . The company disputes the idea that inferior rivet were at fault . The theory has been around for long time , but McCarty and Foecke ’s book , " What Really Sank the Titanic , '' published last month , outline their extensive enquiry into the Harland and Wolff archives and hold up rivets from the Titanic . McCarty pass two years in Britain study the company ’s archives and works on the training and working conditions of shipyard prole . She and Foecke also studied engineering text edition from the nineties and early 1900s to learn more about ship building practice and materials . " I had the chance to take the metallurgy of several rivets , '' McCarty said . " It was a process of taking thousand of image of the interior of these rivets , finding out what the bodily structure was like , doing chemical examination and electronic computer modeling . " Seeing the form of levels we saw in dissimilar domain , in dissimilar part of the ship conduce us to consider they would have ordered from dissimilar multitude , '' she said , adding this may have led to the weak rivet . The two metallurgist test 48 stud from the ship and find that slag concentration were at 9 per centum , when they should have been 2 to 3 pct . The slag is a byproduct of the smelting appendage . " You need the scoria but you need just a niggling to take up the load that ’s applied so the smoothing iron does n’t stretch out , '' Foecke said . " The Fe becomes weak the more slag there is because the brittleness of the scoria takes over and it breaks well . '' Foecke said the main enquiry was not whether the Titanic would sink after strike the iceberg , but how tight the ship went down . He believes the answer is provided by the weak rivets . His analysis showed the builders used stronger steel rivets where they expect the greatest stress and weaker iron rivet for the tail and the bow , where they thought there would be less pressure , he said . But it was the ship ’s bow that struck the crisphead lettuce . " Typically you desire a four legal profession for stud , '' Foecke said , using the measure for the strongest rivet . " Some of the ordination were for three bar . '' Harland and Wolff spokesman Joris Minne challenge the finding . " We always say there was nothing incorrect with the Titanic when it go away here , '' he said . When the crisphead lettuce reach the Titanic , it scraped alongside the ship . Foecke said this affect a turn of seams in the bow and the weak rivets let go , putting more pressing on the strong rivets . " Six compartments flood . If the rivets were on intermediate better quality , five compartments may have oversupply and the ship would have persist afloat longer and more citizenry would have been saved , '' Foecke said . " If four compartments inundate , the ship may have limped to Halifax . '' The company does not have an archivist , but it refers scientific questions on the Titanic to retired Harland and Wolff naval engineer David Livingstone , who also has researched the ship ’s sinking feeling . He enounce he largely agrees with the authors ' findings on the metal composition of the rivets , but added their conclusion that the rivet were to blame for the sinking are " misleading and faulty '' because they do not see the ship ’s overall invention and the diachronic context . " You ca n’t just look at the material and say it was substandard , '' Livingstone said . " Of course of instruction material from 100 years ago would be subscript to fabric today . '' He enjoin he has found no text file to support the argument that Harland and Wolff wittingly used deficient material . He pointed out that the Olympic , a ship the company build up at the same time using the same materials , had a long life with no troubles . The third vessel plough out in the former 1900s was attacked and sunk in World War I. Livingstone say he is not sure why iron rivets were used in the bow and the relentless but believes it may have been because a Harold Hart Crane - mount up hydraulic rivet machine could not reach those points . He said the iron rivets were panoptic to right for the difference in strength . Contrary to Foecke ’s theory , Livingstone articulate , the Titanic did not go down tight compared to other ships that have lapse . He said the Titanic did not capsize – as do most sinking ships – but maintained an even keel until the last moment , going down after about 2 1/2 hours when the system of weights of the H2O it took on became too much . William Garzke , president of the forensics panel of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers based in New Jersey , sound out wrought smoothing iron was commonly used at that clock time , but steel was the young , stronger choice . Garzke , who also has studied the Titanic sinking feeling , say the two scientist made a good point about the variability of the rivets , but " the problem is not the metallurgy of the rivets , it was the design of the pore joints . '' He enjoin that the party used only two rivets at the site of encroachment , when three would have provided more strength and durability . Associated Press writer D’Arcy Doran contributed to this report from London .
The bow of Titanic photographed in June 2004, by the ROV Hercules during an expedition returning to the shipwreck of the Titanic.
