Photos of the Titanic were recently found as part of a private auction. These were taken by the ship’s chief electrical engineers before it left Belfast shipyard. The photos showed 30-foot-long black marks along the front
right-hand side of the hull, where the ship’s lining was pierced by the iceberg.
Experts subsequently confirmed the marks were likely to have been caused by a fire started in a three-storey high fuel store behind one of the ship’s boiler rooms. The fire was started back in the Belfast docks – before the ship had even begun its maiden voyage across the Atlantic.
Molony said that these new photos have come to light that show signs of damage to the hull, possibly caused by a fire below deck. The damaged sections of the hull made it impossible for the Titanic to withstand the iceberg impact.
“This isn’t a simple story of colliding with an iceberg and sinking. It’s a perfect storm of extraordinary factors coming together: fire, ice, and criminal negligence.” We should emphasize that officials have always known that there was a fire on board the Titanic – a fire that was smoldering in coal bunker number 6 – when the ship left Belfast, and Molony says that this damage was a crucial part of the sinking.
A team of 12 men attempted to put out the flames, but it was too large to control, Molony claims the fire heated the hull bulkheads up to 1,000 degrees Celsius. “We have metallurgy experts telling us that when you get to that level of temperature against steel it makes it brittle, and reduces its strength by up to 75 percent,” say Molony.
The dark marks Molony has spotted in several photos were close to bunker 6 and to the spots where the iceberg struck its hardest blows against the hull. (Floro Mercene)
(To be continued)
