Quote Originally Posted by davesrepair View Post
Exactly, thanks.

"I cannot imagine any condition which would cause this ship to founder. I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to this vessel. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that." - E. J. Smith, Captain of the Titanic, quoted in the NYT, April 16, 1912

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" Jeremiah 17:9
Has they made the bulkhead walls in the lower hold go all the way to the ceiling with water tight pressure doors allowing these areas to become pressurized compartments he might have been correct. The long gash in the hull would have only filled those compartments instead of allowing the water to flow over the tops of the walls flooding the hold.
The problem here is now we can all be arm chair engineers after the fact.
An example of my own experience. I was working at a company where we made all our own hydraulic cylinders for the machines we were building. Our 5" bore 6 ft stroke cylinders were tested to 6000 PSI we rated them at 3000PSi, the machines we built used a 2800 PSI system. Should be sufeincent RIGHT?
Ok the scenario the user or one of their helpers had opened the hydraulic tank for what ever reason, no one knows why, but they had failed to secure the cover properly, it rained a nd where the tank was located run off from the roof had contaminated the oil turning the ATF pink. Over time this water contaminated oil was cycled throughout the system. the cylinders were mounted vertical and used the rod end to pull so when the machine was loaded with 2 cars parked on platforms above each other and one on the ground the valve was supposed to be pulled to allow the platforms to settle on a safety lock. These being parking machines the operators didn't always release the pressure allowing the platforms to settle to the locks allowing the cylinders to be fully retracted and under constant pressure. One hot day the contaminated oil expanded so much it caused the top of the cylinder that had the gland in it to burst dropping the platforms onto the locks. The only real damage was 1 the burst cylinder and 2 a spray of oil all over a few cars.
Naturally they wanted to sue for damages and possibly rightfully so but we hired a professional engineering company to investigate the cause if in any way we were responsible we would have gladly paid for the damages to 6 new $80,000.00 BMWs. However the investigation proved several points of negligence on the part of the dealership #1 tampering with the hydraulic tank#2 not following stated operational procedures.#3 not informing us of the contamination so we could have flushed the system long before any damage could have occurred.
their findings were the contaminated oil had corroded the safety relief valves on every machine the water inclusion in the oil had expanded under the heat from the sun baring down on the surfaces of the cylinders causing pressures to build astronomically high. In recreating the the incident using another of the cylinders with the same oil still inside it was determined that the pressures built to over 15,000 PSi. Even though we were exonerated we completely flushed out the system replaced all of the cylinders just incase others may have been partially compromised replaced all of the relief valves and paid to have the damaged vehicles cleaned and detailed, and added tamper resistant seals to the hydraulic tank, and a secondary cover with a locked access door to prevent rain or runoff from getting in the power unit.
So yes stuff happens and when it does if you learn something from it to prevent it happening again it is a good thing.