How Many Rivets Did the Titanic Use?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 ส.ค. 2024
- I hope you enjoyed this riveting fact :)
Oceanliner Designs explores the design, construction, engineering and operation of history’s greatest vessels- from Titanic to Queen Mary and from the Empress of Ireland to the Lusitania. Join maritime researcher and illustrator Michael Brady as he tells the stories behind some of history's most famous ocean liners and machines!
#titanic #history #engineering #oceanlinerdesigns #ships
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Imagine being a worker who lost 2 years of his life working in terrible conditions just for it to all go down the drain in 4 days
Yeah but it was their job
Yeah but they still made the money. They got their part. I imagine the people who paid to build it would be angrier
@8830wjs or as the conspiracy goes they may have even orchestrated it in order to claim a bonus from their insurance company.
Ok everyone replying to this comment clearly hasn't read my others so im just gonna compile them all into one no more excuses
Comment 2
@dutchthespitfire3204 never said i believed it bruv just thought I'd mention it
There are some distinct differences in design along the sides of both the titanic and Olympic. If you examine the ship wreck you can see quite clearly the wreck of the titanic is infact the titanic
Comment 3
@sabrinastratton1393 again like i said didn't claim it to be true however the theory does exist and so i figured id throw it in there
Sounds like your average marriage...
@@kingboong8343 The switch theory is bullshit
Olympic was still a very popular ship and served untill the 30s
It's 4am and I can't sleep, but at least I know how many rivets the Titanic had.
😄 I feel you sir... many a time I toss and turn all night... or can't get back to sleep after a 3am pee😏
Too relatable
Same here again
O READ THIS COMMENT AT EXACTLY 04:00
If only they had used 3,000,001 rivets...
More like 3.100.000. Concerning the 5 compartments that were struck by the iceberg on the harbord side of the ship.
@@victorsamsung2921 no only 1 more it would've stayed afloat
@@victorsamsung2921 It was a joke, sweetie.
@@yusokrazee I know. Just adding a bit more context.😉
@@victorsamsung2921 “I know. Just adding a bit more context.😉”
-🤓
This discussion has been riveting. I was welded to the story.
You took my line.
😂😂😂😂
The four-person rivet team was the heater, the placer, the bucker, and the hammer. (Names may vary.)
A rivet looked like a metal mushroom.
One guy ran a little coal stove on a stand, heating the rivets, fanning the fire, and pulling out red-hot rivets with tongs. He would throw the hot rivets up to the placer who had a catching funnel.
The placer would stick the stem of the rivet in a hole so it went through two plates of metal.
The bucker had a tool that was essentially a bar of metal with a dimple in one end - a bucking bar. The dimple went over the head end of the rivet.
The hammer guy would then whang on the end of the stem of the rivet with a hammer, spreading and flattening it into a head.
When the rivet cooled, it would shrink in length, pulling the sheets together.
Techniques may vary, but throwing red-hot steel rivets was a thing.
There was a study on the quality of the rivets used on the Titanic and there was a theory that the lower quality rivets would've been brittle in the cold North Atlantic waters. It would've been an inconsequential but small contribution to the sinking.
I think that's unlikely because the temperature difference seems to small.
You mean the grade 4 rot iron rivets at the bow? They were out in by hand exclusively and were of lower grade to curve easier.
@@grantmctaggart9942 "wrought" not "rot". They weren't lower grade, that's a modern misconception. Wrought iron was regarded separate material from steel in 1912 with its own set of fully understood properties.
@@Hammerandhearth spelling is not my strong suite 🤦♂️
@@Hammerandhearth but yeah I’m aware it’s not stright up lower quality
I was a restoration engineer for many years and I had to do riveting as part of my job (although, not quite this many). You really must have a go at riveting if you get the chance, the proper way that is. It'll keep you on your toes mate 👍
I’m game! I bet those old riveters were in great shape!
Why have I got addicted to your videos?!
I'm really fucking pissed that the Titanic just sank like that, GORGEOUS ship, if only it were still floating to this day.
She would've probably been deemed "outdated" long before modern times and scrapped or sold to some rich person.
My understanding is that iron rivets were used on complex seams and hull sections, where limited access would not permit the use of gantry riveting machines. Iron was inherently softer than steel and could also be worked slightly hotter, meaning that they were easier to drive by hand.
Lusitania actually used more rivots than Titanic because they wanted her hull to be able to withstand Duty as an auxilliary warship.
And it still didn’t stop the torpedo.
@@peterm1826 The whole auxilliary Cruiser concept was proven pretty much useless by WW1
I'd love to see the Big Piece to witness this craftsmanship! My great grandfather worked in Harland and Wolf during the time the three sisters were built!
Hi Mike, just saw you on the news. Great work and wonderful to see you’re getting exposure in the media!! All the best to you 😊
Cheers, thanks so much for watching :)
Now wondering what percentage of the ship's weight was in rivets.
Probably only around 1% at most, the paint would be heavier.
Given that each one of those rivets weigh about a pound, the rivits make up roughly 2.8% of the ships weight.
so, if we take all of the rivets, they would weigh roughly 3,000,000 pounds, in comparison, the entire weight of the titanic was 104,620,000 pounds, meaning that, according to my very rough math, the titanic’s weight was around 2.867520550563946% rivets. feel free to correct me, i am going to be wrong
1200t. That’s the right number. Source: “Titanic”, Leo Marriott.
@@spaghettiman697 came up with the same number, I think you nailed it.
I did know this, not because I'm a smartass, although there are some who seriously question that, but because I don't live too far from Belfast, and have visited the Titanic Centre where you can learn all sorts of little details.
A fact that I found really interesting, was how the steel plates of the hull were designed. There was no CAD back then, so the template for every single plate - and every one was unique - was drawn in chalk, on the floor of the design shop!
I suspect the templates are recreations, but it's amazing to think how such a marvel could be built using such simple methods.
Those numbers add up to over 20 riveting teams working every day for 2 years straight. 20 x 200 x 730 days = approximately 3M rivets.
I've done quite a bit of hot riveting with thinner steel plates and there is just something satisfying about how strong/attractive the joint is with the most basic materials/tools.
That's riviting
After a full day of hammering in rivets in a steel hull, you definitely know what you've done.
Now imaging doing this for years, or probably a good amount of your adult life.
Rivets are insane. Because, and hopefully this isn't new to anyone, things expand when heated and contract when cooled, the rivets "shrunk" as they cooled which squeezed her hull plates together so tight as to become watertight. Interestingly, welding had a disadvantage due to this property of rivets. It took a while for welding to take off partly due to concerns that missing a spot would lead to leaks whereas rivets pretty much prevented that issue. Cost and skill were the main factors as to why welding was slow to take off but a degree of conservate thinking made it hard for the welding arc to hit the shipyard.
I did not know that. However did you know that oceanlinerDesigns is my favorite TH-cam channel ? 😯
:)
@@OceanlinerDesigns Cheers to you Aussie!
My tinnitus flared up just watching this.
The not-so-subtle pause right after saying the steel rivets were used in the middle because they were supposed to make it stronger...☠️
I am fascinated by this channel. I have learned so much. Thanks!
Beyond all the human loss, imagine how all the people who toiled on the Titanic felt when it didn't even make its maiden voyage? So much incredible craftmanship vanishing.
Did't know that. Wonder if after the hull is gone we will see the rivets and their location for which have survived v. those eaten away by the 100+ years at depth. Could provide insight into her anatomy.
if the steel hull thieves don't get her first. big market in pre atomic bomb steel, ships in the South Pacific in relatively shallow water are disappearing fast...honestly i think Titanic is way too deep...
"He was a riveter. a proud man, a tough man. My father."
Fun Fact: I have been to Belfast and seen where the Titanic was built and I have also seen a real life jacket used in the night of the sinking.
The museum is really cool
Did you also I walked across the field of grass witch resembles Titanic's keel? I have visit the museum in 2012 a week before Titanic's 100 year anniversary and It took me a few minutes to get to the end of the field.
@@surgemeister182 yes I did!
i know no one is going to see this but i watched your video about the lifeboat rescue thing
maybe the reason why the lifeboats were not filled enough was because no one wanted to get on because they thiught a rescue ship could come
ofcourse, they stayyed on the deck to not be in flooding, and if you argue that they were trying to get on, it was probably just the men trying to get in with their wife’s, which caused the crew ti think everyone was trying to get on, casuing confusion in the inquirys
TLDR:
it wasnt crews fault the lifeboats were not fully filled
Hey ocean liner designs u should do a video on the purpose of titanic’s yellow stripe
The riveters at Clydebank shipyard were legendary for thier riveting skills
Riveting tale ol chap
The double-plating of the strakes was for strength. No wonder the captain was overconfident with regards to ice bergs. It was just the wrong ice berg to strike.
Just built lego titanic. Your videos were so encouraging. 9000 pieces
I’ve been watching your channel lately and I just saw you interviewed on the news!
That’s a funny coincidence! Thanks for watching :)
According to the math I did, it would take one team a little over 41 years to do that many rivets. Which would mean about eighteen teams of four to do that many rivets in a time span of two years. I'm curious if work was being done around the clock or if any days off were taken
Since welding was still a little into the future, I always wondered how they made the plate joints watertight by using just rivets.
When rivets cool they contract. As such, the large rivets essentially shrank enough to squeeze hull plates tight together which made them watertight
This is a very interesting question unless you've already done a video on this, but can you do a video or short on why the Titanic's navigation bridge had 5 telegraphs when only 2 engines could be controlled?
3 for the propeller 1 for auxiluafy and anoter one i dont remember
Some have raised the question of poor quality of the rivets regardless of whether they were iron or steel. That and the tendency of iron to have more brittleness in cold water has given speculation that those were factors that led to the breach of watertight integrity.
Then again, Olympic was built with the exact same ones and survived countless incidents. Plus, Titanic was only in the cold waters of the Labrador Current for about four hours before the collision.
riveters in shipyards were paid on a quota basis if they didn’t meet the quota they lost pay also they had all their days work inspected by rivet counters if the rivet was up to standard it was taken off the quota and they got pay docked for that as well
I still can't believe they were able to form water tight joints between steel plates with such complex contours this way.
That was exactly my thought. Even more surprising than sinking on her first voyage, I'm amazed it was watertight at all!
@@SolarWebsite that's how rivets work. By cooling down they tighten the strakes together, creating a watertight seal.
Thank you for telling me the number of rivets on my beloved R.M.S. Olympic. For years I've had to learn to make do with Titanic information to learn about her but thanks to channels like yours and works from authors like Mark Chirnside. It's easier than ever to learn about so many of the great liners from history. Love it!
This is the titanic…
@@grantmctaggart9942 For decades data from Olympic has been substituted due to lack information on certain aspects of Titanic's construction. The two ships were literally built alongside each other and in the broad strokes are virtually identical.
@@leopardone2386 I know but this is still the titanic
@@grantmctaggart9942 They have roughly the same amount of rivets. I think you missed my point. For decades magazines documentaries and media reports have used information from Olympic to speak about Titanic. They were largely identical outside passenger spaces.
My point is: if you adore Olympic then until recently if you wanted in depth information on that ship. You could largely only find it being portrayed as information on her sister. Even up to and including photographs being mis identified.
So ironically is this case the amount of rivets for the hull. Being the same design built simultaneously. You just inadvertently learned about Olympic as well.
I've done substantial reading on the grand ol ship as I've always been taken by the decadent interior (as a cabinetmaker & finish carpenter).
In one assessment of the ship striking the iceberg, it was noted that if the Titanic had simply plunged head long into the 'berg, rather than skirting it all along its side, it would have survived the impact as only the forward holds would have taken on water. There certainly would have been casualties, although much fewer.
Go figure. (Two) years of all that planning, building, stocking, decadence and highly refined appointments gone to the bottom of an icy drink in a matter of hours. No words describe the tragedy and loss.
I worked something out which was quite strange the Titanic used 3 million rivetts,was a triple srew steamer, if it was travelling 3 seconds slower it would have missed the iceberg, the warning bell was rung 3 times, it had 3 funnels the 4th was for ventilation, and 334 bodies were recovered, and the Titanic inquiry was closed on the 3rd of july.
This ship was a bad luck ship as everything runs in 3's..
And a couple decades later they changed to Welding and Fuel Oil… What a time to see improvements or lose your livelihood.
Actually the rivet's were made from the slag in the steel making process.
Was there any kind of sealant used between hull plates or just the compression of the plates against each other?
Of course we knew 3 million rivets were used on the Titanic's hull. That's why Titanic sunk because they used the good old fashioned way.
All became deaf, some would have constant rining in the ears and a permanent head ache .
RMS Queen Mary had around 10 million rivets!
If they went through 200 rivets a day and there were 3 million rivets on the ship, then construction would have taken 41 years…
Iron, steel, and one made of gold. Every ship had one gold rivet
I actually guessed, Goldilocks-style as it was loading. A million! Two million. Nah, THREE MILLION!
Fun fact: the poor quality iron rivets are the main cause of the Titanic sinking. They became too brittle in the cold water.
Yeaaahhh no
@@eliel_360 Yeah
I wondered if they had welding technology back then. I've seen some seams on the edges of the ship. Not sure if they were welded or casted.
Every single plate was rivetted together, as far as i know welding was either not or little used.
Workers got paid by rivets that’s crazy better be riveting a lot to get paid
Say, can you make a short about how they sealed and caulked between the plates and tested for water tightness?
Didn't need to. Because heated metals expand and then contract on cooling, when the rivets cooled down they effectively shrank. This squeezed her hull plates so tight together as to become watertight. She was sealed up by physics.
So it would take atleast 20 crews at 200 rivets a day to get done with 3,000,000 rivets in 2 years.
it wasn't till the late 1910s into the 20s that rivets were made obsolete by welding. i have seen some large utility water valves for the water company in a major city still in service that are constructed by rivets. basically how you know it's from that era, riveting sheets together was both crap and horribly inefficient, and done away with wherever possible
I actually wonder what it would look like for a ship with out it's skin just all the interior
Can you make a video how engine order telegraphs working (Titanic) 🙏
What I don’t understand is how the holes are made in the first place? Are they premade in the plates? In that case what’s the error % ?
In the days before computers how do you make a plate with lines of holes match up perfectly with other plates on four sides and those plates match up on their four sides? At some point very minor errors will creep in and multiply.
are you sure it's only 200 rivets pr day pr team?
In a 10h workday that's 3min pr individual rivet, likely pressed down to 2min 50s with breaks included.
This doesn't compensate for deformed rivets which will have to be bored out and replaced or dropped rivets which have to be reheated before used again.
How did they seal the seams between the hull plates?
They didn't. Physics did all the work. When the rivets cooled they contracted. As they effectively shrank they pulled the hull plates tight together, so tight that the ship became watertight.
Oh so is that why the middle of the titanic is the last part still standing under water?
Construction workers be like: “all that work for nothing!”
Sydney Harbour Bridge has about 5.5 million rivetts 0 a staple of industry back then.
Is it not true that that's one reason why the Titanic sunk was because of the poor quality of the rivets used near the front of the ship? Yes obviously the iceberg was contributing factor but I heard rivet quality was mentioned in a report.
Cool!
There Was Something Wrong With The Alloy Composition Of Just The RIVETS! -They Went In The Usual Heated Way, But The Process Changed The Metal Composition On The Molecular Level, Leaving Them To Look Normal, But The Metal Composition Made Them As Fragile As Glass, Atomic-Wise. When It Hit The Iceberg The PLATES Were Bent, Twisted, And Crumpled, But Instead Of The RIVETS Being BENT To The Breaking Point, Their Heads And Bottoms, -The Ends Hammered Flat While White -Hot, -SNAPPED Off Like Glass, Making The Hole Bigger And Even Worse!
Id love to one day see some evidence for all of this talk about how shit the rivets were that are mostly still holding the wreck together to this day.
There is literally nothing that implies that anything was done different with the rivets when constructing titanic compared to any other ship of the time.
40.000 ton ship hits several million ton iceberg. Somethings gonna break, dont know why that is such a hard concept to understand
Correct me if I'm wromg but steel is iron with a bit of carbon in it (inder 2% i think) so it doesn't make sence to talk about an iron-steel alloy
Now had they used screws instead…. Who knows
To many its almost frighting
Yes.. I did know that.. My great-granddad was a riveter between the 1st and 2nd world wars.
It's believed that if they had used steel instead of wrought iron rivets the damage may not have been as great. No to mention it wasn't even the best iron at the time. A metallurgical test was done on those iron rivets a day they failed easily.
Riveting stuff
About how many steel plates were used in the hull's skin?
They couldn't use more workers to finish the hull faster?
A river every two minutes is about right
the real question is, how many rivets are still holding in place as of now? 🤔
All but 46
Thanks god for welding nowadays!
Don't think you worked out that math correctly. 200 rivets a day equals to 73K a year. If they used a total of 3 million, it would take 41 years. I think they managed a bit more than 200 rivets a day.
Probably could've used a couple more...
America was wleding ships together when Europe was riveting. Churchill had ships built in America to shore up and replace British ships lost to Nazi terror attacks during WWII.
3 million rivets .. what no approx numbers used?, wonder what James Cameron answer would be.
What do you think of the whole poor quality rivets thing?
Chewed to death already. The rivets were standard for the time. Impurities were to be expected for both wrought iron and steel.
Ive said it before but if you have a 40.000 ton ship hit a several million ton chunk of compressed, rock hard glacial ice at 20 something knots you can make the damn rivets out of titanium and they will still break at impact
Spend more money on rivets that insures best quality ship that holds human life.
so much work, but it still sunk
And how much did each of these rivots cost? 🤔
The fools! Why didn't they use 3 million and 1 rivets?! When will they learn!?
I’ve always wondered how she would’ve fared if she was welded.. I’ve heard reports that rivets popped open and let more water in than originally thought
She could have taken on more water just not in the way she did
Look up the T2 tankers and then get back to me.
We're the workers paid well enough for the construction the Titanic???
Hey mike what’s that stair plstform thingy between Titanics funnels.
The compass tower?
@@DerpyPossum I kinda want him to answer iy
200 rivets a day? That doesnt seem like that much. What all is involved in putting a rivet into place?
You were on 9 news!!!!!
Sooooo they built her inside out?
Thanks that was riveting
No, I mean it really was very interesting!
All that
did they weld some parts?
Meaning with electric arc or gas welding? I've never seen any evidence of their use on Titanic. Both forms of welding were still very new in 1912. I am sure you could find it turn up in a couple of special applications, but I doubt they would trust it for anything structural.
@@Hammerandhearth wouldnt water leak through micro gaps?
@@lolita19711 micro gaps?
@@Hammerandhearth if ww rivet the hull thats in water would the water still come in via small gaps between rivets
@@lolita19711 there were no small gaps between the rivets. Rivet-work is caulked (read hand-chiseled) to expand metal into any potential gaps.
How much water seeped into the hull ??
A ship's full worth since it's a the bottom of the ocean.
Did you mean to say 2000 rivets per day? At 200 per day it would take over 30 years to install 3 million rivets?
200 per crew of 4 men.
They had more than 1 crew of 4 men.