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http://ameblo.jp/warm-heart/entry-10155487656.html から転載。 2008-10-24 07:32:56 先だって、タイタニック最後の生存者（96歳）が思い出の品を競売にかけるというニュースがAP通信によって配信された。タイタニック号は97年前の沈没直後から、ドキュメンタリーや映画など様々な形で話題になることの多い事故だった。アメリカ映画「タイタニック」が空前のヒットとなり、アカデミー賞を受けたのは10年前のことである。 Titanic （タイタニック） それによると「不沈」のはずのタイタニックがあっけなく沈んだのは、「船体が弱かった」からだという。米西戦争の輸送で巨利を稼いだ北大西洋の海運を支配しようと乗り出したモルガン財閥のJ.P.モルガンが、タイタニック号の事実上の船主である。激しい建造競争の中一歩でも先んじようとしたモルガンはタイタニックの完成を急ぎ、実際の仕様よりはるかに薄い鋼材で船体を建造させた。従ってタイタニック建造にあたった造船会社には、事故直後から船体が弱くてタイタニック号が沈没したことは分かっていた。だがその事実を明かせば、遺族に訴えられてモルガン商会は破産する。モルガンを守るため事実は隠された。 以上が“Newsweek”（2008年10月13日付・電子版）が語る謎解きの概略だ。 モルガン財閥はいまも、金融危機の激震に見舞われるウォール街に帝王として君臨する。 -------------------------------- ソースの“Newsweek”英文記事はこちら ⇒ http://www.newsweek.com/id/162267/output/print The Titanic’s Last Secret The Titanic sank into the North Atlantic 97 years ago. Since then, as Harvard historian Steven Biel quipped, "Only Jesus and the Civil War have been written about more." In close to 200 books, documentaries and movies—and the highest-grossing film of all time—historians, scientists and Titanic buffs have fervently debated what really caused the biggest passenger ship of her day to sink just two hours and 40 minutes after hitting an iceberg, carrying 1,522 people to their deaths. It turns out they needn't have bothered. As Brad Matsen explains in his new book "Titanic's Last Secrets," those questions were answered long ago, in a confidential investigation by the ship's builders. To date, experts have amassed enough evidence to demonstrate that the ship broke into three pieces, not two—before sinking, not after—and she went down faster and at a much lower angle than James Cameron would have ever guessed—all thanks to skimpy rivets and a flimsy hull. But a trove of documents from Harland and Wolff—the Belfast, Ireland, shipyard where the Titanic and her sisters were born—reveal that the problem was not just one of incompetence and poor construction. It was negligence: the ship's builders suspected that the ship's hull was too flimsy, but they overrode the concerns of their engineer in a bid to get the Titanic on the seas in time. An investigation held after the ship sank was not made public; the heads of Harland and Wolff allowed two formal government inquiries to lay blame for the wreck on the shoulders of the ship's captain. The lawsuits of so many victims would have bankrupted the Titanic's owners—J. P. Morgan among them. In an era when hundreds of liners bore millions of people across the Atlantic every year, shipwrecks were not unusual. Even as the Titanic was being built, a crash near Nantucket, Mass., between the luxury liners Republic and Florida made headlines globally. Both vessels sustained far greater damage than would ultimately sink the Unsinkable. But the Florida made it to New York on its own power and the Republic stayed afloat for 38 hours—all 750 passengers were rescued. Why the Titanic fared so much worse has remained a mystery. Not until 2005 did divers working with Matsen find two large sections of the ship's bottom—enough for forensic scientists to determine that the flimsy hull and skimpy rivets were, in fact, responsible for the ship's fate. But we did not know, until now, that the shipbuilders knew that too. When Tom McCluskie, a retired Harland and Wolf archivist, got wind of Matsen's findings, he forked over details of the company's 1912 investigation, which had been hidden until then. "What we figured by doing forensic analysis on the extra pieces of hull matched exactly with what Harland and Wolff calculated based on their detailed knowledge of the ship's construction," says Matsen. "McCluskie said he had been waiting for someone to piece it together before he turned the documents over." Both Matsen's team of divers and scientists and Harland and Wolff's engineers concluded that a stronger hull and rivets would have kept the ship afloat much longer, resulting in a dramatically lower death toll. (Harland and Wolff then retrofitted the hull of Titanic's older sister with extra steel. They also built Britannic—the sister ship that was under construction when the Titanic sank—to the original specifications.) The Titanic had been the product of a colossal rivalry spurred by the growth in shipping profits from the Spanish American War. In the hopes of controlling the North Atlantic, J. P. Morgan bought controlling interests in a handful of British and American shipping companies. The federal government supported him with subsidies and tax breaks. The British government then subsidized Cunard Shipping, one of the only companies to resist Morgan's takeover. "There was all this money being thrown at an industry that was virtually unregulated," Matsen says. Making the hull plating a quarter of an inch thinner and the rivets an eighth of an inch thinner than the original designs called for would reduce the ship's weight by 2,500 tons, enabling her to cross the English Channel faster than the competition. Because shipbuilding regulations had not kept pace with the push toward larger vessels, the thinner specifications still met the standards of the day. "It was a matter of keeping the customer happy," says Matsen. "If J. P. Morgan wanted a boat made out of papier-mâché, they would have made him a boat out of papier-mâché." Happily, he didn't ask.
gataro-cloneの投稿
＜タイタニック号最後の秘密＞沈没の真因はモルガン財閥の儲けのために薄く建造された船体にある
テーマ：閑話休題
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=eArP9MLZx_o
格差社会の縮図であるタイタニック号を舞台に描かれた若き男女の恋
「不沈（unsinkable）」を謳ったタイタニック号が、氷山に衝突してなぜもろくも沈没したのか、これまで謎解きに多くの人が参加してきた。ハーバードのスティーブン・リーブという歴史学者などは、タイタニックより多く書かれたものはイエス・キリストと南北戦争だけ、と皮肉るほどだ。つい最近“Newsweek”もこの謎解きに加わった。
All along, the shipbuilders knew the hull was weak.
Jeneen Interlandi
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Oct 13, 2008
- Re: そりゃあ保険金詐欺やったいう話に比べればなんぼかましやか 薬痴寺 2008/10/24 15:10:24
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- Re: ＜タイタニック号最後の秘密 ＞ 検索→ タイタニック リベット kokopon 2008/10/24 09:22:38
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- Re: 「タイタニック最後の生存者（96歳）が思い出の品を競売にかけるという」がリンクしていませんでした。 gataro 2008/10/24 09:03:51
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