Now these are true critics

[Bramblethorn]

As to be expected with any story posted here some readers weren't impressed with my efforts and no doubt added my story to the list of bad Titanic works over the years. But even without my story, there's quite a number of Titanic works that aren't very good. Like a cartoon made for kids about the disaster made circa 2000 so bad and so bizarre it was actually thought for some time to be an urban myth. A 1996 Titanic mini-series featuring a then young and relatively unknown Catherine Zeta Jones was pretty terrible. But that mini-series looks closer in quality to James Cameron's Titanic blockbuster when compared to a mini-series from 2012 to commemorate the centenary of the sinking. While liberties are taken with writing historical fiction (and I can't claim not to have done the same to some extent) the depiction of some real-life passengers and crew was a disgrace, to the point of being libellous. For example one of the ship's senior officers is depicted as a bad-tempered, tyrannical bully, when in real life he was a well respected and much liked officer, and a hero of the disaster who went down with the ship. Other passengers and crew whose actions that night might be best classed as misguided are instead upgraded to being flat out villains. At least I treated the real passengers and crew referenced in my story with respect and dignity.

I think when the material is old enough, people are more relaxed about taking liberties. People still debate whether Richard III killed his nephews but nobody is likely to be offended by a story that takes one side or the other, and there's a comedy musical about Henry VIII's wives.

In the 90s, Titanic was in that borderline space where it was ancient history for some and still "too soon" for others. If you made somebody into a villain they weren't, there'd still be a handful of people who knew that guy first-hand as a parent/etc. and more who'd never met him but were close enough to have strong feelings about him. It's gradually moving further into history, at the usual rate of one year per year, but maybe not far enough yet to be completely uncontroversial.

 

[Bramblethorn]

It might as well have been a hundred miles. I didn't realize that it took three hours for rescue boats to arrive.

I think there has only been one ship sunk by a submarine since World War II, during the Falklands War in 1982. If there ever is a naval war off the coast of China - I certainly hope it doesn't happen - we will be shocked again at what submarines are capable of doing.

Two others sunk in war since WWII: an Indian ship sunk by Pakistan in 1971, and a South Korean ship believed to have been torpedoed by a North Korean sub in 2010 (North Korea rejects the claim).

One Japanese civilian ship sunk by a collision with a US submarine, caused by negligence on board the sub, but that's probably not the kind of sinking you meant.

 

[gunhilltrain]

You need to define what you mean by the "age of steam". If you mean reciprocating engines or triple expansion engines (pistons going up and down), then the maximum speed might have been 15 knots or so. But steam turbines, fuelled by coal or oil, pushed up to 22 - 23 knots by the beginning of the first world war - the dreadnoughts. The huge Japanese and American battleships launched in the 1930s were faster (and much bigger - twice or three times the tonnage).

The Soviets put the fear of God up the American navy in the 1980s when an Akula class nuclear boat was recorded doing over 30 knots underwater, which is fast - at the time, faster than most USN aircraft carriers. Bloody noisy, though, they tracked it across the Pacific.

I didn't define it exactly. I just meant steam power, whether reciprocating engines or turbines. Steam turbines were tried out on a least one American locomotive but it failed.

Mike Brady describes a British attempt to build steam turbine submarines. I haven't watched this episode yet.

 

[gunhilltrain]

For a while, steel from WWII and earlier wrecks was in high demand for use in radiation-sensitive equipment (Geiger counters etc.) Steel manufactured post-1945 was contaminated by radioactive elements circulating in the atmosphere due to nuclear testing, and obviously if you make something like a Geiger counter out of material that already contains radioactive elements that's going to impede its usefulness.

It's less of an issue these days; nobody's done atmospheric testing in decades, so most of that contamination is gone.

Yes, I heard it had to do with getting non-contaminated steel.

I wonder how many atmospheric tests were ultimately done, many by the United States (including on our own soil in Nevada). After the first few, it's pretty obvious what's going to happen.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Two others sunk in war since WWII: an Indian ship sunk by Pakistan in 1971, and a South Korean ship believed to have been torpedoed by a North Korean sub in 2010 (North Korea rejects the claim).

One Japanese civilian ship sunk by a collision with a US submarine, caused by negligence on board the sub, but that's probably not the kind of sinking you meant.

I didn't know about the first two. I only knew of the General Belgrano (former USS Phoenix) sunk by a British sub in 1982.

 

[ElectricBlue]

For a while, steel from WWII and earlier wrecks was in high demand for use in radiation-sensitive equipment (Geiger counters etc.) Steel manufactured post-1945 was contaminated by radioactive elements circulating in the atmosphere due to nuclear testing, and obviously if you make something like a Geiger counter out of material that already contains radioactive elements that's going to impede its usefulness.

It's less of an issue these days; nobody's done atmospheric testing in decades, so most of that contamination is gone.

The sunk German battle fleet from WW1, in Scapa Flow, is the biggest source of non irradiated steel, tens of thousands of tons of it. The German crews on-board coordinated a mass scuttling of one day in 1919, 52 ships sank of the 74 interned there. Many were salvaged, but I think most are still there.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I wonder how many atmospheric tests were ultimately done, many by the United States (including on our own soil in Nevada). After the first few, it's pretty obvious what's going to happen.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_nuclear_weapons_tests

Not at the time, it wasn't. There were a bunch of squibs, but an equal number where the yield ran away from predictions. The Brits did the same in the middle of Australia (the Woomera and Emu Field test sites), and the Soviets did the biggest air burst of a thermo-nuke, 50 megatons, in 1961. Ouch.

 

[Bramblethorn]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_nuclear_weapons_tests

Not at the time, it wasn't. There were a bunch of squibs, but an equal number where the yield ran away from predictions. The Brits did the same in the middle of Australia (the Woomera and Emu Field test sites), and the Soviets did the biggest air burst of a thermo-nuke, 50 megatons, in 1961. Ouch.

For testing yield and other aspects of the bomb design, I'd think most of that could be done underground. But the other part is testing the effects: what kind of damage does X kind of bomb do to Y construction of building, how much protection does this or that countermeasure give, etc.

The other other part is reminding one's enemies that one has them.