This is by no means extraordinary: coal bunker fires were rather common back in the age of steamships. It was even discussed at the various admiralty inquests into the loss of the vessel.
This is by no means extraordinary: coal bunker fires were rather common back in the age of steamships. It was even discussed at the various admiralty inquests into the loss of the vessel.
Why not both? Very high temperatures earlier in the crossing and then very low temperatures in the Atlantic.
Does it? There's certainly materials where damage is made worse by rapid temperature transitions and/or a temperature differential across the material than by temperature extremes in one direction or the other alone.
Excessive heat being bad doesn't mean that excessive cold is good, or vice versa, and neither conflicts with the idea that both together, close in time or simultaneously, aren't worse than either alone.
In the case of the steel in the titanic, the theory is that there was excessive amounts of suphur in the steel, which "coats" the grain boundaries between ferrite crystals in the steel and causes brittle failures. Modern steels add Manganese to counteract this effect. Sulphur embrittlement is worse at colder temperatures, but will not be effected by heating/cooling cycles unless the heating is so intense that you get past critical temperature and recrystallize the steel (~2300 F).
I can’t seem to find the name but there was a town in Texas, coal delivery ship shows up with fire in storage. They dock, open the hatches, fresh oxygen causes the fire to spread. Then other boats catch on fire. Some explode. Throw shrapnel into town. By the time the fires are out, hundreds are reported dead, almost 40% of the town is left homeless.
The story I’m thinking of, the captain knew the coal was burning before he docked, and went into port anyway to try to salvage the cargo. The subsequent explosion was due to material on other boats.
I may have heard about this around the Tianjin explosion but more likely when they were fighting the new coal depots on the west coast, someone brought it up while talking about coal self igniting.