Myth : If a ship the size of titanic were to go down you would be sucked under with the ship :-)

In the original myth they said that the myth was busted due to the fact that adam was not sunk with the brick that was dropped into the pull.. I have a couple of issues with this..

1.) The volume of water that they had was inaccurate to what would of been that night we are talking the ocean not the backyard swimming pool..

2.) The actual water conditions : It was salt water not your chlorinated pool...

3.) The size of the brick that pulls gravity downwards.. We are talking a 40 ton ship not a pallet of bricks...

Here is how i would retest the myth.. get clearance from local authorities and take buster for a ride to the atlantic ocean with a semi-trailer do hicky thing.. sit buster near the semi in a lifeboat that they would of had and then make a ramp to drop the semi into the ocean and see if that creates enough suction to drag buster down with it....

ps. been a while since i watched the episode sorry if the retested it or if i have my facts wrong...

Titanic:
One key factor I haven't heard yet has to do with panic on the bridge. i.e. It is common to go to an emergency reverse operation even on the largest aircraft carrier during drills at sea. The problem is steering is the reversed.

In reverse with an object on the right for example, you must still steer right while in reverse. When going forward in contrast, of course you would steer left. Only the individual a the wheel would ever know for sure. History says they didn't make this error, however it would have been an easier error to make.

When steering in reverse under power, even for a few seconds, if the helm had been turned without reversing normal steering, the ship would have ground into the iceberg with many times the force of the original impact.
See this site on ship steering: http://users.senet.com.au/~gittins/wheel.html

With respect to on board coal fires and metal quality: remember the ship made it to the middle of the Atlantic and even icebreakers can sustain damage during routine runs.

Did you watch the whole show? They busted it when they sunk a tugboat in the San Fransico Harbor with them aboard. It did not pull them down.

Also salt water is more boyant then fresh water thanks to the salt. Thats why people have a easy time floating in the Great Salt Lake.

To respond to the steering and reversing - the order given was to put the rudder to starboard, a left hand turn since the order is based on a tiller operation(tiller handle is pushed to the right resulting in a left turn). They reversed the ship to try to slow momentum - the Titanic had a center lined rudder and only the port and starboard props operated in reverse. The move is called "porting around" kind of a skid move. In this case it was the wrong application as without a direct flow against the rudder(undersized for a ship of it size), it did not respond as anticipated.

Part of it is the sheer mass of the ship and the DEPTH at which it sank.The draw down of thousands of tons going down does draw you in. I'd refer you to the living history recordings of seaman Ted Briggs, one of only 3 survivors of HMS Hood (1940) who recounted being sucked down by that ship until some explosion below carried him upwards-it's thought boilers in the ship.

I agree it needs a revisit. Owning the first season of mythbusters I have watched this episode numerous times. I agree with what happened in the episode, it didnt suck Adam down nor did it anyone else. But if you put that tugboat up next to the Titanic it would look like a pea. The Titanic was much larger and had much more rooms and such for water to flow into. Put Adam on the end of the Titanic and let it go down and I know for a fact he would be sucked under. There is such a large volume of water being sucked in it would for sure suck someone in. Anyone else agree?

Didn't some of the survivors state that it was a big surprise that when Titanic went under, no one was "sucked down" with it? A lot of them were still in the water at the time, according to the transcript of the Congressional Hearing on the matter. I'd definitely take their word for it, being they WERE there, I wasn't ! JON

I am 14 but my dad was in the navy and he and I both say that the size of the ship will make a difference in the way it will turn out. And you had a tug not a ship. So if the ship is bigger it mite have an affect on the sucking power of it. Right???? Well I am your #1 fan and I now a lot of people say they are but I think I am. And I did not mean to sound rood but it is true. So please redo this myth and please use a ship this time.

P.S I am in total agreement with the first guy .