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Microcap & Penny Stocks : RMS TITANIC INC (SOST) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Michael Paul Langley who wrote (110)	9/27/1998 8:03:00 PM
From: Michael Paul Langley	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217

Titanic rivets may sink theory of causing tragedy By Michael Ellis BOSTON, Sept 10 (Reuters) - A rusted, two-story section of the hull of the Titanic, put on display in Boston on Thursday, may sink the theory that weak rivets hastened the liner's end, conservators said. Some scientists have speculated iron rivets from the luxury White Star liner were prone to snap easily because of an unusually high slag content. But preliminary tests on the rivets from a 20-ton (18 tonne) section of the hull, torn from the ship when she sank in April 1912 and raised from the Atlantic Ocean floor last month, show that they are as strong as those found on modern vessels. ''The rivets have a slag content that is quite acceptable by today's standards, and are similar to today's rivets,'' said George Tulloch, president of the New York-based Titanic recovery company RMS Titanic Inc. (OTC BB:SOST - news) Further tests may show Titanic was a strong ship, despite the apparent fragility of the twisted, one-inch (2.5-cm) thick, rusty red hull, he said. The 46,000-ton (41,000-tonne) liner was traveling at 20 knots (40 kph) when it collided with an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912, on its inaugural voyage from Southampton to New York. In one of history's greatest maritime disasters, only about 700 of the 2,200 people on board were able to escape alive because of a shortage of lifeboats. Tulloch, pointing up at the hull section, which must be constantly sprayed with salt water to preserve it, pointed out where first-class passengers in cabins C79 and C81 once peered out of four portholes. ''There's no doubt the iceberg went right by these windows,'' he said. William Thomas Stead, an English editor who wrote a book decades before the disaster about hundreds of ocean liner passengers drowning because of a shortage of lifeboats, was booked in a cabin next to C79 and C81, but those rooms may have been unoccupied, Tulloch said. Stead died in the tragedy. Below the cabins are parts of two portholes which looked out from a first-class dining room. Small patches of white paint can still be seen on the rusted steel on the starboard section, from between the third and fourth funnels. Hints of Titanic's distinctive black-and-white hull with a gold stripe may appear after conservationists remove silt which has collected on the piece over the years, Tulloch said. Visitors to a Titanic artifact exhibition in Boston will be able to see and touch the hull until November. Scientists and marine designers plan to study the section in order to design oil rigs and undersea pipes able to withstand the immense pressure and harsh environment on the ocean floor, Tulloch said. ''The lesson that we can learn from Titanic is that no matter how comfortable you feel, that elements of nature are always there,'' he said.