
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 2, 1995                   TAG: 9503020071
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: ARLINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

STUDY GETS TO BOTTOM OF TITANIC'S SINKING

More than 80 years after the ``unsinkable'' Titanic sank, a team of top American naval architects and marine engineers is endorsing previous Canadian findings about the cause of the tragedy, asserting that the case now can be closed.

The luxury liner, which sank on its maiden voyage in 1912 with 2,222 passengers on board after striking an iceberg, was built with unsafe metals, had faulty rivets, was running on a rudder too small to propel it safely and was traveling too fast for icy waters, the team's report found.

The report even pointed a finger at the news media for some of the Titanic's bad image. It said that in writings about the famous ship, the press dropped the word ``practically'' from quotes of Thomas Andrews, a managing director of the company that built the ship. In fact, Andrews had declared: ``The Titanic is practically unsinkable.''

These are the conclusions scheduled for release in Arlington today by the five-member team of researchers who studied the sinkings of the Titanic and the Lusitania, which went down in 1915 after being hit by a German torpedo.

The group, which included David K. Brown, a top British naval historian and naval architect, will release ``A Final Forensic Analysis'' to the Chesapeake section of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers.

``The two ocean liners are most notorious ocean wrecks of the 20th century. Each has a story of its own,'' said William Garzke Jr., the principal author of the report and a naval engineer.

The Titanic gained widespread attention and was filled with celebrities and members of high society when it departed on its maiden voyage from England to New York. When it struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean, 400 miles east of Newfoundland, the world's largest passenger liner at the time went under in 2 1/2 hours, killing 1,517 passengers and leaving 705 survivors, mostly children.

Two child survivors, including 7-year-old Eva Hart, now the oldest survivor, told investigators that the ship actually split in half at the surface before it went under.

Garzke said his group's review of the past decade's research on the Titanic and separate testing vindicates Hart's claim. ``Eva Hart is correct,'' said Garzke. ``She always felt that the ship broke apart at the surface.''

by CNB