EXPERTS DIFFER

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 March 1932, Page 2

EXPERTS DIFFER

DOES A SHIP SINK? “When a ship sinks in deep water does it reach the bottom?” is the question raised by correspondents. Expert opinion is divided, although the majority verdict is that it does, says the Sydney “Sun.” Captain E. Veron writes: I emphatically say “No.” A ship or any article will sink till its weight becomes equal to the pressure, and it will float there till the current drifts it to rising ground, and there it will stay, perhaps, miles away from where it made its dive. Other opinions are: —

Captain W. G. Lawrence (Merchant Service Guild): The theory that a ship floats submerged at a great depth has been disposed of scientifically. Pressure at a great depth is exerted all around the object, leaving the law of gravity still operative. There is no suggestion that a sounding lead lowered in the Black Sea of Japan, over six miles deep, does not reach the bottom.

Captain S. G. Green .Burns, Philip, Ltd.): Sediment reaches the bottom. I see no reason why a ship should not.

Captain F. J. Bayldon (Nautical School): Whatever sinks - a fathom below the water will sink to the bottom of the deepest ocean. A submarine does not sink because conditions are altered aboard to make her float at a required depth, but if those conditions are not altered the submarine will sink like a stone to the bottom.

Captain Shiiter (Royal Packet Company.) : Steel has seven times the specific gravity of fresh water, and 1 think it possible that a vessel would reach a point at a tremendous depth where it would float. Professor O. U. Vonwiller (Sydney University): A ship constructed of iron or steel sinks to the bottom, pro/iding that tanks, water-tight com partments, and bulkheads are not intact. These would be crushed, however, by the pressure. It is true that the water at great depths is very much denser than at the surface, but to enable a ship to remain buoyant the water would have to be as dense, as the material in the ship, such as iron of steel. If the theory put fortn were true, then all sand, rocks, etc, would immediately rise to the depth at which a ship would float. The fact that all surveys and charts up till recent years were obtained by lowering a mass of lead to the bottom, and which beyond doubt reached the bottom, explodes the theory as being absurd.