Marine engineers' song?
Stephen Suffet
Anyone know anything about the origin of this filk of that old camp
favorite, "The Titanic"? I first heard it a few years ago, but it
contained several inaccuracies which I subsuquently corrected, some on
my own and others with the help of a physics teacher.
--- Steve
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THE TITANIC (marine engineers' version)
Tune: traditional
Words: unknown (?) (with several revisions for both historical and
technological accuracy by Stephen L. Suffet and Norma McCarthy)
Oh, they built the ship Titanic to sail the ocean blue,
And they thought they built a ship that the water would not come
through,
It was on her maiden trip that an iceberg hit the ship,
It was sad when the great ship went down.
Chorus (repeat ad lib):
It was sad, oh, it was sad,
It was sad when the great ship went down (to the bottom of the...),
So let's all shed some tears for the White Star engineers,
It was sad when the great ship went down.
Oh, the impact caused stress fractures in Compartments 1 through 3,
And they all started flooding almost instantly,
The pressure differential was really quite substantial,
It was sad when the great ship went down.
Now as weight was slowly added to that remote location,
It resulted in a moment around the center of flotation,
That set the bow in motion slightly lower in the ocean,
It was sad when the great ship went down.
As the damaged piece of plating moved down a foot or two,
The static head of pressure caused more water to come through,
Further weight out on that limb caused an increase in the trim,
It was sad when the great ship went down.
But the trimming calculations of this semi-flooded state,
Took an hour to do by hand, and by then it was too late,
It was like the sound of thunder when Bulkhead 3 went under,
It was sad when the great ship went down.
For above the Bulkhead Level, it was like an open door,
Which brought about the flooding of Compartment Number 4,
She was rising on her port as her time was growing short,
It was sad when the great ship went down.
Towards Compartment Number 5 came the madly rushing sea,
And the laws of Archimedes with respect to buoyancy,
Would not be violated, the whole damn ship was inundated,
It was sad when the great ship went down.
Oh, the force of gravitation had been balanced up to now,
By the transverse inclination of the slowly sinking bow,
But its good was now expended, equilibrium thus ended,
It was sad when the great ship went down.
Thus the liner finally vanished from the surface of the sea,
To a place where forces balance and where moments cannot be,
As the owners did repent, did the engineers lament,
It was sad when the great ship went down.
Harold Groot
<Suf...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Anyone know anything about the origin of this filk of that old camp
>favorite, "The Titanic"? I first heard it a few years ago, but it
>contained several inaccuracies which I subsuquently corrected, some on
>my own and others with the help of a physics teacher.
>Tune: traditional
>Words: unknown (?) (with several revisions for both historical and
>technological accuracy by Stephen L. Suffet and Norma McCarthy)
>Oh, the impact caused stress fractures in Compartments 1 through 3,
>And they all started flooding almost instantly,
>The pressure differential was really quite substantial,
>It was sad when the great ship went down.
I first got hold of this one back in the mid-70's. It was part of a
computer-printout collection of songs being used by the
Intercollegiate Outing Clubs of America (IOCA), a group that does
white-water canoe trips, mountain climbing, spelunking and that sort
of thing. {This is the same group that had the published songbook
SONG FEST that was put out by Will Brown (Dartmouth '37) and Gerry
Richmond (Brown '36) and later revised in 1948 by Dick and Beth Best
(Cornell '44 and Radcliff '47).}
The title in the computer printout was simply THE ENGINEER'S TITANIC.
It had a number of different rhymes than you are using, i.e.
Now the impact caused a hole in compartment number 1
And it wasn't very long 'fore the flooding had begun
Here the pressure differential was very influential
It was sad when the great ship went down.
I do not recall that the collection gave credits for the words for
this particular filk, but I will check.
Stephen Suffet
>
>
> The title in the computer printout was simply THE ENGINEER'S
> TITANIC. It had a number of different rhymes than you are using,
> i.e.
>
> Now the impact caused a hole in compartment number 1
> And it wasn't very long 'fore the flooding had begun
> Here the pressure differential was very influential
> It was sad when the great ship went down.
>
> I do not recall that the collection gave credits for the words for
> this particular filk, but I will check.
Thank you. The reason that the version I posted has a number of
different rhymes is that I consciously revised the lyrics, with the
assistance of a physics teacher, to more accurately reflect both the
history and the science. Of course such revisions only became possible
after the discovery and subsequent examination of the sunken remains.
--- Steve