Ask The Tropers

To avoid confusion, the issue is happening on the discussion page.

I posted a reply explaining why their pet peeve is factually possible. We'll see how that goes, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

Bless you a thousand times over. Even if it doesn't work. Seriously. It's just nice not to be holding the fort alone.

Also sent a PM asking Aurelian to stop now that they're delving into Single-Issue Wonk territory. Hopefully they'll comply.

K, I received a reply from Aurelian and, they're still insistent on the issue. Furthermore, they're putting the blame on RoseAndHeather for this mess.

Single-Issue Wonk and being a dick. Good grief...

Yikes.

Let me talk to my younger brother who has meticulously studied the Titanic.

Well, I can tell you with absolute certainty that, from a mechanical standpoint, Carpathia's feat is possible.

In fact, Aurelian's allegations that the ship never exceeded the speed of 14 knots are absurd because if that were the case, then she wouldn't have been able to cover a distance of 58 miles in 3,5 hrs. Navigating her way through the same iceberg field that doomed the Titanic, not to mention the inevitable exhaustion of the men responsible for shoveling coal into the boilers (the 'gas pedal' in a modern day car, so to speak), would mean that Carpathia's speed would drop below 14 knots during the second half of the journey.

To put it bluntly: their insistence in treating an early 20th century steamboat with a manual fuel dispenser system (i.e. men with shovels) like a modern vehicle equipped with cruise control is prepostrous.

Well, Aurelian hasn't posted any counterarguments in the discussion page in hours, so I think they may have finally let this go. If I see them push the issue again, I'll bump this inquiry.

As an observer who does not have any stakes in the matter, I just want to point out that RoseAndHeather has never presented a compelling argument for why we should stick to her version of the story rather than that presented by Aurelian.

Two editors are having a disagreement over a historical fact; both base their position on sources, some of which say one thing while other sources say another thing. For a non-expert, which presumably all of us are, it is impossible to decide which side is right. I don't know why so many tropers are ganging up on Aurelian like this.

^ Well, I'm not knowledgeable on the Titanic in general so I don't know who is right in this regard. I guess we'll just have to see. In the meantime, I'm out of this. Got better things to do.

It's not my version of the story. It's the story as related many, many times over the last century, including Walter Lord's seminal history of the night, A Night to Remember, and his post-wreck-discovery follow-up, The Night Lives On; as well as the team behind Titanic: Honor and Glory, who have a small army of well-respected, professional Titanic historians fact-checking them on literally everything they do or say.

It's also attested to by Captain Arthur Rostron, commanding the Carpathia that night, as well as multiple passengers on the ship who were there when she received the distress call and were on board as she made the journey to Titanic.

Aurelian's claim, meanwhile, is based on one single article, of dubious veracity, which comprehensively misunderstands how steam engines even work.

Does that help?

~Aurelian provided evidence on 23rd April and asked you to do the same. That evidence didn't appear until 27th April, and that's (part of) what ~Lord Gro was referring to.

In addition to the article, ~Aurelian also cited Report into the Loss of the SS Titanic on the 25th.

I wasn't aware that I was required to play librarian and researcher for one of the most well-known facts about one of the most well-known tragedies in the world, particularly given that I didn't initiate the changes on the page in the first place.

Aurelian cited the Report of Loss etc as saying Carpathia had an average speed of 13-15 knots, which has absolutely nothing to do with their point. The page says, quite clearly — as Round Robin has backed up — that Carpathia reached 17.5 knots that night, specifically in the early part of her journey. Her speed was slowed later on by 1) the physical exhaustion of the stokers and 2) y'know, icebergs. The ship's average speed is not and has never been the issue. Aurelian stated, flatly, that the ship never exceeded 14 knots that night. As even the Report tells you, Aurelian is wrong.

This is, I repeat, a Single-Issue Wonk by one troper based on one article of dubious veracity and provenance, with dubious methodology. Full stop.

At this point, I would assume both of you are engaging in Single-Issue Wonk.

Yeah, seriously, the minutiae of how the rescue played out are not really a topic for this website.

You're not required to play librarian or researcher. You're just required to look at your arguments with the same critical eye which you apply to Aurelian's.

From the beginning of this argument, Aurelian has made the point that the only original source for the fact or claim that the Carpathia reached a speed of 17.5 knots during the night of the Titanic sinking is the captain of the Carpathia, who was (like everyone else for decades after that) mistaken about the position where the Titanic sank, therefore overestimated the distance the Carpathia had covered from her original position, and therefore assumed, in hindsight, that his ship had gone faster than it actually had.

You have refuted nothing of this, rather your replies seem to confirm that ultimately the captain of the Carpathia is the (only) source for the often-mentioned 17.5 knots, and that all the other books you mention have only been repeating his claim. It is not very convincing, for example, to cite the passengers on the Carpathia as independent whitnesses; they could only have estimated the speed, and how accurate could their estimates really have been? Or how did they all come up with the same estimated speed? Much more likely they just believed that the captain's numbers were correct. They'd have no reason to doubt him.

Round Robin has made several posts arguing that the Carpathia could have reached 17.5 knots. All that may well be true, it's just no proof that she did. The captain could have been wrong. Because apparently he was mistaken about the distance the Carpathia had covered.

Interestingly, you have already admitted that the factuality of the famed 17.5 knots is uncertain:

So, if the truth of about the 17.5 knots is impossible to know, then why are you so eager to preserve the current version of UsefulNotes.RMS Titanic, which presents this number as definite truth?

You vehemently reject Aurelian's edits resp. proposed changes on the grounds that the cannot prove his claim that the ship never exceeded 15 knots; very well; yet the page presently says that the ship definitely reached 17.5 knots (not 16 knots, not 17 knots, but 17.5 knots), and it is impossible to prove that claim either. Could it be that in your attachment to the celebrated 17.5 knots, you display some of the obstinacy which you accuse Aurelian of? Or why can't the page just stick to the things that can be verified? It would certainly make things easier.

I also observe that your style of arguing has been rather underhanded and tedious; you're needlessly referring to Aurelian's argument as "pet wank", "whining", Single-Issue Wonk etc., even when he's certainly not being wonkier than you. You've asked the mods to "step in" because he kept posting on the Titanic discussion page; why would the mods intervene so long as he has not broken any rules? It also does not matter how often you call Aurelian's source an article "of dubious veracity"; that the article is untrustworthy is what you are trying to demonstrate, not a fact which you can simply state to bolster your position.

(Worst-case scenario, we may need to lock the page until this calms down.)

Also, if edit-warring has occurred, the involved parties should be called in and told to knock it off.

Yeah, after much thought, I think both parties are responsible for persisting the issue even further. This needs to stop before another Edit War on the page breaks out.

My sole interest is in making sure that the Useful Notes page — a supposedly fact-based endeavour — reflects the general consensus of Titanic historians, because that is what it is supposed to do. End of story. I don't think it's our place to determine what is and is not fact from that night — that's what professional historians are for. But as a Useful Notes page, it should reflect the current general consensus of said professional historians. That's all I'm interested in, or everyone's going to be adding their pet theories to Useful Notes pages everywhere if they can scrape up a random article from the Internet about it, regardless of the reliability of the source.

Except that you're ignoring a Titanic historian, and calling them "dubious", despite having published a professional collaboration about the Titanic with the assistance of nearly a dozen authors. That makes them very much in the arena of "general consensus of Titanic historians". The evidence Aurelian has provided shows that the person making this claim is a professional historian.

So if the Carpathia's speed reaching 17.5 knots is only just an unconfirmed urban myth with virtually no evidence to back up the claim, then what incentive, RoseAndHeather, do you have of keeping it on the page as fact? Didn't you say you want to make the page as factual as possible? At this point, I'm starting to believe you may be contradicting yourself out of spite against one troper who is presenting possible evidence.

Can we please just drop this argument? It's getting nowhere, and we don't need this kind of drama.

^ We would except this wouldn't solve the problem with the Single-Issue Wonk we got going on here. How are we going to keep this from exploding into a major edit war? If the argument is dropped there would just be an edit war. We need moderator intervention.

I have no idea whether the Carpathia reached that speed or not or what sources to use, but couldn't we solve the issue at hand by just not including the information either way? While I'd generally want to include as much info on the page as possible, this particular fact isn't particularly important to the overall subject of the page, and more importantly, has probably caused more trouble than it's really worth to have on there. We could just reword that note to state that the Carpathia's captain pushed the ship so hard that it caused permanent damage without mentioned the specifics of exactly what top speed it hit, especially since it seems as that fact is in contention anyway.

^ Yeah, I agree with this.

^ Same. Japanese Teeth's suggestion is very reasonable.

^^^ Wholeheartedly agreed.

Edit: Deleting rant; this subject has succeeded in frustrating me.

I think that's a good compromise!

Compromise is acceptable.

Make it, leave a reason pointing yo this discussion.

Any attempts to relitigate on-page will result in a suspension.