Volume 29, No.14                                   
April 4, 2004

A Riveting Story

   Thanks to recent research, old ideas about why the Titanic sank have been put on ice.

   When the luxury liner went down on her maiden voyage in 1912, the cause seemed obvious.  After all, the ship struck a massive iceberg in the Atlantic just before midnight on April 14th, ripping a giant hole in the hull.  The gash was so big the ship sank in just 160 minutes, killing 1,500 people. But why was the hull so vulnerable?  

   According to one early theory, the steel in the vessel’s underbelly was defective, so the ocean’s frigid water made it brittle enough to shatter upon impact.  But that idea doesn’t hold water, for two reasons.  First, the steel used by the shipyard was “battleship quality”, far stronger than what was needed.  Second, the water in the Titanic’s ballast tanks at the time of the collision wasn’t frozen, which means the ocean wasn’t cold enough that night to turn even defective steel brittle.  Besides, the bad steel scenario doesn’t explain why, during the collision, survivors heard a strange noise that sounded “as though we went over a thousand marbles.”

   A much more likely theory has surfaced since the discovery of the Titanic’s wreck in 1985.  During a dive on the site, a research sub brought up some of the iron rivets that had connected the steel plates of the ship’s hull.  When metallurgist Tim Foecke of the National Institute of Standards and Technology cut into one of those rivets, he found a flaw:  “slag” — bits of glass added to the iron to give it strength — was not evenly distributed, as it should’ve been.  Instead, it was clumped, which weakened the metal instead of reinforcing it.  

   According to researchers, proper rivets would stretch but hold together during a collision but, in defective ones, the heads would pop off, leaving a series of one-inch holes in the plates.  Pop enough rivets — something that might sound like the ship going over “a thousand marbles” — and the steel plates would separate, letting in enough water to sink the ship.  Interestingly, when researchers got 48 more rivets from the wreck, nineteen were defective. At the very least, defective rivets were a factor in the Titanic disaster.

   Which begs the question:  how strong are the rivets holding your life together?  If our relationships with God and the people we care about are the strong plates that keep us afloat, the rivets are love.

   As long as the connections with our Father, friends and family hold together, we can move through life with grace and power, plow through the roughest seas, and survive even those catastrophic collisions that shake us to the core, whether it’s the death of a loved one,  a bout with devastating disease, or the inevitable discouragement that threatens to sink each of us.  Meaningful, significant ties with people who stand with us without strings or hesitation make us virtually invincible. That’s why a truly caring church family is so important.

   But our relationships with God and each other are held together by rivets of faithful, committed love that allow us to give a little when we crash into obstacles that would otherwise spell ruin.  Strong feelings are part of that love.  Emotion is the slag that strengthens love and brings fullness to the rational, commonsense side of relationships.

   But if that emotion isn’t even;  if it becomes clumped and concentrated in unhealthy ways, it weakens the very love it’s supposed to strengthen.  When we’re guided primarily by what we feel, instead of what we know to be the truth about God and each other, there’s no give in our relationships, especially when we run into big obstacles.  With too much blind, uninformed emotion, love comes apart, our connections give way and, before you know it, we’re doomed.

   There will be many times when you don’t feel very loving towards God and the people in your life.  That’s why commitment and truth are essential to a strong love.  They’ll hold things together until the right feelings return.  Otherwise, we’re sunk.

By Rick Gamble, published in Cross Current, the weekly newsletter of the Followers of Christ congregation in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.  Reprint at will in not-for-profit publications.  To subscribe, contact sgamble@bfree.on.ca