LESSONS FROM TEACHER CIRUELA
SHIPWRECKS (BARCOS HUNDIDOS)

Until the Titanic was at last found on the ocean floor, an enduring criterion had considered that sunken ships could not reach the bottom of the sea, but were kept held as if suspended between two beds of water, just at a depth level where water becomes compressed by the pressure that upper layers apply on them.

But this statement is not at all unworthy of belief: the logic behind the argument that water pressure up to 1km under the surface reaches 100 atmospheres (too much for our eardrums... a pressure-induced damage would occur and they'd be ruptured) has provided a solid foundation for this view.

Then based on this knowledge, supposing that ocean water is capable of compressing up to such a degree and reaching such an increasingly density which might stop shipwrecks from sinking to the bottom of the sea comes as a natural conclusion. But the true thing is that compressibility of water is rather low -and so are density degrees it might reach-, just low enough as to being able to exert the necessary force to keep a ship in a suspended status. It means that, in fact, even in the deepest oceans, water gets actually compressed hardly in a five per cent.

Nevertheless, low compressibility does not mean no compressibility. If water were not compressible even to a greater or lesser degree, worldwide oceans would be risen by an average of 35 meters, thus flooding an area of 5 million square kilometers and causing considerable damage as spreading out onto lands where life is possible thanks to water compressibility.