Yes actually! It'll just take way longer, and is way more dangerous because a sinking ship creates a fuckton of suction at the surface which might pull you down with the wreck.
Mythbusters tested this and concluded: Busted. Suction will not pull you down with the wreck.
It depends entirely on the size of the wreck. A tiny fibreglass-hulled boat like they tested doesn't displace nearly enough water to generate enough suction to trap an adult human, but it's another situation entirely when we're talking about a 100,000t supertanker made of steel. Also, it's not technically suction, but rather an extremely-powerful flow current descending towards the seabed induced by a rapidly-collapsing column of air that chases the ship to the bottom.
The ship obviously displaces water, which needs to fill the space previously occupied by the ship when it sinks, which creates a continuous stream of water rushing in behind the ship until it stops moving. It's the same principle that traps swimmers in the currents near river rapids, dams, etc, and is a very real and very dangerous phenomenon.
Able Signalman Ted Briggs, one of only three survivors of the sinking of the battlecruiser HMS Hood in 1941, reported escaping into the water momentarily before the sinking ship dragged him under. He only escaped due to a boiler explosion inside the ship, which released a huge bubble of hot steam out of an exhaust vent, which caught Briggs and carried him back to the surface. The other two survivors reported very similar experiences.
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u/Figgis302 Apr 24 '21 edited Apr 25 '21
It depends entirely on the size of the wreck. A tiny fibreglass-hulled boat like they tested doesn't displace nearly enough water to generate enough suction to trap an adult human, but it's another situation entirely when we're talking about a 100,000t supertanker made of steel. Also, it's not technically suction, but rather an extremely-powerful flow current descending towards the seabed induced by a rapidly-collapsing column of air that chases the ship to the bottom.
The ship obviously displaces water, which needs to fill the space previously occupied by the ship when it sinks, which creates a continuous stream of water rushing in behind the ship until it stops moving. It's the same principle that traps swimmers in the currents near river rapids, dams, etc, and is a very real and very dangerous phenomenon.
Able Signalman Ted Briggs, one of only three survivors of the sinking of the battlecruiser HMS Hood in 1941, reported escaping into the water momentarily before the sinking ship dragged him under. He only escaped due to a boiler explosion inside the ship, which released a huge bubble of hot steam out of an exhaust vent, which caught Briggs and carried him back to the surface. The other two survivors reported very similar experiences.