An Unsinkable Titanic/Chapter 10
CONCLUSIONS
I.The fact that the Titanic sank in two hours and thirty minutes after a collision demonstrates that the margin of safety against foundering in this ship was dangerously narrow.
II.It is not to the point to say that the collision was of an unusual character and may never occur again. Collision with an iceberg is one of the permanent risks of ocean travel, and this stupendous calamity has shown how disastrous its results may be. We cannot afford to gamble with chance in a hazard whose issue involves the life or death of a whole townful of people.
III.If it be structurally possible, and the cost is not prohibitive, passenger ships should be so designed, that they cannot be sunk by any of the accidents of the sea,—not even by such a disaster as befell the Titanic.
IV.That such design and construction are possible is proved by the fact that the first of the large ocean liners, the Great Eastern, built over half a century ago, so far fulfilled these conditions, that, after receiving injuries to her hull more extensive than those which sank the Titanic, she came safely to port.
V.It is not to the point to attribute the financial failure of the Great Eastern to the costly character of her construction. She failed because, commercially, she was ahead of her time, passenger and freight traffic being yet in their infancy when the ship was launched. Cheap steel and modern shipyard facilities have made it possible to build a ship of the size and unsinkable characteristics of the Great Eastern, with a reduction in the cost of twenty to thirty per cent.
VI.The principles of unsinkable construction, as formulated by Brunel and worked out in this remarkable ship, have been adopted in their entirety by naval constructors, and are to be found embodied in every modern warship. These elements—the double skin, transverse and longitudinal bulkheads, and watertight decks—are the sine qua non of warship construction; and in the designing of warships, they receive the first consideration, all other questions of speed, armour-protection, and gun-power being made subordinate.
VII.In the building of merchant ships, unsinkable construction has been sacrificed to considerations of speed, convenience of operation, and the provision of luxurious accommodations for the travelling public. The inner skin, the longitudinal bulkhead, and the watertight deck have been abandoned. Although the transverse bulkhead has been retained, its efficiency has been greatly impaired; for, whereas these bulkheads in the Great Eastern extended thirty feet above the water-line; in the Titanic, they were carried only ten feet above the same point.
VIII.The portentous significance of this decline in the art of unsinkable construction will be realised, when it is borne in mind that the Titanic was built to the highest requirements of the Board of Trade and the insurance companies. She was the latest example of current and approved practice in the construction of high-class passenger ships of the first magnitude; and, judged on the score of safety against sinking, she was as safe a ship as ninety-five out of every hundred merchant vessels afloat to-day.
IX.That the narrowing of the margin of safety in merchant ships during the past fifty years has not been due to urgent considerations of economy, is proved by the fact that shipowners have not hesitated to incur the enormous expense involved in providing the costly machinery to secure high speed, or the equally heavy outlay involved in providing the sumptuous accommodations which characterise the modern liner.
X.If, then, by making moderate concessions in the direction of speed and luxury, it would be possible, without adding to the cost, to reintroduce those structural features which are necessary to render a ship unsinkable, considerations of humanity demand that it should be done.
XI.Should the stupendous disaster of April the 14th lead us back to the sane construction of fifty years ago, and teach us so to construct the future passenger ship that she shall be not merely fast and comfortable, but practically unsinkable, the hapless multitude who went down to their death in that unspeakable calamity will not have died in vain.
XII.In conclusion, let us note what changes would render such a ship as the Titanic unsinkable:
(a)The inner floor of the double bottom should be extended up the sides to a watertight connection with the middle deck. This inner skin should extend from bulkhead No. 1 at the bow to bulkhead No. 14, the second bulkhead from the stern.
(b)The lower deck should be made absolutely watertight from stem to stern, so as to form practically a second inner bottom; and it should be strengthened to withstand a water pressure equal to that to which the outer bottom of the ship is subjected at normal draft.
(c)All openings through this deck, such as those for hatches and ladders and for the boiler uptakes, should be enclosed by strong watertight casings, carried up to the shelter deck, and free from any doors or openings leading to the intervening decks,—the construction being such that the water, rising within these casings from the flooded spaces below the lower deck, could not find its way out to the decks above.
(d)The second bulkhead from the bow and the second from the stern should be carried up to the shelter deck. All the intermediate bulkheads should be extended one deck higher to the saloon deck, D.
(e)The cargo spaces in compartments 3 and 4, lying below the middle deck, should be divided by a central longitudinal bulkhead, and the hatches, leading up from these holds, should be enclosed in watertight casings extending, without any openings, to the shelter deck, where they should be closed by watertight hatch covers. The huge reciprocating-engine-room should be divided by a similar, central, longitudinal bulkhead.
(f)Finally, the passenger spaces on decks A, B, C, and D, should be protected against fire by the construction, at suitable intervals, of transverse bulkheads of light construction, provided with fire-doors where they intersect the alleyways.
A Titanic, as thus modified, might reasonably be pronounced unsinkable. To such a ship we could confidently apply the verdict of Brunel, as recorded in his notes on the strength and safety of the Great Eastern: "No combination of circumstances, within the ordinary range of probability, can cause such damage as to sink her."