Image: Scientific American, April 27, 1912
Editor’s note: we are publishing this article on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912
Scientific American
Vol. CVI, No. 17, April 27, 1912
In the long list of maritime disasters there is none to compare with that which, on Sunday, April 14th, overwhelmed the latest and most magnificent of the ocean liners on her maiden voyage across the Western Ocean. Look at the disaster from whatever point we may, it stands out stupefying in its horror and prodigious in its many-sided significance.
"Titanic" the Last Word in Naval Architecture.
The "Titanic" stood for the "last word" in naval architecture. Not only did she carry to a far greater degree than any other ship the assurance of safety which we have come to associate with mere size; not only did she embody every safeguard against accident, known to the naval architect; not only was there wrought into her structure a greater proportionate mass of steel than had been put into any, even of the recent giant liners; but she was built at the foremost shipyard of Great Britain, and by a company whose vessels are credited with being the most strongly and carefully constructed of any afloat.
Unusual Strength of Construction.
To begin with, the floor of the ship was of exceptional strength and stiffness. Keel, keelson, longitudinals and inner and outer bottoms, were of a weight, size and thickness exceeding those of any previous ship. The floor was carried well up into the sides of the vessel, and in addition to the conventional framing, the hull was stiffened by deep web frames—girders of great strength—spaced at frequent and regular intervals throughout the whole length of the vessel. Tying the ship's sides together were the deck beams, 10 inches in depth, covered, floor above floor, with unbroken decks of steel. Additional strength was afforded by the stout longitudinal bulkheads of the coal bunkers, which extended in the wake of the boiler rooms, and, incidentally, by their watertight construction, served, or rather, in view of the loss of the ship, we should say were intended to serve, to prevent water, which might enter through a rupture in the ship's outer shell, from finding its way into the boiler rooms.
Watertight Compartments and Pumps.
As a further protection against sinking, the "Titanic" was divided by 15 transverse bulkheads into16 separate watertight compartments; and they were so proportioned that any two of them might nave been flooded without endangering the flotation of the ship.
Furthermore, all the multitudinous compartments of the cellular double bottom, and all the 16 main compartments of the ship, were connected through an elaborate system of piping, with a series of powerful pumps, whose joint capacity would suffice to greatly delay the rise of water in the holds, due to any of the ordinary accidents of the sea involving a rupture of the hull of the ship.
The watertight compartments were divided up by bulkheads (heavy dark lines in the image) that ran across the ship from side to side. Unfortunately, as this drawing from 1912 shows, the bulkheads did not rise up high enough to stop water from spilling over the top of them as the Titanic settled into the ocean. Some of these bulkheads are only 10 feet above the waterline. Credit: Scientific American, April 27, 1912
Size as an Element of Safety.
Finally there was the security against foundering due to vast size—a safeguard which might reasonably be considered the most effective of all. For it is certain that with a given amount of damage to the hull, the flooding of one compartment will affect the stability of a ship in the inverse ratio of her size—or, should the water-tight doors fail to close, the ship will stay afloat for a length of time approximately proportional to her size.
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3 Comments
Add CommentInteresting how, in the last paragraph of the article, the author dismisses eyewitness accounts of the ship breaking apart and imagines the Titanic impaling the ocean floor and standing upright.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGreed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJ.P. Morgan's greed killed the Titanic, by building the world's three biggest ships simultaneously, despite a clear lack of skilled workers and steel. He wanted to get these death traps in the water and earning to pay off the massive loan, and beat Cunard Lines.
So he was allowed to use thin, brittle, sulfur-contaminated hull plate, smaller iron rivets instead of steel, and less than a third the needed number of lifeboats because his ad copy fooled maritime regulators. They really did believe she was unsinkable. Those unsightly boats just cluttered up decks passengers need for gamboling and shuffleboard! Begone!
Morgan's bean counters continually overruled the inexperienced engineer and puked out the Olympic, a ship so flimsy, the sides could be seen "panting" (flexing in and out by over three inches) at speed. The Olympic's frame began cracking on the first day of sea trials and workers slapped steel bandages all over it to make it seaworthy. Her sister ship, the Britannic, snapped in half and sank just four years later after hitting a mine in WWI. She sank in less than an hour. Her watertight doors and portholes had been left open.
Eyewitness testimony as to the flimsiness of these craft was suppressed, from the Titanic snapping in half, to White Star attempting to spirit several officers out of the country to prevent them from testifying at the inquiry. We will never know just how bad these ships were, because many of those who knew went to the bottom. But we DO know what J.P. Morgan did on that fateful night.
He inexplicably changed his plan to make the maiden voyage, and stayed home to deal with a change in art import laws as he raped Europe of priceless antiquities.
Most people didn't even know Morgan owned the Titanic, much less that he killed over a thousand people by trying to be the biggest and the cheapest. The press reprinted White Star Lines advertising copy verbatim, as the era's latest version of "too big to fail."
And it didn't fail, for Morgan. After the rigged inquiry blamed the idiot captain, E.J. Smith, for speeding into a known ice field at night without even bothering to provide his lookouts with binoculars, the insurer paid Morgan his money back. Smith may have been chosen for his recklessness, having caused three collisions with other ships by tearing around in port at full speed, and crushing the top of a tug with the Olympic's giant rudder. If anything went wrong, Morgan could blame the captain's inability to keep track of where other objects were in relation to the floating city.
The original report on the Titanic sinking is a model of good reporting: a credit to the Scientific American of old! The lack of lifeboats is a terrible comment on bad old British malpractice (I am a British citizen), in a world dominated by the bean-counters and people deluded enough to believe their own publicity. There never has been, and probably never will be, an unsinkable ship. The sinking of the Costa Concordia shows that there are no limits to human stupidity and arrogance.The ship sank probably because the captain was showing off to a pretty girl(see your other article about men being "cognitively impaired by attractive woman"). The passengers of this ultra-modern ship had not yet had their lifeboat drills, as the ship had only left port that morning. The Spirit of Free Enterprise (British Ferry) sank within minutes of leaving harbour a few years ago. So accidents can happen at any time, in the calmest weather.
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