Unsinkable
The ship was never touted by the White Star Line as unsinkable—the term "practically unsinkable" appeared in a couple of admiring reviews of the ship beforehand and was played up for ironic effect afterward. The perception in the public mind was that the ship exuded modernity and comfort, giving a great impression of solidity and safety—the same way a bank built of solid masonry does even as it founders from unstable finances. The article "Wreck of the White Star Liner Titanic" from Scientific American from April 27, 1912, shows how the ship was designed with safety in mind. Unfortunately the ship was not designed with safety as the first priority. There were watertight doors and bulkheads, but even in 1912 engineers recognized that the bulkheads did not rise high enough—some were only three meters above the waterline. But such barriers cut up the interior space and made it harder to accommodate the easy flow of fare-paying passengers, and so they were discouraged. The ship had a double bottom for safety, but the company decided to save money and interior space and not build double sides. After the sinking, engineers immediately retrofitted the Titanic’s sister ship Olympic with a double hull.

Lifeboats
These days we believe there must have been a special kind of Dionysian madness to send a ship into the ocean without enough lifeboats to carry every soul on board. Early designs for the Titanic did in fact call for 64 lifeboats, but by the time the ship was launched, the company had whittled that complement down to 20.

Astonishingly, the number of boats carried was actually above and beyond what was legally required by the British Board of Trade for seagoing ocean liners. One argument said that a full complement of lifeboats would have made the ship too top-heavy, perhaps risking capsize. Another argument was that in an emergency the lifeboats would not have time to be loaded and launched, especially if the ship was heeling over. But the main reason for dispensing with lifeboats may have been to provide plenty of room for luxurious sundecks and sumptuous parlors for the pleasure of the well-to-do passengers. There were certainly plenty of technical fixes available: the front cover of Scientific American from April 27, 2012, shows one possible solution of stacking all the boats on the top deck.

Speed in ice fields
The Titanic was never designed to be as fast as more powerful competitor ships. A fast first crossing, though, made for good media image and better business for the White Star Line in the highly competitive transatlantic steamer business. Therefore, quite possibly, the chairman of the company, J. Bruce Ismay, pushed the venerable Capt. Edward John Smith to steam ahead with all possible speed. Other ships in the area had radioed that they had seen icebergs, and Smith may have altered course slightly to avoid possible locations of these known hazards, but in the balance between speed and risk, the company line won out. Yet there was no shortage of knowledge about the perils of ice, as you can see from this April 27, 1912, Scientific American article. Sonar was developed within the next two years as a way to avoid icebergs.

4 Comments

1. 1. bongobimbo 06:36 PM 4/4/12

   PART ONE: Click on "Suggestion for a Full Complement of Lifeboats", and read, after reading this.
   
   RMS TITANIC had a complement of 1,178 passengers, crew and hired specialists. The naval architect wanted 64 lifeboats, but the company provided only 20. Doing the arithmetic shows that each lifeboat, even if filled to the capacity of 47 (very few were) would still need to turn 5 or more people away to drown. Only by increasing the size of each lifeboat to a capacity of 59 could 1,178 fit into 20 boats. So far as I know, enlarging the lifeboats and increasing space between the davits was never considered and may have been impossible in 1912.
   
   Had 64 lifeboats been provided (hung in tiers) each boat could have been lowered after a maximum of 18 passengers boarded. (64 into 1178 = 18.40625.) 60 boats would have been triple the 20 boats that were furnished, and more efficient than 64. 60 boats could handle 19 people, well within the capacity of a 47-person boat. Makes me wonder why Mr Andrews asked for 64.
   
   The SciAm team that analyzed the sinking in 1912 and wrote the "Full Complement of Boats" report came up with an even more efficient lifeboat plan. If hung single-tier in the davits, we can count 36 boats in the SciAm 1912 illustration. 32 people could have fit into each 47-capacity boat and every single person of the 1,178 could have been saved. There would be no need to hang boats double-tiered since 72 boats would be too many. Tragic that Mr Andrews didn’t argue longer or louder with the company, and tragic that no one in Parliament argued with the Board of Trade over a long-obsolete reg originally adopted in the age of sail. But of course it was the "Gilded Age", an era of foolish and dogmatic misuse of capitalism against a sensible (and actually more conservative) social contract that was desperately needed.

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2. 2. bongobimbo 06:41 PM 4/4/12

   PART TWO: Today the sleepwalking lawmakers aren’t the Board of Trade, but the NeoCons and Blue Dogs in the US Congress and their counterparts in other countries who, like the early 1900s’ robber barons, also worship the great god Mammon via a form of virulent capitalism that must have Adam Smith screaming in his grave! These greedos ignore or defy the evidence for human-caused runaway global warming--not to mention multitudes of other needed reforms on behalf of real people.
   
   Like the Board of Trade a hundred years ago, quick profits for their good buddies the fossil fuel super-rich dazzle them, since they known there will be a rake-off for them. Having no consciences to warn them of the need for public safety and common sense, the Tea Partiers of 2012 plod along in a state of advanced hubris. They too will face public fury, because just like the TITANIC, their arrogance is speeding the world to crash into the planetary equivalent of an immovable iceberg in a sea lane. Except this time billions of lives will be lost.
   

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3. 3. WizeHowl in reply to bongobimbo 09:00 AM 4/7/12

   I think you have your numbers slightly wrong, from my memory there were 2,278 or there about. Since 1,517 died your figures are out.
   
   But your on the right track. With 64 boats an average of 36 people could have safely been transferred to the Carpathia and other rescue ships with virtually no loss of life.
   
   

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4. 4. dschlenoff in reply to bongobimbo 11:14 AM 4/16/12

   Lifeboats--yet another detail that can be endlessly disputed. Only 4 lifeboats (the collapsible ones) had a 47-person capacity; 14 had a capacity of 65 (one was tested prior to the journey and had 70 men crammed in it safely, although office Lightoller testified later that he was worried that a lifeboat at full capacity would have strained the lowering mechanism); the two small cutters had a capacity of 40.

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