An Unsinkable Titanic E-Book

John Bernard Walker

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Among the many questions which have arisen out of the loss of the Titanic there is one, which, in its importance as affecting the safety of ocean travel, stands out preëminent:
"Why did this ship, the latest, the largest, and supposedly the safest of ocean liners, go to the bottom so soon after collision with an iceberg?"
The question is one to which, as yet, no answer that is perfectly clear to the lay mind has been made. We know that the collision was the result of daring navigation; that the wholesale loss of life was due to the lack of lifeboats and the failure to fill completely the few that were available; and that, had it not been for the amazing indifference or stupidity of the captain of a nearby steamer, who failed to answer the distress signals of the sinking vessel, the whole of the ship's complement might have been saved.
But the ship itself—why did she so quickly go to the bottom after meeting with an accident, which, in spite of its stupendous results, must be reckoned as merely one among the many risks of transatlantic travel?

Leseprobe

AN UNSINKABLE TITANIC

Photo by Brown Bros., New York

Stoke-hole of a Transatlantic Liner

AN UNSINKABLE TITANIC

EVERY SHIP ITS OWN LIFEBOAT

BYJ. BERNARD WALKER

© 2023 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385741921 

PREFACE

It is the object of this work to show that, in our eagerness to make the ocean liner fast and luxurious, we have forgotten to make her safe.

The safest ocean liner was the Great Eastern; and she was built over fifty years ago. Her designer aimed to make the ship practically unsinkable—and he succeeded; for she passed through a more severe ordeal than the Titanic, survived it, and came into port under her own steam.

Since her day, the shipbuilder has eliminated all but one of the safety devices which made the Great Eastern a ship so difficult to sink. Nobody, not even the shipbuilders themselves, seemed to realise what was being done, until, suddenly, the world's finest vessel, in all the pride of her maiden voyage, struck an iceberg and went to the bottom in something over two and a half hours' time!

If we learn the lesson of this tragedy, we shall lose no time in getting back to first principles. We shall reintroduce in all future passenger ships those simple and effective elements of safety—the double skin, the longitudinal bulkhead, and the watertight deck—which were conspicuous in the Great Eastern, and which alone can render such a ship as the Titanic unsinkable.

The author's acknowledgments are due to the "Scientific American" for many of the photographs and line drawings reproduced in this volume; to an article by Professor J. H. Biles, published in "Engineering," for material relating to the Board of Trade stipulations as to bulkheads; to Sir George C. V. Holmes and the Victoria and Albert Museum for data regarding the Great Eastern, published in "Ancient and Modern Ships"; to Naval Constructor R. H. M. Robinson, U.S.N., for permission to reproduce certain drawings from his work, "Naval Construction," and to Naval Constructor Henry Williams, U.S.N., who courteously read the proofs of this work and offered many valuable suggestions. The original wash and line drawings are by Mr. C. McKnight Smith.

J. B. W.

New York, June, 1912.

AN UNSINKABLE TITANIC

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY

CHAPTER II THE EVER-PRESENT DANGERS OF THE SEA

CHAPTER III EVERY SHIP ITS OWN LIFEBOAT

CHAPTER IV SAFETY LIES IN SUBDIVISION

CHAPTER V THE UNSINKABLE GREAT EASTERN OF 1858

CHAPTER VI THE SINKABLE TITANIC

CHAPTER VII HOW THE GREAT SHIP WENT DOWN

CHAPTER VIII WARSHIP PROTECTION AGAINST RAM, MINE, AND TORPEDO

CHAPTER IX WARSHIP PROTECTION AS APPLIED TO SOME OCEAN LINERS

CHAPTER IINTRODUCTORY

Among the many questions which have arisen out of the loss of the Titanic there is one, which, in its importance as affecting the safety of ocean travel, stands out preëminent:

"Why did this ship, the latest, the largest, and supposedly the safest of ocean liners, go to the bottom so soon after collision with an iceberg?"

The question is one to which, as yet, no answer that is perfectly clear to the lay mind has been made. We know that the collision was the result of daring navigation; that the wholesale loss of life was due to the lack of lifeboats and the failure to fill completely the few that were available; and that, had it not been for the amazing indifference or stupidity of the captain of a nearby steamer, who failed to answer the distress signals of the sinking vessel, the whole of the ship's complement might have been saved.

But the ship itself—why did she so quickly go to the bottom after meeting with an accident, which, in spite of its stupendous results, must be reckoned as merely one among the many risks of transatlantic travel?

So far as the loss of the ship itself was concerned, it is certain that the stupefaction with which the news of her sinking was received was due to the belief that her vast size was a guarantee against disaster—that the ever-increasing dimensions of length, breadth, and tonnage had conferred upon the modern ocean liner a certain immunity against the dangers of travel by sea. The fetish of mere size seems, indeed, to have affected even the officers in command of these modern leviathans. Surely it must have thrown its spell over the captain of the ill-fated Titanic, who, in spite of an oft-repeated warning that there was a large field of ice ahead, followed the usual practice, if the night is clear, and ran his ship at full speed into the zone of danger, as though, forsooth, he expected the Titanic to brush the ice floes aside, and split asunder any iceberg that might stand in her way.

Courtesy of Scientific American

Rivetting the Outer Skin on the Frames of a 65,000-Ton Ocean Liner

Confidence in the indestructibility of the Titanic, moreover, was stimulated by the fact that she was supposed to be the "last word" in first-class steamship construction, the culmination of three-quarters of a century of experience in building safe and stanch vessels. In the official descriptions of the ship, widely distributed at the time of her launching, the safety elements of her construction were freely dwelt upon. This literature rang the changes on stout bulkheads, watertight compartments, automatic, self-closing bulkhead doors, etc.,—and honestly so. There is every reason to believe that the celebrated firm who built the ship, renowned the world over for the high character of their work; the powerful company whose flag she carried; aye, and even her talented designer, who was the first to pronounce the Titanic a doomed vessel and went down with the ship, were united in the belief that the size of the Titanic and her construction were such that she was unsinkable by any of the ordinary accidents to which the transatlantic liner is liable.

How comes it, then, that this noble vessel lies to-day at the bottom of the Atlantic in two thousand fathoms of water?

A review of the progress of those constructive arts which affect the safety of human life seems to show that it needs the spur of great disasters, such as this, to concentrate the attention of the engineer and the architect upon the all-important question of safety. More important than considerations of convenience, economy, speed of construction, or even revenue-earning capacity, are those of the value and sanctity of human life. Too frequently these considerations are the last to receive attention. This is due less to indifference than to inadvertence—a failure to remember that an accident which may be insignificant in its effect on steel and stone, may be fatal to frail flesh and blood. Furthermore, the monumental disasters, and particularly those occurring in this age of great constructive works, are frequently traceable to hidden or unsuspected causes, the existence and potentialities of which are revealed only when the mischief has been done. A faulty method of construction, containing in itself huge possibilities of disaster, may be persisted in for years without revealing its lurking menace. Here and there, now and then, some minor mischance will direct the attention of the few to the peril; but the excitement will be local and passing. It takes a "horror"—a "holocaust" of human life, with all its attendant exploitation in the press and the monthly magazine, to awaken a busy and preoccupied world to the danger and beget those stringent laws and improved constructions which are the earmarks of progress towards an ideal civilisation.

Courtesy of Scientific American.

Note how far the Great Eastern was ahead of her time. She was not exceeded until the advent of the Oceanic in 1899.

Growth of the Transatlantic Steamer from 1840 to 1912

Not many years ago, there was being erected across the St. Lawrence River a huge bridge, with the largest single span in the world, which it was believed would be not only the largest but the strongest and most enduring structure of its kind in existence. It was being built under the supervision of one of the leading bridge engineers of the world; its design was of an approved type, which had long been standard in the Western Hemisphere; and the steelwork was being fabricated in one of the best equipped bridge works in the country. Nevertheless, when one great cantilever was about completed, and before any live load had been placed on it, the structure collapsed under its own weight. One of the principal members—a massive steel column, five feet square and sixty feet long—crumpled up as though it had been a boy's tin whistle, and allowed the whole bridge to fall into the St. Lawrence, carrying eighty men to their death! The disaster was traced to a very insignificant cause—the failure of some small angle-bars, 3½ inches in width, by which the parts of the massive member were held in place. No engineer had suspected that danger lurked in these little angle-bars. Had the accident happened to a bridge of moderate size, the lessons of the failure would have been noted by the engineers and contractors; it would have formed the subject, possibly, of a paper before some engineering society, and the warning would have had results merely local and temporary. But the failure of this monumental structure, with a loss of life so appalling, gave to the disaster a world-wide notoriety. It became the subject of a searching enquiry by a highly expert board; the unsuspected danger which lurked in the existing and generally approved methods of building up massive steel columns was acknowledged; and safer rules of construction were adopted.

It took the Baltimore conflagration to teach us the strong and weak points of our much-vaunted systems of fireproof construction. Only when San Francisco, after repeated warnings, had seen the whole of its business section shaken down and ravaged by fire, did she set about the construction of a city that would be proof against fire and earthquake. It was the spectacle of maimed and dying passengers being slowly burned to death in the wreckage of colliding wooden cars, that led to the abolition of the heating stove and the oil lamp; and it was the risk of fire, coupled with the shocking injuries due to splintering of wooden cars, that brought in the era of the electrically lighted, strong, and incombustible steel car.