[1] Figures in this column represent the length between perpendiculars.
An interesting study of bulkhead practice in some notable ships is afforded by the table and diagrams which are herewith reproduced by the courtesy of "Engineering." In the matter of height of bulkheads above the water-line, the Great Eastern stands first, followed by the Paris, the Lusitania, the Campania, and the Titanic.
CHAPTER V
THE UNSINKABLE GREAT EASTERN OF 1858
The term "unsinkable," as applied to ships, is used throughout the present work in an accommodated sense. There never was but one unsinkable craft, and for that we must go back to the age of primitive man, who doubtless paddled himself across the rivers and lakes upon a roughly fashioned log of wood.
In the modern sense, an unsinkable ship is one which cannot be sunk by any of the ordinary accidents of the open sea, such as those due to stress of weather, or to collision with icebergs, derelicts, or some other ship.
Can such a ship be built?
Not only is it feasible to construct vessels of this type to-day; but, as far back as the year 1858, there was launched a magnificent ship, the Great Eastern, in which the provisions against foundering were so admirably worked out that probably she would have survived even the terrific collision which proved the undoing of the Titanic.
The Great Eastern represented the joint labours of the two most distinguished engineers of the middle period of the nineteenth century, I. K. Brunel and John Scott Russell. The former was responsible for the original idea of the ship, and it was he who suggested that it should be built upon the principles adopted in the rectangular, tubular bridge that had recently been built across the Menai Straits. To Scott Russell, as naval architect, were due the lines and dimensions of the ship and the elaborate system of transverse and longitudinal bulkheads.
Those were the days when the engineer was supreme. He worked with a free hand; and these two men set out to build a ship which should be not only the largest and strongest, but also the safest and most unsinkable vessel afloat. How they succeeded is shown by the fact, that on one of her voyages to New York, the Great Eastern ran over some submerged rocks off Montauk Point, Long Island, and tore two great rents in her outer skin, whose aggregate area was equivalent to a rupture 10 feet wide and 80 feet long. In spite of this damage, which was probably greater in total area than that suffered by the Titanic, the ship came safely to New York under her own steam.