An Unsinkable Titanic: Every Ship its own Lifeboat

by John Bernard Walker

Courtesy of the Scientific American

Olympic, Sister to Titanic, Reaching New York on Maiden Voyage

The dimensions of the frames and plating of the hull were determined by the builder's long experience in the construction of large vessels. The cellular double bottom, which extended the full width of the ship, was of unusual depth and strength. Throughout the ship, its depth was 5 feet 3 inches; but in the reciprocating engine-room, it was increased to 6 feet 3 inches. The keel consisted of a single thickness of plating, 1½ inches thick, and a heavy, flat bar, 3 inches in thickness and 19½ inches wide. Generally speaking, the shell plates were 6 feet wide, 30 feet long, and 2½ to 3 tons in weight. The largest of these plates was 36 feet long and weighed 4¼ tons.

Amidships, the framing, which consisted of channel sections 10 inches in depth, was spaced 3 feet apart. Throughout the boiler-room spaces, additional frames, 2½ feet deep, were fitted 9 feet apart, and in the engine- and turbine-rooms, similar deep frames were fitted on every second frame, 6 feet apart. These heavy web-frames extended up to the middle deck, a few feet above the water-line, and added greatly to the strength and stiffness of the hull.

Had the inside plating of the double bottom been carried up the sides and riveted on the inner flanges of these frames, as shown in the sketch on page [107], it would have served the purpose of an inner skin; and when the outer skin of her forward boiler-rooms was ruptured by the iceberg, it would have served to prevent the inflow of water to these two large compartments. Mr. Ismay, the President of the International Mercantile Marine Company, in his testimony at the Senate Investigation, stated that among the improvements, which would be made in the Gigantic, now under construction for the company, would be the addition of an inner skin. Doubtless he had in mind the construction above suggested.

The 10-inch channel frames extended from the double bottom to the bridge deck, and some of these bars were 66 feet in length and weighed nearly 1 ton apiece. The frames were tied together along the full length of each deck by the deck beams of channel section, which, throughout the middle portion of the ship, were 10 inches deep and weighed as high as 1¼ tons apiece. The transverse stiffness of the framing was assured by stout bracket knees, riveted to the frames and deck beams at each point of connection, and by the 15 watertight bulkheads, which were riveted strongly to the bottom and sides of the ship, and also by 11 non-watertight bulkheads, which formed the inner walls of the coal bunkers on each side of the main bulkheads.

The bridge, shelter, saloon, and upper decks were supported and stiffened by four lines of heavy longitudinal girders, worked in between the beams, which were themselves carried by solid round pillars placed at every third deck beam. In the boiler-rooms, below the middle deck, the load of the superincumbent decks was carried down to the double bottom by means of heavy round pillars.

Such was the construction of the Titanic; and it will be agreed that, so far as the strength and integrity of the hull were concerned, it was admirably adapted to meet the heavy stresses which are involved in driving so great and heavy a ship through the tempestuous weather of the North Atlantic.

The first sight of such a gigantic vessel as the Titanic produces an impression of solidity and invulnerability, which is not altogether justified by the facts. For, to tell the truth, the modern steamship is a curious compound of strength and fragility. Her strength, as must be evident from the foregoing description of the framing of the Titanic, is enormous, and ample for safety. Her fragility and vulnerability lie in the fact that her framework is overlaid with a relatively thin skin of plating, an inch or so in thickness, which, while amply strong to resist the inward pressure of the water, the impact of the seas, and the tensile and compressive stresses due to the motion of the ship in a seaway, etc., is readily fractured by the blow of a collision.